There are details in sports that you don’t want to be as a player or team.
Take the Los Angeles Chargers for example. Los Angeles dropped to 0-2 on the season after the Chargers lost to the Las Vegas Raiders on Sunday. Many teams start 0-2 and some make the playoffs. Just last year, the Houston Texans, Chicago Bears and Carolina Panthers started 0-2 and still made the playoffs.
But what puts the Chargers on a very, very small list is the context surrounding those two losses.. Both come at home, against a team that finished with a below .200 winning percentage last year. Only the Chargers and the 1926 Racine Tornadoes pulled that off.
And those 1926 Racine Tornadoes destroyed jobs weeks later.
While we don’t expect the Chargers to close things out, their upcoming schedule could see more losses than wins.
Then there’s the list of Atlanta’s offense two weeks later, which features longtime NFL analyst Aaron Schatz and FTN virtual.
Through two games, the Colts have the worst passing game in league history by the defensive-adjusted value-to-average metric.
Although DVOA dates back to 1977, the Falcons now have it in that span. The fifth worst passing offense DVOA rating after two games. Atlanta’s passing offense checks at a DVOA of just -89.2%, better than the 2002 Houston Texans (-90.0%), 1978 Tampa Bay Buccaneers (-97.4%), 1984 Los Angeles Rams (-98.7%) and 1979 Houston Oilers (103).
The Falcons’ defense was reasonable, but their passing game stuck with third-string quarterback Cooper Rush and fourth-string quarterback Jack Strand. As a result, the Falcons had one of the worst passing offenses by DVOA in two games since 1977.
It’s also worth noting that the 2002 Texans, 1984 Rams and 1979 Oilers managed to win games despite those terrible passing numbers. That Texas team, however, finished 4-12.
But the other two teams, the 1984 Rams and the 1979 Oilers, actually made the playoffs! In the year The 1984 Rams finished second in the NFC West and booked a playoff spot. However, there they would lose to the New York Giants in the wild card round.
About the 1979 Oilers, this “Luv Ya Blue!” has been . A team that won the AFC Central with an 11-5 record behind running back Earl Campbell. That team advanced to the AFC Championship Game, losing to the Pittsburgh Steelers by a final score of 27-13.
So far, the Houston-based NFL team has reached the AFC Championship Game. The franchise moved to Tennessee to become the Titans, advanced to Super Bowl XACV, and most recently lost to Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs in the AFC Championship Game in the 2019-2020 season.
So even with a historically embarrassing passing attack in two games, there is some hope for the Falcons.
But DVOA isn’t the only way to examine the woes of Atlanta’s passing game. Take some more advanced quarterback stats Adjusted net yards per attempt. Through two weeks, the league average A/A is 6.4. Geno Smith ranks 15th in the league with 6.6 ANY/A, and Joe Burrow is below average, ranking 19th with 6.1 ANY/A.
Rush has 0.9 Any/A. This is ranked 32nd out of 32 qualified players. When you add the incompetents, Rush drops to 37th, one spot below Strand, who has an Any/A of 0.1.
Although not the negative numbers I’ve posted in my time. College game daysThey are very bad.
Or we can look at the effectiveness of the quarterback Charter by RBSDMIt looks at both expected points added per game and above-expected completion percentage:
There is much-needed context to these numbers from Atlanta. As mentioned above, they came up with third-string running back Rush Rush and fourth-string quarterback Strand at the helm of the game. Tua Tagovailoa started the year at quarterback as Michael Penix Jr. worked his way back from a knee injury, but Tagovailoa injured his back in practice in Week 1, forcing the Rush into action.
His play forced Kevin Stefanski to turn to the Strand.
As the numbers show, neither was good. So maybe Penix is better.
It would be hard to be worse.
