The whole offense suffered in 2012 due to the poor OL play. Shady McCoy’s numbers took a big hit. His YPC fell to just 4.2. He ran for a career low 2 TDs. McCoy has got to be looking forward to running behind Jason Peters, Jason Kelce and Lane Johnson, 3 players who weren’t there last season.
If you look at McCoy’s numbers even further, I think you can see how he missed the OL last year in one specific area.
2010 – 207 carries for 1080 yards … 5.2 ypc
2011 – 273 carries for 1309 yards … 4.8 ypc
2012 – 200 carries for 840 yards … 4.2 ypc
The OL play was sloppy in both 2010 and 2012. The OL played very well in 2011.
You see this when you look at his runs of 20 or more yards.
2010 – 7
2011 -14
2012 – 7
Shady had a bunch of runs that covered 40 or more yards back in 2010, but I think that had a lot to do with the explosive passing attack and just some sheer luck. Think about where the long runs come from. Shady reverses field and makes one defender miss, then he’s off to the races.
20 yard runs are more about blocking. You hit the hole and get upfield ASAP.
In 2011, Shady had 14 carries of 20 or more yards, but only 2 of those covered 40 or more yards. I think the consistently good blocking led to fewer plays where Shady was making crazy cuts and reversing the field. One stat would help this theory a lot…negative run plays. I haven’t found a site that lists negative runs by player. You can find them by team, but you don’t know how to sort out QB kneel downs vs 1st Qtr run stuffs vs backup RBs playing late in a blowout (W or L).
