[TSFH Fan]

I had to re-create the charts, sorry. Please see original article for charts you can actually read.

What's Wrong With The 2015 St. Louis Rams On Third Down?
http://www.turfshowtimes.com/2015/11/10 ... third-down


In the last three weeks, the Rams have converted only 6 of 39 third downs. Against a good team in the Minnesota Vikings, this startling ineptitude finally caught up with them. What's going wrong?

Between the combination of Todd Gurley and Tavon Austin, the Rams have suddenly become a potent big-play offense. What they are not is consistently able to sustain drives. Their biggest problem here -- even bigger than their rising penalty count -- is a complete inability to convert third downs.

In the last three weeks, the Rams have converted only 4 of 39 third downs by their own merits. (Two more were converted by penalty.) This didn't stop them from beating Cleveland and San Francisco by a combined five touchdowns, but against a good team in the Minnesota Vikings, this startling ineptitude finally caught up with them.

What's going on? I took a close look at the last three games to find out.

What The Stats Say

Third downs by play-call

RUN...............PASS
2 of 6 (33%)......4 of 33 (12%)

Of these third down passes over the past three weeks, 31 of 33 came from a shotgun set. Even when the Rams were attempting to convert short-yardage distances, Foles would drop back into the shotgun.

Cignetti has used the shotgun almost exclusively on third down, but rarely in other downs. In the last two weeks, Foles only threw 8 passes from shotgun on first or second down, compared to 24 on third down.

What's interesting is that the Rams' pass blocking held up fairly well. Foles wasn't sacked once on these third-down dropbacks.

But far more often than not, the play failed without even a yard gained. 20 of 31 passes Foles threw from the shotgun on third downs fell incomplete. Several drops figure in here. Moreover, every one of Foles' completed shotgun passes on third down was thrown short of the sticks. Only two of those was converted -- both by Tavon Austin.

Third downs by distance

3RD AND SHORT (1-3 YARDS)...............2 of 7 (28.5%)

3RD AND MEDIUM (4-7 YARDS)..............3 of 12 (25%)

3RD AND LONG (8-12 YARDS)...............1 of 12 (8%)

3RD AND IMPOSSIBLE.........................0 of 8

At least by reputation, you would expect a Jeff Fisher team to pound the ball at every opportunity, so it might be surprising to see the Rams run the ball only once in seven 3rd-and-short tries. And they converted, of course.

In the crucially makeable 3rd-and-short and 3rd-and-medium passes, Tavon Austin is clearly Foles' go-to target. He has 7 looks among these 19 plays. Todd Gurley is next with 4, no one else has more than 3.

Oddly enough, when Foles gets into third-and-impossible situations, Stedman Bailey suddenly gets looks. 4 of Foles' 8 "impossible" throws went to Bailey.

Too much shotgun?

All this shotgun passing is not a natural fit for the Rams offense, nor for Foles, despite his experience in the Chip Kelly offense. Most notably, he has no opportunities for play-action passes or misdirection plays. And according to Pro Football Focus, Nick Foles becomes a radically different player with and without play action.

...........................................WITH PLAY-ACTION.....................................WITHOUT PLAY-ACTION
PASSING..........................42-60 (70%), 642 yards (10.7 ypa)...........................86-160 (53.8%), 851 yards (5.3 ypa)
TOUCHDOWNS.................................2....................................................5
INTERCEPTIONS...............................0.....................................................5
PASSER RATING.....................116.1 (4th best in NFL)....................................66.4 (worst in NFL)

Split Personality
All of this points to an undeniable conclusion, that their season-long stats back up: The Rams have two completely separate offenses -- their base offense ("Fisherball"), and their third-down offense ("Air Cignetti").

Their base offense is fairly good, and fits the Jeff Fisher identity that you'd expect. They run the ball 59% of the time and work off the threat of the run in the passing game, generating a fairly healthy 7.7 yards per pass attempt. Evidence that it's working? They have ripped off 27 explosive plays of 20 yards or more from their base offense on first or second down.

Their third down offense flat out stinks. Foles is asked to throw 84% of the time, has no play-action threat to decoy defenses with, and gets a measly 5.3 yards per attempt. Only 5 explosive plays have happened on third down.

This leads to a counterintuitive suggestion around these parts: the Rams could fix their third-down woes by sticking to what they do well.

In other words: All Fisherball, all the time.

[Gareth]

To answer the question......Jeff Fisher.

[ramsman34]

Do the RAMS have theses stats and, if so, are they paying attention to them? Perhaps run and throw out of the gun on early downs? Perhaps throw out of under center on 3rd down - think 3-step,drop facing the D and THROWING A DAMN SLANT!!!!

[Stranger]

This is soooo disheartening.

[snackdaddy]

We can disect this, analyze it to death and come up with conclusions. But the bottom line is, some players make plays, some don't. Our players don't make plays. Simple as that. Make plays and this problem goes away.

