We knew the Washington Redskins would be awful this year, and the New York Giants are playing down to poor expectations, too. Both teams are 2-9 through 11 weeks, with one of those wins being a head-to-head Giants victory. The other three wins?

• The Giants beat Tampa Bay, 32-31, when the Bucs missed a 34-yard field goal at the final gun.
• The Redskins beat Miami, 17-16, when the Dolphins failed on a 2-point conversion attempt with 6 seconds remaining.
• Washington beat Detroit (playing backup Jeff Driskel), 19-16, with a game-winning field goal in the final 20 seconds.

The strength of the division was supposed to be Dallas and Philadelphia, but that hasn’t quite worked out, either. The Eagles have been big disappointments, particularly on offense (the team ranks in the bottom 10 in yards, yards per pass attempt, and turnovers): Philadelphia is just 5-6, and 4-5 outside of NFC East play. The Cowboys have played really well against bad teams and rank in 8th in both points per game and points per game allowed; and yet Dallas is just 6-6, with all 6 wins coming against teams with losing records. The Cowboys are 2-6 outside of the division, and have lost as touchdown favorites to both the Jets and Bills.

Altogether, the NFC East is just 9-24 this season in non-division games, easily the worst mark in the NFL. And this is despite the division drawing the AFC East, projected to be the worst division in football (again) this year. In fact, the AFC East has the second-best record among the 8 divisions, but there’s a chicken-or-egg situation going on here: does the AFC East have a good record because it’s good, or because it’s playing the NFC East? The AFC East is 10-4 against the NFC East so far this season. [continue reading…]

Ravens second-year quarterback Lamar Jackson has become the NFL’s most exciting player.  Jackson is combining rushing quantity at the quarterback position at a level that we’ve never quite seen before — at least, not in the NFL.  Jackson is tied for 5th in the NFL with 46 rushing first downs, but the Ravens a hardly a one-man show.  Starting running back Mark Ingram is also one of the 12 players in the NFL with 40+ rushing first downs, and backup Gus Edwards is one of the 16 players in the NFL with at least 30+ rushing first downs.

Baltimore has amassed 129 rushing first downs already this year; the 2018 Ravens set the modern record with 153 first downs last season, and this year’s team will smash that mark.  The most dominant rushing team in history was the 1978 Patriots, who rushed for a record 3,165 yards and also picked up a record 181 first downs.  Both of those marks are in jeopardy, as the 2019 Ravens are on pace to finish with 3,369 rushing yards and 188 first downs.

How insanely good are the Ravens at picking up first downs? The graph below shows each team this season, and the number of passing first downs (X-Axis) and rushing first downs (Y-Axis) from each offense. [continue reading…]

There have been 13 games this season where a team has allowed 100 or fewer passing yards. The San Francisco 49ers have caused 5 of those games.

Through 11 games, San Francisco has allowed just 1,506 passing yards. That’s the fewest by any team through 11 games since the 1989 Minnesota Vikings, and it’s the second lowest amount for any team after 11 games since 1980.

This year, the average team is gaining 235 passing yards per game, which is of course net of sack yards lost. The 49ers are allowing just 137 passing yards per game to opponents, for well, a variety of reasons:

• The 49ers have caused opponents to lose 348 yards due to sacks this year, the most in the NFL.
• The 49ers are allowing just 9.4 yards per completion, the lowest rate in the NFL.
• The 49ers have sacked opponents on 11.8% of dropbacks, the best rate in the NFL.
• The 49ers are allowing a 60.0% completion percentage, tied for the 2nd-best rate in the NFL. That’s why San Francisco is allowing just 4.0 net yards per pass attempt, the lowest in the NFL.
• Despite the 49ers usually playing with a lead, opponents appear afraid of throwing on San Francisco, probably because it is so hopeless.
• And yes, they’ve had some help: a driving rainstorm in a game against Washington, and a run defense that is actually quite porous. Teams have actually been more efficient running against San Francisco than throwing against that defense.

