Shame on me for simply looking at the NFL.com rushing rankings when stating my claim that the Patriots would face lowly rushing offenses in their final four games and wouldn’t miss Spikes that much.
Here’s what the run of the mill stats say:
- Bills 17th
- Dolphins 18th
- Bears 22nd
- Packers 23rd
But when we look over at the far more insightful Football Outsiders rankings things look a little more difficult.
- Packers: 10th
- Dolphins 15th
- Bills 19th
- Bears 26th
If you’re not familiar with how Football Outsiders do their rankings it’s based off this simple theory.
If it’s 1st and 10 and you get 2 yards it’s a bad play.
But if it’s 3rd and 1 and you get 2 yards it’s a good play.
So really, yards per carry isn’t really a telling stat. So Football Outsiders looks at the situation, the down/distance and then the result and assigns a grade. So basically their rankings are better and tell you more.
So from these rankings it looks like the Pats run defense will definitely be tested in these final games without Spikes.