AllGreenBayPackers.Com

As you may know from reading my past blog posts, I love me some stats. I don’t think they’re the be-all and end-all when it comes to football, but I do think they are a useful tool to use when analyzing a team, a unit, or a player. Perhaps that’s why I enjoy following sites like Pro Football Focus (PFF) and Football Outsiders (FO).

These two groups of data crunchers put a lot of time and critical thought into representing the performance of players and teams in the form of numbers. Through careful observation and grading of every play of every football game of the year, these statisticians are able to eventually tell us which team’s offense is performing the best based on their results and the strength of the defenses they’ve played.  Or they can present a numerical “grade” for an individual player for something like “pass blocking efficiency.”

Like I said before, they provide a great tool for professional football analysis. We can use the information to either support what we think we’ve seen, or use it as a jumping off point to examine something further.  Read more... (1203 words + 1 image, estimated 4:49 mins reading time)

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Greg Gabriel at the National Football Post (a great website that I highly recommend) recently published an article entitled “How clubs strategize for free agency and the draft” which postulates an interesting idea that when picking at a certain position in the draft, a team can expect a certain number of players at a position to be picked ahead of them (if that sounds confusing please check out his article where he goes more indepth in the concept).  For instance, if a team just won the Super Bowl and is picking last in the 1^st round and is interested in drafting a quarterback, they can reasonably expect to see the 3^rd or 4^th best quarterback still available because on average 2-3 quarterbacks get drafted in the 1^st round.  If you think about it, there are only so many “can’t miss” 1^st round draft picks produced every year and usually their positions are distributed rather evenly (factored in with the nature of the NFL).  Obviously some years can be strong years for certain positions, like this year with defensive ends, but on average the amount of players in a certain position selected remains relatively constant.  Read more... (927 words + 1 image, estimated 3:42 mins reading time)

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One of the big problems with playing 3 games in 10 days is that injuries are that much more devastating.  In particular, having only 3 days to get healthy for Packers such as Greg Jennings and James Starks will be a particularly difficult task.  In my opinion, there’s no huge rush to push Jennings if he isn’t a 100% ready.

Jordy Nelson (who happens to be white) has had a career year and Jermichael Finley is a near lock to be the focal point of the defense even if he isn’t targeted all that much.  After that, there is always Donald Driver, James Jones, Randall Cobb or maybe even Andrew Quarless who is capable of having a fantastic game in Jennings’ absence.

Not so much with James Starks.  While still technically the backup to Ryan Grant, anyone who has watched a Packers game (save perhaps the Bears game) understands that Grant is really backing up Starks.  The difference between the two can be summed up pretty easily; Starks is the better performer but Grant is the more dependable of the two.  Read more... (890 words + 2 images, estimated 3:34 mins reading time)

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In my last article I compared the defensive performance of the Packers defense (in regards to passing plays) against the average defense; for instance I compared the Packers defense against the New Orleans Saints to all other defenses who have played New Orleans at this point.

Today, I’m flipping the table and comparing the Packers passing offense against the average offense; so again for instance I will compare the Packers offense against the New Orleans Saints to all other offenses that have played New Orleans at this point.  Since the Packers didn’t have a week 8 game, and since data on the Packers is most important (as this is a Packers blog), I’m only working with week 7 data.  Again, Cmp is completions, Att is attempts, Cmp% is completion percentage, Yds is yards, TD is touchdowns, Int is interceptions, Y/A is yards per attempt and Yds/Pt is yards per point (essentially how many yards does the offense have to gain in order to gain a point?  The lower the more efficient the offense is)  Read more... (1166 words + 1 image, estimated 4:40 mins reading time)

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The Packers may be perfect in the win-loss column, but it would be foolish to assume that everything with the Packers is going perfectly.  The last 3 years the Packers have fielded competitive teams each with its own Achilles’ heel; in 2009 it was the offensive line, in 2010 it was the running game and this year it’s definitely the secondary.

While everyone one has heard that the Packers are near the bottom of the barrel in terms of passing defense, is it because they’ve played against elite passing quarterbacks? Is it because they’ve played against pass-first teams?  Or is it because the secondary simply isn’t as good as it was when they won the Super Bowl?

I decided to take a look at passing averages of teams that Packers have played.

The first section are the numbers posted by opponents while playing the Packers.

The Second section are the passing averages of Packers opponents not including the Packers game (i.e. how these teams did against other teams on their schedule).

The final section is the difference between the two and the last bit is the average of these differences.  Read more... (1043 words + 1 image, estimated 4:10 mins reading time)

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After week 1, every fan has the right to be optimistic.  Fans of winning teams will instantly project the same success to the next 16 weeks, fans of losing teams will console themselves that its only one game and fans of teams that got blown out will delude themselves into thinking that their team is the next 2003 Patriots, who got skunked 31-0 by the Buffalo Bills only to finish 14-2 and win the Super Bowl.

Packers fans can count themselves lucky to be part of the 1^st group after a thrilling win against the New Orleans Saints but amidst the victory, questions arose. The Packers game up an astounding 477 total yards with Drew Brees shredding the Packers secondary for 398 yards.  Will this be an issue in games to come or just a result of playing one of best quarterbacks along with one of the most powerful  passing offenses in the NFL?

In my opinion no. Take a look at the statistics  Read more... (1399 words + 1 image, estimated 5:36 mins reading time)

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