So how good is this pass defense through 11 games once you account for era — at least, in terms of preventing passing yards? Well, maybe the best ever? San Francisco is allowing 98.5 fewer passing yards per game than league average through 11 games, which is the best performance by any pass defense since 1950. The table below shows the top 100 pass defenses by this metric:
[continue reading…]

Previous Passing Stats:

• Week 1
• Week 2
• Week 3
• Week 4
• Week 5
• Week 6
• Week 7
• Week 8
• Week 9
• Week 10
• Week 11

The story of week 12 was the dominance of the 2018 quarterback class, which is now headlined by Lamar Jackson. The Ravens sensation had his second game with 4 or more passing TDs and at least 75 rushing yards in 8 days; there had only been six of those games in the NFL from 1950 until two weeks ago.

Sam Darnold had the best game of his career in a blowout over the Raiders. The Jets young quarterback averaged a career high 10.86 yards per attempt, threw two touchdowns and ran for a third, and took just one sack.

Baker Mayfield also had a dominant performance, putting together a 327-yard, 3-TD game while completing 71% of his passes. Yes, his opponent was the Dolphins, but it continued the second half trend that Darnold and Mayfield seem to be exhibiting.

Josh Allen had the weakest game of the bunch, but was still efficient in a Bills victory. He averaged 6.73 ANY/A as a passer, but also rushed 8 times for 57 yards (excluding kneels), picking up 4 first downs, including 3 on third down.

The table below shows the week 12 passing stats. In general, this was a pretty rough week for passing, other than the 2018 class and the annual “Ryan Tannehill did what?” week of the year. In particular, Jeff Driskel, Brandon Allen, and yes, Aaron Rodgers, had miserable games. [continue reading…]

Frank Gore keeps inspiring these posts. Yesterday, Frank Gore rushed for 65 yards, which gives him 19,155 yards from scrimmage for his career, moving him into 4th-place on the all-time list.

This was also his 149th game with at least 50 rushing yards, which moved him alone into 2nd place in that category, too.

Gore is 17 touches away from 4,000 touches, and 20 touches away from moving ahead of Curtis Martin into third place on that all-time list, too. But the stat that everyone is talking about now is that Gore moved ahead of Barry Sanders into third-place on the all-time rushing list.

And while Gore was not as dominant as Sanders or Smith or Payton, in some ways that makes what he’s done more remarkable. The graph below shows the career rushing yards, after game X, for each of the players who rank in the top 5 in career rushing yards. Nobody but Hall of Fame running backs can keep producing after 150 games, but that’s what Gore has done. He was never as talented as Sanders or Payton, but his durability, toughness, and consistency is just as remarkable as the talent that those two backs had.

Prior to Gore, only three running backs — Emmitt Smith, John Riggins, and Walter Payton — rushed for over 5,000 yards in their 30s. All are Hall of Famers, as are two (Marcus Allen, John Henry Johnson) who came up just short of the post-30, 5K mark. Gore had an excellent career in his 20s, and then became the best running back in his 30s in NFL history. The graph below shows the 100 leaders in rushing yards in history. The X-Axis shows career rushing yards in a player’s 20s; the Y-Axis shows career rushing yards in a player’s 30s. [continue reading…]

The most famous wide receiver MVP season belongs to Jerry Rice in 1987. That year was one of the most controversial AP MVP awards ever: Joe Montana was the AP’s first-team All-Pro choice, and Jerry Rice was widely considered the best player in the NFL. However, Montana (18 votes) and Rice (30) split the 49ers vote, allowing John Elway to win the AP award with 36 votes despite most people thinking Rice was better than Elway and most voters thinking Montana was better than Elway. That season, the Pro Football Writers of America, the Newspaper Enterprise Association & Jim Thorpe Athletic Club (voting as a collective entity), The Sporting News, Sports Illustrated, the Football Digest, the Maxwell Club of Philadelphia Bert Bell Award, the New York Daily News, and the Minneapolis Star Tribune (Robert Sansevere) all named Rice as their MVP that season, while only Peter King and the Associated Press chose Elway.

Rice was the last wide receiver to win a major MVP award, but he was not the first.

In 1941 and 1942, Don Hutson was the best player in football. In 1941, Hutson received 6 of 9 first place votes, beating out his passer Cecil Isbell, Sid Luckman, and Chicago’s Danny Fortmann (who you really should learn about) to win the award. In ’42, he once again received 6 of 9 first-place votes, this time beating out Bill Dudley and Sammy Baugh.

In 1955, Harlon Hill was named the NEA MVP. That season, Otto Graham won the United Press poll for MVP, picking up 13 of 30 votes, while Hill and Alan Ameche each grabbed 4 votes.

