Steven Jackson’s Lament
October 30th, 2009 | by Will |I, like many a fantasy football player — not just Rams fans — drafted Steven Jackson as my first round workhorse. Working behind his new offensive line, and the positive effects of the Mike Karney Factor, and with a full preseason and training camp unmarred by contract negotiations, this was going to be SJ’s breakthrough season. And he’s played well, except for one galling thing:
No touchdowns. No “rolling the dice.”
Jim Thomas touched on in Jackson’s frustration in his post-game notes from the Rams’ 42-6 loss to the Colts. And now Steve Korte of the Belleville News Democrat points out that the Rams are one of just two teams without a rushing touchdown. Both writers take pains to say that Jackson is being a good citizen about this — unlike, say Larry Johnson, who started an ill-advised twitter flame war with his fans.
So what’s happening? The obvious answer is lack of opportunities — the Rams spend so little time in scoring position, that Jackson just hasn’t had the chances. But digging deeper into the play-by-play, we’ve uncovered that there is actually a double-barreled reason why: not only have the Rams spent little time in the red zone, but Jackson sees the lowest percentage of touches there compared to anywhere else on the field. See for yourself, with this infographic, after the break:
Methodology: For this analysis, we looked at every offensive snap that wasn’t a punt or kick, or called back due to penalty. Jackson’s “touches” include runs and pass targets — both complete and incomplete.
We aren’t sure what’s going on with Shurmur’s playcalling here, but the theme seems to be that the Rams are using Jackson as a workhorse in the middle of the field, but more as a blocker or a last resort in the red zone. And one thing that will come out in a companion graphic (if I get time) is that Jackson’s yardage per touch goes down significantly inside the opponent’s 20. But again, that might be a factor of limited opportunities.
Tags: Fantasy Football, Information Graphics, Infoshot, Larry Johnson, Pat Shurmur, Rolling the dice, Steven Jackson, Twitter
By Jeff Roman on Oct 30, 2009
This is excellent! Well done Will.
By hixxinsoulard on Oct 31, 2009
Good stuff. I don’t think the rams have been able to run in the red zone since the faulk days. Jackson in 06 maybe?
By brackenthebox on Nov 2, 2009
Pretty cool graphic. It definitely represents some of the frustration of watching the Rams flounder in the red zone without letting their best player touch the ball.
That said, a couple points (from the statistician in me). If you assume that the touches outside of the redzone represent typical usage, the p-value for his usage in the red zone being lower than outside is a little over 0.10. That means that about 10% of the time, you’d see the distribution shown above even if the play calling was statistically identical in both cases. While 10% is small, it’s definitely not negligible. Maybe I just want to cling to that 10% chance that Shurmur hasn’t been an idiot.
Secondly, I’d imagine that every back’s yardage per touch decreases in the red zone: defenders are playing closer to the line of scrimmage and you can’t get any long runs to boost the numbers. That said, we’ve been awful in the red zone for years, so I wouldn’t be surprised if he takes an even bigger hit than the average back.
By Will on Nov 2, 2009
Jeff, thanks for good word.
Hixx, unfortunately I haven’t compiled stats that go back beyond this season … doing it all by hand from NFL.com game logs, rather than pay for the Stats Inc monkeys. But I’d say not since Faulk’s big touchdown year have the Rams had a decent red zone ratio, and the run game has been a distant fourth option behind “pass,” “pass again,” and “lay up for the field goal.”
Bracken, I wish I knew more about statistics — it’s tough to follow the logic that *identical* playcalling inside and outside the red zone would lead to this kind of split, any percent of the time. Are you accounting for multiple reads in a given play call? I appreciate the close read and the thoughtful response.
By brackenthebox on Nov 2, 2009
Yea, I probably wasn’t clear there. The statement I made comes from basically treating the play calling as a random draw from some distribution (like a weighted coin flip). If you had a “coin” that gives the ball to SJ 43% of the time (164/386 touches outside the RZ) and then “flipped” it to determine the 49 RZ plays, most of the time you would get something close to 43% RZ touches; sometimes, even with the same underlying distribution, you’d only get 32% RZ touches (as is observed here). By this model of playcalling, there is a 10% chance that you would see 16 or fewer RZ touches for SJ even if Shurmur has the same overall philosophy (43% touches for SJ).
Now, obviously, Shurmur isn’t flipping a coin on the sideline to determine what plays to call (we hope), but in many cases in sports, decision making can be modeled by random process. The randomness can come from a variety of places (true randomness of just choosing a play that feels good, the effective randomness of the game situation, etc.) So while the coin flip scenario I outlined above isn’t exactly what’s going on, it basically says that there is some chance that even though there is a skewed distribution right now, Shurmur could have been using the same overall philosophy (get SJ ~40-45% of the touches) whether he’s inside or outside of the redzone.
An extreme example of this is if the Rams had only run a single play in the red zone all year (not that far off). Even if SJ hadn’t touched the ball in that one play, it doesn’t mean that Shurmur never wants to give him the ball in the red zone. As the Rams run more and more plays and continue to go away from SJ, you have more and more confidence that Shurmur’s philosophy is different. According to the model outlined above, you’d place that confidence at about 90% with the 16/49 touches we’ve seen so far.
By Will on Nov 2, 2009
Okay, I think I get it. To paraphrase — I’m imagining (for the sake of the argument) that Shurmur has a “weighted” coin that lands on heads (SJ) roughly 43% of the time. That matches his general offensive philosophy outside the red zone. And the question is, based on these numbers, is Shurmur using the same philosophy or a different philosophy in the red zone?
And your answer is that we can be roughly 90% sure that he’s intentionally doing something different. Which makes perfect sense out of your initial comment: “Maybe I just want to cling to that 10% chance that Shurmur hasn’t been an idiot.”
If this *is* intentional, is this something Shurmur brought over from Philadelphia? Eagles fans that I know hate Andy Reid’s goal-line playcalling, because he has this brilliant multi-purpose running back, but they seemingly never try to use him to pound the ball in the end zone.