Run/Pass Ratios are the single most overrated statistic in all of football. I can't exaggerate how meaningless that statistic is, nor how imprecise it is in today's college game.
We track it only to abide by the rule that each play can only have 1 forward pass. It's usefulness in statistics and tendencies is very, very low.
Now, if you want to track how many times Team A threw a flanker screen out of a Trips set on the short side of the field, that's meaningful. The number of times a team was credited with a forward pass is not. It doesn't tell me how to defend that team. Was it a 3 yard RB screen? A 7 step drop? A draw play?
I think fans today are so much better educated about the game than they were in the past, but the media and the popular opinion on this stat is such a huge tether holding it back from going further.
Especially with that word 'balance'. Blah, such a useless and generic word. It assumes that doing something in equal proportions is somehow a desired result. There is nothing special about having a 50/50 pass run ratio. In fact, from a big play potential, it is often counterproductive........and football is a game where picking up large chunks of offense at one time is a very desirable trait.
Every successful offensive scheme is 'balanced'. By 'balanced' I mean the capability to present complementary looks and actions in order to derive specific results from the defense. A triple option offense is balanced via the FB dive or outside release. You're attempting to give one look to a playside DE and enticing different actions. The Zone Read is balanced via the backside DE.
We don't keep mainstream stats on how often the FB Dive was ran, but we track how many times the same offense threw a forward pass. The former, which is important, doesn't enter mainstream consciousness despite the fact it is infinitely more important to the success of that offense than the latter.
Of all the complementary actions, the pass-run relationship is just one of them and yet because it is an easily accessible statistic it is given an enormous priority. For general purposes, its pretty meaningless to know if your opponent passes the ball 45% or 52% of the time. Now, if we make it situationally specific, it becomes more important. You want to know how often on 3rd and 3 or less the opponent ran an ISO or threw an inside slant on a 3 step drop. That's meaningful data that tells me how to defend that down.
That's what I really want to know......how do I defend it. The problem with pass/run ratios is it turns the game into a simple dichotomy: it's either pass or run with a requisite response to defeat it. Early computer games on the sport were this way. It ignores the diversity of this game and attempts to simplify it to an erroneous degree.
