There's a lot of consternation among those covering the Patriots and a good portion of the fans heard on local sports radio about this 2012 Patriots team. I've had a feeling that Tom Brady's season is being somewhat under appreciated and wanted to see how close to the truth my bad feelings about the defense were, especially after the Bills looked like they had the Pats by the short hairs before Captain Crimson threw a perfect spiral right to Devin McCourty. The shock was he caught it for the interception to end the game. Lately it appears those famous Pepper Johnson whipping a football right at a defenders face who tries to catch it drills were as futile as Mitt Romney's battleground states plan. See? Emotion begets blah blah blah sarcasm and cheap jokes. To the foot of the sage trolls at Cold Hard Football Facts I return for answers. Save me from this morass of what my eyes tell me, what Felger spouts and Mazz agrees with, and Mutt sticking to his claim that Chandler Jones will go to the football Hall Of Fame some day this morning oh wise ones!
The CHFF have this wonderful stat called Real Quarterback Rating (RQBR). It's just like the regular QB rating, only better. In their words: "We introduced Real Quarterback Rating before the 2011 season as a way to quantify all aspect of QB play. It's been a TOTAL score behind your wildest dreams. Teams better in Real QB Rating in 2011 went an incredible 223-33 (.871) -SNIP- The current passer rating is just that, a measure of passing effectiveness. Real Quarterback Rating includes rushing attempts, rushing yards, rushing TDs, fumbles and sacks to produce a new kind of rating that measures a quarterback's overall performance with the ball, not just as a passer when he actually releases the ball (which is all that passer rating currently measures)." Perfect, seeing as I want to compare last year, when the team went to the Super Bowl, to this year 2 years of data is great. Along with that I wanted to check the defenses the Patriots have played over the first 10 weeks this year vs last year. For that I used a CHFF stat called Defensive Passer Rating (DPR), which means in a nutshell the QB rating a defense gives up.
Last year at this time Tom Brady had a RQBR of 95.58, ranking 3rd in the NFL. I took the DPR for each team the Patriots played against through week 10 of 2011 at the time the Pats played them. That is Miami's DPR week 1, San Diego's DPR week 2, etc. Last years opponents also included the Revis Island led New York Jets twice, the stout Steelers of last year, and the New York Football Giants. Those defenses averaged a DPR of 86.14. In other words, those Ds made opposing QBs look like the Matt Shaub of this year. That's the Matt Shaub with zero playoff wins on his resume and lives on a vicious D and the best running back in the game. And keep in mind that the DPR was measured just after the team played Brady and his 95.58 RQBR. Brady ended the year with a 99.35 RQBR as the team went on an 8-0 streak, against a string of horrible QBs by the way, to finish at 13-3 and go to the Super Bowl.
So what about this year? Brady is again 3rd in the NFL, this time with a RQBR of 96.15. And the defenses he's been up against? It may not seem like it but the opposing average DPR has been 88.77. That's only a 2% difference from the murders row of last year. They've faced just about the same schedule in terms of weekly difficulty and Brady has performed slightly better than a year ago. Pretty impressive I'd say considering Mankins has missed time on the offensive line and Aaron Hernandez has only played a game and a half. The remaining schedule this year is rather daunting. Current DPRs Indy 96.54, Jets 81.79, Miami 80.08 twice, Houston 71.65, 49ers 77.23, Jaguars 87.11. In Brady's favor going forward is he has been without the aforementioned Hernandez. That's the guy who was Brady's 3rd option last year with 79 catches for 910 yds and 7 TDs. He's been replaced this year by Brandon Lloyd, who in turn has replaced Deion Branch as the second WR behind Welker in terms of production. And then there is the running game. This year Steven Ridley has 814 yards, is averaging 4.7 yards per carry and has scored 6 TDs. Last year Green-Ellis was the lead back and went 667-3.7-11 for the full year. Add it all up and assuming Hernandez comes back soon, we can agree Lloyd is a better option than Branch, and the running game is approximately 40% better than last year, then Brady should have a better offense to attack those good defenses the last half of the year.
So what about the defense? That's a subject I'll tackle tomorrow when I'll be looking at this year's Patriots team vs Payton Manning's Super Bowl 2006 Colts team.
Until next time,
The SAHD
Wow, what a trade by the Blue Jays, Dodgers East!
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