of Young’s ypc right now. Take out a 49 yard scamper out of a draw play on 3rd and 24 vs. thechargers and his ypc drops from 5.7 to 4.7. Take out a 19 yard broken play against the saints (a beautiful play, but not indicative of his play to play rushing ability) and his ypc drops all the way down to 4.0. I don’t know what we should be expecting, or what would be considered good, adequate, or not quite good enough, but his lack of production on first and second down (he has only had 3 rushing touches on 3rd down) is a small part of our tendency to be so pass heavy right now. His running leaves something to be desired in the hitting the hole category, but I think he looks as determined and energetic as ever.

I am hopeful for your prediction of touches for Hall. I don’t have a problem with his ypc, because it has declined with a correspondence to his decline in carries(10/61, 7/31, 6/25, 4/14, 5/13). He obviously needs to be fed the ball, the source of a major beef I have with the “5 play rotation” he and Selvin were in. 5 plays seem arbitrary and not conducive to the nature of a RB.

Here are some running game numbers to mull over: (the following numbers are based on real offensive production, which means yards gained by penalty are not counted, and yards lost by penalty but gained back are added in. I have obtained some surprising numbers from this regarding how many yards our offense gained. We have been benefiting a LOT from opponents penalties. Additionally, some of the figures below are followed by a number in parentheses. This number represents an adjusted version that subtracts the results from the following plays: 49 yard draw on 3rd and 24 vs. SD, 19 yard broken play vs. NO, and 18 yard draw by pittman in garbage on the final play of the KC game.)

The RBs are accounting for 28(25) of the offensive production on 36% of the plays. Our real avg per play is 3.85(3.51) rb rushing, 7.9 per pass/ receiver play. Averaging the top five rushing attacks (our goal) that have corresponding top overall offenses(indicating the balance we seek), the numbers are 5.8 per rush, 7.8 per pass. This corresponds to a roughly 25% better expectation of yardage production from a pass than a run. The broncos in contrast have an expectation of 52(56), or more than 2 to 1, better production from passing than running.

This describes a familiar cycle this season (barring the raider game, which was so well executed on offense that all of the above numbers are approx. 16% better than they would be without that game). While attempting to run early in the game, or after we get the early lead (trying to establish a playcalling balance closer to 48-52% run-pass) we fail to get enough yards, turning more to the pass. The result is short drives and tired defense, but still productive. The disparity between pass and run production is around35-40% at this time (remember, we want it around 25, a mean average for balanced yet productive attacks). Later in the game when we should be running to eat up the clock and hold a lead we are instead playing tit for tat, as the offense continues to have short drives dominated by the pass as the run is still hit and miss. The disparity creeps over 40 as we go into the fourth quarter. In the last four games our fourth quarter run-pass balance has been pitiful: 27run. The lone bright spot is pittman at the end of the TB game converting 3 first downs in 4 plays in the 4th, including 2 on the final drive to run out the clock. Selvin and Hall averaged 1.8ypc during that 4th quarter, on first and second down. Quarters like that, with the heavy dose of the pass out of desperation push our rushing production disparity over 50, and into no-man’s land.

The lack of running production on first and second down is forcing us to play fast and furious, giving the opponent lots of chances to hang and forcing us to play even faster, including in the low scoring TB game, where the offense simply wasn’t effective at scoring points like in the 4 previous games. The disparity in the playcalling was congruent through all 4 games.

The CBS fools in my area are carrying something called “mountain bike championships” instead of Jax vs Den. Kind of odd, consideriing that Jax is an AFC South competitor of Indianapolis, and Denver is a hot team right now. I like mountain biking, but wouldn’t watch it over the NFL. Sheeesh!

At any rate, I expect Jax to resign by move thirty two, giving Denver a final score of 4 wins versus 1 win with 16 games tied. It won’t matter how much time is on the clock, as Denver has checkmate forced in 5 no matter how you slice it.