Only two teammates have ever won the AP Offensive Rookie of the Year and AP Defensive Rookie of the Year awards. That happened 50 years ago in 1967, when the Detroit selected RB Mel Farr with the 7th pick in the first round of the draft and future HOF CB Lem Barney with the 34th overall pick in the second round. As a rookie, Farr gained 1,177 yards from scrimmage in 13 games, 7th most in the NFL. Barney, meanwhile, led the NFL in interceptions, interception return yards, and interception return touchdowns, with a 10-232-3 stat line. Both made the Pro Bowl, and Barney was a 2nd-team All-Pro choice by both the NEA and NYDN.

This year’s Saints have a similar story. New Orleans went cornerback first and running back second, drafting RB Alvin Kamara with the 67th pick (3rd pick in the 3rd round) and CB Marshon Lattimore with the 11th overall selection (Utah S Marcus Williams was the second round pick). Kamara has been remarkable with 1,426 yards from scrimmage (8th in the NFL) and 12 touchdowns (tied for 3rd) in 15 games, while averaging a remarkable 6.2 yards per carry and 9.9 yards per reception. Either Kamara or Kareem Hunt will win the AP OROY award this year. Meanwhile, Lattimore has been a huge part of the Saints defensive revival: he’s a frontrunner for the AP DROY award, and is tied for 5th in the league with five interceptions, including one returned for a touchdown.

The final AV numbers from Pro-Football-Reference aren’t in yet, but since the Saints offensive and defensive numbers are both outstanding this year, and both Kamara and Lattimore made the Pro Bowl, I think it’s safe to assume that both will have at least 10 points of AV. [continue reading…]

There have been many great running back pairs in NFL history. The standard bearers when it comes to running back pairs both played in NFL at the time the AFL was born: Jim Brown and Bobby Mitchell in Cleveland, and Paul Hornung and Jim Taylor in Green Bay. Any great running back pair needs more than one season, but when it comes to just one year of dominance — since the AFL/NFL merger — I am not sure if any pair can top what Mark Ingram and Alvin Kamara of the Saints have done this year.

Kamara is currently 4th among running backs in fantasy points using 0.5 points per reception (the middle ground between PPR and non-PPR leagues) with 252.1 fantasy points.  Meanwhile, Ingram is just behind him in 5th place with 247.6 fantasy points (awarding 1 point for every 10 yards rushing or receiving and 6 points for every touchdown).  Todd Gurley, Le’Veon Bell, and Kareem Hunt are your top three running backs with 355.3, 303.1, and 261.2 fantasy points, respectively, and then Melvin Gordon (243.7) and LeSean McCoy (231.9) are the only other running backs with over 200 fantasy points.

So no matter what Kamara and Ingram do this weekend (and the Saints are playing for the NFC South title this weekend, so the incentive is there for them to do well), they will both finish in the top 7 among all running backs. And guess what: that has never happened since the AFL-NFL merger.

In fact, just 8 times has a team had two top-10 running backs over this time.  In reverse chronological order…. [continue reading…]

I saw an interesting tweet yesterday:

My first thought was, “No way!” But then again, the leading RB in receiving touchdowns is a pretty obscure category, so who knows. Well, it turns out McDowell is correct (at least back to 1970, which is as far as I checked; before 1970 you are dealing with much smaller leagues, anyway).

So yes, Todd Gurley really does have a running back quadruple crown: he leads all running backs in rushing yards (1,305; Kareem Hunt is second with 1,292); rushing TDs (13; Mark Ingram is second with 12); receiving yards (Alvin Kamara has 742) and receiving TDs (6; Kamara and Christian McCaffrey each have 5).  That is not going to hold up, as Gurley will rest this weekend as the Rams have clinched the NFC West but can not get the 1 or the 2 seed in the NFC.  But for now, it is pretty remarkable, if from nothing else than from a trivia perspective.

In fact, since 1970, only two running backs — Jamaal Charles in 2010 and Arian Foster in 2013 — have led all running backs in three out of those four carries. Charles ranked 3rd in rushing yards that year, Foster ranked 7th in this receiving TDs.

The table below shows all running backs since 1970 whose average rank in these four categories was 5.0 or lower. [continue reading…]

Two years ago, I set a baseline for what a pre-season projection system should hope to accomplish. The simplest baseline of all would be to project each team to go 8-8. That would require no thought at all: a person could wake up 49 years and eight months from now and project each then-existing team in the NFL (or its successor league) to go .500 in the 2067 season. So any projection system has to beat that, at a minimum. As I wrote two years ago:

If you did that in every season from 1989 to 2014, your model would have been off by, on average, 2.48 wins per team. This is calculated by taking the absolute value of the difference between 0.500 and each team’s actual winning percentage, and multiplying that result by 16. So that should be the absolute floor for any projection model: you have to come closer than that.

