06-25-2024, 04:20 PM
(06-25-2024, 03:55 PM)KillerGoose Wrote: I am getting my data from a play-by-play database that goes back to 1999. Relative ranking doesn't tell the entire story if the deltas aren't very big. For 2020 & 2021, the league average shotgun usage was a little over 66%. Cincinnati was in shotgun 69% of the time. Compare that to Philadelphia or Baltimore, who are in shotgun on ~90% of their snaps. Cincinnati used shotgun just a bit above league average. I would hardly call them a shotgun heavy team. Maybe your threshold for doing so is different than mine, but 3% more than average doesn't equal a heavy team IMO.
Care to share this database you're referencing? According to sharp analytics, in 2020 the average was 65%. We were at 76% or 8th highest in the league (and that's without the guy who likes shotgun playing 1/2 the season).
So, yes. I'd consider 11% higher than the average to be a heavy shotgun team. Especially when you consider the teams that are in shotgun 90+% of the time are the teams with running QBs (AZ, BAL, PHI) which skews the averages.
In 2023 I can't find cumulative data, but according to ESPN, during our 4-1 stretch when Burrow was healthy, we were in Shotgun 85% of the time
In 2022 we used shotgun 77% of the time (5th in the league)
In 2021 I can't find cumulative data.
In 2020 we used shotgun 76% of the time (8th in the league)
So again, we have been consistently a shotgun heavy team. People are acting like that's going to change, and my simple question is, what makes anybody confident about that based on what we've seen from the QB/Coach combo? All the evidence would tell you that the approach is going to stay the same.