The AFL had a habit of giving its most valuable player award to wide receivers. In 1963, Lance Alworth had a breakout season, and won a close vote over his Chargers teammates to win the United Press International AFL player of the year award. Alworth earned 7 votes, Chargers running back Keith Lincoln and Chargers quarterback Tobin Rote had five each, and Raiders running back Clem Daniels earned the final three votes. Alworth was even better in 1965, but lost the AP MVP vote to Buffalo quarterback Jeff Kemp, 10-8.

In 1964, Patriots wide receiver — and placekicker — picked up 12 of 24 votes to win the UPI Player of the Year award. Cappelletti won the AP MVP that year, too, but neither the AP nor the UPI was considered the official AFL MVP award. That honor belonged to the Sporting News, and Cappy picked up 99 votes to win the official award, too (Alworth was the runner up with 44 votes).

Finally, in 1965 in the NFL, End Pete Retzlaff won the Bert Bell player of the year award, while Jim Brown swept the other major MVP awards.

As Saints wide receiver Michael Thomas continues his dominant season, I thought it would be worthwhile to look back at the past receivers to win a most valuable player trophy.

The Seattle Seahawks have been one of the biggest outliers in recent history when it comes to winning percentage and points differential. Seattle is 8-2, despite scoring 275 points and allowing 254 points. We can calculate a team’s expected winning percentage — it’s Pythagenpat winning percentage — by using a two-step formula.

First, we calculate the total points scored and points allowed in all Seahawks games (529) and divide it by the number of games played (10, leaving 52.9 total points scored per game). We then take that number and raise it to the 0.251 power, and get a result of 2.71. This is the exponent we use when calculating a team’s expected winning percentage using the traditional Pythagorean formula. The advantage here using this two-step process over a static exponent (like 2.37) is that it recognizes that higher-scoring games provide different environments than lower-scoring games. To calculate Seattle’s expected winning percentage, we would use this formula:

(Points Scored ^ Exponent) / [(Points Scored ^ Exponent) + (Points Allowed ^ Exponent)]

In Seattle’s case, that’s:

(275 ^ 2.71) / (275 ^ 2.71 + 254 ^ 2.71)

[continue reading…]

Players who are in their first three years in the league are responsible for a whopping 45% of all receiving yards this season. That is a new high in the modern era, and since the new CBA was signed in 2011, we have seen a trend of younger players being responsible for more receiving yards.

[continue reading…]

Which quarterbacks have provided the most passing value above average so far this season? The league is averaging 6.23 ANY/A so far this season, and passing value is calculated as simply ANY/A minus league average, with that difference multiplied by the number of dropbacks for each passer.

I am short on time today, so I’ll leave the commentary to you guys.

Stefon Diggs currently ranks 6th in the NFL in receiving yards, which is pretty remarkable given that he’s played on the least pass-happy team in the NFL. Minnesota has played 11 games, and ranks 32nd in pass attempts per game and 26th in total pass attempts. Diggs is averaging 2.75 yards for every Vikings pass attempt, the second-best average in the NFL behind Michael Thomas, who is the best receiver in the NFL.

Courtland Sutton is in a similar situation, except unlike Diggs, he is fighting both low volume and poor quarterback play.  A second round pick out of SMU last year, Sutton is having his breakout season with a combination of Joe Flacco and Brandon Allen at quarterback.  Denver has thrown just 322 passes this season, but Sutton is one of 10 players who have already hit the 800-yard receiving mark.  Sutton is averaging 2.50 yards for every Denver pass attempt; perhaps even more impressive is that he’s responsible for 35% of all Broncos receiving yards, 34% of all Denver first downs, and 44% of Broncos receiving touchdowns.

And then there’s John Brown, the breakout star of the Bills.  He has 35% of all Bills receiving yards this season and a whopping 40% of all Bills receiving first downs.  He is averaging 2.45 receiving yards per Buffalo pass attempt (817 receiving yards, 333 pass attempts).