Now, let’s flash back to July of this year. The USA Today published its preseason predictions in a rather provocative fashion, particularly with respect to two teams. I see a ton of preseason projections every year and forget them minutes later, so please forgive me if you feel like I am picking on the USA Today here. That is not the intent, and other publications have made more egregious errors but are not at my fingertips. But this publication picked the Patriots to go 16-0 and the Jets to go 1-15, which was rather extreme.

Upon further view of their predictions, many of them are pretty ugly. So I decided to compare those predictions to the “every team in the same” test, or the “8-8” system.

There were six teams the USA Today got really wrong, where an 8-8 projection would be at least 3.0 games closer to being accurate:

The Buffalo Bills are 8-7 (off of 0.500 by 0.5 wins); the USA Today predicted them to go 4-12 (off by 4.5 wins).
The Green Bay Packers are 7-8 (0.500 projection is off by 0.5); the USA Today predicted them to go 12-4 (off by 4.5).
The Los Angeles Rams are 11-4; an 8-8 projection would be off by 3.5 games, but the USA Today had the Rams are 4-12, off by 7.5 games.
The Oakland Raiders are 6-9 (off by 1.5); the USA Today had them at 11-5 (off by 4.5).
The Detroit Lions are 8-7 (off by 0.5); the USA Today had them at 5-11 (off by 3.5).
The Tennessee Titans are 8-7 (off by 0.5); the USA Today had them at 12-4 (off by 3.5).

You might say the loss of Aaron Rodgers shouldn’t be held against them, and that the Rams success caught everyone off guard. Both of those things are true, but we also know that superstars get hurt and surprise teams happen every year. Both of those facts should urge predictors to be more conservative in the aggregate.

The USA Today thought the Titans would be great and the Bills terrible; both are 8-7. And the USA Today had the Raiders at 11-5 and the Lions at 5-11; instead, Detroit has two more wins than Oakland. These, again, are signs that we shouldn’t be too overconfident in our preseason projections (a look at the Giants and the Rams projected wins totals would also work to that effect).

Now, there were also three teams where the USA Today beat the 8-8 system by at least 3 games.

The Indianapolis Colts were projected to go 5-11 by the USA Today; they are 3-12 (USAT off by 1.5, .500 prediction off by 4.5).
The Cleveland Browns were projected to go 4-12; they are 0-15 (USAT off by 3.5, .500 prediction off by 7.5).
The Pittsburgh Steelers were projected to go 12-4; they are 12-3 (USAT off by 0.5, .500 prediction off by 4.5).

In the case of the Colts, Browns, and Bears, predicting them to be bad — but not terrible — was the wise move. (That would have worked with the Jets, too: the 1-15 projection is now off by 4 or 5 wins, giving another win to the 8-8 system). The Steelers were projected to be very good, and that prediction was nailed. The USA Today even wins the Patriots bet as we stand right now (12-3 is closer to 16-0 than 8-8), but a more conservative approach would have been better.

Overall, the USA Today fared worse than the blind 8-8 system. The USA Today projections were closer than the 8-8 system for 13 teams. Meanwhile, the 8-8 system was closer on 15 teams, with four teams (Houston, Kansas City, Jacksonville, New Orleans) currently graded as ties. Take a look: [continue reading…]

From 2002 to 2017, DeSean Jackson and Malcom Floyd are the two leaders in yards per reception (minimum 250 receptions). Jackson has 548 receptions for 9,487 yards, a 17.31 yards per catch average, while Floyd is at 321/5,550/17.29. We’ll skip who is #3 in yards per catch for a minute, but the next three are Torrey Smith, Eddie Kennison, and T.Y. Hilton.

Those are all pretty light players. Jackson’s weight, according to PFR (where all weights for this post were obtained), is 178 pounds. Floyd played at 201 pounds, while Smith, Kennison, and Hilton weighed in at 205, 201, and 183 pounds, respectively.

There are five players, all tight ends, who weigh over 260 pounds and had 250+ receptions since 2002: Rob Gronkowski, Kyle Rudolph, Alge Crumpler, Brent Celek, and Jermaine Gresham. Rudolph and Gresham averaged under 10 YPC for their careers, while Celek was at 12.6 and Crumpler at 12.7 (this excludes Crumpler’s 2001 season, although that doesn’t move the needle on his career YPC). Oh, and then there’s Gronk, who has a career YPC average of 15.15.

That’s… really high for a heavy man. And, make no mistake, at a listed 265 pounds, Rob Gronkowski is a heavy man. The graph below shows each player since 2002 with at least 250 receptions. On the X-Axis is each player’s yards per catch average; on the Y-Axis, their weight. Gronk is the red dot. [continue reading…]

The Buffalo Bills are still in the playoff hunt despite not being a very good team. The Bills have been outscored by 63 points so far this year, but have an 8-7 record. They’ve lost two games by 30+ points and two more by 20+ points, but a 5-2 record in one-score games has Buffalo still in the playoff hunt (the Bills are in with a win in week 17 and either a Ravens loss or losses by both the Titans and Chargers).

