A Statistical Deeper dive into our 2021 Defense and our 2022 outlook

[Mr. Scot]

1 hour ago, Gash said:

Saw that movie with my family in the theater when it came out. Yep, I'm that old.

Can't make that claim. Did see it on Wonderful World of Disney though

Now, years later when he grew up to be a chopper pilot assigned to an Antarctic research station, I saw that one in the theater.

[CRA]

29 minutes ago, Mr. Scot said:

Yep. Situational...

As an aside, the one guy Rhule really just seems to own is Kingsbury.

also helps when Kyler Murray and Nuk Hopkins are taken off the table.   

[Mr. Scot]

3 minutes ago, CRA said:

also helps when Kyler Murray and Nuk Hopkins are taken off the table.   

Fair, but I'll take whatever we can get at this point

[Pimpdaddy]

3 hours ago, Gash said:

Saw that movie with my family in the theater when it came out. Yep, I'm that old.

me too...lol

[Basbear]

7 hours ago, Ricky Spanish said:

I keep seeing everyone bring up the fact that we were "The #2 Defense in the NFL last season!!11" countered by those that say "No we sucked donkey balls" and I'm kind of over it. Truth is, we weren't as good as some say and we weren't as bad as some say. They were really good at some things and really bad at others.

I'm going to break it down into three categories so we can understand what the team did well (top 10), what they didn't do well (bottom 10), and what we were kind of okay at (ranked 11-22 or so) and what was done this offseason that may affect these rankings for 2022. I'm not going to look at total yards or total TDs allowed because that would not paint a true picture of the Defense's capabilities due to the offense putting them in bad situations all year. Instead, I will look at the efficiency stats (the per play, per drive kind of stuff) as a better illustration of our teams true performance because we gave the opposing Teams a better starting position by nearly 2 full yards compared to the rest of the league:

So having that context, let's take a deeper dive on whether or not the defense was actually good or not

Things we were good at

Yards/offensive play

Net Yards gained per pass attempt:

Rushing Yards/Attempt

Penalties in general and limiting them

Limiting YAC (#1!)

Blitzing a lot

Pressures per drop back

Tackles for loss

3rd down conversion percentage

Number of plays allowed per drive (surprisingly really good)

Net yards per drive (heavy correlation to our bad offense)

 

Things we were not good at

Turnovers both total, and per drive:

Percentage of plays we allowed a passing TD

INT Percentage

RZ TD Percentage

 

Things we were just OK at

QB Hurries per throw

Knockdowns of the QB per pass attempt

Missed Tackles

QB Completion percentage Allowed

Adjusted yards/pass attempt

Yards per completion

QB Rating allowed

4th down conversion percentage

Scoring Drive Percentage (this stat has strong correlation to how bad our offense was)

Avg points scored per drive

Overall Defense DVOA

 

2021 Summary:

Personally, I'm a bit surprised at how there was significantly more good/Average than bad. What the stats showed me is that we are a controlled aggressive defense that limits penalties and is overall pretty solid. There are definitely some concerns, mainly RZ defensive play calling if we are giving up that many TDs per trip, but there is a solid foundation to improve upon, and our Run defense wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it was last year. PFO's overall defensive rating of 15 is pretty reasonable considering our strengths (aggressive, getting after the QB) and weaknesses (turnovers, and big plays allowed).

It cannot be understated how BAD our offense was last year and how much their ineptitude really hurt our defense. They constantly gave opposing teams a short field to work with and could not sustain drives due to turnovers and overall sucking.

 

2022 Outlook

Adding Baker Mayfield as our QB might be the single best offseason acquisition for our defense. If he is even remotely average than the Team improves dramatically. Truth be told, if we had Teddy as our QB last year, we had the potential to win way more games based on how the defense played. Other offseason acquisitions include bolstering the LB corp, adding a pass rushing DT, adding a solid vet safety, and hiring Steve Wilks and Paul Pasqualoni. Offseason losses include losing Reddick and Stephon Gilmore to FA.

While I'm not sold on Pasqualoni as an upgrade, Wilks in the DB room is a huge boost as far as coaching goes. He helped make Josh Norman, Kurt Coleman, and James Bradberry pro bowl caliber players and he should be a great mentor for our young secondary. While we lost Reddick, he wasn't the best run stopper, and I understand why we just picked up Henry Anderson to help with run support. Brown will need to step up in a big way, but the LBers we signed, while not the best in coverage, are good run stoppers and should help bolster our average run defense. We seem to be banking on a lot of our young talent stepping up in YGM, and the secondary as a whole. Truth be told, our secondary looks pretty damn scary on paper and I think they are the true engine of our defense. We are built to lock down the receivers and allow the DL/LBers enough time to get to the QB. Snow loves to blitz, and he loves to do it exotically. This defense is giving me some real legion of boom vibes in terms of construction - not necessarily results just yet.

I have come out of this deep dive surprisingly optimistic and actually excited to see what our defense can do this year with better coaching and a better offense to support them. Statistically speaking, they seem to be on the cusp of being a truly GOOD defense, especially if they can start getting turnovers. 

Thanks for a real thread topic backed by time/effort/stat/love.

[Panthers Fan 69]

7 hours ago, Ricky Spanish said:

I keep seeing everyone bring up the fact that we were "The #2 Defense in the NFL last season!!11" countered by those that say "No we sucked donkey balls" and I'm kind of over it. Truth is, we weren't as good as some say and we weren't as bad as some say. They were really good at some things and really bad at others.

