I hope you guys like this, because I’m going to try to do this every week.  I’m going to look a little deeper into the stats – to try to find an unsung hero, point out something we might have missed while watching the game, or see where some of the struggles might be coming from.  I’m using my understanding of the Football Outsiders defensive stats to come up with Stop Rate and Defeat numbers.  I’d love to give numbers for defenders in Pass Coverage, but I haven’t had time to chart the game (yet – maybe that’s a project I can tackle later).

Reminder:

Successful Play – 45% of yardage needed on First Down, 60% of yardage needed on Second Down, 100% of yardage needed on Third or Fourth Down.

Stop Rate – Percentage of Plays stopping the offense short of a Successful Play.

Defeat – A Stop on Third or Fourth Down, and Interception, or a Play that results in a Fumble (whether the defense recovers or not – that means the defender who causes the Forced Fumble gets the Defeat, not the guy who comes up with a Fumble Recovery).

DVOA – Takes every single play during the NFL season and compares each one to a league-average baseline based on situation. DVOA measures not just yardage, but yardage towards a first down: five yards on third-and-4 are worth more than five yards on first-and-10 and much more than five yards on third-and-12. Red zone plays are worth more than other plays. Performance is also adjusted for the quality of the opponent. DVOA is a percentage, so a team with a DVOA of 10.0% is 10 percent better than the average team, and a quarterback with a DVOA of -20.0% is 20 percent worse than the average quarterback. Because DVOA measures scoring, defenses are better when they are negative.

Offense

Really, I’m not going to go into the efficiency numbers too much – if you like stats, you should be reading FO’s Quick Reads every Tuesday, plus their site has Drop-down Menus for Offense, Skill Positions, Defense, Special Teams, etc.  What I will say is that for as dominating a performance as that felt, the Offense performed pretty poorly.  By the way, even these ranks say they are DVOA (Defense-adjusted Value Over Average), the site says they’re not actually adjusted yet (not enough data), so they are the raw VOA.

The Passing Offense is ranked #12, but in reality there was passes to Running Backs (great), passes to Tony G (good), and that’s about it.  I say “good” for Tony G because I felt Ryan was forcing it to him some – he only had 5 Receptions on 9 Targets (56% Catch Rate).  The big problem was the team’s inability to get Roddy White going against the Dolphins.  He only had 5 Receptions on 10 Targets (50% Catch Rate), but the real problem was where those targets were – he had 2 passes listed as “Deep” in the play-by-play (both incomplete).  The other 8 targets were listed as “Short” (I’m not sure if the NFL has a “Mid” range for game logs), with his longest completion going for 14 yards.  He averaged 15.7 Yards per Reception last year.  Mularkey’s got to put him in a better position to succeed (i.e. more 10-12 yard In/Out Routes and deeper Post/Corner Routes, fewer short Hitch Routes).

The Run Game was obviously a problem against Miami.  I haven’t studied the Offensive Line play in another viewing, and the Football Outsiders O-Line stats won’t be up until after Week 2, so I can’t really comment about them.  But the Falcons came out #22 in Rush Offense – and it could have looked much worse.  Right now Turner has a non-adjusted VOA of -15.2% (15% below average), and a 41% Success Rate.  The problem is that his last three carries of the game went for 26 yards (all Successful Plays).  Without those, his numbers would look positively awful – 19 carries for 39 yards, with a 32% Success Rate (NFL average is usually close to 50%).  While it is a good thing that he was able to get those last three successful carries, and Ryan was able to kill the clock for the win, the team has got to be able to run better – even if the defense is focusing on Turner.

One other thing I noticed was this: the team had 3rd and 1 three different times, and passed the ball all three times (twice out of a shotgun formation).  There was two incompletes leading to punts, and one 2 yard completion to Snelling for a 1st down conversion.  This is Mularkey getting too cute.  Running on third and short is more likely to convert than passing on third and short (see here).  Even if you factor in the possibility of a big gain on play-action, running the ball is still the more successful strategy (and two of these three passes were listed as “Short”, so that wasn’t even the goal).

Defense

I’m going to be honest here – I don’t know how Football Outsiders handles assisted tackles.  What I did was just give both guys a full Play and a full Stop (if they stopped a Successful Play), so these might look slightly better than what the guys at FO have, if they split them somehow.  I do know that Stop Rate doesn’t include Special Teams Tackles, so I’ve taken those out.  These are also for both Pass and Run plays combined.  Here goes:

A few numbers jumped out at me when I put this together.  The first surprise (in a bad way) was Mike Peterson’s Stop Rate.  His two Defeats were huge, game-changing plays (the Forced Fumble and the Interception), but his average tackle was too far downfield to prevent the Dolphins from moving toward another first down.  The second (this time a pleasant) surprise was how good Stephen Nicholas looked in these numbers (plus he added one Special Teams Tackle).  I can confidently say that if Peterson (even with a low Stop Rate) and Nicholas keep up this level of performance throughout the entire season, we will be very happy fans, and the team will be getting a solid performance from their Linebackers.

John Abraham, Jonathan Babineaux (who added two Fumble Recoveries), and Kroy Biermann (who also added two Special Teams Tackles) were obviously some of the main stars last Sunday, but another name that caught my eye (although not like Peterson or Nicholas) was Brent Grimes.  His 67% Stop Rate is very good for a Cornerback, and he made one more tackle than Chris Houston (of course, sometimes it’s good for CB’s to not make many plays, with the opponent throwing to the other side of the field).

If these guys are the heroes defensively, I have one “goat” for you (if you can call somebody the goat after a performance like this):  Erik Coleman.  I can’t be sure about his two tackles without charting the game to see whether he was in coverage, or if he was cleaning up somebody else’s mess, but both of those plays went for First Downs for the Dolphins (21 yard pass on 3rd and 10; 6 yard pass on 4th and 4).  What I do remember from the game, though, is it was his blown coverage on the TD to Ricky Williams.  He originally came up to the line of scrimmage after the play-action fake, but lost him and couldn’t catch back up when he realized where the play was headed.   I only point this out to emphasize the fact that even in a nearly perfect game on defense, there are always areas for improvement.

By the way, the Pass Defense is ranked #5 and the Run Defense was ranked #18 after Week 1.  The Special Teams is ranked #26, and that is almost entirely attributed to Elam's missed kicks.

Besides Nicholas and Biermann, the other guys with Special Teams Tackles were: Eric Weems (with 2), Christopher Owens and Coy Wire (with 1 each).

Hope everybody sees something here that they might have missed while watching the game.  Let me know what you think!