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last season team goff/keenum ranked 7th highest in % of passes thrown 10 yards or less in the air among the top 40 qualifying qbs.... for the 2012-2016 stretch, i.e.under fisher, the rams rate for such passes was 10th highest when compared to last year's top 40 qualifying qbs... but we need stats to tell us that, right? also, passes of 10 yards or less account for 70 of 100 passes thrown in the nfl, unlike 31+ yard passes which account for 4 of 100.... if stats were kept for attempts of 5 yards or less in the air, as opposed to 10 yards or less, my guess is the rams qbs would have ranked even higher for the 2012-2016 stretch.

anyway, i really don't care if the rams throw the ball "deep" or not, i just want them to become a team that throws the ball vertically rather than east/west, something that hasn't been a consistent part of their passing game for many, many years.

This is why I kept mentioning Goff didn't throw them. Do Keenum alone and you get a different picture, one more like 2012-15.

I also said that the Rams tended NOT to throw as much in the medium ranges. Which you verify thanks but no verification needed. In another thread I did Washington last year, which DID tend to throw more than the league norm in the medium ranges,

But they were in the top third of the league in terms of passes of 31 or more...often but not always setting it up with play action.

Those are the actual numbers as per the discussion---did the Rams throw and complete long passes. They tended to be around 5%, which is high by league standards. Except for Goff who didn't really throw them.

I know that led to a goofy discussion about whether you should count long passes, but I didn't enter that discussion. I just said that (except for Goff) they tended to do them at a rate that was in the top third of the league. They also completed them at a fair rate. That's just true. Sorry if saying that caused so much consternation. It was supposed to be just a simple fact.

I really don't know why this discussion was so weirdly controversial. My one explanation is that people thought it was an effort to start another Fisher War, which I get is not permitted. I didn't view it that way. I just viewed it as looking at facts. In regards to Tavon, did the Rams throw long? Yes. Not that much to TA personally but they did throw long, so him being excluded from that is telling. IMO what they found out doing that is that he is not reliable enough to count on it. For Tavon, a ball has to be in front of him in stride within his catch radius--he doesn't adjust to the throw the way you would expect a pure receiver type to do.

We agree that the McVay approach, which is to feature the medium range pass more than the norm, makes up for something missing from the Rams previously. But then I have been saying for years now that that was a deficit in the Rams attack, and in fact saying that was one of the reasons I did these stats.

However, pretending like someone said they didn't throw short is not the way to have a civil discussion. My words were (and have been for years) that they throw ball control passing, run, and set up deep shots. That means a lot of different things, but among the many things it means is that they tended not to be up to league norms in terms of medium passes (which for me is the 11-20 & 21-30 yard ranges). I said that here several times and have been saying it for years. And again that's not pro- or anti- any particular coach and was not meant to be part of any stupid Coach Wars debate...it's just facts.

There was never any real fight. Acting like there was, was just silly.

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