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More Points Than Plays – Rams Stats and Records
By Stats Doctors
http://www.101sports.com/2014/12/02/points-plays-rams-stats-records/
Please consider for a moment the following statistics. Your team has six “three-and-outs” in the second half and completes only one of seven passes for five yards on the way to only three first downs and 41 yards of total offense in the last two quarters. For the game, the team succeeds on only its first of eight third down plays, gaining positive yardage on only two of those plays. There are no drives that last longer than seven plays or 4:00 and time of possession for the game is but 23:04. Sounds like a bad day at the football office, doesn’t it? Not if you’re a Rams fan.
Those were some of the numbers for the Rams that came out of the team’s 52-0 drubbing of the Raiders Sunday at the Edward Jones Dome. On a day when I found myself scrambling for the record books as much as the Oakland quarterbacks were scrambling from the Rams pass rush, there were amazing numbers galore. It’s hard to determine where to begin, but how about this for starters. The Rams had more points than plays by tallying 52 points while running 49 plays from scrimmage. This is a real rarity and last occurred 11 years ago when the Rams defeated the Vikings 48-17 with only 47 plays. St. Louis averaged more than two points per minute! That last happened in that same 2003 game against Minnesota when the Rams had the ball for 22:38.
A shutout is no easy feat, be it football or baseball. Blanking the Raiders marked only the fifth shutout in the NFL this season in 192 games, or one in approximately 38 games. In the last 10-plus seasons, there have been only 71 shutouts.
Last year, the Cardinals led major league baseball with 23 shutouts in their 162 games or one every seven games while all 30 teams combined averaged barely half of the Redbirds’ total. The Rams have now recorded 33 shutouts in franchise history and this was only the fourth since the team moved to St. Louis in 1995. The last home shutout was a 36-0 romp over the Falcons in 2003. Interestingly, 13 of those 33 shutouts occurred in the 1970s.
Coincidentally, the last Rams shutout was in Oakland eight years ago when the Rams triumphed 20-0. That was also the last time the Rams were plus-five in the turnover margin. Only six times have the Rams had an even more favorable turnover ratio and the last time that took place at home was in the 2006 season opener. Then, the Rams had six Jeff Wilkins field goals and a plus-five margin in an 18-10 win. In contrast, only nine times in Raiders team history have they suffered through a worse turnover ratio day and that has only happened once in the past 15 years. One key point about the five forced turnovers by the Rams defense is that four of them occurred on third down plays.
The 52 points recorded by the Rams was not the highest point total in the NFL this year as the Falcons racked up 56 against the Bucs and the Packers have had 55 and 53 points against the Bears and Eagles, respectively. However, the 52-point margin of victory was the largest of the season by 10 points and there have been only three games with larger point differentials in the past 10 years.
This was only the third time in over 15,000 NFL games that a final score was 52-0. The Dolphins rang up 52 on the Patriots behind three Mercury Morris touchdown runs in 1972 and the Baltimore Colts did the same to the Bears in 1964 on the strength of three Johnny Unitas touchdown passes although the leading receiver that day was Bears tight end Mike Ditka with six catches for 108 yards
In the long history of the NFL, there have been only 26 shutouts with the winning team scoring at least 52 points. Now, keep in mind that the Rams did all of their scoring in three quarters as they once again went scoreless in the third quarter. There are four shutouts recorded between 1920 and 1923 involving teams like the Buffalo All-Americans and the Racine Legion for which quarter-by-quarter scores are not apparently available. In the other games, there are only five times when a team also confined its scoring to three quarters. The most recent of those games prior to Sunday was the New England 59-0 victory over the Titans, coached at that time by Jeff Fisher.
Fortunately, Coach Fisher was on the winning side of a 50-plus point shutout win Sunday and in the past 95 seasons of professional football, he appears to have become only the fourth coach to be on both sides of 50-plus point shutouts. Coach Fisher is in very good company, however, as Philadelphia Eagles coach Lud Wray saw his team lose 56-0 to the Giants in 1933 and came back the following season with a 64-0 shellacking of the Cincinnati Reds (the football variety). The other two coaches who have been on the sidelines for both the thrill of this kind of victory and the agony of that kind of defeat are in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. George Halas coached the Bears to the famous 73-0 playoff win over Washington in 1940, but some 24 years later an upstart head coach named Don Shula led his Baltimore Colts to a 52-0 win over the still Halas-led Bears. The other is Weeb Ewbank who was the head coach at my alma mater Washington University in 1947 and 1948 (with a 14-4 record). In 1958, he coached the Colts to a 56-point win over the Packers, but four years later he was on the losing end of Halas’ second huge shutout margin, a 57-0 score.