The Carolina Panthers are 8-1 in one-score games, the best record in the NFL. Carolina may be a very good team, but the Panthers are just 3-3 in games decided by more than 8 points. Carolina has a Pythagenpat winning percentage of 0.592, which is more in line with a 9-6 team than an 11-4 team.

The table below shows the Pythagenpat winning percentages for each team this season. The Bills and Panthers have exceeded “expectations” by the largest amount this year when it comes to actual winning percentage vs. Pythagenpat winning percentage. The biggest underachievers? The Browns, Bucs, Jaguars, and Chargers. [continue reading…]

Last year, when the Browns were 0-14, I noted that Cleveland was also a pitiful 2-12 against the spread. The worst mark against the spread in a 16-game season was 3-13, which Cleveland managed to avoid. The Browns beat the Chargers (and the spread) in week 16, and then pushed in a 3-point loss in the season finale against, of course, Pittsburgh.

But guess what? After falling to the Bears today, 20-3, the Browns are now 3-12 against the spread (the second worst team is the Broncos, who are 4-10-1). And for the 7th time in 8 years, the Browns will again finish the season against the Steelers.

If you look at the teams that were 3-13 or 3-12-1 against the spread, they tend to do very well the next year. In other words, Vegas perhaps hasn’t quite caught up to the fact that teams that perform terribly against the spread do much better the next year.

But then you have… the Browns. Cleveland is now 6-24-1 against the spread since the start of last season, ensuring they will finish with the worst mark since 1978 over a 2-year period. The 2014-2015 Titans were the previous record-holder, at 8-23-1 against the spread, followed by the 2008-2009 Jaguars (9-23-0) and four teams at 9-22-1 (’03-’04 Raiders, 2007-2008 Broncos, 1990-1991 Rams, and well, the 2015-2016 Browns).

So not only has Cleveland been historically bad on the field this year, they have been historically bad against the spread for the second year in a row.

On Thursday, I noted that Jimmy Garoppolo had joined rare company by beginning his career with a 5-0 start.  In the comments to that post, Mark Growcott commented that Browns rookie Deshone Kizer has begun his career with an 0-13 start.  Cleveland, of course, is 0-14 (Kevin Hogan started one game), with Kizer undoubtedly playing a large role in those failures. It may not be his fault per se — i.e., one could argue he’s too green to even be playing — but his production has been abysmal. He’s averaging 3.50 ANY/A this season, easily the lowest in the NFL.

Mark wanted to know if that was the worst losing streak to begin a career. The answer is… yes! Jack Trudeau like Kizer, was a mid-second round pick. Trudeau played at Illinois and was drafted by the Colts in 1986.  Indianapolis was not very good back then, and neither was Trudeau, who went 0-11 as a starter during his rookie season.  In 1987, Trudeau lost the team’s first game, but then after the players’ strike ended, he came back and helped the Colts beat the Patriots in late October for the first win of his career. Trudeau set the record by losing his first 12 starts, until Kizer broke that mark on Sunday with a loss to the Ravens.

Kizer is one of just 9 quarterbacks to begin his career with an 0-10 record or worse. Jack Trudeau was the only one to start 0-12, while Troy Aikman and Stan Gelbaugh both had 0-10 starts.

Derek Carr began his career with an 0-10 start just four seasons ago. So too did Brodie Croyle, Harry Gilmer, Zach Mettenberger, and Warren Moon. Rick Norton, Dan Orlovsky, and Norm Snead began their careers with 0-9 starts.

Cleveland is 0-14 for a lot of reasons, but as you can suspect, much of it can come down to the team’s passing offense and passing defense. In just one of 14 games this season have the Browns won the ANY/A battle against their opponent: [continue reading…]

In week 3, the Jaguars blew out the Ravens in London, 44-7, producing a Game Script of 22.6. That was the biggest Game script of the season, until week 15. On Sunday, the Rams destroyed the Seahawks, 42-7 in a game that was over at halftime. Los Angeles seven first half drives ended as follows: field goal, field goal, touchdown, interception, touchdown, touchdown, touchdown. Seattle’s first half drives ended as follows: fumble, punt, punt, punt, punt, fumble, punt, end of half.

The Rams recorded the biggest Game Script of the season at +23.4, but Los Angeles wasn’t alone. The third and fourth biggest Game Scripts of the season also came on Sunday. The Jaguars, again, were the big rollers: Jacksonville beat Houston 45-7 and recorded a Game Script of +21.7, thanks to jumping out to a 31-0 halftime lead. And Minnesota took a 24-0 lead into the locker room against Cincinnati, and a 34-0 lead before finally winning 34-7. The Vikings posted a Game Script of +20.9, one of just six games this year with a Game Script of +20.0.

