Final stats: Offense 29th, Defense 7th, Spec.Teams 8th

Rams offense lags far behind in Football Outsiders’ rankings

Nick Wagoner

http://espn.go.com/blog/st-louis-rams/post/_/id/25621/rams-offense-lags-far-behind-in-football-outsiders-rankings

EARTH CITY, Mo. — The raw statistical numbers sometimes tell the full story of a team’s season. Sometimes they don’t and we have to go to more analytical data to get a better grasp.

For the St. Louis Rams in 2015, we had a little bit of both.

Earlier this week, the folks at Football Outsiders unveiled their final statistical rankings for all 32 NFL teams. As you’d expect, the Rams fared quite well in terms of their final DVOA for defense and special teams. DVOA evaluates plays, players and teams based on situations and compares to league average to form an efficiency rating, which is often a good indicator of a team’s success or lack thereof. Also, as you’d expect, the Rams offense did not come up with a favorable score.

On defense, where the Rams’ yards allowed per game fell far short of expectations, the Rams finished seventh in DVOA. On special teams, the Rams finished eighth in DVOA.

The Rams’ offense didn’t grade out well in Football Outsiders’ final rankings.
With those two in pocket, a league-average offense likely would have set the Rams up for a playoff run. Alas, it didn’t happen as the DVOA numbers matched up pretty closely with where the Rams ranked in more common statistics. The Rams finished 29th in offensive DVOA, ahead of only Indianapolis, Dallas and Tennessee.

Not that we needed any more evidence that the Rams offense must be the focal point of offseason upgrades, but where the defense was much better than some of the basic numbers might suggest, the offense certainly wasn’t.