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Shoes
05-17-2018, 01:14 PM
The 2017 edition of the Pittsburgh Steelers brought many highlights for sure. Their 13-3 record was a personal best for head coach Mike Tomlin and their most wins since going 15-1 in 2004. The offense also soared to new heights, featuring a 4000-yard passer, a 1200-yard rusher and a 1500-yard receiver. But while the highs were high, the team’s lows were too detrimental, scarring what could have been a superb season. The Steelers were one and done in the playoffs, being upset by the Jacksonville Jaguars and the team also featured one of the NFL’s worst red zone defenses.
Just how bad was the Steelers’ red zone defense last year? Well the team’s red zone scoring percentage was a whopping 65.9%, meaning that the defense allowed touchdowns on every two out of three red zone trips. This would rank second highest in the NFL, with just the Cleveland Browns ahead of the Steelers with 67.4-percent. Essentially, the Steelers red zone defense was just marginally better than the 0-16 Browns. But though the Steelers were able to avoid dead last in this manner, they wouldn’t in another category.

http://www.steelersdepot.com/2018/05/steelers-red-zone-defense-had-worst-regression-in-2017/

Fire Goodell
05-17-2018, 02:09 PM
It did seem bad, over the course of years. I remember in the 90's I was confident in the defense being able to force field goals. Now? Holding the other team to a FG is a surprise to me.

Mojouw
05-17-2018, 02:36 PM
Again, this doesn't tell the entire story.

In the earlier part of the season the only really bad red zone performances were the Bears game and the first Jags game.

Then everything was pretty "OK" until Shazier went out.

Look at the schedule/results here: http://www.nfl.com/schedules/2017/REG/Steelers

Now look at these stats: https://www.teamrankings.com/nfl/stat/opponent-red-zone-scoring-pct



Rank
Team

2017
Last 3
Last 1
Home
Away
2016







31

Pittsburgh (https://www.teamrankings.com/nfl/team/pittsburgh-steelers)

65.91%

88.89%

100.00%
90.91%
40.91%
48.48%




I mean those last 3 percent is just eye-poppingly bad. I gotta figure that inflates the percentage quite a bit.

So, I wonder what it would look like if you did Red Zone % pre-Shazier injury and post-Shazier injury? The article says this "During the months of December and January, the Steelers’ red zone defense allowed opposing offenses to go 17/20 (85%) in scoring touchdowns." Doing some simple math (this is NOT the ideal way to do this, but it'll work as a rough guess) I come up with the following:


First 12 Games % + Last 3 games % /2 = 65.91%

X + 88.89 = 65.91*2
X = 131.82-88.89
X = 42.93% Red Zone Defense for the first 12 games.

Granted, the math is by definition messier than that and I simply don't have the time or inclination to read through each game's box score and add up red zone trips and outcomes. So while I readily grant that the red zone defense almost certainly was worse than roughly 43% in the first 12 games, I suspect it was somewhere south of 55%. That would put the team somewhere in the top half of the league. If it really was south of 50% for the first 12 games, that would put them on pace to be Top 10 in the league.

What is my point? Another article that basically says nothing because no one bothered to think through the implications of the stats they were simply copying and pasting.

Mojouw
05-21-2018, 01:50 PM
http://www.steelersdepot.com/2018/05/2018-offseason-questions-why-was-red-zone-defense-terrible-at-home/

At it again. Now looking at home road splits.

Simply ignoring the fact that 3 out of 4 of the post Shazier injury games were home and only 1 was on the road (against an injury riddled Texans team).

All we can learn from this is that the Steelers red-zone defense suffers when you turn the ball over (Jags) and it goes from kinda decentish to really bad when you remove the primary defensive playmaker from the field.

Wonder what the rates looked like for early 2000's teams with Troy P and without Troy P.

But yeah, let's write an article on the correlation and ignore the causation.