Henne faced the greatest amount of 3rd & Longs in the NFL

lack of 1st down production left us facing an uphill battle

Thank you, ground game. (I edited the thread to focus more on 1st & 2nd down since 3rd down has already been beaten to death)

I decided to crunch some numbers to see just how bad our 2nd & longs truly were because, when I rewatched the season, it seemed in my eyes that our ground game was killing us on 1st down to the point where I felt it was detrimental to our drive success, related scoring production, and Henne's overall production. IMO that's a ton of stress to put on any young QB. I threw in the redzone stuff just for the heck of it.

Here are the numbers:

1st Down QBR--completion%......(# pass attempts in 2nd & 1-7/# attempts in 2nd & 8+)

Henne............. 88.0--67.2%............ (49/113)
Ryan............... 82.0--59.5%............ (64/127)
Sanchez.......... 92.7--62.2%............ (72/122)
Flacco............. 94.7--64.2%............ (61/99)
Freeman...........96.0--62.2%........... (67/81)
Bradford.......... 65.6--60.6%........... (89/104)
McCoy............. 88.0--61.9%........... (30/42)
Clausen........... 53.7--47.9%........... (30/59)
Kolb................ 64.0--59.2%........... (25/40)
Cassel............. 94.4--57.4%........... (57/72)
Cutler.............. 99.4--60.6%........... (40/104)
Roethlisberger...88.8--61.1%........... (42/88)
Orton.............. 98.6--62.1%........... (64/113)
Brady............ 108.5--72.5%........... (78/99)
Rodgers......... 108.8--71.6%........... (76/86)
Rivers............ 117.1--70.5%........... (55/112)
P Manning........ 98.9--66.7%........... (100/161)
Brees.............. 85.0--66.7%............ (90/124)
Schaub............ 85.9--62.0%........... (75/104)
E Manning...... 106.6--71.4%........... (74/84)
Palmer............ 86.0--62.7%............ (64/106)
McNabb........... 80.8--60.7%............ (42/105)
Vick.............. 100.8--63.7%............ (57/62)
Hasselbeck...... 71.8--57.5%............ (59/85)
Fitzpatrick....... 88.1--60.7%............ (54/95)
Garrard......... 104.0--66.4%............ (42/80)
Campbell......... 84.9--64.5%........... (42/71)
A Smith........... 87.2--58.5%........... (36/63)
Kitna............... 80.8--61.8%........... (36/65)
Anderson......... 68.9--53.5%........... (39/69)
Collins............. 73.9--54.3%........... (37/57)
Hill.................. 81.6--61.6%........... (51/98)

If my math is correct, our offense faced the 3rd worst ratio of 2nd & 1-7 compared to 2nd & 8+.

We can all draw our own conclusions, but these numbers tell me we're not making plays on 1st down to move the chains and not running well on 1st down. I know most of us could already tell this by watching games, but now we can see how our 2nd downs compared to the rest of the league. This is quite telling considering anything less than 4 yards on 1st down correlates to a greater likelihood of failure than success..... not to mention there are more 1st downs than any other down.

Considering Henne's 1st down play wasn't bad by any means (5th best 1st down completion %), this leads me to believe the lack of effective ground game on 1st & 2nd down greatly impaired his performance evidenced by his poorer play on 2nd down & 3rd and long in comparison to 1st down. Hopefully Daniel Thomas, a hard running Lex, Pouncey, and greater offensive speed will help jump start our 1st down success.

 

Well........ before we only hypothesized that we were in too many 3rd & longs.
Now we know that, not only were we in a lot, we were in the most in the NFL. lol.

 

It's astonishing & ironic that a supposed run-oriented team was so horrible on 1st down.

 

That was infuriating, Nabo.

 

There's 1 flaw with that Fin-O ........ his 3rd down conversion percentage was one of, if not the, highest in the NFL when excluding the 3rd and longs.

 

I remember telling at the TV more times than I would've liked, but I didn't realize it was that bad.

 

I agree and disagree with this. Obviously he's not Brady or Manning, but at the same time he did well converting 3rd downs & did well on 1st down..... so I wouldn't necessarily say that our running game was greatly impaired on 1st down b/c of Henne. If Henne sucked on 1st down & we needed to use the ground game as a crutch, I could see how teams would play the run more on 1st down.

IMO the short gains on 1st down allowed defenses to key in on the pass on 2nd down....... which is coincidentally where Henne performed the worst. (I'm not saying he didn't have his share of the contribution by any means either)
If we weren't in 95 3rd & 8+, it's very likely that his 3rd down rating would've been between 85-90 rather than 73

If we ran better on 1st to set up more unpredictable 2nd downs, I think Henne would've been in the 85ish range here, too, rather than 69.6.

The complete lack of balance totally killed us IMO.

I honestly feel it was the ground game that hurt the passing game more than the passing game hurt the ground.

 

The kind of chuckle where you laugh at yourself for being such an idiot?????

 

well, I went 1 whole page without being called a Henne lover etc, so I guess that's an improvement.

 

thanks for reminding me.

 

Why you gotta make fun of the Polish NAVY like that?!

 

We're on page 2 so it doesn't count. lol.

 

Super Troopers is a classic.

 

I mean....... :

 

thanks for breaking everyone in for me?

 

Well, these stats were a pain to tally up.......... so maybe if you worked a little harder......... just sayin.