A couple of things jumped out of me across the whole season. The Hawks have been a team that lived and died by running and stopping the run the last few years. That has been turned on it’s ear this season.
- In close wins (less than 7 points) and in losses, the Hawks allow an average of a full yard-per-carry less than in games they win by 7 or more. In English, that means their run defense is weaker in games they win by 7 or more.
- The Hawks allow an average of 272 yard/game passing in their losses and 179 in their wins. That is a massive difference. If you look at the close wins + losses vs. their big wins again, the differential is even bigger (262 yards vs. 153 yards).
- The YPA against in losses is 7.66 vs. 4.92 in wins. Wow.
All these stats seem to illustrate that we better stop the pass if we want to win this year. This adds some color to all those regurgitated stats about sacks in our wins vs. sacks in our losses.
Another stat of note is our pts allowed in wins vs. losses.
- We give up 11 pts/game in our wins and 26 pts/game in our losses.
Lastly, this team is as schizophrenic as we all have observed. There are only four Hawks games all year decided by less than 7 points. When we win, we win by an average of 14 pts, and when we lose, it’s by an average of almost 10.