What Does Andy Reid Mean?

Frequent commenter McTumms emailed yesterday with a really interesting tidbit from Reid's Friday press conference:

On what his ideal run-pass ratio would be:
"I don't do that. I know that this offense is the best when it's as close to 60-40 or 50-50 as you can get it. I also know that, through studies that I've done, with a number of Super Bowl winners, that really doesn't matter as you go through there. You guys might take your time to do a little homework on that."

Oh, crap.  Is Reid right?  Have Eagles' fans all been jumping on his lack of run-pass balance for years -- and been wrong?  Are we all trapped in a 1960's mindset while meanwhile the game has completely changed?

Let's find out.  The following two tables look at the pass percentages for three subsets of Super Bowl winners and two eras of Andy Reid:

• 1982-2006 -- This is as far back as the sack statistics go.  To keep the methodology consistent, I had to cut it off here.  I would have preferred to have included the 1981 49ers as well, but could not.
• 1992-2006 -- This was the year of the Cowboys' first Super Bowl win under Jimmy Johnson.  I'm arbitrarily considering this to be the modern era of the Super Bowl.
• West Coast -- In his quote above, Reid mentions "this offense."  I've gone ahead and pulled the numbers for all the Super Bowl-winning West Coast offenses since 1982.  The particular coaches are listed below the table.  I didn't list Seifert by name, but included his two San Francisco winners as well who also ran the same offense (and actually passed more often than Walsh's teams).
• Andy Reid -- The bottom two lines of the tables include the percentages for the two Andy Reid eras, 1999-2003 and 2004-2006. 

One note: the first challenge with looking at this issue is defining what's a run and what's a pass.  It seems obvious enough, but if McNabb drops back to pass, sees nothing open and takes off down the field, is that a run or a pass?  It goes as a run on the official stat sheet -- unless he gets sacked -- but really that's a called pass play. 

But then, there are some quarterbacks who do actually run the ball a fair amount of the time.  Vince Young and the former quarterback for Atlanta both come to mind.  So without having access to the play-by-play information, how do we figure out what counts as a run and what's a pass? 

I'm not going to decide that for you, so what I did is run the numbers three separate ways and you can pick which one you think makes the most sense.  The first column just pulls QB runs out of the equation completely.  We don't know what the intent was, so let's not even count them.  The second column counts QB runs as running plays, even though most of them probably aren't.  The final column counts all QB runs as pass plays, even though there are probably a few sneaks mixed in there.

The first table contains the raw percentages, the second shows the difference between the second Reid era and the other lines.

After looking at these tables, I'm honestly not sure what Reid is talking about.  Super Bowl winners definitely pass more than they used to, but Reid's teams pass significantly more often than teams that have historically won the Super Bowl.  It doesn't matter which era, which offensive system, or even how you qualify the "runs," those gaps are huge.

He's definitely right that West Coast offense teams pass more often than others, but there's still a 7.4 percent gap between those teams and the "modern" Reid.  That difference works out to about five running plays per game, which honestly, sounds about right. 

Here's something even more striking.  Take a look at the five Super Bowl champions who have passed the most frequently during the regular season of their championship years:

Depending upon how you choose to define the terms, only one or three teams have passed the ball at least 60 percent of the time during the season in which they won the Super Bowl. 

More importantly, no team has ever won the Super Bowl in a year when they passed the ball as often as Andy Reid's teams do.

I should be clear, I'm not suggesting that the Eagles can't win a Super Bowl by passing this often.  I personally believe they need to run the ball more this year for a number of reasons, but look, Reid's the one making $5 million to coach this team.  You're not going to win that argument with just stats.

But when you're talking about Reid's clear statement regarding historical trends, there are only three possibilities here:

1. I've screwed something up in my numbers (obtained from NFL.com, by the way).
2. Reid's research methodology takes into account something I didn't consider. 
3. Reid misspoke. 

I really, really hope one of the Eagles's beat writers follows up on this point, because something isn't right here.