First Quarter Offensive Rankings – Impact Drives Per Game
Now that every team has played at least four games, here are the rankings for each team’s offense overall per game. I publish this to encourage discussion and because of the interesting way that it flattens out ratings to count only the performance of the offensive unit. Special teams play and defensive scoring are completely absent in these ratings.
An impact drive is one that includes at least two first downs and consumes substantial time of possession. The average number of impact drives per game is 4.7. This means that the average NFL team generates 4.7 impact drives per game. A number higher than this is better and lower is worse than average.
As you can see below, the Giants produce more offensive drives than any other team while the Chiefs produce the least number of dominating drives. The Jets, for the first quarter, are slightly below average in producing offensive drives.
One thing to remember about these ratings. They don’t indicate scoring. Generally, more drives produce more scoring. However, some teams have relatively weak offenses (a low score below) yet produce a lot of points or vice versa. These discrepancies may be because a team has breakaway skill position players or can not execute in the red zone or some other reason. Later this week, I’ll publish ratings for offensive efficiency. Those numbers will tell you how well a team produces points.
I hope you find these ratings entertaining. If you are interested, I can provide numbers for each half and quarter-by-quarter. The first half-second half numbers are pretty fascinating. The Jets, for example, produce more than a full drive better in the second half than the first, an indication of an offense looking for its rhythym or poor preparation or excellent in-game adjustments, you decide.
Here are the numbers in impact drives per game.
| Browns | 2.4 |
| Rams | 3.3 |
| Vikings | 3.8 |
| Lions | 3.9 |
| Chiefs | 3.92 |
| Chargers | 4 |
| Raiders | 4.132 |
| Jaguars | 4.24 |
| Bills | 4.32 |
| Seahawks | 4.4 |
| Bengals | 4.48 |
| Jets | 4.5 |
| Panthers | 4.56 |
| Packers | 4.56 |
| Saints | 4.7 |
| Texans | 4.8 |
| Steelers | 4.8 |
| Eagles | 4.8 |
| 49ers | 4.88 |
| Patriots | 4.9 |
| Bears | 4.96 |
| Titans | 4.96 |
| Falcons | 5.12 |
| Buccaneers | 5.12 |
| Redskins | 5.2 |
| Colts | 5.2 |
| Dolphins | 5.2 |
| Cowboys | 5.28 |
| Cardinals | 5.6 |
| Broncos | 5.8 |
| Ravens | 6 |
| Giants | 6.4 |
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just wait till next week when everything clicks together we will be awesome and no more bringing in the punter like 50 times a game now we have a good passing game but i think mangini is gonna do something to make TJ happy , we all expect him to do that early in the game , we know him to well but I have no problem with the the running game is a mess which im sure the Jets used the bye week to fix , You well i was watching the Giants game they said that O line is the best because they know each other so well the been with each other for so long , well its gonna take some time for our guys to get into synch
I wonder if TJ can take a snap?
Question: How often have we seen Jones and Washington in the backfield together? We’re all tired of seeing TJ run up the middle for two yards. Why not let Favre read the coverage, then decide who to hand-off to. If they’re stacked in the box, give it to Leon to run around the outside. Otherwise, let Jones pound it. At this point, it seems like teams read it too well — like when we bring in Brad Smith.
With the league turned so upside down (see Miami), I’d like to see some of that creative Shotty playcalling that we saw in 2006.
Of course, if any of the above was viable, I’d be an offensive coordinator. Mostly, I feel like Sonya — “You can’t bring the draw on third and long, Sonya!”
ha. that’s a funny commercial.
Spent – Farve is too new and uncomfertable with the offense to be doing all the crazy shifts and whatnot that Shotty did with Pennington. Besides, the motion and odd formations were meant to keep the defensive front seven on their heels to compensate for what was an awful offensive line.
Two points: One, four games with teams higher than us and six games with teams lower than us. Two, BF said he likes to see the defense in a static position, thus the current lack of motion. No telling if that will change as the season goes on.
Pennington’s first year in Schott’s system was his most adventurous. It was a brand new system to Chad and he was also recovering from an injury and he was able to pick it up pretty well.
Now of course, Favre didn’t have a full offseason to learn it, but he’s now had 2 full months of “studying” to get a good sense of it. Now that we’re in October we should be able to incorporate some offensive trickery and different formations into the mix, especially with a veteran such as Favre.
As far as impact drives go, a few that stand out the most to me are the ones in the second half of the Cardinals game. Yea, it sucked that they scored 21 unanswered points in the third quarter, but we came back with some impressive drives that put the game out of reach.