GDT 12/1/19 Week 13: 9-2 Baltimore Ravens vs 10-1 San Francisco 49ers

[AngusMcFife]

1 hour ago, DreamKid said:

Can't speak for anyone else, but I think the 49ers' fans on FF are a pretty good bunch. Nothing wrong with you guys supporting your team or trying to make a case for something in here. Your approach to it is a nice contrast to the level we're usually treated to as well.

Much better than Browns fans, for sure. 

[Danand]

I took a look at both the Ravens and the 49'ers offensive blocking scheme. A lot of the blocking were players coming in motion and blocking to the sides rather than head on. In another matchup I would assume, that defenders would be told to cut on those blocks to force everything inside

[diamondbull424]

19 hours ago, J-ALL-DAY said:

You're looking at just TDs, but Brown has 36 catches this season, six of them have been over 25 yards. That's a pretty high percentage right there. The games he does get these big 25+ yarders in, he's held pretty much in check, minus the Rams game where he obviously had a big impact despite only having 42 yards.

We can definitely agree to disagree, no problem with that. But with the amount of blitzes you guys utilize, you will allow bigger plays compared to a team that usually relies just on the front four to generate a rush. Passing rating be damned, there's going to be more opportunities there for bigger plays for the team going against single coverage opposed to a team dropping seven in coverage and taking away the big play. 

Two things. Genuinely interested in where to find those stat breakdowns. I know I’ve seen them before but yet I can’t find them now.

Secondly I don’t know enough about what a good deep threats percentage of 25+ yd plays are to say that 1/6 is or isn’t a high percentage. But common sense tells me that it’s not a significant percentage comparable to the top deep threats in the league. A guy line Torrey Smith is someone I can point to that I’m sure was much closer to 35-40% of his plays were 25 yards plus just based off of watching him play. So I can’t help but think 16.7% is not high and does the opposite of prove your point. I would love to compare the data myself and compare Brown to the Tyler Locket’s, DeSean Jackson, and Brandin Cooks of the world. 

Generally deep threat receivers that exclusively play that way have a much higher YPC. Something like 17-19 YPC. Hollywood’s YPC is something like 14.1, that is no where close to someone who is this one trick pony deep threat that your initial point that I contested makes him out to be. He’s fast and a very effective deep threat, don’t get me wrong, but he’s also a bubble screen, out route, curl route receiver that gets you YAC and separation with those short routes. Typically in games where the footing isn’t as bad and he can play as fast as he likes to. He’s Antonio Browns cousin and outside of the additional 15 lbs plays a very similar game.

https://nextgenstats.nfl.com/stats/receiving

What’s more Next Gen stats have their TAY and TAY% stats that tracks total air yards and percentage thereof for the WR. I see a host of receivers with higher TAY% than Hollywood which speaks to my assumptions on the percentage of his deep routes not being crazy high compared to league average. His numbers look much more comparable to a guy like AJ Brown that you can target for the big play but can also get you YAC off the shorter routes as well.

I can understand your perceptions towards Brown being a “deep threat” that doesn’t have impact in other games where he doesn’t have a crazy long catch, but I’ve watched everyone of his games, he opens up things short, but then he runs short routes as well and gets key completions to get the team into crucial 3rd and short situations or he consistently finds ways to get open off his short routes in the endzone.

[diamondbull424]

Only 2 of his 6 TDs are off of 25+ yd plays. That means 66% of his TDs aren’t deep TDs. This isn’t the case for most deep threat exclusive WRs. Generally most of their TD production is coming from the defense not putting a safety over the top and getting burnt for the score. That happened week one vs Miami when teams still thought Lamar Jackson couldn’t throw well enough to expose them. But beyond that, Hollywood has made plays moreso in the short to intermediate parts of the field. With the occasional longer completion sprinkled in. And he hasn’t been fully healthy either. Now he looks healthy. So once he keeps torching guys short I anticipate more deep threat opportunities as defenses begin to inch closer and closer to the line, similar to Antonio.

[J-ALL-DAY]

14 minutes ago, diamondbull424 said:

Two things. Genuinely interested in where to find those stat breakdowns. I know I’ve seen them before but yet I can’t find them now.

Secondly I don’t know enough about what a good deep threats percentage of 25+ yd plays are to say that 1/6 is or isn’t a high percentage. But common sense tells me that it’s not a significant percentage comparable to the top deep threats in the league. A guy line Torrey Smith is someone I can point to that I’m sure was much closer to 35-40% of his plays were 25 yards plus just based off of watching him play. So I can’t help but think 16.7% is not high and does the opposite of prove your point. I would love to compare the data myself and compare Brown to the Tyler Locket’s, DeSean Jackson, and Brandin Cooks of the world. 

