Chicago Bears: Using Statistics Correctly
Published by Shaun Leistikow on July 14, 2009
Article Source: Bleacher Report - Chicago Bears
There have been many Chicago Bear haters out there lately. They all say the same old thing.
Jay doesn’t have anyone to throw to. Jay will get sacked all the time. The Bear defense was really bad last year. How can a defense who is 30th against the pass be any good?
I’ve had to state this so many times it isn’t funny. Does yards allowed per game tell you anything specifically about a defense? Not really. You don’t know how many plays were taken. How about points a team allows? Does that tell you anything specific about a defense? Again, no.
Anyone who thinks otherwise should go back to High School. Let’s take a closer look at some real stats that have actual meaning to them.
How do you know how good a line is? By sacks allowed, right? No. You can’t get sacked on run plays. You must take sacks divided by pass attempts.
Chicago quarterbacks were sacked 5.2 percent of each pass play. That’s good for 12th which is better than average. NFL team average has it at 5.9 percent. So Chicago was already better than average at pass blocking.
On top of that Chicago has improved their offensive line during the offseason. So we can expect this to drop even less so now the Bears will have a way better than average pass blocking line on paper.
Add in the fact that Jay Cutler is more mobile and this is starting to look a lot like another offensive line that Jay just left. So why do they keep bringing the offensive line back up?
So now we can take a look at the Bear defense.
Yes, Chicago did allow more passing yards than the Broncos. I can see that. But what does this tell you exactly. Is it fair if Chicago took 127 more pass attempts? Can you blame this on the defense? Maybe, but we’ll get to that later.
What we should be looking for is yards allowed per attempt. This will tell you how the defense really does against a pass play. Chicago allows 5.9 yards per pass attempt which is good for 9th in the NFL. The league average is 6.2 yards per pass attempt.
Again Chicago is better than many teams in the NFL against the pass. A question we’ll ask ourselves later is why is Chicago getting so many plays against their defense. Are they not getting off the field? We’ll answer this later.
I want to tackle the run defense first. Chicago allows 3.4 yards per run. Third place in the league. The average is 4.2 yards allowed per play.
The next thing about a good defense is that they can get takeaways. Thirty-two takeaways is good for second in the league, with the average at 24.8 takeaways.
So far we have agreed that Chicago has an above average defense, right? We just need to find out why Chicago has been taking more snaps than any team in the NFL.
Is it because Chicago can not get off the field? Per drive, the Bear defense was on the field for 2:30.9. That is two minutes and 30 seconds. The league leader is 2:28.2. Chicago is the second fastest team to get off the field for defense.
The Bears’ offense is on the field for 2:24.3. The offense is on the field less than the best defense is on the field! That is horrible.
So where is this break down in offense? We already discussed that it wasn’t the offensive line and pass protection. Could it be that Chicago cannot run the ball?
Chicago only had 3.9 yards per rush. So it is possible this had something to do with it. Chicago also just had 6.1 yards per pass attempt. Only 30 percent of Kyle Ortons’ passes were attempted when Chicago was trailing, too. What that means is that there is no reason why we should be this low for yards per pass attempt.
After all of this it is easy to see that the Bear offense needs to improve in order for the team to improve.