While we are looking at zeroes in terms of scoring, why not take a look at zero in terms of red zone drives. For the second time in three weeks, the Rams allowed no red zone possessions. The Broncos did score on a Peyton Manning pass from outside the red zone, but the Raiders never crossed the Rams’ 25-yard line and that play ended with an 11-yard sack of Matt Schaub by Robert Quinn with the subsequent fumble recovery made by Chris Long. What is remarkable is that the Rams had held only two opponents outside the red zone in the previous 20 years and repeated the feat within a span of 14 days. Only three red zone points have been scored against the Rams in the last three games and in the past five games opponents have only six red zone drives resulting in one touchdown, two field goals, and three turnovers.
The recipe for keeping the Raiders out of the red zone was quite similar to what worked against the Broncos. Again, the Rams had a huge advantage in average drive start as they were starting at their own 40-yard line on their 14 possessions while the Raiders were beginning at their own 17-yard line. For Oakland, 13 of their 15 drives started off at the 20-yard line or worse and their best starting field position was at the 30. By comparison, the Rams had nine drives of their own that started past their own 30-yard line. The 286 yard difference in starting field position more than swallowed up the 244 yards of total offense the Raiders had for the entire game. On first down alone, the Rams gained 235 yards for a 10.2 average per play while the Raiders averaged only 3.8 yards per first down play. Even if we subtract Tre Mason’s 89-yard touchdown that came on a first down play, the Rams still would have averaged 6.6 yards on the other 22 first down plays.
tre mason-2
Tre Mason has the five longest rushing plays for the 2014 Rams.
Here’s a little more about that Mason run. The rookie running back from Auburn now has the five longest rushing plays for the Rams this season. The 89-yard burst was longer than his next three longest runs combined and went for more yards than the team’s leading rusher had gained in 10 of the preceding 11 games. With that run, the Rams had a 100-yard rusher as well as a 100-yard receiver (Stedman Bailey) in the span of only 18:46 of playing time. The run was the second-longest in team history and was the longest ever in a home game breaking a 75-year old record set by Parker Hall with an 88-yard run against the Steelers. The score culminated a one-play, 94-yard drive (the Raiders were offsides before the Mason run) and that was the longest touchdown drive in the fewest plays since the team moved to St. Louis and likely is the longest one-play touchdown drive in franchise history. There have been five 89-yard touchdown runs in NFL history with two this year (Mason and Giovani Bernard of the Bengals) and Coach Fisher had a good look at one of the others when Chris Johnson went 89 yards to the house for the Titans against the Jaguars in 2009.
One of the remarkable stats from the game is that the Rams scored touchdowns on their first five possessions and needed a grand total of one third down play on those drives. Shaun Hill’s 16-yard pass to Bailey on third-and-8 on the third drive was not only the Rams’ initial third down play over 11:00 into the game, but it was their only success on eight third down plays. Records are a bit flimsy about third down conversions from games up to 1990. Since then, the Rams had played 11 games before Sunday when they had no more than one third down conversion. Not only did the Rams fail to win any of those games, but they were defeated by an average of 16.8 points. That is, until Sunday.
When this blowout ended, the Rams had wrapped up the second largest margin of victory in team history, only surpassed by the 1976 59-0 demolition of the Falcons. Only once have the Rams scored more first half points and their 38-0 cushion at intermission was the largest halftime lead ever for the team. It was also the second worst shutout loss for the Raiders only exceeded by a 55-0 loss to the Houston Oilers in 1961. Also, no team has ever scored more points in the first half than the Rams did against the Raiders Sunday.
Going into the Oakland game, the Rams had scored at least 10 points in just six out of 44 quarters. The team increased that total by 50 percent as they hit double digits in three of four quarters Sunday for the first time in seven years. They had exactly 10 points in each of the last three quarters of a 37-29 win over the Saints to snap an eight-game losing streak.
The Rams now head to Washington with a 5-1 record following a loss and having scored an astounding 59 unanswered points. The opportunity is there for the Rams to get back-to-back wins for the first time this season. Unanswered points aside, this would be one time it would be really nice for the Rams to have the answer.