The graph below shows every player in the NFL this season.  The X-Axis shows the number of pass attempts for that team; the Y-Axis shows the number of receiving yards for that play.  As you can see, Diggs, Sutton, and Brown really stand out (and next to them are Tyler Lockett at 793 yards on 327 Seahawks pass attempts and DeAndre Hopkins at 745, 333). [continue reading…]

Previous Passing Stats:

• Week 1
• Week 2
• Week 3
• Week 4
• Week 5
• Week 6
• Week 7
• Week 8
• Week 9
• Week 10

In week 16 of the 1983 season, Lynn Dickey, Ron Jaworski, Joe Theismann, and a rookie John Elway each threw 4 interceptions. Four quarterbacks throwing four interceptions apiece in a single week was unusual even for the early ’80s, and it is downright unheard of now.

Well, I should say *was* unheard of in modern times. Because in week 11, for the first time in 36 years, four quarterbacks threw at least four interceptions. It started on Thursday Night Football, when Mason Rudolph threw four interceptions against the Browns. On Sunday, Jameis Winston had a casual 4-INT game, and Kyle Allen’s recent downward spiral resulted in an ugly 0-TD, 5 sack, 4-INT game against the suddenly dominant Atlanta Falcons defense. Rudolph and Allen were the worst two quarteracks of the week. Finally, last night, Philip Rivers threw four in a loss to the Chiefs, with Daniel Sorensen making a great grab to seal the game and capture the final interception of the week.

It was only two weeks ago when passing offenses had the best interception week ever: teams threw just 12 interceptions on 952 passes, a 1.26% interception rate. This week, there were 29 interceptions thrown on 1038 passes, a 2.79% interception rate.

The full week 11 passing stats below: [continue reading…]

Here are Dak Prescott’s passing numbers over his last 16 games.

And even that doesn’t tell the full story, at least as far as this season goes. Prescott has 149 passing first downs this season on 377 dropbacks, a 39.5% passing first down rate. In fact, the Cowboys lead the NFL in passing first down percentage, despite “only” ranking 8th in completion percentage.

This chart is always one of my favorites: completion percentage on the X-Axis, and passing first down rate on the Y-Axis. [continue reading…]

Justin Tucker continues to be the best kicker in the NFL. He missed his first kick today, from 40 yards away, which was shocking. And that’s the point of today’s post: Tucker missing a 40-yard field goal is shocking.

His last 7 misses were from 65, 53, 48, 43, 46, 62, and 58 yards away. He had made 56 consecutive field goals from 40 yards and in, until the miss today against Houston. The graph below shows the result of every regular season field goal in Tucker’s career, from his first game in 2012 through week 10 of the 2019 season. [continue reading…]

So far this season, NFL teams are averaging about 6.4 net yards per pass attempt and 4.3 yards per carry. In addition, teams are passing on about 59% of all plays. I thought it might be interesting today to look at the distribution of the outcomes on rushing and passing plays.

For running plays, the analysis is pretty simple. About 12% of all rushing plays will lose yards, and another 9% of all rushing plays will gain zero yards. Said differently, close to 4 in every 5 rushing plays will gain positive yards. Note, of course, that quarterback scrambles are considered rushing plays for this analysis.

On the other hand, 42% of pass plays do not gain positive yards. So far in 2019, 6.9% of pass plays result in a sack and 33.1% of pass plays result in an incomplete pass, which means 60% of all pass plays (including sacks) result in a completed pass. In addition, about 2.7% of all pass plays result in a completion for either zero yards or negative yards. Add it all up, and on any given pass play in 2019, and there’s about a 3-in-7 chance that the passing team won’t be getting any yards. [continue reading…]

Patrick Mahomes, Russell Wilson, Lamar Jackson, Dak Prescott, and Deshaun Watson are all having great years, and all five players are in the running for the 2019 MVP award. Right now, Mahomes has been the most efficient of the group, but the story of the 2019 season isn’t about great passing offenses…. but the fact that great passing offenses aren’t the story of the 2019 season. (As an aside, Kirk Cousins and Minnesota are quietly number two in ANY/A this season).

The best passing offense, in terms of Adjusted Net Yards per Attempt, belongs to the Chiefs. So far this season, Kansas City is averaging 8.81 ANY/A, and the league as a whole is averaging 6.27 ANY/A.   So the Chiefs are averaging 2.54 ANY/A more than the average team this year.  That’s great, but what is noteworthy is that it is NOT that noteworthy this year.

The Jets passing offense is more extreme than the Chiefs passing offense.  New York is averaging an anemic 3.34 ANY/A this season, which means the Jets Relative ANY/A on offense is -2.93.  So we could say that the Jets passing offense is the most extreme this season of the 32 passing offenses.

