An Advanced Statistical Look at Todd Haley’s Offenses

Most people have long ago done some sort of analysis of the Todd Haley hire, but here I’ll be looking at stats that are off the beaten path, so at the very least it’ll be a new perspective. The big thing to be noticed is that Haley hasn’t done a lot of playcalling relative to the length of his career, so for that much-anticipated aspect of being offensive coordinator for the Steelers, there isn’t much to look at to predict how Haley will fare, but the years he did (2008-2009), the results are somewhat encouraging. I’ll start by looking at Haley’s stints as wide receivers coach

Wide Receivers Coach, 1999-2006, NYJ/CHI/DAL

First, here are the Football Outsiders passing Defense-Adjusted Value Over Average (DVOA) for each of these seasons, along with the change from the team’s previous season, and the top wide receiver in Defense-Adjusted Yards Above Replacement (DYAR):

Looking at the changes from each team’s previous year, the worst passing slide came in Haley’s first year in New York. In 1998, Wayne Chrebet and Keyshawn Johnson were the best WR duo in the NFL. In 1999, the Jets suffered injuries to Chrebet and Vinny Testaverde that severely hampered the offense, so it’s unclear how much, if any, of that decline should be attributed to Haley. In 2000, Chrebet and Testaverde were back at full strength (though Chrebet would never have as good a season as he did in 1998), but Johnson left via free agency, depleting the offense again.

One criticism of Haley’s time as a wide receivers coach is that it’s hard to tell whether he developed any young receivers during this time. The best receivers to debut were Laveranues Coles in 2000 and Justin Gage in 2003, Haley’s last year with those teams. The Bears did not develop any young WRs with Haley as WR coach, while Marty Booker kept declining. The Cowboys leaned on veterans as well; of their two best young receivers, Patrick Crayton developed slowly, and we’ll never know how Antonio Bryant would have developed in Dallas after his clash with head coach Bill Parcells led to a trade.

On the other hand, Terry Glenn had his best seasons under WR coach Haley in Dallas. He had his two best DYAR totals, his two best catch percentages (65% in 2006 and 63% in 2004), and his two best DVOA percentages (26.3% in 2004 and 20.3% in 2006). This may not have been Haley’s doing, of course: it could have been the way he was used in Dallas’ play package, or his familiarity (short as it was) with Parcells, but it’s encouraging nonetheless.

Offensive Coordinator, ARI 2007-08, Head Coach, KC 2009-11

First, the same chart as above, except with total offense and broken down into passing and rushing, and with no top player column:

The most encouraging part of this chart is (somewhat obviously) the 2008 Cardinals. They improved in passing DVOA, were tied for third in points scored, and, of course, made the Super Bowl. This was also Haley’s first full year of calling plays. His second, though, was 2009, which was less of a success.

As a coach, Haley was criticized in 2010 for not using his running backs properly, giving Thomas Jones starting carries while using Jamaal Charles in a tandem with Jones for most of the season, despite Charles being the more effective RB. Given Charles’ ACL injury at the beginning of 2011, you could argue that he wasn’t used properly, but whether he was underused, overused, or misused, or whether it was just bad luck requires more intimate knowledge of Charles as a person.

Using QuantCoach’s coaching statistics, we can quantify Haley’s coaching/playcalling during these years as well (the statistics start in 2008):

H_A is the measure of playcalling effectiveness (offense and defense), δHY is the measure of player productivity (offense and defense)

Despite the attempt to separate out in-game coaching from player productivity, at least in Haley’s case the two are highly correlated so far in his career (which may or may not be a bad thing, given the offensive talent on the Steelers roster). However, both stats are defined as the difference between the team’s offense and their opponents’ offense, so if an offensive playcaller is outstanding but a defensive playcaller is terrible, the two can cancel out. Let’s look at weekly KC H_A for 2009-11, as well as the ARI H_A for the 2008 playoffs (weekly statistics don’t start until the 2008 playoffs, which is unfortunate for this analysis.

The playoff snapshot of Haley’s Arizona playcalling is encouraging, as the Cardinals’ “coaching contribution” on offense was the best in three of four weeks, even besting the Steelers’ in Super Bowl XLIII (though not by a lot). In Kansas City, Haley did most of the playcalling in 2009, then Charlie Weis took over in 2010 followed by Bill Muir in 2011. Most encouraging from here is that three of Haley’s best coaching/playcalling results in 2009 came in the last seven games, indicating growing familiarity with the players as the season went along. 2010 was very inconsistent, with some outstanding results and some awful ones, with the awful ones coming at the worst time (end of season/playoffs). 2011 started off well, but then came the disastrous stretch from weeks 9-14 that cost Haley his job.

What Does This All Mean For Haley in Pittsburgh?

Haley’s track record seems to be better with good veteran teams and worse with young rebuilding teams (what a surprise). Development of young players on offense seems to be mixed/unclear. Without retroactively spying in on conversations between Haley and Laveranues Coles or Justin Gage or Dez White, we won’t know how much of their development or lack thereof was due to Haley’s coaching. Haley’s coaching/playcalling during the 2008 playoffs with Arizona is encouraging, as is the end of the 2009 season with Kansas City and some flashes of brilliance in 2010-11. The rest of his tenure in Kansas City is mediocre, but I would imagine it’s harder to coach with Tyler Palko at QB and players injured on both sides of the ball, as happened in 2011. The talent on the Steelers offense, combined with the fact that Haley’s best offensive playcalling results were with a high-talent offense in Arizona, makes me think he’ll do fine. I’ll be keeping track of those stats, especially the QuantCoach stats, all 2012 season long to attempt to measure Haley’s playcalling effectiveness.