By Stats Doctors
http://www.101sports.com/2014/12/02/points-plays-rams-stats-records/
Please consider for a moment the following statistics. Your team has six “three-and-outs” in the second half and completes only one of seven passes for five yards on the way to only three first downs and 41 yards of total offense in the last two quarters. For the game, the team succeeds on only its first of eight third down plays, gaining positive yardage on only two of those plays. There are no drives that last longer than seven plays or 4:00 and time of possession for the game is but 23:04. Sounds like a bad day at the football office, doesn’t it? Not if you’re a Rams fan.
Those were some of the numbers for the Rams that came out of the team’s 52-0 drubbing of the Raiders Sunday at the Edward Jones Dome. On a day when I found myself scrambling for the record books as much as the Oakland quarterbacks were scrambling from the Rams pass rush, there were amazing numbers galore. It’s hard to determine where to begin, but how about this for starters. The Rams had more points than plays by tallying 52 points while running 49 plays from scrimmage. This is a real rarity and last occurred 11 years ago when the Rams defeated the Vikings 48-17 with only 47 plays. St. Louis averaged more than two points per minute! That last happened in that same 2003 game against Minnesota when the Rams had the ball for 22:38.
A shutout is no easy feat, be it football or baseball. Blanking the Raiders marked only the fifth shutout in the NFL this season in 192 games, or one in approximately 38 games. In the last 10-plus seasons, there have been only 71 shutouts.
Last year, the Cardinals led major league baseball with 23 shutouts in their 162 games or one every seven games while all 30 teams combined averaged barely half of the Redbirds’ total. The Rams have now recorded 33 shutouts in franchise history and this was only the fourth since the team moved to St. Louis in 1995. The last home shutout was a 36-0 romp over the Falcons in 2003. Interestingly, 13 of those 33 shutouts occurred in the 1970s.
Coincidentally, the last Rams shutout was in Oakland eight years ago when the Rams triumphed 20-0. That was also the last time the Rams were plus-five in the turnover margin. Only six times have the Rams had an even more favorable turnover ratio and the last time that took place at home was in the 2006 season opener. Then, the Rams had six Jeff Wilkins field goals and a plus-five margin in an 18-10 win. In contrast, only nine times in Raiders team history have they suffered through a worse turnover ratio day and that has only happened once in the past 15 years. One key point about the five forced turnovers by the Rams defense is that four of them occurred on third down plays.
The 52 points recorded by the Rams was not the highest point total in the NFL this year as the Falcons racked up 56 against the Bucs and the Packers have had 55 and 53 points against the Bears and Eagles, respectively. However, the 52-point margin of victory was the largest of the season by 10 points and there have been only three games with larger point differentials in the past 10 years.
This was only the third time in over 15,000 NFL games that a final score was 52-0. The Dolphins rang up 52 on the Patriots behind three Mercury Morris touchdown runs in 1972 and the Baltimore Colts did the same to the Bears in 1964 on the strength of three Johnny Unitas touchdown passes although the leading receiver that day was Bears tight end Mike Ditka with six catches for 108 yards
In the long history of the NFL, there have been only 26 shutouts with the winning team scoring at least 52 points. Now, keep in mind that the Rams did all of their scoring in three quarters as they once again went scoreless in the third quarter. There are four shutouts recorded between 1920 and 1923 involving teams like the Buffalo All-Americans and the Racine Legion for which quarter-by-quarter scores are not apparently available. In the other games, there are only five times when a team also confined its scoring to three quarters. The most recent of those games prior to Sunday was the New England 59-0 victory over the Titans, coached at that time by Jeff Fisher.
Fortunately, Coach Fisher was on the winning side of a 50-plus point shutout win Sunday and in the past 95 seasons of professional football, he appears to have become only the fourth coach to be on both sides of 50-plus point shutouts. Coach Fisher is in very good company, however, as Philadelphia Eagles coach Lud Wray saw his team lose 56-0 to the Giants in 1933 and came back the following season with a 64-0 shellacking of the Cincinnati Reds (the football variety). The other two coaches who have been on the sidelines for both the thrill of this kind of victory and the agony of that kind of defeat are in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. George Halas coached the Bears to the famous 73-0 playoff win over Washington in 1940, but some 24 years later an upstart head coach named Don Shula led his Baltimore Colts to a 52-0 win over the still Halas-led Bears. The other is Weeb Ewbank who was the head coach at my alma mater Washington University in 1947 and 1948 (with a 14-4 record). In 1958, he coached the Colts to a 56-point win over the Packers, but four years later he was on the losing end of Halas’ second huge shutout margin, a 57-0 score.