But guess what: opponents facing the Bengals are also more extreme than Chiefs!  So far this season, Cincinnati is allowing a remarkable 8.99 ANY/A to opposing quarterbacks, which means [Insert Bengals Opponent] has been better at passing this year than Kansas City.  At -2.72 ANY/A, the Bengals pass defense is truly awful.

But wait, there’s more.  The Patriots pass defense is even more extreme than the Bengals pass defense. New England is allowing just 1.70 ANY/A this season, which is +4.57 ANY/A better than average!

The graph below shows how each team ranks in both offensive ANY/A (X-Axis) and defensive ANY/A (Y-Axis) relative to league average.  The best teams would be up and to the right, but that’s a generally empty box.  The worst teams are down and to the left, and we do have three teams there.

So while the passing attacks in Kansas City et al. are having great years, they aren’t more extreme than the Jets pass offense, the Bengals pass defense, or the Patriots pass defense.  And that is pretty unusual.  I went and calculated the best and worst passing offenses and defenses, as measured by Relative ANY/A, in each year since 1970.  Usually, extreme offenses are the biggest outliers, and in the positive direction.  In 22 of those seasons, the most extreme unit was the best passing offense; in 13 years, the worst passing offense was the most extreme.  The other 14 years were split evenly between the best and worst passing defenses. Take a look: [continue reading…]

Previously:

• Week 1 Game Scripts
• Week 2
• Week 3
• Week 4
• Week 5
• Week 6
• Week 7
• Week 8
• Week 9

In 1974, the Bengals — the Paul Brown/Bill Walsh/Ken Anderson Bengals — were running the West Coast Offense to perfection. Anderson completed a whopping 64.9% of his passes that season, setting a post-WWII record. But in the team’s final game of the season, with Anderson injured, the team turned to unheralded Wayne Clark at quarterback. Unfortunately, the schedule makers had the team’s final game in Pittsburgh, against the famed ’74 Steelers defense.

The Bengals were blown out, of course, and lost 27-3. Cincinnati trailed by at least 17 points at halftime, after three quarters, and at the end of the game. Naturally, this is a Game Script that would call for a lot of passes, but here’s the twist: the Bengals ran 41 times and passed just 8 times! Clark completed only 3 of those passes for 23 yards, with 2 of them going to TE Bruce Coslet — yes, that Bruce Coslet — for 24 yards; the third completion was a 1-yard loss to the running back.

Running 40 times in a game where you trail by 17 after the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th quarters should sound weird to you. In fact, this Bengals game was the only time since the merger that all those factors were met. I say was, because that was the case until Sunday, when the modern Bengals pulled off the same trick.

Cincinnati rushed 40 times, and Joe Mixon had 30 carries, in a game where the Bengals trailed 14-0 after the 1st quarter, 28-10 at halftime, and 49-10 after three quarters. How do you call 40 rushing plays in a game where you are getting blown out? One answer is that Cincinnati was starting Ryan Finley for the first time in his career, although Finley did not play all that poorly. The other answer is that the Bengals just didn’t care.

My favorite drive was with 5 minutes left in the 3rd quarter. Cincinnati took over at its own 25, trailing 42-10. Yes, down by 32 with 20 minutes to go is not a good situation, but most teams would at least try to put some points on the board. Here’s what happened.

Play 1: Mixon run left tackle for 0 yards.
Play 2: Pass to Mixon 1 yard ahead of the line of scrimmage; Mixon gains 13 yards of YAC.
Play 3: Mixon run right tackle for 3 yards.
Play 4: Mixon run left guard for 1 yard.
Play 5: 3rd-and-6, Finley pass, sack, fumble, returned for touchdown.

Maybe the Bengals knew what they were doing calling all those running plays.

The table below shows the week 10 Game Scripts, headlined by the Ravens +21.6 Game Script. [continue reading…]

Baltimore quarterback sensation Lamar Jackson is averaging 226.2 passing yards per game and 78.0 rushing yards per game so far this season.  That is… well, remarkable.  In fact, in the history of pro football, there has only been one player in NFL history to average 75 rushing yards and 75 passing yards per game: Orban “Spec” Sanders, playing for the New York Yankees in the AAFC in 1947.

