Give Me the Numbers...STAT! Redskins Overall NFL Rankings

This week's "Give Me the Numbers, STAT!" post is brought to you by the movie Lucas--because we don't have a single receiver who can get as wide open as Lucas was able to on that climactic play. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that flick was also one of the first to really knock the "end-of-movie-spontaneous-clapping-for-unheralded-character" scene out of the park.

Each week, we will update our nifty little chart. I am starting us off with pretty vanilla stats that are easy to compare against the rest of the league. On offense and defense, we will track these numbers each week so that at any point in the season we can notice moves up or down and try to offer explanations as to what may be happening. Did we play an inferior opponent? Did we face a well-oiled passing attack? Were we missing a key offensive lineman? As we make our way through the 2010 campaign, I thought it would be a good idea to attempt to make some sense out of what we are doing versus what the rest of the NFL is doing. It is true that every team doesn't play the same schedule and different divisions offer different challenges, but at the end of the day (and season) every team is still stacked up against the rest of the league. Feel free to make your own observations and track any additional stats in the comments section below. Just title your comment with the stat you are tracking and keep us updated throughout the season.

Offense

Pretty crazy how beating Dallas makes us lose sight (even if for a moment) of how bad our offense performed on Sunday night. Granted, McNabb was rusty from his injury and offenses typically take a week or two to warm up in the regular season. That said, 13 points and less than 25% on 3rd downs is a real ball-buster. I will add red-zone efficiency to the next week's spreadsheet. As you can see from this chart, after Week 1, our offense is leaning heavily on the lack of turnovers. We have seen this movie before (two years ago under Zorn). With this kind of production, one or two turnovers will cost us wins every week.

(Defense after the jump)...

Defense

These numbers aren't exactly stellar either. If you look at the whole picture here and block out the points we gave up on defense, you would probably assume we lost our game. Of course we didn't--SUCK IT, DALLAS!

If we are able to improve our defensive rankings after Week 2, I will be very impressed. The Houston Texans have been a potent offense for some time now and will pose a tremendous challenge to Jim Haslett and his new scheme.

The good news for the Redskins and this column is that across the board, we have a ton of upside. Lots of room to move up the rankings. I don't want to read too much into this first chart because I think the real thrust of this column will be the week-to-week analysis of where we are moving to and why.

The most important thing to take out of the Week 1 analysis is that if we were able to win that game against Dallas with this kind of statistical production, we should be sitting pretty if we are able to improve in multiple categories.