FanPost

Checking the Numbers: 49ers-Vikings Game


Hello, Niners Nation readers! I have written a post reviewing yesterday's game from a statistical standpoint. Fooch was gracious enough to give me the go ahead to share it with you here. Hope you like it. An excerpt and link is below.

On Sunday afternoon, the San Francisco 49ers and Minnesota Vikings played a game that went down to the wire, with a last second Brett Favre TD pass sealing the win for Minnesota. In a game where the 49ers seemed have pulled the road upset, Favre proved that the Vikings made the right decision to convince him to come out of retirement one more time. Minnesota needed an unbelievable play win this close game. By looking at the statistics, can that help understand what these two teams did to get that point? As I have done with several games in this season, here I wanted to look at this game from my own analytical perspective.

In this post, I took the box score stats from the game and compared how each team did against a combination of their season averages from the 2008 season and the 2009 season. Up to this point, I had been using only 2008, but I have begun incorporating 2009 numbers as well. For each team, I average per game for all games played in 2008 and 2009 prior to this weekend as the baseline.

So, anyway, on to the numbers! (Box Scores taken from Yahoo! Sports and 2008/2009 averages from Pro-Football-Reference.com). Below, I have four tables.

49ers' Offensive Boxscore vs. 49ers' Offensive Averages

The first table is a comparison of San Francisco's offensive numbers from this game with their average numbers from the beginning of the 2008 season up until last week. This gives an indication as to how well the Vikings' defense performed in this game because it shows whether the 49ers' offensive numbers were above or below their game averages.

Team Statistics Vikings' Def vs. 49ers' Off
SF SFAvgOff % Difference
First Downs 13 17.56 -25.95%
Passing 8 10.72 -25.39%
Rushing 3 5.11 -41.30%
TOTAL NET YARDS 246 308.89 -20.36%
Total Plays 52 60.06 -13.41%
Average Gain Per Play 4.7 5.14 -8.62%
NET YARDS RUSHING 58 104.22 -44.35%
Rushes 26 25.06 3.77%
Average Per Rush 2.2 4.16 -47.11%
NET YARDS PASSING 188 204.67 -8.14%
Yards Per Pass Play 7.2 5.85 23.13%
Times Sacked 1 3.5 -71.43%
Had Intercepted 1 1.06 -5.26%
Fumbles Lost 0 0.94 -100.00%

The Vikings' defense did a great job on the 49ers' offense, holding them below their average offensive output in just about every category. They did a particularly good job stopping SF's rushing game. It probably didn't help that Frank Gore left due to injury. The 49ers' main positives in this game offensively were in sacks (over 70% below their average), and turnovers. They had no fumbles lost, while they had been averaging about one lost per game.

Vikings' Offensive Boxscore vs. 49ers' Defensive Averages

The second table is a comparison of the Vikings' offensive numbers from the game to the 49ers' defensive averages. This tells us how the Vikings' offense performed compared to 49ers' defensive averages.

Team Statistics Vikings' Off vs. 49ers' Def
MIN SFAvgDef % Difference
First Downs 19 18.28 3.95%
Passing 14 10.83 29.23%
Rushing 2 6.11 -67.27%
TOTAL NET YARDS 377 322.11 17.04%
Total Plays 75 64.22 16.78%
Average Gain Per Play 5 5.02 -0.31%
NET YARDS RUSHING 94 100.83 -6.78%
Rushes 27 27.33 -1.22%
Average Per Rush 3.5 3.69 -5.12%
NET YARDS PASSING 283 221.28 27.89%
Yards Per Pass Play 5.9 6 -1.64%
Times Sacked 2 1.89 5.88%
Had Intercepted 1 0.83 20.00%
Fumbles Lost 0 0.33 -100.00%

The Vikings' offense performed pretty well in this game. They were below the 49ers' average rushing yards allowed, but in most categories they were near or better than San Francisco's averages. In particular, Minnesota passed for nearly 30% above their opponent's average.

To see the last two table and read the rest, please click here.

This is a FanPost and does not necessarily reflect the views of Niners Nation's writers or editors. It does reflect the views of this particular fan though, which is as important as the views of Niners Nation's writers or editors.