New York Jets at Minnesota Vikings: Charting the Offense

For most of the season, I've had this idea for a project where I chart our offense. The idea is to look for tendencies, similar to what actual teams do. Since our games have mostly been awful, I've been putting it off. The team simply hasn't had enough sustained drives where you can glean any meaningful information.

This sort of charting is something every team does for every game of every opponent. Once they've reviewed every play, they'll look for tendencies. For example, it could be that every third down, they go to shotgun formation. Maybe they use certain personnel for certain types of plays. These sorts of tidbits can change games, and it requires a deeper sort of analysis than most fans have attention span.

Charting plays are one reason that it's often said that football is one big chess game. Normally, it's done for both an offense and defense and for the entire game. For the purposes here, I just did one half of offensive play, just so you can get a glimpse of what I'm talking about. The table is sortable, so you can look at every down individually and every formation, etc. Take a look and comment below if you see any notable tendencies.