A Closer Look: 2006 Red Zone Production

In the last post, I took a closer look at our red zone production in 2006, and today we're going to take an even closer look than that.

Thankfully, the stat compilation company used by by RollTide.com this season provided in-depth play-by-play data of each and every snap, so we can analyze the Crimson Tide on a play-by-play basis. Furthermore, I've analyzed only eight games -- the eight conference games -- for the exact same reasons as mentioned earlier in the post on Pythagorean Wins.

So, after breaking down every red zone play in the conference games, what exactly did I find?

In the eight conference games, we ran a grand total of 94 plays in the red zone. And, well, those 94 plays were generally pretty damn ugly. All told, in 94 red zone plays, we accumulated only 166 yards of offense, about 1.7 yards per play. Moreover, we scored only seven touchdowns in these 94 plays, meaning we scored, on average, one touchdown per every 13.4 red zone plays.

John Parker Wilson, despite an otherwise solid year, struggled a good bit in the red zone. Yes, he did throw five red zone touchdown passes, but all told he was only 14-29 in the red zone, completing less than 50% of his passes. Moreover, Wilson also had 10 rushes (either scrambles or sacks) on aborted passing plays. All told, Shula and co. called 39 passing plays in the red zone in 2006, and it resulted in only 14 completions. Putting a percentage to it, only a mere 35.8% of called passing plays actually resulted in a completed pass, and the average completion -- in the relative rarity that it did occur -- went for only about four yards. Unfortunately, the much more often result was a sack, a Wilson scramble, a turnover, or an attempted pass that fell harmlessly to the ground.

Beyond that, I went a bit deeper in breaking down our red zone production into more specific categories. I broke down the 94 plays into four regions: from the 20-16, from the 15-11, from the 10-6, and from the 5 to the goal line. Looking at the numbers in that sense brought about some interesting insights.

From the 5-yard line to the goal line, we were atrocious, as expected, gaining only 15 yards off of 18 plays. All told, when inside the five, we netted on average about two feet per play. And the production from the 20-16 was even worse, as we gained only 32 yards off of 31 plays. Even though it's a higher yard-per-play average than from within the five, it's nevertheless worse because positive gains are capped inside the five yard line by a complete lack of room to move the ball much farther, something that is much less of a problem from the 20-16.

Of course, struggles in both areas had a very negative impact on overall point production. The struggles inside the five yard line turned should-be touchdowns into field goals, and the struggles to move ball from the 20-16 inside the 15 not only hurt point production by stopping drives that could have potentially produced touchdowns, but also by making the field goals that had to be kicked more difficult because of increased distance, which is course drives down the likelihood that those kicks will be successful. And the latter impact is far from insignificant. Given the relative inconsistency of college kickers, a field goal five to ten yards further away probably has anywhere from a 10%-25% smaller chance of being good than from one five or ten yards closer to the goal line.

Oddly enough, though, between the 15-6, we did relatively well, and much better than we did from the 20-16 or the 5 to the goal line. In that area, for whatever reason, we averaged around three yards per play, which, while not great, is triple what we averaged from the 20-16 and the 5 to the goal line. I honestly have no clue as to why that was. Perhaps it was just a statistical oddity that would have worked itself out had we seen a larger sample size, but perhaps there was a legitimate reason for the differences in levels of production. If it is the latter, though, I can't think of why that would be the case.

But what about offensive balance?

All we heard all year long, and even up until today, was that one of our main problems in the red zone was that we were not balanced, that we ran the ball entirely too much and got conservative when it counted; opposing defensive coordinators knew what we were doing, and this allowed opponents to effectively stop it. So how does that argument play out?

Once you run the numbers, that argument doesn't seem to have that much validity, despite spirited assertions to the contrary. All told, from the 20-6, we had 71 plays. Of those 71 plays, 39 were runs (54.9%), and 32 were passes (45.1%). And, of course, that 55-45 split is generally the definition of offensive balance in college football. Even when you break it down by individual games, we were still pretty balanced. We weren't too balanced in the Vanderbilt game (ran mostly), the Arkansas game (ran mostly, especially late in the fourth quarter), and the Florida game (passed mostly), but for the other five SEC games, we were really well balanced in terms of play-calling from the 20 to the 6.

At bottom, despite what some people will strongly assert to the contrary, conservatism wasn't the reason we struggled in the red zone. We were atrocious, for the most part, regardless what we did, whether it be run or pass.

From the five yard line to the goal line, it was a bit of a different story. We had 18 plays from inside our opponent's five yard line, 13 runs and 5 passes. Obviously, the play-calling was heavily swayed in favor of running the football, but before you criticize Shula, you have to keep in mind that the overwhelming majority of plays inside the five yard line should be running plays. Throwing the football that deep in your opponent's territory is very difficult, and the interceptions that can occur generally yield much higher return yardage for the opposing team than a normal interception. All told, running the football generally yields small, consistent gains, and that is what you need with such a short distance to go.

The problem wasn't, seemingly, the fact that we ran the ball so much from inside the five yard line, it was who we ran it with that was the problem. In conference play, Tim Castille -- out of the dread jumbo package -- got eight carries inside the five yard line (Castille carried the ball on almost 45% of plays inside the five), and those eight carries netted a grand total of five yards. All told, Castille averaged about 20 inches per carry inside the five yard line. In general, with Castille -- a fullback -- plays were very slow to develop, and it gave opposing defenses a lot of time to shoot the gaps and stop the play for little or no gain. At the end of the day, hindsight 20/20, a quicker back like Johns or Darby would have likely been the better solution.

The bottom line, the jumbo package should have be re-titled the junk package.

So what all should we take from the analysis? I'd say two things.

One, the play-calling -- or, more precisely, I should say the supposed overly conservative play-calling -- was not, apparently, the problem with our lack of red zone production in 2006. One way or the other, regardless of what we tried in the red zone, it just really didn't work. Running plays were generally stuffed at the line for little or no gain, and passing plays more often than not resulted in incompletions, interceptions, fumbles, or sacks. Our lack of red zone productivity would most certainly not have been improved simply by throwing more passes and opening the offense up more.

Two, however bad you thought our red zone production was in 2006, the statistics show that it was probably much worse than you imagined.

At bottom, after really going in-depth on overall red zone production in 2006, you just appreciate how horrendous it really was. Odds are, we could perform poorly in the red zone again in 2007, and still have red zone production significantly better than in 2006.