TimesFour

How important has the tight end position been to the success for the Green Bay Packers?

This article takes a look back a on the role of the tight end has been to Packer offenses over the last twenty years.

My perception going into this is the Packers have always been at their best when the tight ends play a major role. The results changed my opinion, but is it in a good way?

We are going to look at three different sets of numbers.

The first is “% of the offense”, this takes the total reception yards by the TEs and is divided by total yards (rushing and receiving) by the Offense for that year.

The second set of numbers is “% of receptions” which is how many catches by the TEs divided by total receptions by the team.

The third set of numbers is “% of TDs” which takes the total number TEs touchdowns divided by total offense touchdowns.

% of offense
Losing season: 11.08%
Winning season: 11.81%

% of receptions
Losing season: 16.44%
Winning season: 17.16%

% of TDs
Losing season: 18.86%
Winning season: 16.20%

There is essentially a statistical dead heat on the role of the tight end in conjunction to the success of the Packers.

So does this mean making sure Jermichael Finley or Donald Lee a bigger part offense to be more successful a fallacy?

The Packers had two 8-8 seasons, not included in the above numbers, here are those averages:

% of offense: 9.3%
% of receptions: 14.11%
% of TDs: 9.26%

My perception is the tight ends would have less of a impact with losing seasons, but that has not been the case.

My numbers can be found here:

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=t2NmdA3YKiZosydAO3-7FKQ&output=html

Regardless, I still enjoy having the TEs as a nice part of the offense, but it doesn’t translate into wins.