Generally deep threat receivers that exclusively play that way have a much higher YPC. Something like 17-19 YPC. Hollywood’s YPC is something like 14.1, that is no where close to someone who is this one trick pony deep threat that your initial point that I contested makes him out to be. He’s fast and a very effective deep threat, don’t get me wrong, but he’s also a bubble screen, out route, curl route receiver that gets you YAC and separation with those short routes. Typically in games where the footing isn’t as bad and he can play as fast as he likes to. He’s Antonio Browns cousin and outside of the additional 15 lbs plays a very similar game.

https://nextgenstats.nfl.com/stats/receiving

What’s more Next Gen stats have their TAY and TAY% stats that tracks total air yards and percentage thereof for the WR. I see a host of receivers with higher TAY% than Hollywood which speaks to my assumptions on the percentage of his deep routes not being crazy high compared to league average. His numbers look much more comparable to a guy like AJ Brown that you can target for the big play but can also get you YAC off the shorter routes as well.

I can understand your perceptions towards Brown being a “deep threat” that doesn’t have impact in other games where he doesn’t have a crazy long catch, but I’ve watched everyone of his games, he opens up things short, but then he runs short routes as well and gets key completions to get the team into crucial 3rd and short situations or he consistently finds ways to get open off his short routes in the endzone.

 

7 minutes ago, diamondbull424 said:

Only 2 of his 6 TDs are off of 25+ yd plays. That means 66% of his TDs aren’t deep TDs. This isn’t the case for most deep threat exclusive WRs. Generally most of their TD production is coming from the defense not putting a safety over the top and getting burnt for the score. That happened week one vs Miami when teams still thought Lamar Jackson couldn’t throw well enough to expose them. But beyond that, Hollywood has made plays moreso in the short to intermediate parts of the field. With the occasional longer completion sprinkled in. And he hasn’t been fully healthy either. Now he looks healthy. So once he keeps torching guys short I anticipate more deep threat opportunities as defenses begin to inch closer and closer to the line, similar to Antonio.

I just went and checked his game logs and got those stats.

Okay, so you can say deep threat isn't the correct word, but the entire point is the Niners are the best team (or were the best team a few weeks ago) in preventing any 20+ yard plays through the air. Brown has six of them of above 25 yards. Not that it is impossible for him to get a big gain against the Niners, just not THAT likely. That's the point I was trying to make. The deep ball IS taken away with how we play our coverages so the only way he gets a big gain is having a bunch of YAC. Which is certainly possible, but the defense is really good at stopping that as well. To take it further, those six catches of 25+ yards that Brown has gotten have accounted for 277 of his 520 yards. So he's gotten over 50% of his receiving yards off those six catches compared to his 30 other receptions. That to me is a fairly big percentage. Now, I don't know how it is for the rest of the league, that much is true. But it just seems like quite a bit? Would be fun to compare against other deep/big play threats in the league. 

 

[diamondbull424]

4 minutes ago, J-ALL-DAY said:

I just went and checked his game logs and got those stats.

Okay, so you can say deep threat isn't the correct word, but the entire point is the Niners are the best team (or were the best team a few weeks ago) in preventing any 20+ yard plays through the air. Brown has six of them of above 25 yards. Not that it is impossible for him to get a big gain against the Niners, just not THAT likely. That's the point I was trying to make. The deep ball IS taken away with how we play our coverages so the only way he gets a big gain is having a bunch of YAC. Which is certainly possible, but the defense is really good at stopping that as well. To take it further, those six catches of 25+ yards that Brown has gotten have accounted for 277 of his 520 yards. So he's gotten over 50% of his receiving yards off those six catches compared to his 30 other receptions. That to me is a fairly big percentage. Now, I don't know how it is for the rest of the league, that much is true. But it just seems like quite a bit? Would be fun to compare against other deep/big play threats in the league. 

Got you. I guess the confusion came with the assumption that this is the only way he’s used. Perhaps it wasn’t you but a 49ers fan quoted my post prior to the game about Brown finally looking healthy and that should allow him to be more involved in the passing attack. At the time I had either assumed the rain wouldn’t be quite as bad as it was for the footing or I hadn’t known it would rain when I gave that pre-game prediction.

Point being that when I was quoted their was an assumption to mean Brown is only activated deep, which my whole point that was quoted was that a healthy Brown means he can consistently be a factor “overall”. As we’ve seen with Saquan Barkley an ankle/foot injury significantly impacts how quick these guys play, contact balance, how much impact they can endure.

With Brown his speed still allowed him to be a factor deep, but he’s been largely catching short passes and not having the burst or twitchiness to be the same YAC specialist that he was in college where he could take a short pass and make you pay for additional gains. The healthier he gets the more he becomes an overall factor.

The assumption that “healthy” means “he’s going to go deep” was a misnomer from the beginning and the point that I’ve been contesting since before the game happened. Either way the game is over, I think we’ve both come to understand their was a potential misunderstanding from the beginning so it’s all good.