For those stat geeks like me...

[ironcitychef]

I love to look at how stats meet the unpredictable at certain spots like watching those breaking Vegas specials where MIT grads count cards and predict the Roulette wheel, and so on. So I decide to support the local guy after a newspaper article and SI.com's article on "The Football Scientist". http://www.thefootballscientist.com/ I don't want to rip the guy off, but I just got the book today and already am impressed. Its mainly a break down of QB's, WRs,TE's, S's and DB's for 2005. Its only those because he tapes all the games off tv so you get what we see. But he charted all the plays and results and really breaks the stats down to some meaningful stuff...for example here's some of the Steelers breakdown points...

Offense/QB:

Big Ben was known to get a little worse as the year went on, as the stats show wk 4 - 14 he only makes 3 bad decisions(throwing into coverage, throwing off balance/sacked, starring down WR) while in wk 15-playoofs he jumps to 8. With weights being worse since most were TD causing for the opponent. But its not all bad...the books(read "all his tapes") shows that 53.5% of Ben's passes were to receivers who were open by 1 1/2 - 2 steps on the coverage. Where else you gonna get that stat? You add in when WR were open by a step and it goes to 83.5%. So when Ben makes reads(cause the book also shows he was best on his first reads) he is highly accurate.

WR:

Burress - our deep threat? 30 deep passes in 12 games, against tight/good coverage on 40% of those, and he only caught 1/3 of those passes. As we always said you gotta go up and get those. Buyer beware NYG...

Randle El - 7th ranked WR in tight/good coverage overall. Yeah, he's fast...he is good all over as he placed high in short/med/deep routes, but when replacing Burress he excelled as 12 of 13 deep passes and 7 of 13 med. passes came after week 11.

Ward - was a surprising 14th in tight/good coverage on short routes, but it shows 80 passes were in the short area. Also shows that was only a deep threat 14.2% of the time. Maybe we are saving our money for Randle El?

Wilson - author was worried when we signed him, but his stats say we are on to something...13th in deep passes/22nd in medium routes. Also he only had 6 missed passes. They don't even get attributed to him scientifically because of errors on throwing or such, so no dropped passes in 80 attempts.

I'll let you all decide but it is already money well spent in my opinion.

[bigbensgirl7]

Good stuff iron!

[slashsteel]

Top notch Iron. I love indepth stats......

[ironcitychef]

Oh yeah, it appears that there was one other WR beside Wilson who didn't drop a pass that was a "gimmie"(no bad pass or throw away). He also plays for us by the name of Randle El. Is someone in our front office doing some homework or what? Just to throw out to you other fans as well. The top 2 WR's in catching % of all passes in their direction? Dieon Branch(73 att) and Hines Ward(127 att) in the high 60% range. What a page turner...it looks like someones accounting sheets, but if you read between the lines its great stuff.

[BlitzburghRockCity]

Good stuff, thanks for the info.

Im anxious to see how Ben does this year the whole way. Obviously he hit the rookie wall that every rookie hits to one degree or another. He's got almost 2 years worth of games under his belt in only 1 season so he is very experienced for a 2 year guy.

[Prosdo]

Nice find ICC. It was an interesting read.

[pitt]

This is interesting. Thanks for putting it up.