FanPost

Checking the Numbers: Chargers-Raiders Game


Hey Chargers fans! I have a new post comparing the teams' performances from Monday night's game to their averages from 2008. I thought this would help give an idea of how the respective offenses and defenses did given some form baseline numbers. I hope you enjoy it.

On Monday night, the San Diego Chargers and Oakland Raiders met for a game in which the Chargers were heavy favorites. With solid fundamental football, the Raiders held San Diego in check for much of the game. But, with time growing short, quarterback Philip Rivers led his team on the game winning drive, capped off by Darren Sproles’ TD run with 18 seconds left. There are plenty of recaps out there reviewing the game, but here I wanted to look at this game from my own analytical perspective.

In this post, I took the box score stats from the game and compared how each team did against their season averages from the 2008 season. If it were later in the year, I would compare them against each team’s average so far in the 2009 season. But, since the previous season usually serves as the baseline for predictions going into a new year, I think that analyzing against the previous season’s numbers is perfectly acceptable. Perhaps after week 6 or 7 (maybe 8), I will begin using current season averages as the basis for comparison.

So, anyway, on to the numbers! (Box Scores taken from Yahoo! Sports and 2008 averages from Pro-Football-Reference.com) Below, I have four tables.

To read the rest, please click here.

This FanPost was written by a member of the Bolts From The Blue community and does not necessarily reflect the views of the Bolts From The Blue editors or SB Nation.