Ground & Pound? MJD and how great teams ran the ball

By Kerry J. Byrne
Cold, Hard Football Facts ground crew foreman
 
Maurice Jones-Drew has missed Jacksonville’s spring workouts, in protest over his contract situation.

Jones-Drew was the leading rusher in the NFL last year, fresh off the best season of his career and really the only star of note on a punch-less offensive club. That combination of "big star" vs. "team in need" spells trouble for the Jaguars. Given that predicament, and given the football world's blind faith in the power of a premier back, Jacksonville management will probably feel the need to capitualate to their big star.
 
But should they?
 
Jaguars fans certainly wonder if the team should break the bank for their pint-sized big star. The answer is simple:
 
No. The Jaguars should not break the bank for MJD.
 
Certainly, fantasy football fans and those who peddle in the snake of oil of conventional wisdom are apoplectic: Jones-Drew was a stud last year. He led the NFL with 343 carries and 1,606 yards, with 8 rushing scores. He caught 43 for three more scores through the air.
 
Those numbers certainly equal a great season. But the Cold, Hard Football say, "So what?" The Jaguars went 5-11 and they scored just 15.2 PPG (28th). If a stud running back was the difference between a great offense and  bad offense, or the difference between victory and defeat, the Jaguars would have performed much better offensively and in the win column.
 
The AFC South, meanwhile, has been awash in running backs cranking out empty, insignificant yards in recent years. Chris Johnson (Tennessee), Arian Foster (Houston) and Jones-Drew led the NFL in rushing each of the last three years. Not one of those teams had a winning record.

In fact, only two running back led the NFL in rushing on teams that won the Super Bowl: Emmitt Smith (three times), who's only the most prolific rusher of all time and the exception to every rule of the position, and Terrell Davis (1998).

So forgive the Mighty CHFFs if we don't get all ga-ga and starry eyed over guys who lead the NFL in rushing.
 
How the champs ran the ball
You know how we do things around here inside the House That the Facts Built. We start out by looking at great teams in history: where did they great teams excel statistically and where did they struggle?
 
This simple exercise has helped us change the way analysts understand the game of pro football and has wiped away much of the misty-eyed reverie and dusty-old conventional wisdom that clouds and corrupts so much about what people believe about the game today.
 
For example, this exercise – what were great teams great at? – is why we know the mighty Vince Lombardi Packers won via superior passing efficiency on both sides of the ball and not through some perceived but largely non-existent dominance on the ground year after year.
 
So for this stage of the exercise we began at the top: we looked at all 46 Super Bowl champions and simply measured how they ran the football.

• How often they ran (attempts)
• How far they ran (yards)
• How many scores they ran for (TDs)
• And how effectively they ran (yards per attempt)

What we found was pretty much what we expected: some champs ran quite well. Some ran quite poorly. At the end of the day, almost without exception, running the ball well or running it poorly is largely disconnected to championship capabilities. You can win running well; you can win running poorly.
 
But let’s start with the list of every Super Bowl champ and then dive into the results below. You can copy this chart into excel and search, etc. We have follow-up charts coming on individual leaders, rush defense, etc.

SUPER BOWL CHAMPIONS running the ball (1966-2011)