The graph below shows the passing yards per game (X-Axis) and rushing yards per game (Y-Axis) for every player who played in at least 6 games from 1932 to 2018.  As you can see, Sanders really stands out.  For reference, I’ve also included Jackson’s 2019 season to date — he, too, is a pretty notable outlier. [continue reading…]

Previous Passing Stats:

• Week 1
• Week 2
• Week 3
• Week 4
• Week 5
• Week 6
• Week 7
• Week 8
• Week 9

Lamar Jackson has rushed 92 times for 716 yards, a 7.8 yards per carry average (excluding his 14 kneels for -14 yards). Jackson has rushed for 37 first downs, which is more than Leonard Fournette, Nick Chubb, or Christian McCaffrey. He is a remarkably effective runner, on the level of Michael Vick if not better, while also being an exceptionally efficient passer.

For the second time this season, Jackson posted a perfect passer rating. He’s in the top 10 on the season in both passer rating and ANY/A, and if anything, that probably underrates him. He’s also scrambled 28 times for 285 yards, which probably should be included in his passing numbers and would increase his ANY/A by over 0.2 yards per passing play.

The other notable thing from week 10 was that Patrick Mahomes and Dak Prescott continued to produce at an MVP level but lost. In the case of Mahomes, a lot of things had to go wrong: running back Damien Williams had a fumble returned for a touchdown, Tyreek Hill and Sammy Watkins had huge drops, the game-tying field goal was blocked, an earlier field goal attempt was aborted due to a botched snap, and the Chiefs defense was shredded by Derrick Henry.  Not to mention Andy Reid getting overly conservative and kicking three field goals on 4th-and-2 or 4th-and-3.  That’s how the Chiefs lost despite yet another brilliant game from Mahomes, who had exactly one drive end in a punt or a Mahomes turnover.

As for Prescott, the blame for the Cowboys loss can be equally shared among Ezekiel Elliott and the Dallas defense.  Elliott and Kalen Ballage (Dolphins) both had nearly identical stat lines in week 10: each back rushed 20 times and picked up 0 first downs, the most carries by any running back in 2019 in a game without a first down (Ballage rushed for 43 yards; Elliott 47).   Meanwhile, the Dallas defense allowed 28 points on the first 7 drives of the game, with the average drive beginning on Minnesota’s 24-yard line.

The table below shows the week 10 passing stats. [continue reading…]

Jared Goff has now played 51 games in his NFL career, including playoffs. And his last 16 games have not been pretty:

Putting aside the fumbles (which is an enormous issue for Goff), let’s just look at his passing stats. I calculated Goff’s Adjusted Net Yards per Attempt (which is his passing yards (net of sacks) plus 20 yards for every TD pass and minus 45 yards for every interception, divided by his pass attempts plus sacks) for every game in his career. I then calculated his Relative ANY/A to league average for that season for each game, too.

The graph below shows Goff’s Relative ANY/A in each game, along with his trailing 16-game Relative ANY/A average. I have also color-coded his playoff games, and highlighted a few notable games. [continue reading…]

Previously:

• Week 1 Game Scripts
• Week 2
• Week 3
• Week 4
• Week 5
• Week 6
• Week 7
• Week 8

[continue reading…]

This week, I appeared on the Wharton Moneyball Podcast on Sirius XM. You can listen here:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/wharton-moneyball-11-6-chase-stuart-coach-todd-golden/id1159695411?i=1000456092933

Or here: https://shows.pippa.io/5b69f70c0a0eca0c20692176/episodes/wharton-moneyball-116-chase-stuart-coach-todd-golden

A few years ago, when writing about Andrew Luck, I wrote that he didn’t have much help. Today, I am revisiting the topic of quarterback help, using Jimmy Garoppolo as our example (and we’ll compare him to Falcons quarterback Matt Ryan). Because so far this season, no quarterback has been placed in a more favorable situation than the 49ers quarterback.

Let’s start by recognizing that none of today’s analysis is about the quarterback himself; rather, it is about the situation that each team’s quarterback finds himself placed in. Let’s begin with Game Script.

