Success & Stop Rates: San Diego Chargers at Oakland Raiders

For those unfamiliar with Football Outsiders' success and stop rates, we'll begin with a quick refresher course. A successful play is one that gains 45% or more of the needed yards on 1st down, 60% or more of the needed yards on 2nd down, and 100% or more of the needed yards on 3rd/4th down. A stop is preventing the offense from gaining those yards.

OFFENSE

The Chargers could not run the ball at all in this game. They did not have a single successful run in the 1st, 3rd or 4th quarters. That's incredible, and that's the story of this game on the offensive side of the ball. They got beat in the trenches, and it shows in particular in the 15.4% success rate running on 1st down and the 30.0% success rate throwing on 3rd/4th downs. Whenever the Raiders had reason to expect what was thrown at them, they destroyed the Chargers' offensive line and blew up the play. The Chargers had the most success when "pitching backwards." They were successful nearly three out of four plays when passing on first down and were 50/50 when running on 2nd/3rd/4th downs.

The most interesting individual stat was that Danny Woodhead was successful on 66.7% of passing plays, but only 33.3% of running plays. I think that captures his skillset remarkably well.

DEFENSE

The defense was downright dominant on 2nd and 3rd downs. Unfortunately, they were terrible on 1st down. For the second consecutive week, the defense came out much stronger in the 2nd half. Unfortunately, the hole they'd dug in the 1st was so deep that combined with Woodhead's fumble it just didn't matter. Both units for the Chargers were slightly better than 50/50, but the Bolts gave up more big plays and stumbled more frequently in high leverage situations. The Chargers were probably the better team at the skill positions, but they also made more mistakes and looked completely unprepared to deal with an athletic quarterback. They stopped Oakland's backs 66.7% of the time, but only stopped 44.4% of Terrelle Pryor's scrambles.

On an individual level, Jarret Johnson led the defense with five tackles for stops. Donald Butler, Manti Te'o and Corey Liuget tied for second with three each.