The full Game Scripts from week 15, below: [continue reading…]

Jimmy Garoppolo is now 5-0 as a starter for the Patriots and 49ers. This, despite being an underdog in 3 of his first 5 starts:

[continue reading…]

Two years ago, after week 15 of the regular season, I noted the following:

Antonio Brown has 1,586 receiving yards, most in the NFL, which puts him on pace for 1,813 receiving yards this season.

Adrian Peterson has 1,314 rushing yards, most in the NFL, which puts him on pace for 1,502 rushing yards in 2015.

That’s pretty weird.  In general, the rushing leader usually gains more rushing yards than the receiving yardage leader picks up through the air.  From 1970 to 2014, the receiving yards leader  “outgained” the rushing yards leader in only 10 of 45 seasons.  And in only three of those years did the receiving leader “win” by more than 100 yards: in 1999 (Marvin Harrison had 1663 receiving yards; his teammate Edgerrin James had 1553 rushing yards), 1990 (Jerry Rice over Barry Sanders, 1502 to 1304), and 1982 (Wes Chandler over Freeman McNeil in the strike-shortened season, 1032to 786). On a per-game basis, it’s tough to beat what Chandler did, but Brown is on pace to become the first receiving leader since the merger (in fact, the first in the NFL since 1952) to “outgain” the rushing leader by over 300 yards.

By the end of the year, Julio Jones led the league in receiving with 1,871 yards, while Peterson rushed for “only” 1,485 receiving yards. So that was an odd year where the receiving leader finished with nearly 400 more yards than the rushing leader.

Last season, T.Y. Hilton led the NFL with 1,448 receiving yards, while Ezekiel Elliott had 1,631 rushing yards despite missing one game.

But this year? Well, Brown is at it again.  Through 13 games, Pittsburgh had the leading rushing and receiver in the NFL.  Brown had a whopping 1,509 receiving yards while Le’Veon Bell led the NFL with “only” 1,105 rushing yards. That was a massive 404 yard difference after just 13 games!  In game 14 (which, of course, takes place in week 15), Brown was injured and is likely out for the rest of the regular season.  So through 15 games, Bell has 1,222 rushing yards and Brown has 1,533 receiving yards.

There’s a chance Brown winds up leading the NFL without taking another snap this year, or that DeAndre Hopkins passes him (1,313 yards with two games to play).  Either way, this is likely another season where the receiving leader will outgain the rushing leader.

But also noteworthy: right now, the leading receiver on 22 of the NFL’s 32 teams has more yards than that team’s leading rusher.  The Bills (LeSean McCoy) rushing leader has 600 more yards than the team’s receiving leader (Charles Clay), making them one of just 7 teams where the rushing leader has 100+ more yards than the receiving leader. Three teams — the Cardinals, Vikings, and Texans — have their receiving leader with 500+ more yards than their rushing leader. Take a look: [continue reading…]

Through 15 weeks, the league-wide Adjusted Net Yards per Attempt average is 5.99, representing a small turn down from the high water marks of the past few seasons.

Tom Brady is second in the NFL in ANY/A at 7.72, just a hair behind Drew Brees (7.75). But because Brady has 52 more dropbacks than Brees this season, that makes Brady the better MVP candidate. Brady leads the NFL in passing value added, which is simply ANY/A minus league average ANY/A, with that difference multiplied by number of dropbacks. The table below shows the amount of passing value added by the 35 quarterbacks this season with 200 pass attempts. [continue reading…]

Through 14 games, the Jacksonville Jaguars may be the best team in the NFL. Jacksonville ranks first by an enormous margin in pass defense, which is the main driver of the team’s success. The Jaguars are 0.90 ANY/A better than the second-ranked pass defense (Baltimore), and 1.37 ANY/A better than the third-ranked pass defense (Chargers). Jacksonville’s rush defense on a per-carry basis ranks just 29th, but the Jaguars are still the best defense in the NFL.

To measure defenses on per play basis, I took a weighted average of a defense’s yards per rush allowed (40%) and adjusted net yards per attempt allowed (60%). The Jaguars allow 3.87 yards per play, the best in the league by a good margin, followed by the Ravens, Vikings, and Eagles.

We can do the same thing for offense. Jacksonville ranks 8th in yards per carry and 12th in ANY/A, which may surprise folks, but Blake Bortles has been white hot the last three weeks. The best offense belongs to the Saints, who rank 1st in ANY/A (by a razor thin margin of the Patriots) and 2nd in YPC (by a razor thin margin behind the Chiefs). The Saints have the best offense in the NFL on a per-play basis (using the same 40%/60% split) and the 11th-best defense, good enough for New Orleans to rank as the 3rd best team overall.

