A Bad Flattitude; A Look at Chargers Scoring in the First Half
by Brian (DaBolts) on Dec 17, 2008 8:34 AM PST
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PrintThe Chargers have felt to be a very slow starting team in the first half; they come out flat. Whether you want to attribute that to unimaginative scripted starts or Norv having trouble calling plays and head coaching, I thought it would be interesting to see exactly how bad it is.
Sometimes you expect to find things and they end up not being true; for instance my perception was that Chargers were much worse than average on penalties but when I actually looked it up they are merely average. Over the season they have given up around fifty more yards; which should be negligible. On the other hand in looking up how flat they are in the first half; the effect is pretty amazing. The Chargers are actually outscored by opponents by 30 points in the first half. In contrast they outscore their opponents by 74 points in the second half.
| Chargers | Opponents | |
| First Half Points | 159 | 189 |
| Second Half Points | 187 | 113 |
| Totals | 346 | 302 |
So the scoring differential shows that the effect is true and quite large. If we take a closer look it seems that to some degree the offense is more effective; they score 28 points more in the second half than in the first. What is really striking is the defense, they allow 76 more points to opponents in the first half. Opposing teams are scoring almost two thirds of their points in the first half.
My conclusion is that the talk about Norv's play calling is somewhat overblown; the real problem is either in the defensive game plan or performance. Either the defense is not coming out primed to play; or the adjustments are much better than the initial defensive scheme. Do the Chargers go 'bend but don't break' until behind and then stiffen up? I'd have to go back over some games to really find out. I suppose some of that could be opposing teams being more conservative with leads as well.
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What I've noticed
At least lately, is that the defense is getting about 5 minutes to rest on the bench between first half drives by the opposition because a lot of 3 and outs.
Even when we’ve scored in the first half, it’s usually on a big play to VJ or Floyd and almost never on a long, clock-eating drive.
This is actually what I thought was the problem with the team last year before we turned it around. The offense was too predictable out of the gate and the defense was too willing to “bend” until the second half. It gave our opponents a head start every game. Then suddenly our defense started blitzing from the start and our offense mixed it up in the beginning and we began to roll. Sad to see we’ve regressed since then.
Half Time Leads
The Chargers have only established a half-time lead in four games; we have won three of those. In Pittsburgh we had a two point lead at the half and ended up losing by one. The other three against the Jets, Patriots and Raiders were all blowouts. So they are only able to establish leads going into the half less than one third of the time.
"Football is a physical sport, sometimes you have a disagreement on what's going on, and you have a discussion about it." Kris Dielman
by Brian (DaBolts) on Dec 17, 2008 9:37 AM PST up reply actions
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