Titans play-calling by down and quarterback

No, I’m not posting more. In fact, I’m not providing much analysis. Instead, while I was running some Raiders and Broncos splits for my writing for Football Outsiders Almanac 2014, I went ahead and ran some Titans splits along the same lines.

This is just simply play-calling, by quarterback, by down, and by quarter. The Jake Locker sample includes Weeks 1-3, 4 (the Jets game) until he was injured, 7, 9, and 10 until he was injured. The Ryan Fitzpatrick sample includes only Weeks 11-17. I limited the Fitzpatrick sample to those plays because that’s when they made an attempt to shift the offense toward what they thought Fitzpatrick did well, as opposed to still trying to run the Jake Locker Offense when he started in Weeks 5 and 6 against the Chiefs and Seahawks.

What does this all mean?

I don’t know, I don’t have time to think about that right now. I do know, or think I know, some things, though. Speaking generally, what teams do in the first half is all about what they want to do. What teams do in the second half is more a function of game situation. Fourth quarter sample sizes are skewed by teams running more plays when they’re trailing and need to pass and fewer plays when they’re leading and running to burn clock, so you would expect much pass heavier-splits in the fourth quarter. Those Fitzpatrick first and second down splits, though, especially in the third quarter…