Year	Team	Games	ATT	Rank	YDS	Rank	TD	Rank	YPA	Rank	YPG
1966	Green Bay Packers	14	475	3	1673	8	18	3	3.52	13	119.5
1967	Green Bay Packers	14	474	4	1915	2	18	2	4.04	4	136.79
1968	New York Jets	14	467	3	1608	8	22	1	3.44	9	114.86
1969	Kansas City Chiefs	14	522	1	2220	1	19	1	4.25	1	158.57
1970	Baltimore Colts	14	411	21	1336	23	9	19	3.25	23	95.43
1971	Dallas Cowboys	14	512	2	2249	3	25	1	4.4	7	160.64
1972	Miami Dolphins	14	613	1	2960	1	26	1	4.83	2	211.43
1973	Miami Dolphins	14	507	12	2521	3	16	6	4.97	2	180.07
1974	Pittsburgh Steelers	14	546	4	2417	2	19	5	4.43	4	172.64
1975	Pittsburgh Steelers	14	581	5	2633	2	22	5	4.53	2	188.07
1976	Oakland Raiders	14	557	8	2285	10	14	14	4.1	14	163.21
1977	Dallas Cowboys	14	564	8	2369	4	21	1	4.2	5	169.21
1978	Pittsburgh Steelers	16	641	3	2297	14	16	12	3.58	23	143.56
1979	Pittsburgh Steelers	16	561	12	2603	2	25	2	4.64	1	162.69
1980	Oakland Raiders	16	541	10	2146	10	14	18	3.97	11	134.13
1981	San Francisco 49ers	16	560	6	1941	19	17	10	3.47	28	121.31
1982	Washington Redskins	9	315	5	1140	10	5	21	3.62	17	126.67
1983	L.A. Raiders	16	542	8	2240	10	18	8	4.13	15	140.00
1984	San Francisco 49ers	16	534	6	2465	3	21	2	4.62	2	154.06
1985	Chicago Bears	16	610	1	2761	1	27	1	4.53	5	172.56
1986	New York Giants	16	558	5	2245	6	18	7	4.02	11	140.31
1987	Washington Redskins	15	500	9	2102	7	18	3	4.2	5	140.13
1988	San Francisco 49ers	16	527	7	2523	2	18	7	4.79	2	157.69
1989	San Francisco 49ers	16	493	13	1966	10	14	12	3.99	13	122.88
1990	New York Giants	16	541	2	2049	8	17	7	3.79	24	128.06
1991	Washington Redskins	16	540	1	2049	7	21	1	3.79	18	128.06
1992	Dallas Cowboys	16	500	4	2121	5	20	2	4.24	9	132.56
1993	Dallas Cowboys	16	490	6	2161	2	20	2	4.41	3	135.06
1994	San Francisco 49ers	16	491	5	1897	6	23	2	3.86	7	118.56
1995	Dallas Cowboys	16	495	4	2201	2	29	1	4.45	4	137.56
1996	Green Bay Packers	16	465	14	1838	11	9	19	3.95	12	114.88
1997	Denver Broncos	16	520	6	2378	4	18	5	4.57	2	148.63
1998	Denver Broncos	16	525	2	2468	2	26	1	4.7	2	154.25
1999	St. Louis Rams	16	431	15	2059	5	13	10	4.78	2	128.69
2000	Baltimore Ravens	16	511	5	2199	5	9	24	4.3	8	137.44
2001	New England Patriots	16	473	8	1793	13	15	7	3.79	24	112.06
2002	Tampa Bay Buccaneers	16	414	23	1557	27	6	31	3.76	28	97.31
2003	New England Patriots	16	473	12	1607	27	9	24	3.4	30	100.44
2004	New England Patriots	16	524	5	2134	7	15	8	4.07	18	133.38
2005	Pittsburgh Steelers	16	549	1	2223	5	21	5	4.05	12	138.94
2006	Indianapolis Colts	16	439	18	1762	18	17	6	4.01	16	110.13
2007	New York Giants	16	469	8	2148	4	15	7	4.58	4	134.25
2008	Pittsburgh Steelers	16	460	9	1690	23	16	11	3.67	29	105.63
2009	New Orleans Saints	16	468	7	2106	6	21	3	4.5	7	131.63
2010	Green Bay Packers	16	421	20	1606	24	11	18	3.81	25	100.38
2011	New York Giants	16	411	22	1427	32	17	6	3.47	32	89.19
	Averages		504.8	7.7	2089	8.8	17.6	7.9	4.14	11.6	136.5

 
Here are some of the findings. We began publishing them on Twitter Monday (@footballfacts). But we'll be analyzing and expanding on this data and on both sides of the ball throughout the 2012 season and beyond.
 

The 1972 Dolphins and 1985 Bears

Only two teams led the NFL in rushing and won a Super Bowl: the 1972 Miami Dolphins and 1985 Chicago Bears. These are two of the most legendary teams in history: the undefeated 17-0 Dolphins and the mighty 18-1 Bears. Each team led the NFL in rushing attempts, rushing yards and rushing touchdowns. They are clear statistical anomalies on our list of largely average rushing teams.
 
Their status as legends would seem to confirm the effectiveness of the alleged old-school devotion to so-called smash-mouth football. But in reality these teams were great in almost every other way, too. They largely benefited from the league’s best defenses and best pass defenses – both were No. 1 in scoring D fielded elite pass defenses, as measured by Defensive Passer Rating.
 
Oh, the 1972 Dolphins also led the NFL in offensive passer rating (86.9).  So they were elite in all aspects of the game, not just running the ball. Hence, 17-0. The 1985 Bears were a respectable No. 5 in passing YPA (7.6) and No. 9 in passer rating (77.3).
 

Middle-of-the-pack rushing skills

The average Super Bowl champ ranked 8th in rushing touchdowns, 9th in rushing yards and 12th in average per rush attempt. There were, on average, 27.5 teams in the NFL since 1966.
 
So those results mean that the average champ barely ranked in the top third in rushing and was merely middle of the pack in rushing effectiveness.
 

