Over the next week or so, you’re guaranteed to see a whole lot of articles titled ‘Super Bowl 46 Preview’. Although I’m sure you’ll find plenty of good information in those pieces, today I’m going to supply you with statistics and analysis that you simply can’t find anywhere else. I’m digging very deep into the Pro Football Focus statistical database to break down the passing game matchups like you’ve never seen before. There will be a ton of stats, sure, but bear with me to the end and come game time, you’ll find yourself noticing things you normally didn’t pay much attention to before.

Here we go.

Patriots Pass Offense vs. Giants Pass Defense

You can’t run a play without a personnel package. What you see above is a breakdown of the Patriot’s packages on passing plays during the 2011 season. Note that the position mentioned doesn’t refer to where the player lined up; rather it’s the player’s roster position. That might seem a little silly, but the point here is really just to give an idea of personnel. Later on, we’ll talk about where each player actually lines up.

Our chart shows us that the Patriots preferred package on passing plays is the 2WR-1HB-2TE grouping. Considering how often Rob Gronkowski and Aaron Hernandez (remember, both are considered a ‘TE’ 100% of the time in this chart regardless of where they lined up) are on the field, this shouldn’t come as a surprise. The Patriots keep 2+ tight ends on the field on 74% of their passing plays, which ranks as the highest mark in the NFL. That being the case, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that they rank 30th in 3+ WR formations at a rate of 34%.

Next, we’ll be looking at several different passing categories.

We kick it off by taking a look at how Brady distributes his throws. We also see how opposing quarterbacks distributed their throws against the Giants during the 2011 season and the NFL average in each category. You see the percentage of targets split into four categories: throws to backs, to players lined up out wide (X/Z), to players lined up in the slot, and to players lined up as an in-line tight end.

This won’t be a shocker considering that the average NFL fan is aware of Wes Welker, but our chart shows us that Brady is extremely reliant on his slot man. As we’ll see later, though, it’s not just Welker doing the damage here. Brady doesn’t throw much to the back and the X/Z receivers are also at about a 10% disadvantage compared to the rest of the league. You might find it interesting to see that Brady only throws to the in-line tight end 15% of the time, a rate that is just 2% higher than the NFL average. This is a product of Aaron Hernandez and, to a lesser extent, Rob Gronkowski, spending quite a bit of time in the slot and/or out wide. More on that later.

Not a ton jumps out here, but we do see that Brady’s lack of throws to the backs is somewhat warranted, as they’ve combined to haul in only 69% of their targets. Brady has completed 73% of his throws to slot receivers and in-line tight ends, both of which are well above league average. The Giants do, however, do a nice job against the opposing in-line TE, so Gronkowski could have a little bit more trouble than usual.

Here we have average depth of target, which tells us how deep down field the pass catchers are being targeted. On an overall level, we see that teams like to attempt passes deeper down field on the Giants. This is interesting, especially because we saw earlier that opponents actually throw to the X/Z at a rate below league average vs. the Giants. Brady’s heavy use of the slot receiver/TE keep his overall rate at about league average.

Before I go on, I wanted to throw the Yards-per-Reception and Yards-after-reception data into the mix. It’s interesting to note that Brady averages 13 yards per completion, compared to the 12 allowed by the Giants defense. All that comes despite Brady actually aiming deeper on his throws. This can be attributed to the YAR chart, which shows us that Brady’s pass catchers do a great job racking up yardage after they catch a pass. The Giants defense, however, does a good job getting pass catchers to the ground after they haul in pass. This will be a situation worth monitoring.

Touchdown rates are always intriguing. We see here that the Patriots are, in fact, the scoring machine we’re accustomed to, managing a touchdown once every 10 pass completions. The Giants give up touchdowns at a rate above the NFL average, but not near as often as the Patriots score. What jumps out here should obviously be the in-line tight ends. The Giants do appear to have a weakness covering the in-line TE near the goal line and it’s a clear strength for the Patriots. Thanks to the Brady-Gronkowski connection, just under 20% of Brady’s completions to an in-line TE have resulted in a score. The odds are very good that Gronkowski will find paydirt on Super Bowl Sunday.

Brady doesn’t throw very many interceptions, but the Giants are above average in this department. The position that stands out (again) is in-line tight end. Only 1% of Brady’s 2011 attempts to the position have resulted in an interception this season. The Giants, meanwhile, have a strong 5.2% rate. The Giants do a nice job ball-hawking on throws to the in-line TE and it could give Gronkowski some trouble.