I'm going to break it down into three categories so we can understand what the team did well (top 10), what they didn't do well (bottom 10), and what we were kind of okay at (ranked 11-22 or so) and what was done this offseason that may affect these rankings for 2022. I'm not going to look at total yards or total TDs allowed because that would not paint a true picture of the Defense's capabilities due to the offense putting them in bad situations all year. Instead, I will look at the efficiency stats (the per play, per drive kind of stuff) as a better illustration of our teams true performance because we gave the opposing Teams a better starting position by nearly 2 full yards compared to the rest of the league:

So having that context, let's take a deeper dive on whether or not the defense was actually good or not

Things we were good at

Yards/offensive play

Net Yards gained per pass attempt:

Rushing Yards/Attempt

Penalties in general and limiting them

Limiting YAC (#1!)

Blitzing a lot

Pressures per drop back

Tackles for loss

3rd down conversion percentage

Number of plays allowed per drive (surprisingly really good)

Net yards per drive (heavy correlation to our bad offense)

 

Things we were not good at

Turnovers both total, and per drive:

Percentage of plays we allowed a passing TD

INT Percentage

RZ TD Percentage

 

Things we were just OK at

QB Hurries per throw

Knockdowns of the QB per pass attempt

Missed Tackles

QB Completion percentage Allowed

Adjusted yards/pass attempt

Yards per completion

QB Rating allowed

4th down conversion percentage

Scoring Drive Percentage (this stat has strong correlation to how bad our offense was)

Avg points scored per drive

Overall Defense DVOA

 

2021 Summary:

Personally, I'm a bit surprised at how there was significantly more good/Average than bad. What the stats showed me is that we are a controlled aggressive defense that limits penalties and is overall pretty solid. There are definitely some concerns, mainly RZ defensive play calling if we are giving up that many TDs per trip, but there is a solid foundation to improve upon, and our Run defense wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it was last year. PFO's overall defensive rating of 15 is pretty reasonable considering our strengths (aggressive, getting after the QB) and weaknesses (turnovers, and big plays allowed).

It cannot be understated how BAD our offense was last year and how much their ineptitude really hurt our defense. They constantly gave opposing teams a short field to work with and could not sustain drives due to turnovers and overall sucking.

 

2022 Outlook

Adding Baker Mayfield as our QB might be the single best offseason acquisition for our defense. If he is even remotely average than the Team improves dramatically. Truth be told, if we had Teddy as our QB last year, we had the potential to win way more games based on how the defense played. Other offseason acquisitions include bolstering the LB corp, adding a pass rushing DT, adding a solid vet safety, and hiring Steve Wilks and Paul Pasqualoni. Offseason losses include losing Reddick and Stephon Gilmore to FA.

While I'm not sold on Pasqualoni as an upgrade, Wilks in the DB room is a huge boost as far as coaching goes. He helped make Josh Norman, Kurt Coleman, and James Bradberry pro bowl caliber players and he should be a great mentor for our young secondary. While we lost Reddick, he wasn't the best run stopper, and I understand why we just picked up Henry Anderson to help with run support. Brown will need to step up in a big way, but the LBers we signed, while not the best in coverage, are good run stoppers and should help bolster our average run defense. We seem to be banking on a lot of our young talent stepping up in YGM, and the secondary as a whole. Truth be told, our secondary looks pretty damn scary on paper and I think they are the true engine of our defense. We are built to lock down the receivers and allow the DL/LBers enough time to get to the QB. Snow loves to blitz, and he loves to do it exotically. This defense is giving me some real legion of boom vibes in terms of construction - not necessarily results just yet.

I have come out of this deep dive surprisingly optimistic and actually excited to see what our defense can do this year with better coaching and a better offense to support them. Statistically speaking, they seem to be on the cusp of being a truly GOOD defense, especially if they can start getting turnovers. 

fug me that’s alot of math. Are we going to be good or not??

[poundaway]

On 9/8/2022 at 2:25 PM, Ricky Spanish said:

That is a major takeaway (pun intended) I got from this. Our defense was if nothing else, completely solid, and that was without collecting turnovers through that entire process. If we can cause more turnovers, our defense will be downright scary moving forward. 

My coach used to say punts are turnovers.  Panthers weren't as bad in that category.  If teams will pass more on us, we'll see more ints.

[Ricky Spanish]

2 hours ago, poundaway said:

My coach used to say punts are turnovers.  Panthers weren't as bad in that category.  If teams will pass more on us, we'll see more ints.

Way more things can go wrong on any given passing play (sack, QB fumble, tipped pass, interception, receiver fumble) than on a run play (RB fumble).

[musicman]

Excellent post. TY!!!

[coffee]

7 hours ago, Ricky Spanish said:

Way more things can go wrong on any given passing play (sack, QB fumble, tipped pass, interception, receiver fumble) than on a run play (RB fumble).

John Fox, is that you?

BTW, great info to start this thread!  Thank you!

[Khyber53]

On 9/8/2022 at 11:17 AM, Ricky Spanish said:

I keep seeing everyone bring up the fact that we were "The #2 Defense in the NFL last season!!11" countered by those that say "No we sucked donkey balls" and I'm kind of over it. Truth is, we weren't as good as some say and we weren't as bad as some say. They were really good at some things and really bad at others.

 

Thanks for all the hard work that went into that! Great piece!

Still, I have to wonder how much the numbers were skewed by how bad, and I mean terrible, our first three opponents were. Of course, you can't just take out every team's first three games and have the stats still reflect things because not every team played three chumps like we did, so I guess we have to go with what we have there.

I hope that we're good on defense this year, but I have to agree that Mayfield's play has the potential to have the biggest impact on our defensive outcomes.