https://www.fieldgulls.com/2017/10/...ams-tackles-for-loss-todd-gurley-marcus-smith
Seahawks front four need better backfield penetration to stop Todd Gurley and Rams’ attack
Seattle was one of the best defenses on the ground in 2016 but Sheldon Richardson, Michael Bennett and the rest of the defensive line haven’t lived up to their “Death Row” billing in running situations so far this year
by Lars Russell
Matthew Emmons-USA TODAY Sports
The
Los Angeles Rams went from objectively the worst offense in the NFL in 2016—
dead last in both run
and pass DVOA—to one of the better units through four games in 2017: Tops in scoring, second in
total yards and yards per play and sixth in
Football Outsiders’ efficiency.
Some of the credit for that improvement goes to
Jared Goff, who stepped up his performance from a dreadful rookie year to post the
10th-best QBR by dramatically cutting down his interceptions. Goff averaged one pick per start last season but has just one total in this young campaign. Thanks to Goff’s development and Sean McVay’s innovations to the scheme, L.A. has the best passing DVOA in the land right now.
The Rams’ run game is not quite so efficient, with a minus-11.6 percent rating by Football Outsiders that ranks 19th overall. But Goff and the Los Angeles passing attack get tremendous help from
Todd Gurley and the Rams’ rushers anyway, who have been solid enough to take much of the load off Goff by affording McVay to call the third-lowest rate of pass attempts in the league—
technically it’s the most balanced offense, with a 51-49 percent split.
In turn, this relative run success comes from Los Angeles’s upgraded offensive line. In his rookie year in St. Louis and also last season,
Gurley’s runs got stuck in the backfield a remarkably high amount, which pounding probably contributed to Gurley’s sophomore decline: In 2015 Gurley owed his Rookie of the Year award mostly to his own ability to transcend that blocking and burst for 6.7 yards a pop on carries when he got beyond the line of scrimmage.
That might have been unsustainable anyway, or Gurley started to break down, but by 2016 he was
last in the league among qualified ball-carriers with just 4.5 yards per attempt on those plays—resulting in 216 yards less than expectation for an NFL-average starter. His open-field rank by Football Outsiders dropped from third to 30th.
The Rams
went out and hired left tackle Andre Whitworth and center John Sullivan. Now, with adjusted line yards boosted from the 3.5-3.6 yard range
to 4.4, Gurley is enjoying more room to run in the backfield and
Richard Sherman, who has watched more film than I,
says the holes are more open at the line of scrimmage.
Gurley’s yards per carry is back over four yards overall (from 3.2 in 2016) and Ryan Keiran
places Gurley fourth in the league at run production contributing to win percentage, better than formulas like DVOA or DYAR would indicate.
In fact, because L.A. has been in position to run so often, Gurley is the only player in the top five of the NFL in both rushes and OrW-percentage (offensive rushing win percentage). That makes a better case for Gurley as the NFL MVP so far than
the traditional counting stats argument.
To bring this around to the
Seattle Seahawks, with Seattle’s own offense expected to have trouble getting first downs with its pitiful offensive line against the Rams’ fearsome front group, it will be critical for the Seahawks to limit Gurley’s advancement when Los Angeles has the ball. The aim has to be getting Goff into third and long situations as much as possible, as Mike Chan warns.
View: https://twitter.com/karatemanchan37/status/915753023074455552?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.fieldgulls.com%2F2017%2F10%2F7%2F16440586%2Fseattle-seahawks-los-angeles-rams-tackles-for-loss-todd-gurley-marcus-smith
Seattle was exceptional at doing just that to Gurley in 2016, holding Gurley to 89 yards across 33 attempts in two games. But again, that was against a different Rams offensive line, and with a different Seahawks defense. The Seahawks were the best run defense in the NFL last year in yards per carry allowed,
third in rush defense DVOA, and generated the most expected points from run-stopping in the league.
In 2017,
Seattle is second-worst in the league allowing 5 yards flat per rush. Part of that is skewed heavily by several long runs by the
San Francisco 49ers and
Tennessee Titans—the Seahawks
didn’t give up any runs longer than 35 yards a year ago, and only five more than 20 yards—but Football Outsiders adjusts for those unpredictable outliers and still puts Seattle 30th in rush defense DVOA and 18th in adjusted defensive line yards. The Seahawks’ run defense has
added negative value, according to expected points.