But Jacksonville ranks 9th in offense, and with that pass defense, that’s enough to put the team in first place on a per-play basis overall. Take a look: [continue reading…]

Steelers running back Le’Veon Bell is having another sensational season. Since 2014, Bell is averaging 91.3 rushing yards and 46.5 receiving yards per game. Bell actually leads all players in yards from scrimmage since 2014 despite missing 14 games! He’s averaging 137.8 yards from scrimmage per game since 2014; Ezekiel Elliott is second at 129.9, but he only played in 23 games. If you exclude Elliott, the next two players are wide receivers (Antonio Brown and Julio Jones) at 106.3 and 104.3, respectively. In fact, excluding Elliot, no other running back has averaged even 100 yards from scrimmage per game; LeSean McCoy is second to Bell at 99.9 yards per game.

Bell is not just a yards from scrimmage star, however. As of yesterday, he was also leading the NFL in rushing yards, Bell is at 1,105 rushing yards, ahead of Kareem Hunt (1,046), Todd Gurley (1,035), Jordan Howard (1,032), and McCoy (1,007). Last night, Hunt rushed for 155 yards in a win over the Chargers, so he is now ahead of Bell (the Steelers play the Patriots today). Elliott is at 97.9 rushing yards per game, a bit ahead of Bell (85.0), but Elliott has missed five (soon to be six) games due to suspension.

Assuming Bell does go on to win the rushing crown, he may in fact join a pretty rare group: leading the NFL in rushing yards despite averaging fewer than 4.0 yards per carry. Right now, Bell is at 3.90 yards per carry, and there’s a good chance his YPC either improves or if it doesn’t, he doesn’t wind up winning the rushing crown. But if he does win the rushing title, Bell would have the lowest yards per carry average of any rushing champion since Football Perspective favorite Eddie Price back in 1951.

The table below shows the rushing yards leader in each season in the NFL, AFL, and AAFC since 1932.

In the last 20 years, Edgerrin James has the two lowest YPC averages of any rushing leader.  Before James, the lowest YPC average belongs to Christian Okoye, who averaged exactly 4.00 yards per carry in 1989.  Okoye narrowly avoided being one of just two running backs since the AFL-NFL merger to lead the NFL in rushing with a sub-4.00 YPC average. That lone honor therefore belongs to Floyd Little, who averaged 3.99 YPC in 1971.

Yesterday, I noted one of the counter-intuitive facts of the 2017 season: the best defenses by yards per carry allowed weren’t very good teams, while the worst defenses by yards per carry allowed were good teams. The correlation coefficient between winning percentage and yards per carry allowed “should” be negative, but was in fact a positive 0.37.

What about for offenses? Well, the correlation coefficient is a positive 0.26, which is more intuitive. It means the teams that average more yards per carry also average more wins, although the relationship isn’t particularly strong. The best 8 teams by YPC average have won 54% of their games, while the worst 8 teams have won 45% of their games. The Steelers are a noteworthy example, as Pittsburgh is 11-2 but ranks 28th in yards per carry. The Bears and Browns rank 5th and 7th in yards per carry, but have combined to go 4-22.

But in general, there is a positive correlation in 2017 between being good at gaining yards per rush and winning teams. So the “reasons” you may have used to justify why bad teams were good at yards per carry allowed don’t hold much water here. [continue reading…]

Regular readers know that I am not a big fan of yards per carry to measure a running game, on either the team or the individual level. That also goes for team defense. If you look at this year’s standings, though, and compare a team’s record to its yards per carry allowed, you will in fact notice a correlation.

And a moderately strong one at that. The correlation coefficient between a team’s winning percentage in 2017 and that team’s yards per carry allowed is 0.37. That indicates a positive correlation between the two stats, but… well, there isn’t supposed to be a positive correlation. This means that allowing more yards per rush is correlated with winning more games. See for yourself: [continue reading…]

As it stands, Bryce Petty and the Jets are 17-point underdogs this Sunday in New Orleans. Here are the 15 largest spreads the New York Jets have faced since 1978:

[continue reading…]

There have been 208 games so far this season. Prior to week 14, the Chicago Bears, in a 27-24 win over Baltimore, had the lowest pass ratio of any team in a game at 27.6% (21 passes, 55 runs). Playing in the snow in Buffalo, the Bills rushed 51 times against 16 pass plays, for a 23.9% pass ratio. That’s the lowest pass ratio since a Monday Night Football game in 2014, when the Jets went back to Geno Smith as quarterback and basically didn’t let him throw the ball unless he had to. In modern times, teams just don’t run on 76% of their plays: the only other game since 2010 where that happened involved Tim Tebow, of course.

But wait, there’s more. The Colts ran on two-thirds of their plays, easily the lowest pass ratio of any team that lost its game this year; no other team had passed on fewer than 47 percent of its plays and lost. This was the most run-heavy game of the year and it wasn’t particularly close.