I almost didn’t bother looking over drops, but again I had to point out the in-line tight ends. We already mentioned that the Giants defense has forced opposing in-line TEs into low catch rates and have intercepted a high rate of those passes, but those opposing TEs are also dropping passes at an extremely high rate. 13% is more than double the league average.

Now that we’ve look at how Brady distributes the ball to his pass catchers and how the Giants do against each of those positions, it’s worth looking into which players actually line up at those positions. This chart does that. It’s broken down into 8 positions: Left/Right Wide Receiver, Slot Left/Right Wide Receiver, In-Line Left/Right TE, Halfback, and Fullback. Each position shows two columns: one is the total snaps at that position in 2011 and the other is the % of the player’s total snaps at the position. For example, Deion Branch lined up in the left slot 69 times in 2011, which accounts for 8% of his total snaps.

There aren’t many surprises at the wide receiver position: Deion Branch, Tiquan Underwood, and Chad Ochocinco (if he’s active) take most of their snaps out wide. Wes Welker and Julian Edelman primarily work from the slot.

At tight end, however, we finally see a statistical breakdown of where Rob Gronkowski and Aaron Hernandez line up. Gronkowski rarely lines up out wide, but is in the slot one third of the time, interestingly to the right way more than to the left.  Just over 60% of the time, he’s on the line (again, on the right side more than the left). Hernandez, meanwhile, might as well be grouped with the wide receivers. He’s at the X/Z 29% of the time and in the slot another 35%. He’s used as a back on 8% of his snaps, which means only 29% of his snaps are as an in-line tight end. Just like Gronkowski, Hernandez is on the right side of the field quite a bit more than he’s on the left.

Before we move on, enjoy this general information regarding the Patriots’ pass offense:

In 18 games this season, the Patriots averaged 67 offensive plays per game. They called a pass on an average of 41 of those snaps (60%), which works out to 27 runs (40%). This makes them the 16th pass-heaviest team in the NFL. In their 15 wins, they averaged 68 offensive plays, 40 of which were passes (58%) and 28 of which were runs (42%). In their three losses, they averaged 65 offensive plays, 45 of which were passes (70%) and 20 of which were designed runs (30%). Opponents of the Giants this past season averaged 67 offensive plays per game, 42 of which were passes (63%) and 25 of which were runs (37%). Finally, when these two teams met back in Week 9 (a 24-20 Giants win), the Patriots ran 74 offensive plays, 52 of which were passes (70%) and 22 of which were called runs (30%).

Giants Pass Offense vs. Patriots Pass Defense

I’m now going to do the exact same analysis, except this time it will be on the other side of the ball.

Unlike the Patriots, the Giants do not favor the 2-1-0-2 formation as the base for their pass offense. They utilize that formation on only 15% of their passing snaps, instead leaning on the 3-1-0-1 56% of the time. Except for the rare Ballard-Beckum formation, the Giants would rather get Manningham in the game along with Cruz and Nicks. We also see that the Giants bring in the fullback on 23% of their passing snaps, compared to only 1% for the Patriots. The Giants have 2+ tight ends on the field on pass plays 19% of the time, which ranks 21st in the NFL. They go with 3+ wide receivers 61% of the time, which ranks 19th.

Next, we’ll compare Eli Manning, the Patriots Pass Defense, and the NFL average in several key categories.

We get the ball rolling with our ‘% of targets’ chart. We see a lot of consistencies here, but there are two columns that stand out a bit. We see that Manning throws to his Flanker or Split End at a rate 4% higher than the NFL average. Conveniently, teams have thrown at the X/Z vs. New England at a rate 6% higher than the NFL average. The position that suffers – in both situations – is the in-line tight end. Manning has made use of the position on just 9% of his throws this season. The Patriots allow the same rate. It’s not often an offense and defense will line up this well, so there is definitely some predictability here. Manning will be able to get the ball to his X/Z and he won’t be forced to use Jake Ballard more than he’d like.

We see some consistencies here, as well. Overall, Manning is slightly above average at completing his passes and the Patriots defense is slightly below. The only category that seems to stand out is the in-line tight end. We see a 62% catch rate for Manning’s tight ends, but the Patriots allow a generous 72%. It’s fair to say we can boost Jake Ballard’s catch rate a bit.