Rushing attempts is the key

The Cold, Hard Football Facts, along with other researchers, have often said that you don’t need to run well to win. You just need to attempt to run often to provide some balance on offense. Former NFL coach Bill Parcells has made the same claim.
 
This list provides further confirmation of this belief: of the categories above, Super Bowl champs on average ranked highest in rush attempts (7.7th) and lowest in average per attempt (11.6th).
 
In other words, they largely did not run the ball any better than the average NFL team. But they did run it more often.

A statistical butchery of the Redskins' Hogs

The Hogs helped make the Washington Redskins of the early 1980s one of the most compelling teams in history. In fact, we call them The Last Old School team.

Anyone old enough, or who enjoys NFL Films, can't help but picture mighty John Riggins smashing helpless defenses behind the blocks of Joe Jacoby, Russ Grimm, Jeff Bostic, Mark May and George Starke, while RFK Stadium reverberated with the sounds of diesel horns. If the Cold, Hard Football Facts got misty eyed, those images would do it for us.

But it turns out, week to week, those Super Bowl-champ Redskins were not a particularly skilled rushing team. In the strike-shortened nine-game season, they ran for just 5 TDs (21st) and averaged a meager 3.62 YPA (17th).

Now, Riggins was an absolute horse in the 1982 playoffs. He ran often and ran well. The unusual 16-team playoff tournament of 1982 is where he earned established his legend. But week in and week out, the Diesel and the Hogs were not a particularly adept running team.

The 1983 Redskins were a much better running team, leading the NFL in attempts (629) and touchdowns (30). Their average of 4.17 YPA was not particularly impressive. Of course, that team, despite its rushing productivity, failed to win the Super Bowl, whereas the 1982 Redskins succeeded.

The need, or lack thereof, for 1,000-yard rushers

Nineteen of 46 Super Bowl champs did not have a 1,000-yard rusher, including the last four. But don’t think it’s a modern phenomenon. The first six Super Bowl champs failed to offer us a 1,000-yard rusher, too.
 
The 1,000-yard rusher holds a certain amount of cachet in the football lexicon. But in reality it’s largely irrelevant to on-the-field success.

Norm Bulaich and the 1970 Colts

The 1970s produced a wealth of premier backs, but with the exception of Larry Csonka and Franco Harris, they rarely played for champions.
 
The decade began ignominiously for the ground game, too. The 1970 Colts were the least effective rushing team to win a Super Bowl. They averaged just 3.25 yards per rush attempt.
 
They also fielded the least productive leading rusher: Norm Bulaich carried the ball 139 times for 426 yards a dismal average of 3.06 YPA and just 3 TDs. Still, Johnny Unitas and the Colts were good enough to eke out a Super Bowl championship.
 

Best and worst

The most productive rushing Super Bowl winner was the 1972 Dolphins (211.4 YPG). We saw the least productive team just last season, the 2011 Giants (89.2 YPG).

The efficiency leaders

The 1973 Dolphins (4.97 YPA) and 1972 Dolphins (4.83) ran the ball more effectively than any other Super Bowl champs. But the next two teams on the list may surprise you: the 1988 49ers (4.79) and Greatest Show on Turf 1999 Rams (4.78).
 

No nose for the end zone

The 2002 Super Bowl champ Tampa Bay Buccaneers rushed for just 6 TDs, fewest by any SB champ in a 14- or 16-game season.
 

Myth of the Packers

No myth in football is more enduring than that of the mighty Packers powering their way to one championship after another.
 
The 1962 Packers may have been the greatest rushing team of all time. But the success of Lombardi’s Packers on the ground varied widely from year to year.
 
The 1966 Packers ranked 3rd in attempts, 3rd in touchdowns, 8th in yards and just 13th in average per attempt in a 15-team league.  
 
The Packers jettisoned Hall of Famer Jim Taylor before the start of the 1967 season. Their rankings as a rushing team largely improved across the board, and they did it without a star ball carrier.
 
Jim Grabowski led the 1967 Packers in rushing with 120 carries for 466 yards and 2 TDs. That offense was virtually unstoppable during the postseason, laying waste to the Rams and Raiders and eking out tough yards when they counted most against the Cowboys in the Ice Bowl. And that legendary team did it all with merely servicable guys in the backfield.

Certainly, they didn't possess a single back of the caliber of Maurice Jones-Drew. But who cares, really?

---

---

Read more: Jacksonville Jaguars, Jaguars, Kerry Byrne, Kerry J. Byrne, larry csonka, Maurice Jones-Drew, NFL, NFL OTAs, OTA, OTAs, Washington Redskins