While we are looking at zeroes in terms of scoring, why not take a look at zero in terms of red zone drives. For the second time in three weeks, the Rams allowed no red zone possessions. The Broncos did score on a Peyton Manning pass from outside the red zone, but the Raiders never crossed the Rams’ 25-yard line and that play ended with an 11-yard sack of Matt Schaub by Robert Quinn with the subsequent fumble recovery made by Chris Long. What is remarkable is that the Rams had held only two opponents outside the red zone in the previous 20 years and repeated the feat within a span of 14 days. Only three red zone points have been scored against the Rams in the last three games and in the past five games opponents have only six red zone drives resulting in one touchdown, two field goals, and three turnovers.
The recipe for keeping the Raiders out of the red zone was quite similar to what worked against the Broncos. Again, the Rams had a huge advantage in average drive start as they were starting at their own 40-yard line on their 14 possessions while the Raiders were beginning at their own 17-yard line. For Oakland, 13 of their 15 drives started off at the 20-yard line or worse and their best starting field position was at the 30. By comparison, the Rams had nine drives of their own that started past their own 30-yard line. The 286 yard difference in starting field position more than swallowed up the 244 yards of total offense the Raiders had for the entire game. On first down alone, the Rams gained 235 yards for a 10.2 average per play while the Raiders averaged only 3.8 yards per first down play. Even if we subtract Tre Mason’s 89-yard touchdown that came on a first down play, the Rams still would have averaged 6.6 yards on the other 22 first down plays.
tre mason-2
Tre Mason has the five longest rushing plays for the 2014 Rams.
Here’s a little more about that Mason run. The rookie running back from Auburn now has the five longest rushing plays for the Rams this season. The 89-yard burst was longer than his next three longest runs combined and went for more yards than the team’s leading rusher had gained in 10 of the preceding 11 games. With that run, the Rams had a 100-yard rusher as well as a 100-yard receiver (Stedman Bailey) in the span of only 18:46 of playing time. The run was the second-longest in team history and was the longest ever in a home game breaking a 75-year old record set by Parker Hall with an 88-yard run against the Steelers. The score culminated a one-play, 94-yard drive (the Raiders were offsides before the Mason run) and that was the longest touchdown drive in the fewest plays since the team moved to St. Louis and likely is the longest one-play touchdown drive in franchise history. There have been five 89-yard touchdown runs in NFL history with two this year (Mason and Giovani Bernard of the Bengals) and Coach Fisher had a good look at one of the others when Chris Johnson went 89 yards to the house for the Titans against the Jaguars in 2009.
One of the remarkable stats from the game is that the Rams scored touchdowns on their first five possessions and needed a grand total of one third down play on those drives. Shaun Hill’s 16-yard pass to Bailey on third-and-8 on the third drive was not only the Rams’ initial third down play over 11:00 into the game, but it was their only success on eight third down plays. Records are a bit flimsy about third down conversions from games up to 1990. Since then, the Rams had played 11 games before Sunday when they had no more than one third down conversion. Not only did the Rams fail to win any of those games, but they were defeated by an average of 16.8 points. That is, until Sunday.
When this blowout ended, the Rams had wrapped up the second largest margin of victory in team history, only surpassed by the 1976 59-0 demolition of the Falcons. Only once have the Rams scored more first half points and their 38-0 cushion at intermission was the largest halftime lead ever for the team. It was also the second worst shutout loss for the Raiders only exceeded by a 55-0 loss to the Houston Oilers in 1961. Also, no team has ever scored more points in the first half than the Rams did against the Raiders Sunday.
Going into the Oakland game, the Rams had scored at least 10 points in just six out of 44 quarters. The team increased that total by 50 percent as they hit double digits in three of four quarters Sunday for the first time in seven years. They had exactly 10 points in each of the last three quarters of a 37-29 win over the Saints to snap an eight-game losing streak.
The Rams now head to Washington with a 5-1 record following a loss and having scored an astounding 59 unanswered points. The opportunity is there for the Rams to get back-to-back wins for the first time this season. Unanswered points aside, this would be one time it would be really nice for the Rams to have the answer.
