Monday Morning Sentimonies: How Far Have We Come?

Despite the fact that our position at the basement of the west division has not changed, most people will agree that the Riders are a better team than last. I wouldn’t have thought it would be possible to worse than the 2016 Riders but the Hamilton Ti-Cats have proved otherwise. Anyway, I thought I would take the opportunity over the Riders’ bye week to dig into exactly how much better the 2017 Riders are after 7 games than the 2016 Riders were.

Below is a comparison of the stats after 7 games between 2016 and 2017.

	2016	2017	Difference	% Change
Wins	1	3	+2
Offense
Points	138	197	+59	+43%
Offensive TDs	10	20	+10	+100%
Passing Yards	2057	2228	+171	+8%
Rushing Yards	463	514	+51	+11%
Sacks allowed	17	16	-1	-6%
Turnovers	15	9	-6	-40%
Defense
Points allowed	233	172	-61	-26%
Passing Yds allowed	2213	2041	-172	-8%
Rushing Yds allowed	643	678	+35	+5%
Sacks	10	15	+5	+50%
Turnovers	10	12	+2	+20%
Special Teams
Punt Return Avg	7.9	11.1	+3	+41%
Opponent Punt Ret Avg	12.8	9.4	-3	-27%
Kickoff return avg	19.5	25.5	+6	+31%
Opponent Kickoff Ret Avg	24.7	20.6	-4	-17%
Net punt avg	32.8	35.7	+3	+9%
Penalties	61	50	-11	-18%
Players Dressed	65	60	-5	-8%

The first thing that jumps out is that there is improvement in every category but 1. Some of the increases are dramatic and some are incremental but its improvement pretty much across the board. Let’s take a closer look at each category.

Offense

What stands out here is that we are actually scoring points (almost exclusively at home but that’s another topic for another day). Scoring is up 43% and we have doubled… I repeat doubled… the number of times our offense has crossed the goal line. We have also drastically decreased turnovers. The offseason focus on upgrading our O-line and receivers seems to be working.

Defense

Again, scoring is what jumps off the page here. We are allowing 26% less points that last season. Don’t get me wrong are defense still has its deficiencies (particularly in pass defense) but they are a far cry from the utter garbage we fielded last year. This may be in part to a decrease in a statistical category I didn’t track above “players converted to defensive starter from god knows what they were before”. Seems playing actual defenders has its advantages.

Special Teams

This is the one that really caught my eye. I had a general sense just from watching the games that we are playing pretty solid on special teams but I didn’t realize how much better. Our kick and punt returns are significantly better and our coverage teams are allowing smaller returns… particularly on punts.

Overall we are seeing a more disciplined team as penalties are down… as are fines (at least since the actual season started).

I think some of this improvement is a product of the last category in my table there. Unlike last year where our game roster was a constant carousel of players on and off, on route to dressing a record 100 players, this year there is a lot more stability overall. Key is the stability we are getting along the O-line and in the secondary.

Ultimately the only statistical category that matters is winning and we are still clearly the 5^th best team in the West division in that regard until we prove otherwise. So while I’m hopeful, I’m not yet on the “the Riders have turned the corner” bandwagon yet. That said, I do think it’s important we take a step back and appreciate that we seem to be headed in the right direction following one of the biggest tear downs and rebuilds in recent memory. But also keep in mind that when your starting point is rock bottom, a few big steps forwards doesn’t immediately put you back on the top.