Eli Manning averages more than 10 yards a thrown in terms of depth and the Patriots are unlikely to do anything to slow him down. Teams have thrown down the field on them all year along, racking up a 9.7 aDOT, which is almost a full yard above league average. The biggest variation we see between the two is in the slot. This can mostly be attributed to Victor Cruz, who is a big player receiver despite, as we’ll see later, spending a lot of time in the slot.

Like before, I’ll throw Yards-Per-Reception and Yards-after-reception together. aDOT and YPR line up pretty well this time, so there isn’t a lot to be said. We do notice a lot of YAR when it comes to slot receivers for Manning. Again, the reason for this is Victor Cruz, who turned quite a few short passes into long touchdowns this past season. The 6.6 mark is clearly a bit of an outlier, though, and is sure to regress a bit. Cruz is a strong asset in the slot, but he’ll return to earth a bit as time goes on.

The Patriots’ defense is criticized for giving up a ton of yardage, but they aren’t too bad when it comes to scoring defense. In fact, their 6.7% TD/Rec rate is below league average. Manning, however, has one of the game’s best TD rates at 8.5%. Although he doesn’t utilize the in-line tight end much in his offense, he does find Ballard and Co. quite a bit in the endzone – very much like Brady. His 13.9% TD rate to tight ends is over 5% higher than league average. The Patriots do a pretty nice job slowing touchdowns to in-line TEs, however. The area they struggle most is on throws to slot receivers, which gives Aaron Hernandez and Wes Welker an advantage. Keep an eye on them in the redzone.

The Patriots’ defense has done a nice job creating interceptions this season, as well. The 3.7% mark they’ve put up is a full percent higher than Manning’s 2.6% this season. The 3.4% rate on throws to backs is probably a little bit of luck with deflected passes, but they also enjoy a strong 5.0% mark on attempts to slot receivers. Manning will need to show extra caution when looking for Cruz.

Two numbers stand out to me here. One is the 14% drop rate by backs facing the Patriots defense. The other is the 12% drop rate by the Giants’ in-line tight ends, which may explain why Manning doesn’t throw to them very often. Interestingly, we see that the Patriots D hasn’t seen many throws to the in-line TE get dropped this year, but that could change this time around.

Just as we did with the Patriots earlier, this is a complete breakdown of where the active Giants offensive players line up on offense.

Hakeem Nicks played 1,112 snaps this season, only 41 of which came in the slot. On the other hand, Victor Cruz picked up right where Steve Smith left off, working in the slot on 60% of his snaps. In fact, that number would be even higher had Mario Manningham not missed so much action. Speaking of Manningham, he saw only 6% of his snaps in the slot despite getting some practice there in pre-season workouts. In 3-wide sets, it’s almost always Nicks and Manningham out wide with Cruz in the slot.

The fourth offensive skill player on the field is generally Jake Ballard, who works in-line about 83% of the time. Another 13% of his snaps come from the slot. Travis Beckum has seen his role fluctuate this season, but he’s used in the slot or out wide 56% of the time. Bear Pascoe has seen plenty of action at both fullback and tight end this season, but Henry Hynoski is usually the man who comes on the field to replace Manningham in rushing situations. He’s lined up as a fullback on 96% of his snaps.

To wrap it up, here is some general information regarding the Giants’ pass offense:

In 19 games this season, the Giants averaged 65 offensive plays per game. They called a pass on an average of 40 of those snaps (61%), which works out to 25 runs (39%). This makes them the 11th pass-heaviest team in the NFL. In their 12 wins, they averaged 67 offensive plays, 39 of which were passes (58%) and 28 of which were runs (42%). In their seven losses, they averaged 63 offensive plays, 42 of which were passes (67%) and 21 of which were designed runs (33%). Opponents of the Patriots this past season averaged 67 offensive plays per game, 43 of which were passes (64%) and 24 of which were runs (36%). Finally, when these two teams met back in Week 9 (a 24-20 Giants win), the Giants ran 68 offensive plays, 40 of which were passes (59%) and 28 of which were called runs (41%).

There you have it – as thorough a statistical breakdown you’ll find on the Giants and Patriots passing game matchup for Super Bbowl 46. Enjoy the game and keep an eye on those tight ends in the redzone.

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