Did you know...?

[NorthCoast]

OK...wife's in bed for the night, so am bored:

did you know that the Steelers rank 17th in the league in rush yds/att at 4.2 while Ravens are way down at 24th and 3.8 yds/att? I would not have thought that given the better OL the Ravens have and Rice who tends to gain positive yds on every carry.

I actually caught this while looking to see if a strong rush game = better record (answer: its a mixed bag). Teams with bad QBs have good rush attacks, but their records blow. The question is how good could a team be if they have a decent QB and a decent rushing game? Sometimes I think the game has swung to being way too dependent on one man (QB) where in the past the offense was up to 30% dependent on the RB.

[Eddie Spaghetti]

Re: Did you know...?

don't forget all the $$$ they dropped on vonta leach.

their OC is dumber than ours.

[RuthlessBurgher]

Re: Did you know...?

In their loss to the lowly Seahawks (a team we blanked 24-0), they handed the ball to Ray Rice 5 times, and had Unibrow Flacco pass 52 times. That playcalling makes Bruce Arians look like Bill Walsh.

[SteelAbility]

Re: Did you know...?

OK...wife's in bed for the night, so am bored:

did you know that the Steelers rank 17th in the league in rush yds/att at 4.2 while Ravens are way down at 24th and 3.8 yds/att? I would not have thought that given the better OL the Ravens have and Rice who tends to gain positive yds on every carry.

I actually caught this while looking to see if a strong rush game = better record (answer: its a mixed bag). Teams with bad QBs have good rush attacks, but their records blow. The question is how good could a team be if they have a decent QB and a decent rushing game? Sometimes I think the game has swung to being way too dependent on one man (QB) where in the past the offense was up to 30% dependent on the RB.

Statistics show that the QB's YPA is the biggest correlation to winning. Specificially, historically, the QB with higher YPA wins 79% of games. It is the one metric that is the single most indicator of the effectiveness of an offense (and also defense).

I just looked Ben's numbers this year. He is sitting at 8.0 YPA this year. Yup, Ben still has effective offense. He's doing this with, in my opinion, receivers who are above-average in talent but whose games have not yet elevated to full potential.

I really wish we could have worked it out with Santonio. I believe we would have won our 7th SB. Ben was sitting at 8.6 YPA in 2009, the last season we had Santonio. It was a D without Troy that stunk up the joint in 09.

[SteelAbility]

Re: Did you know...?

Further proof that Ben is elite ...

[url="http://www.nfl.com/stats/categorystats?tabSeq=0&statisticCategory=PASSING&s eason=2011&seasonType=REG"]http://www.nfl.com/stats/categorystats? ... onType=REG[/url]

Ben is sitting as the #7-rated QB being tied with two others at #5 in YPA ... and this behind a terrible pass-blocking OL. Week 1 versus the Ravens was an aberration. Without that, he's probably the #4 or #5 rated QB at 8.1 or 8.2 YPA, sitting alone at 5th in YPA.

[RuthlessBurgher]

Re: Did you know...?

Today on Sirius NFL Radio, they were debating who is the 3rd best QB in the AFC this year. They gave the top 2 slots to Brady and Ben without much debate.