The Arizona Cardinals rushed for 1,990 yards in 2019, good for 10th in the NFL. They averaged five yards per attempt.
Let’s take a look at how the rushes were split up in terms of direction.
They attempted 381 actual rushes. They had 396 rushing attempts on the season, but that includes kneeldowns.
Of those 381 rushes, they attempted to run up the middle more than any other direction, doing so 147 times. That represents a little more than 38% of their rushing attempts. In comparison, they ran up the middle on 202 of their 345 rushing attempts in 2018 — almost 59% of their rushes.
They ranked fifth in the league in rushes up the middle.
The Cardinals used the outside to run quite a bit. They went over the left end 86 times and over right end 65 times. Together, they rushed to the edge 151 times a little more often than they went up the middle. In 2018, they ran to the edges a combined 48 times.
They were second in the league last season in rushes over left end and fourth to right end.
More than 78 percent of their rushes were either up the middle or to the edges.
They ran over left tackle 20 times, over left guard 25 times, over right guard 16 times and over right tackle 22 times. They were in the bottom three in the league in all four directions in attempts and dead last over left tackle and over right guard.
How did they do in each direction?
They averaged 5.14 yards per attempt up the middle, which was fourth in the league. Over left end, they averaged 6.59 yards, also fourth. They were not as good over right end at 4.65 yards, which ranked only 20th.
They were fourth in the league over left tackle at 6.3 yards per rush and second in the league over right tackle at 7.05 yards per rush.
Over left guard, they were 28th in the league at 2.84 yards and dead last over right guard, averaging only 2.0 yards.
It is clear that Kliff Kingsbury’s philosophy in the running game is to use the whole field, attacking in the middle and spreading the run game from sideline to sideline.
Here is a graphic from the NFL Game Statistics & Information System with the data in visual form.
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Ep. 256
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Ep. 255
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