[kayfabe]

I'm gonna disagree ENTIRELY with this article (although without challenging
the schizophrenic Fisher vs. Air Cignetti one-or-the-other offense).
Because it's not just that the Rams are bad on third down. It's that

[a] Their 3rd down to-go distance is likely the worst in the league, with
32 of their last 39 plays having to convert four or more yards. And thus

[b] That means they're not leaving themselves to do much but go into shotgun
after some pathetic 1st and 2nd down calls (note too that Super Bowl
teams typically have the highest 3rd down conversion rates in the NFL).

So there's in fact concrete evidence that All Fisherball, all the time wouldn't
work at all. And I don't know if it's players not making plays, or coaches
not giving the opportunity to have players make plays or a sub-par QB, I
really can't tell. Because it's just overall really, really bad...

Just look at the overall metrics on just how bad the Rams offense has been;
arguably off-the-charts bad, maybe even historically bad --

Dead last in offensive plays per game, by a wide margin (at 57.0; the
next team is Tennessee at 59.9).

Nick Foles averages just 15.4 pass yards per possession, by far the
lowest of all NFL QBs.

And Football Outsiders has the Rams dead last in offensive yards per drive,
dead last in plays per drive (by a wide margin), second to last in offensive
points per drive (only to SF), third to last in time-of-possession-per-drive,
and dead last in the key advanced metric offensive DSR (Drive Success Rate),
a number devised by Pro Football Prospectus to measure the percentage of down
series that result in either a 1st down or TD.

http://www.footballoutsiders.com/stats/ ... atsoff2015

In fact the last DSR metric is a ridiculous 2.5+ standard deviations away
from the norm. The second worst offensive team (San Francisco) is only 1.5
standard deviations away. So it's a big drop from San Fran's offense even...

Average League DSR: .6977
Standard Deviation: .0384
Rams Offensive DSR: .5950 (32nd)
Niners Offensive DSR: .6320 (31st)
NewEng Offensive DSR: .7880 (1st)
Philly Offensive DSR: .6840

A separate thread here viewtopic.php?f=3&t=742 keeps trying to compare Foles
with Bradford, for example, but I think it's really apples and oranges.
Because QBR or passer ratings really only tell part of the total story.
And in contrast Philly is last in time-of-possession-per-drive, but 20th in
points-per-drive, so that translates into an offensive DSR that's right
around the league average. And that also means that the Rams defense
is probably by far the least rested in the NFL (in terms of actual time,
not game time)...

Because yes Philly has their share of quick strikes and three-and-outs
but I'd bet that if someone actually measured total (not game) time spent
on the field with a stopwatch that the Rams defense would be the most
gassed, what with fewer offensive plays-per-drive and less clock stoppages
due to fewer first down gets and fewer incompletions that stop the
clock (due to a heavy run offense).

So like I said, using QBR for Foles and comparing that to probably any
other QB in the NFL is a really misleading stat, and points out a
huge loophole in QB ratings. The Rams just aren't generating first downs so
the defense is tiring late, and that probably points to why sub-par backups
Michael Vick and Shaun Hill probably stole two 4th quarter wins this year
from them

[The only saving grace for the Rams? Their next two opponents don't
generate any takeaways (Chicago only has six in 2015 and Baltimore
is even worse, with 3 picks and only one fumble recovery all year).
And the Rams are in the top ten in both fewest turnovers-per-offensive-drive
and interceptions-per-offensive-drive (though they fumble more than
the league average). Plus the Rams actually haven't allowed a TD on their
last 34 possessions at home. But I digress...]

So keep running out Fisherball? NO WAY. They fumble more than the
league average, they artificially gas their defense, they leave themselves
vulnerable to 4th quarter comebacks from backup QBs, and they don't
set themselves up for any kind of 3rd down success. All quantified via
advanced metrics, Football Outsiders and Pro Football Prospectus. Draw
whatever conclusions you will...

[Stranger]

Thank you, Kayfabe, for pointing all of this out. It confirms what so many of us are seeing and saying about Fisher ball. I'm exhausted watching this ineptitude on offense. It's beyond clear that Fisher doesn't have a clue what it takes to run a modern NFL offense, and that ownership/management is going to have to step in or Fisher is going to have to step aside.

I've seen the consistency argument posted by several here, but I just don't see how that argument is justified when the performance is so abysmal.

[moklerman]

It all boils down to 3rd and obvious. The stats show that they're going to pass and it's going to go to Tavon. Statistically, that's all defenses have had to focus on.

Which all leads back to Fisher teams being maddeningly predictable on offense. That will NEVER change.

[dieterbrock]

There are 2 reasons why the Rams are so awful on 3rd down
1) 1st down play calling
2) 2nd down play calling

[moklerman]

There are 2 reasons why the Rams are so awful on 3rd down
1) 1st down play calling
2) 2nd down play calling

Not to mention bad passes, drops, etc. It seems that instead of continuing to call those plays that should have worked though, they go away from them. Cook's been open. Britt's been open. You gotta keep giving them opportunities. They're either going to start catching it or you'll have to replace them but you can't just stop calling successfully designed plays.