In fact, this was the most run-heavy game since the 2006 game between the Falcons and Panthers where Carolina rolled out a Wildcat offense with Jake Delhomme sidelined and starting QB Chris Weinke playing with a bum shoulder, the Panthers and Falcons combined for 71 rushing attempts and just 27 passes (plus six sacks). But the combined 97 runs for the Bills and Colts (helped by 15 overtime runs) was the most in a game since 1981 between the Chiefs and Bears that also went to overtime and was played in cold and wet conditions. The full week 14 Game Scripts, below: [continue reading…]

Four years ago, I wrote an article about the — at the time — young and improving Seattle pass defense. It’s hard to compare modern defenses to what we saw in the ’70s, as the game has changed significantly in the favor of more impressive passing numbers.

But what we can do is compare each pass defense in each season to each other pass defense. In 2013, the Seahawks allowed 3.19 Adjusted Net Yards per Attempt, while the league average was 5.98. That’s a difference of 2.79 ANY/A, and the standard deviation among the 32 pass defenses was 0.95 ANY/A. In other words, the Seahawks were 2.93 standard deviations better than average (2.79 divided by 0.95).

This year, the Jaguars are allowing 3.52 ANY/A, and the league average is an almost identical 6.01. So Jacksonville is 2.49 ANY/A better than average, and given the standard deviation of 0.94, it means the Jaguars pass defense has a Z-Score of 2.65.

That would rank as the 6th best since 1950, behind the ’02 Bucs, ’88 Vikings, ’70 VIkings, ’13 Seahawks, and ’82 Dolphins. The 3.52 ANY/A average is the lowest since the 2013 Seahawks, and the second lowest since the 2009 Jets (who played in a less friendly passing environment; the league average was 5.74 ANY/A).

If you look at the NFL passing statistics through 13 games (well, 12 for the Dolphins and Patriots), it’s easy to see why the Jaguars pass defense is so good. It’s because they’re great at literally everything. The table below shows the team’s rank in every major category: top-5 finishes are in pink, and #1 finishes are in red with white font. [continue reading…]

The Minnesota Vikings have a pretty good passing game: through 14 weeks, the Vikings rank in the top 10 in both ANY/A and passer rating. What makes it really weird is that the top two members of the passing game — the quarterback and leading receiver — were both undrafted free agents. Case Keenum went undrafted in 2012 after a stellar career at the University of Houston. The Vikings leading receiver is Adam Thielen, who went undrafted in 2013 out of Minnesota State–Mankato. Together, they are the driving force behind the 2017 Vikings efficient passing attack.

The Vikings will become just the 7th team since 1970 with their top passer and top receiver both having gone undrafted.

• The 2014 Browns had Brian Hoyer and Andrew Hawkins, although unlike the Vikings, this team wasn’t very good. Cleveland went 7-9 (which is of course, very good for Cleveland) and ranked 23rd in ANY/A.

• The 2009 and 2010 Cowboys make the list, too, thanks to Miles Austin and a pair of quarterbacks. In 2009, Tony Romo and the Cowboys ranked 4th in ANY/A and went 11-5; the next year, with Romo hurt, Jon Kitna led Dallas in passing but the team went 6-10 and ranked 12th in ANY/A.

• In 2004, the Titans passing attack was led by Billy Volek and Drew Bennett. For a short run, the combination was outstanding, but overall, the Titans finished 19th in ANY/A and 5-11.

• In 2000, Jay Fiedler and Orande Gadsen were the key components in a mediocre Miami passing attack. Those Dolphins teams were defined by their defense, and the Dolphins went 11-5 despite ranking 19th in ANY/A.

• In 1992, Dave Krieg joined the Chiefs as a 34-year-old veteran. He was undrafted, as was Willie Davis, who had zero NFL catches to his name prior to the season. Davis wound up leading the Chiefs in receiving, and together, Krieg and Davis helped the Chiefs rank 8th in ANY/A and finish 10-6.

The table below shows all teams since 1970 where neither the quarterback nor the leading receiver (in receiving yards) were drafted within the first 200 picks. It is sorted by ANY/A rank that season:

There are, unsurprisingly, a few combinations that show up multiple times on the list. Warren Moon and Drew Hill were the key parts of the Oilers passing game for five straight years in the back half of the ’80s. Wade Wilson and Anthony Carter made the list for their work with the Vikings in ’87, ’88, and ’89. Steve DeBerg and Stephone Paige did it with the Chiefs from ’88 to ’90. Ryan Fitzpatrick and Steve Johnson led the Bills in passing and receiving, respectively, in 2010, 2011, and 2012. And Brian Sipe and Reggie Rucker led the Browns in ’76, ’77, and ’78.

What stands out to you?

The Jacksonville Jaguars currently lead the NFL in three categories that correlate strongly with winning: rushing yards, Adjusted Net Yards per Attempt Allowed, and points allowed. It’s pretty freakin’ rare for a team to lead the NFL in all three of those categories; since 1950, it’s only happened six times.

