Steelers-Ravens Statistical Preview Part 3: Special Teams/Penalties

To get you prepared for Saturday’s big Divisional Round matchup between the Steelers and Ravens, we’re going deep into the advanced stats in three separate posts to see where each team has the advantage. As usual, Football Outsiders and Advanced NFL Stats provide all the number-y goodness.

For this third part, I’m focusing on special teams, along with a couple of other key factors in Saturday’s game, starting with everyone’s favorite subject to discuss, penalties!

The penalty rates (penalty yards per play) and the teams’ league rankings, according to Advanced NFL Stats, are:

While this number and ranking have been improving the past few weeks for the Steelers, it is still a big concern heading into the playoffs. They must control penalties, especially on offense, in order to win.

Special teams and key players after the jump!

Football Outsiders’ play-based value system allows them to assess each separate portion of special teams by the points above or below average they contribute to the team.

The Steelers special teams stats have declined steadily in the past few weeks. Some of that is due to Daniel Sepulveda being replaced by Jeremy Kapinos, but while field goals/extra points have improved with Shaun Suisham in the fold, kickoffs have declined, punt returns have somehow also gotten worse over the course of the year, and kick returns have fallen back to the middle of the pack after a strong start.

Meanwhile, the Ravens have the best punter in the league (Sam Koch) and one of the best kickers at kicking off (Billy Cundiff). Advanced NFL Stats published an article earlier this month with one of the more eye-catching titles you’ll see: “Kicker Billy Cundiff Had 20 Sacks This Year”. The premise is that a touchback is consistently better than the average kickoff return, to the point that a touchback is roughly equal to half a sack in terms of field position and expected points on the drive.

This is the area where the Ravens have a big advantage over the Steelers, and if the Steelers lose this game, it’ll be because the game is a defensive field position battle, and the Ravens will most likely win that battle.

Key Players

Here are three players from each team whose performance, good or bad, I think will determine the outcome of this game:

Steelers

• Jonathan Scott: As the much-maligned weak link in a weak offensive line, Scott must hold his own in order to slow the Ravens defense. Fortunately, as I outlined in part 1, the Ravens have been relatively poor this season in rushing the QB.

• Ike Redman: He leads all running backs who have between 10 and 29 receptions in value per pass. Utilizing him out of the backfield may make a difference.

• Antonio Brown: He was the main reason the Steelers’ kick returns started out strong, and also one of the reasons it’s fallen back since then. He is always capable of a big return, and I think the Steelers will need at least one of those ensure victory.

Ravens

• Ray Rice: As I outlined in part 2, the Steelers are average at covering RBs in the passing game. Rice could easily make a big third down catch.

• Cory Redding: I kind of bashed both him and Ray Lewis in part 1 in describing the Ravens’ downfall in rushing the QB. Lewis has always been more of a run stopper, getting tons of tackles but relatively few sacks. The big reason the Ravens are poorer at rushing the QB than in years past is their inability to find a suitable replacement for Trevor Pryce. Redding has been solid, but needs to step up to elite for the Ravens defense to get even better.

• Lardarius Webb: The Ravens’ punt returns have been near the bottom of the league this year, but if Webb is given a chance to return one or two, it may make a difference in the field position battle.