Just to get this out of the way immediately, I obviously took a backwards K in my prediction of a so-so T.O. performance this week. Three things though. First, the stats couldn't account for T.O. having 2 catches for 120 yards and a touchdown on plays where he blatantly committed an offensive pass interference that was not called. Second, and perhaps I had an influence on this, 67% of those of us who voted on the preview poll thought that T.O. would have less than 100 receiving yards, and only 9% correctly predicted that he would have over 150. Finally, T.O. still has a negative DYAR (-7; ranked 65^th) and a lopsided expected yards discrepancy (-133) even after the second best yardage game of his career. In fact, his expected yards discrepancy per game actually got worse, dropping from -8.6 to -12.1. So I guess what I'm saying here is, "Yeah. I was wrong, but I wasn't as wrong as you think." Sunday's performance by T.O. was totally unexpected based on the stats, and therein lies a major limitation of statistics: It is good at predicting "typical" performance, but not so good at predicting "atypical" performance.

Now, with that out of the way, I'd like to focus on what most 49er fans have been focusing on since Sunday, and I don't mean the choice between roasting and deep frying the Thanksgiving poultry. I'm talking about the atrocious performance of the 49er offense in the red zone against the Cowboys. Most of the blame over the past 3 days has been centered around Mike Martz's play-calling...you know...the pass-run-pass tendency that even I picked up on a couple of weeks ago. Well, there's a dirty little secret, borne out by the stats, that tells me that Martz may not be as much of an offensive genius as most NFL fans think he is.

IN THE RED (ZONE)

We all know the legend of Mike Martz. He turned a guy with "bag boy" and "Arena League player" on his resume into a Super-Bowl-winning, multiple-MVP quarterback. He was the ringmaster of "The Greatest Show on Turf." Hell, he even gilded Jon "The Interception Machine" Kitna's right arm. What's become obvious over the years, though, is that his offense is bred for easy situations. Versus a defensive genius (See Bill Belichick), or when the pressure is on (See Super Bowl XXXVI), however, his offense can be amazingly inefficient. It's great at racking up yardage, but it's not so great at succeeding in the situations that most impact the outcome of an NFL game. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the red zone.

Below is a chart showing the efficiency of Martz-led offenses both overall (black line) and in the red zone (red line):

*Martz only coached the Rams offense for 5 games during the 2005 season.

After the jump, I'll explain the chart, explain why talent hasn't been as important as you think, compare the red zone stats with other field zones, and see how the 49ers did in their SVW situations...

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