In 2009, the Mark Sanchez/Thomas Jones/Darrelle Revis Jets pulled off that feat. New York ranked 27th in ANY/A and underachieved significantly relative to its Pythagorean record. The Jets snuck into the playoffs but then lost in the AFC Championship Game.

In 1985 and 1986, the Chicago Bears did it in consecutive years. We all know about the 15-1 team from 1985, and Jim McMahon and the offense ranked 6th in ANY/A and won the Super Bowl. In ’86, the Bears ranked 17th in ANY/A, McMahon was injured, and Doug Flutie was the quarterback in the team’s lone playoff game, a home loss to Washington where the team did take a 13-7 lead into the locker room.

In 1972, the Dolphins led the NFL in a host of categories, including that 14-0 regular season record. And while Miami led the NFL in rushing yards, ANY/A allowed, and points allowed, but also in ANY/A.

In 1969, the AFL’s Chiefs pulled off the trick and ranked 4th in ANY/A in the 10-team AFL. Like the ’72 Dolphins and ’85 Bears, this team won the Super Bowl.

In 1962, the Packers — you know, maybe the greatest team of all-time — were the first team since the 1949 Eagles to lead the NFL in ANY/A allowed, points allowed, and rushing. The Packers, of course, won it all, too.

Nobody is going to confuse Blake Bortles with Bart Starr, Len Dawson, or Bob Griese, or even Jim McMahon or Earl Morrall. But can Bortles be Mark Sanchez good, or just a little bit better? The Jaguars currently rank 17th in ANY/A and Bortles ranks 17th in Total QBR. So how have previous Jaguars-esque teams fared? [continue reading…]

In week 13, the Cowboys, Packers, and Jets were run-happy teams, finishing with the three most run-oriented play ratios of the week. After accounting for Game Script, the Jets were really run-heavy: New York finished with a negative Game Script but finished with 49 runs! The Jets finished tied for the most rushing attempts since 1983 in a game (excluding OT) where the opponent scored 30+ points. The other time? The remarkable Jerome Harrison/Josh Cribbs game against the Chiefs from 2009, which I wrote about at the time.

The Cowboys finished with 23 pass plays and 42 runs in a blowout win over the Redskins. Dallas led most of the way against Washington, and the Cowboys are happy to institute a run-heavy plan whenever the Game Script allows.

The Packers led early against the Bucs, but Tampa Bay took a 4th quarter lead and the game went deep into overtime. Brett Hundley had 24 dropbacks, while Packers running backs had 22 carries and Hundley himself had 7 carries. The main reason for the run-heavy game plan? Hundley was a disaster throwing the ball, gaining 77 net yards on those 24 dropbacks with an interception. Since 1979, the Packers have won just one other game with so few passing yards: this disaster of a game in 1991 against the 1-10 Colts.

The full week 13 Game Scripts below: [continue reading…]

Running back Duke Johnson, a 3rd round pick from the University of Miami in 2015, currently leads the Browns in receiving yards.

Suffice it to say, that’s not a good thing, at least in this case. The Browns rank last in ANY/A at 3.5 and last in passer rating at 59.8; Cleveland has the worst passing attack in the NFL, and the fact that Johnson is the team’s leading receiver probably speaks to that.

It’s also pretty rare. Excluding guys like Eric Metcalf or who played running back at times but wasn’t a running back in say, the 1995 Falcons, it’s only happened twice since 2000. Two years ago, with Keenan Allen limited to 8 games and Antonio Gates to 11, Danny Woodhead led the Chargers in receiving yards. And for the 2013 Chiefs, Jamaal Charles somehow led the team in rushing and receiving yards (something neither Johnson nor Woodhead did) as Dwayne Bowe and Donnie Avery fought for table scraps.

The table below shows every running back to lead his team in receiving yards since 1970: [continue reading…]

Here’s a look at the 2017 rushing leaders for the Seattle Seahawks:

You might have noticed that quarterback Russell Wilson actually leads the team in rushing yards.  Which is… pretty unusual.  Excluding situations when players who didn’t enter the NFL as a running back but played that position (like Ty Montgomery or Denard Robinson), only twice in the last 20 years has a non-RB led his team in rushing yards.  Do you know who and when?

Before them, the last player was Randall Cunningham – who did it for the 1987, 1988, 1989, and 1990 Eagles. The only other time since the merger that a non-RB has led his team in rushing yards was Bears quarterback Bobby Douglass in 1972.

And before Douglass, you have to go back to 1960, when Lenny Moore led the Colts in rushing yards the year after moving to wide receiver (he still actually led the team in carries, too, but Alan Ameche was the fullback and Alex Hawkins was the running back; Moore finished with 936 receiving yards and 374 rushing yards). Also that year, Jets (well, Titans) quarterback Al Dorow led the expansion franchise in rushing yards.