On its interior rotation, Seattle essentially swapped run-plugging nose tackle
Ahtyba Rubin for a more versatile talent in
Sheldon Richardson, but Richardson is supposed to be an elite run defender as well so it’s not clear what’s causing the Seahawks woes against the rush apart from missed open-field tackling. What is clear is that it
is more than downfield discrepancies:
View: https://twitter.com/JuMosq/status/915318954016378880?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.fieldgulls.com%2F2017%2F10%2F7%2F16440586%2Fseattle-seahawks-los-angeles-rams-tackles-for-loss-todd-gurley-marcus-smith
As Justis Mosqueda highlights, Seattle has generated the fourth-worst tackles for loss per rush. That means the Seahawks are not getting frequent enough penetration past their blockers.
That monstrous defensive line was expected to be eating opponents’ brains in the backfield all season, but the vaunted group has only stopped nine run plays (8.7 percent of rushes) behind the line of scrimmage so far (curiously, six of them came against the boom-and-bust Titans who also maxed out with 100 yards on two other Demarco Murray rushes).
Compare that to the 11.6 rate from a year ago when that slight three-percent-of-all-rushes difference generated a value score relative to league average of plus-6.0—an 11 point swing in TFL percentage value!
That difference can have huge impact on wins and losses because, as
Pat Kirwan among others have studied, the difference between second and 10 or more versus second and seven or eight, or between third and seven versus (like Chan says) third and three or four, significantly alters the chances of gaining first downs,
adding expected points and other factors that lead to victory. The charts in those links use old data, but the principles remain the same in today’s NFL.
Mosqueda’s parenthetical question expresses how confusing it is for Seattle to be struggling in this regard, and we may find those tackles for loss indeed regress toward a value more similar to 2016’s rate as the season moves on.
However, in the short term, the Seahawks enter this matchup with
highly volatile consequences extremely thin on that front four,
scrambling to add to the defensive line rotation after Cliff Avril’s and Quinton Jefferson’s injuries in the past week.
Frank Clark is a powerful replacement for Avril on the edge, but when
Clark started five games in 2016 during Michael Bennett’s absence Seattle’s run-stopping declined sharply, from three yards per attempt to 4.5, owing to that loss of depth.
That shifts the focus to players like
Marcus Smith,
an effective contributor last week but still an uncertain variable for now, as the Seahawks try to limit Gurley and control the Los Angeles Rams with their defense.
While many Seattle fans spent all week worried about what havoc
Aaron Donald and
Robert Quinn might bring to the Seahawks backfield, the game may turn on what kind of damage the shorthanded
Death Row defensive line can do to the L.A. ground game.
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Gurley got ROTY in part because Rawls was hurt
Rawls was eclipsing Gurley during a 7 game stretch. That’s not a knock on Gurley, just reminding people how special Rawls can be.
As for the issues with the line, they will straighten out. It’s part of going from a veteran core to having 1st and 2nd year linemen in the mix. They aren’t as familiar with the scheme and run fits. I expect to see the numbers improve as the season wears on.
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There's time left in the season,
but we need to see Cliff, QJeff, Dion and Malik heal and get game ready.
I want to see Rawls outplay Gurley.
Like
Henderson the Rain King, I want, I want…
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If Rawls outplays Gurley
I don’t see any reasonable way this game is close.
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20 pressures on 33 dropbacks last week
We’ll see if they can produce that against someone other than the Colts – but I honestly haven’t been disappointed with the run defense on a play-in play-out basis. Just stay in your lanes guys, everything will be fine on the run-d front.
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TFL?
"Tackles for loss per rush" calculated after 4 football games. Is that a meaningful stat? Average it over 16 games, and compare two teams who played the same schedule and, sure, that seems like an interesting stat if placed alongside some others. But I don’t think it means too much at this point.
That said, have you WATCHED Frank Clark play the last couple of weeks? He is becoming the most disruptive D lineman on our team. He’s likely a higher-impact player than Avril at this point in their careers, and so I don’t think we will miss Avril too much. Frank is just beginning his third year and is getting better every game.
Sheldon Richardson has been with this team for four weeks. He had the experience to step right in, but he’s still getting a feel for Pete Carroll’s schemes and communicating with his new team mates. Expect his quickness to show up as he begins thinking less week by week.
Jaran Reed had likely the best game of his career against the Colts. Along with stuffing the run, he is beginning to get the penetration they have been coaching him on. He’s getting better every game.
I think Rams may be a bit disappointed they didn’t play this Seahawks team a few weeks ago when they were just getting it together. I think this D is ready to play as well as any in the league over the next few weeks.