STAT #1
There's a crazy stat that gets thrown around that gets attributed to Russ: Only once have we won when the opponent scored more than 24 points (not an unbelievably high score given the average losing score in the NFL is 18). That stat absolutely has to be at least shared by Bevell (if not solely attributed him) and his 'schemed' slower starts.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/ThomasGower/status/745397038188224512[/tweet]
The win came against Pittsburgh last season when we beat them 39-30. And in typical rabbit out of a hat fashion we amassed 0 points in the first quarter and went into the second half behind before Russ hit Doug for 2TDs in the last 8 minutes as we put up 19 4th quarter points to win it.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/pfref/status/775104277031292928[/tweet]
Stats don't just tell one story, and Russ's incredulous 2nd half and 4th quarter comeback record should both stand as testament to his clutchness, but also to the detriment of our offense's inability to function through the first part of the game.
Sure, we like to 'feel teams out' and all that crap, but without the best defense in the league, there's no way we achieve this.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/ThatBayleeGirl/status/562097171479003137[/tweet]
Bevell riding on the coattails of the defense STAT #2 (For those who throw out the 'super bowl win' argument in defense of DB)
In our Super Bowl winning season, we allowed 14.4 points per game, pretty nuts! The 10th best defense that year (the Pats) gave up over 21 per game. Say that we had the 10th best defense that year (still comfortably above average), we'd have gone 8-8 if you adjust the point difference.
Of course, that argument is futile, you can't account for what would have actually happened, and Russ may have had to pull out some rabbits a bit sooner. But let's just recap some of those would-be-losses to find out what really went down.
Week 1, Carolina: Russ throws a late 35 yard TD pass to Jermaine Kearse after we put up 6 points in the opening 3 quarters.
Houston Week 4: Down 20-3 at the half, we could get next to nothing going on offense aside from some strong running from Lynch and neat scrambling from Russ (who could only put up 123 yards through the air). In the end, we needed a Richard Sherman pick 6 to win that game.
Tennessee Week 5: We went into the 4th quarter level, were helped out with a Richard Sherman pick, and eventually pulled away late with Marshawn getting to 2TDs on the ground.
St Louis week 8: 139 yards through the air yet we somehow pull it out 14-9 as Russ throws for 2TDs.
Tampa Bay week 9: Down 21 points to the 4-12 Bucs (with neither the defense or offense covering themselves in glory), a Russell Wilson hurry-up drive led to a Doug Baldwin TD with less than 2 minutes left to tie the game. A Hauschka FG seals it in overtime.
Notable mentions to a couple of really ugly offensive performances in losses against the 49ers and the Cards following this, where we amassed 19 and 10 points respectively.
In too many instances the gameplan goes down the crapper and Russ, Lynch, the defense, or a combination of all three end up carrying the team through.
We win in spite of Bevell, not because of him.
When Marshawn walked, Cable should have too. The man's given us great success in the running game, and his style blended pretty terrifically with Marshawn's, but you can't continue to build an O-line around Christine Michael and Thomas Rawls whilst hanging our best and most expensive player, out to dry
I know it's not their intention to get Russ hurt, but when your O-line guy has never coached an above average pass blocking line it's just dumb to leave the health of our most important player in his hands, or Sowell's, or Webb's.
STAT #3
A QB was sacked an average of two times per game last season (2.3 to be precise) and unsurprisingly the Seahawks allowed more than average, with only five teams allowing more than us (we kept some high level of company with the Jags, 49ers, Titans and Browns being four of those worse off than us).
Admittedly, through the first half of the season Russ had among the slowest release of all QB's (only a handful were slower), and whether you attribute this to Russ's cautiousness, our wide receivers not getting open, or the scheming (or all three) this stat corrected itself as from week 10 onwards Russ was slinging the ball out slower than only three QBs in the entire NFL. He was probably closest to Brady from the pocket, with his scrambling ability negating an even faster average snap-to-throw time.
In keeping with Russ's quicker release, our average sacks per game came down to the league average, and we even managed a sack-free game against the Baltimore Ravens. Woot woot!
Russ's pocket ability mixed with his houdini-like escapability should see us consistently near the bottom of the sack-rate, yet if we're picking holes we were still only average during this stretch to our exit against Carolina.
Still, look what Russ is able to achieve when we up the tempo and let Russ do more.
With that, it must be said that in three of the games to close out our season we were above average (1 sack or less).
STAT #4:
In games where Russell has been sacked once or less, he's 17-1 with a 113 QB rating. 17-1!!!!! That one defeat coming in the agonizing game at Detroit in his first season where he put us ahead with our last drive of the game, only for Titus Young to score with 20 seconds remaining.
Simply said, if you don't sack him, you don't win, it's why teams like St Louis put such a premium on getting to the him.
The Panthers went into last season with a makeshift O-line yet Cam Newton went 7 games being sacked once or less (we had 4, and unsurprisingly all came from week 8 beyond). Denver's O-line wasn't considered great yet Peyton Manning went 6 games being sacked once or less (and he missed 7 games!).
STAT #5
Our running game was not paramount to our success in the stretch, with us throwing for 11 Tds and running for 3 (one of which was Russ) in the three games following week 10 where Russ was sacked once or less. (This was where Russ went on his tear-up).
Whilst our running game was successful down the stretch last season (with Rawls central to this) explosive passing plays came more frequently and before explosive running plays. There's no doubt Rawls was a huge miss after he got injured, and our best hope of finding the form of the second half of last season is with a healthy Rawls, but our pass game opened up the running game plenty last year as our offensive identity shifted.
Still, you need adequate run blockers to take advantage of these opportunities, and we have regressed in this area with the player we lost on the O-line. That's not on Cable, and the fact he's had so little to work with can't count against him.
You can't help but feel this team still needs to freshen things up on offense. Cable needed to go when Marshawn did, and Bevell has ridden on the coattails of a combination of Russ's 4th quarter magic and our defense's ability to keep our opponent to an attainable score for far too long now.
We've played at our floor too often and what we've seen we're capable of when we're able to protect Russ should lead us to seek a coach who can help us achieve this on a more consistent basis. Whilst I'm hopeful of Ifedi working out, I'm sceptical about our talent evaluation on the O-line and our ability to maximise our guys' potential. Carp looked solid for the Jets last year, Okung has looked All-pro for Denver so far, whilst it took a last resort move for us to get anything like value out of Justin Britt (and that experiment is still young).
With all said I do think we'll be 'just fine' this season, but we could be so much better. We should probably accept that Bevell's not going to be fired for example, but he signed an extension in 2013 and I'd assume that was up at the end of the season.
Time to let him walk.