Positional designations get a little tricky pre-1960, but a few other quarterbacks pulled off the feat in the ’50s. Tobin Rote led the Lions in rushing in 1958, and the Packers in rushing in 1951, 1952, and 1956. Charley Trippi led the Cardinals in rushing in 1951 and 1952, although the 1952 Cardinals had the greatest four-way race for a franchise rushing title you’ll ever see.

This is a long way of saying it’s going to be pretty noteworthy if Wilson leads the Seahawks in rushing, which seems very likely to happen.

Regular readers know that I like measuring wide receivers using some nontraditional methods. One metric I like to track is the comparison of how good a team’s passing offense is and what percentage of the team’s receiving pie went to the top receiver. Do you remember Gary Clark in 1991? That season was remarkable because he had 36% of all Redskins receiving yards and a third of the Washington passing touchdowns while playing for one of the best passing attacks of that era.

This year, Antonio Brown, Adam Thielen, and Julio Jones stand out as the best receivers by these metrics. Brown has picked up a whopping 39.5% of all Steelers receiving yards, the highest ratio of any player in the league. Pittsburgh also ranks 12th in Adjusted Net Yards per Attempt, so Brown gets a lot of credit for being an enormous part of an above-average passing offense.

Thielen has 34.3% of all Vikings receiving yards, the third highest share of a team’s receiving game so far this season. And, as surprising as this may be, Minnesota ranks 5th in ANY/A. So Thielen is playing for a top-5 passing attack while being in the top 5 in percentage of his team’s passing attack. That’s a great season. Jones is in a similar position: he has 34.2% of Falcons receiving yards and Atlanta ranks 8th in ANY/A.

The graph below shows each team’s leader in receiving yards. For most teams, this is a wide receiver; for the Browns, it’s a running back, which says a lot about the Browns; the Titans, Raideres, Giants, and Bills are all led by a tight end. The Y-Axis shows that team’s Relative ANY/A, or ANY/A above/below average. The X-Axis shows the percentage of team receiving yards by that player. You want to be up and to the right on this graph, like Brown, Jones, and Thielen. [continue reading…]

The Jacksonville Jaguars have what appears to be a historically dominant defense this year (more on this later in the week). But here’s a simple way to look at it: Jacksonville is allowing just 8.0 points per game in wins this season, and has won just one game where it allowed more than 10 points. The Ravens have had a similar run of success (3 of the team’s 7 wins have come in shutouts) and the Giants have won just two games (but the defense played well in both); the other teams have all allowed an average of 13 points per game or more in wins. You can see how many points each team has allowed in wins and losses this season here.

But I think we are all a bit surprised to see a Blake Bortles led team sport an 8-4 record, and it would hardly be surprising to see the Jaguars win 10 or 11 games this year (Houston and San Francisco are still on the schedule). So when we look back and say how the heck did this happen, well, obviously the defense dominating in wins played a huge role. How huge?

Among quarterbacks since 1950 to win at least 6 games in a season, only 58 played on teams that allowed fewer than 10 points per game in wins. Of those 58, 13 played between 1950 and 1969, another 16 played from 1970 to 1977, and another 9 played from 1978 to 1989.

That means just 20 played from 1990 to 2016, and only 8 from 2002 to 2016. That’s about one every two years, and right now, Bortles and Joe Flacco are poised to join the list. When you look back and see that Kyle Orton once won 10 games, or Mark Sanchez had a winning record, or a 37-year-old Jeff Garcia went 8-5, well, this list helps clarify things. [continue reading…]

With the conference championship games in the books, it’s time to look at the final regular season results. The 4 playoff teams — Clemson, Oklahoma, Georgia, and Alabama — rank in the top 7 of the final ratings. The other 3 teams? They’re all in the Big 10, a conference that sent zero teams. [continue reading…]

Yesterday, I noted that in 2017, teams that outrush their opponents have won 71% of games this season.  That’s higher than the rate last season, but it’s generally in line with winning percentages over the last few years.  In fact, for just about all of pro football history, teams have won around 73% of their games, plus or minus 5%.  But if you look closely enough, you can see a bit of a decline over time. Take a look: [continue reading…]

This year, teams are 126-51 when outrushing their opponents, for a 0.712 winning percentage. In the abstract, that doesn’t mean much, and I’ll take a historical look at this data tomorrow. But what about teams this year?

The 10-1 Eagles rank 2nd in rushing yards and 1st in rushing yards allowed, thanks to a dominant run defense and an offense that is usually playing with the lead. The Eagles have outrushed their opponents in 9 straight games, but in week 1 the Eagles beat Washington despite being outrushed 64-58, and in week 2, the Eagles lost to the Chiefs and were outrushed 112-107. The table below shows how often each team has outrushed its opponents this year: [continue reading…]