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Jay Fiedler career statistics

This offseason, the Dolphins brought in Ricky Williams and shipped out Lamar Smith. Most people, including me, view this as a significant upgrade for their running game.

But what effect will it have on their passing game? The general question here is: when a team improves its running game substantially, does that usually mean the passing game improves too (because defenses are forced to commit more defenders to stopping the run)? Or does it usually mean the passing game declines (because the offense de-emphasizes the pass in favor of the now-stronger running attack)? When the run game gets stronger, two things happen: (1) the improvement should cause the overall offensive pie to get bigger, but (2), the improved running game should take a larger percentage of that pie. Which effect is bigger? After all is said and done, is the passing game usually left with a bigger piece of pie or a smaller one? Let's take a look through history at teams that have improved their running game from one season to the next, and see what happened to their passing attacks.

First, I took each team from the period 1988-1999. I computed their overall team rushing fantasy points (that's RushYd/10 + RushTD*6) and their overall team passing fantasy points (PassYD/10 + PassTD*6). And then I ranked the teams within each year.

Next, I isolated teams whose rushing rank improved by 10 or more places from one season to the next. There were 45 such teams. Of the 45, 15 saw their passing rank improve and 27 saw their passing rank get worse (3 stayed the same). In other words, most of the time, a drastic improvement in the running game has accompanied a decline in the productivity of the passing game. Small sample size caveats apply here, and we probably should not definitively conclude from this that running improvement generally leads to passing decline, but this sure makes it hard to argue the opposite viewpoint.

In other words, if your buddy is trying to convince you that Fiedler's numbers will improve this season because defenses will be forced to stack the box in order to deal with Ricky Williams, you should ask him why he thinks this case will be different from what usually has happened when a team improves its rushing attack. Point out to him that there are gobs of examples of teams beefing up their run game at the expense of their passing game:

1. Between 1994 and 1995, the Redskins added Terry Allen, and upgraded their running game from 28th-best to 6th-best. Their passing game, with mostly the same cast of characters, dropped from 11th to 23rd.
2. When the Patriots added Curtis Martin in 1995, their running attack vaulted from 20th to 10th. Their passing game fell from 3rd to 20th.
3. In 2000, James Stewart's arrival moved the Lions rushing attack from 28th to 18th. Their passing game dropped from 8th to 25th.
4. The 1992 Steelers, behind a huge year from Barry Foster, improved their rushing attack from 18th to 8th. Their passing attack slipped from 10th to 23rd.
5. Changing their primary back from Joe Morris to Ottis Anderson in 1989 improved the Giants' run game from 20th to 10th. Their passing game fell from 9th to 22nd.
6. In 1999, the Saints added Ricky Williams, improving their rushing attack from 30th to 19th. Their passing game dropped from 17th to 22nd.

Ask him why he thinks this case will be different. If adding Terry Allen didn't help Gus Frerotte, why will adding Williams help Fiedler? If adding Martin didn't help Bledsoe, why will adding Williams help Fiedler? If replacing Lamar Smith with Ricky Williams didn't help Billy Joe Tolliver, why will replacing Lamar Smith with Ricky Williams help Jay Fiedler? Why did his theory fail to hold in these cases (and, in fact, in the majority of the cases)? If he can't answer that, then his advice would appear to be of dubious quality.

But maybe he can answer it. If I were him, here's how I'd argue it: the Dolphins running game will in fact be significantly stronger, but that doesn't mean the Dolphins running numbers will be significantly improved. Once it becomes clear that Ricky is tearing defenses up, the Dolphin brain trust will start to capitalize on the attention Ricky's getting and open up the passing game. This will start to depress the Dolphin's rushing numbers and hence their rushing attack won't appear to be improved as much as it actually is.

In other words, the study we've done above only looks at the teams whose rushing totals improved significantly. What it doesn't include are the teams whose rushing attacks did get stronger, but it didn't show up in the stats because those teams then took advantage of the tightened up defense to improve the passing game as well. Put another way, we can try to measure how improved rushing production impacts the passing game, but we can't measure how the threat of improved rushing production impacts the passing game.

I think Ricky's presence probably will open things up for the Dolphins' passing game. Whether that will translate into better numbers for Fiedler et al is not at all clear.

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