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Fred Weary takes great offense at these insinuations
Written by Matt
Sunday, 27 May 2007
Lost in the national chorus of "The Texans Have No Line" is one little detail--it's just not true. Regardless of what you hear out of Bristol, the statistically-provable truth is that the Texans line was better than a number of rather surprising teams.
Pardon me while I kick Barbaro repeatedly about the head and neck. I ask that you turn your attention to the following list:
It should be fairly obvious1
that the above is the number of sacks allowed by those teams during the
2006 NFL season. That's right, gang... for all the "Houston's line
sucks" and "Why didn't they address the o-line" and "Matt Schaub is
going to get murdered" talk, Houston was actually ninth in sacks
allowed. Great? No. But not near as bad as people make it out to be.
But that's only half the story, isn't it? The real question would be sacks-per-pass-attempt2,
since a team that attempts more passes is naturally going to give up
more sacks. Surely, Houston must have been ridiculously bad in this
category, right?
Kind
of surprising, no? One might have assumed that Buffalo, Oakland,
Cleveland, and Detroit had bad lines, but Kansas City? Weren't they
supposed to have a really good line; wasn't their line supposed to get bad this year, now that people have retired?
How
about Seattle--their line was supposed to be one of the strengths of
that squad and the main reason why Matt Hasselbeck and Shaun "Big
Softie" Alexander were so good--and Pittsburgh, the two teams who
appeared in the Super Bowl about 15 months ago? Did their line play
become markedly worse the season after the Super Bowl?
At least
all of those teams featured reasonably immobile quarterbacks. Maybe
that is the common thread; inmóvil quarterbacks just take more sacks,
regardless of their offensive line. But then what of Atlanta? If the
mobility theory held, Surely Ron Mexico would prevent him from taking more sacks than David Carr. Except, that's not true, either.3
So, what gives? Either (a) the stats don't reflect the whole story and somehow mask how bad Houston truly is or (b) the Texans' line really wasn't so awful last year.
I'm leaning toward (b). After all, this is a team who gave up only 7
sacks over the last quarter of the season in 2006 (including NONE to
the eventual Super Bowl champion Colts). Moreover, this is a unit who
were blocking for one of the poorest-decision-making QBs in the game--a
guy who created far more sacks than he avoided.
Of course, the
real kicker here is that the Texans line played the majority of the
season with anywhere from 40-60% of its original starters. Charles
Spencer, Zack Weigert, and Mike Flanagan all missed at least 7 games
last year. Yet, using rookies and fill-ins, this unit was better than
almost anyone outside of the fanbase gives it credit for being.
Now,
before someone offers that the lack of meaningful games Houston played
down the stretch limited the number of times people felt the need to
blitz, I point you again to Cleveland, Buffalo, Detroit, and Oakland.
None of those teams was in contention after, oh, National Beheading Day.
It is because of discussions like this that I get so annoyed with people like Eric Allen,
et al. Other than a couple of guys who have taken the time to look at
the numbers (KC Joyner comes to mind as well as... uh... someone else,
maybe), the talking heads at ESPN and the like just use the offensive
punchline as a joke. Maybe, if they paid even an ounce of attention to
teams outside of New England, New York, and Indianapolis, they just
might realize how off-base they are with this.
Of course, then they wouldn't be the "Worldwide" Leader, would they?
1 If for no other reason that this is pretty much what I talk about any time news about the Texans is slow. 2 Or, what the cool kids refer to as "sack percentage." 3 By way of comparison, Vince Young was sacked only 6.5% (29/447) of the time. Views: 2837 | Print | E-mail
Comments (4)
1. 28-05-2007 19:49
hmmmm.
At the end of the day, what ESPN or anyone says about the Texans doesn't really matter. Nobody is going to say good things about them until they start winning regularly and play a more watchable brand of football.
One of the main reasons the sacks were lower was because of all the short passes. At the end of the year, the passing game because nearly non-existent. Whether that is Carr's fault or the line's fault or the play calling fault or whatever, the Texans line is going to be considered a problem until they play better consistently and get through a season without looking like a M*A*S*H Unit.
Thanks for that sack data. I had no idea that Pittsburgh's line was more porous than ours, but with the qb troubles they had, that may have been their problem....as it was ours it seems.
3. 29-05-2007 07:32
Short passes
Carr had 6.26 yards per attempt last year. He was 5.88 in 2005. So I don't know that you can chalk up the Texans' decrease in sacks from '05 to '06 as being due to shorter passes. With respect to the league, Carr's number was low, but not low enough to suggest much. Consider, Hasselbeck was 6.58. Losman was 6.68. Frye was 6.24. Vick was 6.38. Andrew Walter was 6.08. Carr is right there in that group and he was sacked less than any of those guys. If the lack of sacks was due primarily to short passes, then Vick's short passing plus greater mobility should have easily led to his sack number being lower than Carr's.
So, like I said, the line is not great by any stretch, but it is WAY better than people want to believe.
Silver Oak--Good point. I think people underestimate the amount of sacks that can be directly chalked up to poor QB play rather than poor line play. Which is also a reason that the Texans' line was not as bad as advertised--I mean, can you think of a QB who got HIMSELF sacked more than Carr?