Average Points Differential

Garoppolo has 266 plays this season: 226 pass attempts, 12 sacks, and 28 rushes.  On average, during each of those 266 plays, the 49ers have led by 5.4 points.  That makes life a lot easier for Garoppolo compared to just about every quarterback.  Matt Ryan, on the other hand, is constantly in a situation where the pressure is on for him to score: his average play has come with the Falcons trailing by 10.0 points. [continue reading…]

In March, I wrote about the shrinking middle class of quarterbacks: most teams were either paying superstar dollars to a quarterback or going with a cheap player still on a rookie contract. In fact, at the time of the article, there were just 7 teams that didn’t clearly fit that category: the Redskins (who had been paying Alex Smith and have since drafted Dwayne Haskins), the Dolphins (who appeared to be tanking on the quarterback position), and then five teams truly stuck in no man’s land: the Titans and Bucs, who were using their 5th-year option on Marcus Mariota and Jameis Winston, and the Bengals (still hanging on to Andy Dalton), the Jaguars (traded for Nick Foles), and the Broncos (traded for Joe Flacco).

At the halfway mark of the season, I wanted to check in on the league’s passing offenses by looking at two variables: salary cap dollars allocated to quarterbacks and offensive Adjusted Net Yards per Attempt. That is shown in the graph below.

Or, better yet, let’s redraw that graph. [continue reading…]

Analyzing wide receivers is complicated, so much so that I’ve devoted a tag here at FP to the project. In my opinion, there’s no one statistic we can use to grade receivers, so a holistic approach is best.

A great wide receiver should have a large percentage of his team’s passing pie. And a great wide receiver should make that passing offense effective. So from time to time, I look to compare how receivers look in these two metrics, and see who is standing out. The theory is simple: if you are a great wide receiver, you should have an outsized portion of that team’s passing offense, unless the supporting cast is so strong that well, the entire passing offense looks great. A wide receiver on a bad passing offense should have a huge percentage of his team’s production, so he’ll still look good here; a wide receiver on a great offense should fare well unless he’s only got a small piece of the pie, in which case he’s probably not having a great season. Regular readers will recall that this analysis is why I think Gary Clark‘s 1991 season is one of the best of all time.

So here’s what I did.

1) Calculate the Adjusted Net Yards per Attempt for each offense so far in 2019.

2) Calculate Adjusted Catch Yards, defined today as Receiving Yards + 20 * Receiving Touchdowns, for each player on each offense.

3) Divide each player’s Adjusted Catch Yards by his team’s total Adjusted Catch Yards; this shows what percentage of the pie each receiver is gobbling up.

There are 12 players who have at least 30% of their team’s Adjusted Receiving Yards this year. Michael Thomas, Mike Evans, Courtland Sutton, Cooper Kupp, Allen Robinson, Chris Godwin, John Brown, Stefon Diggs, Terry McLaurin, D.J. Chark, Amari Cooper, and Tyler Lockett. Of that group, only three — Lockett, Cooper, and Diggs — are playing on really good passing offenses, and Thomas, Kupp, and Chark are the only other ones on passing offenses that are above average. It’s safe to say that all six of these players are having really good years (at least when it comes to picking up receiving yards; Diggs has four fumbles, including three lost, that knock him down a few pegs). And while McLaurin and Robinson are playing on awful passing offenses, at least they are dominating the pie: they are saddled with bad quarterbacks, and there probably isn’t much either of them can do.

I’ve plotted every player with a reception so far in 2019 in the graph below.  The X-Axis shows the Relative ANY/A for that player’s passing offense — this is simply a measure of team pass efficiency, and is calculated as ANY/A minus league average ANY/A.  Players on the Jets are on the far left; players on the Seahawks and Chiefs are on the far right.

The Y-Axis shows the percentage of team’s Adjusted Receiving Yards by each player.  So Michael Thomas (38.8%) is at the top of the chart, Mike Evans is second (at -0.42, 36.0%) is the second highest point, etc.  In general, you want to be up and to the right on this chart.  The four players who stand out here are Thomas (+0.80, 38.8%), Amari Cooper (+1.57, 30.6%), Stefon Diggs (+2.16, 31.1%) and Tyler Lockett (+2.43, 30.3%). [continue reading…]

Previous Passing Stats:

• Week 1
• Week 2
• Week 3
• Week 4
• Week 5
• Week 6
• Week 7
• Week 8

There were no truly awful passing performances in week 9 of this NFL season. The 28 teams combined for a 98.8 passer rating and averaged 6.72 ANY/A, but one of the benefits of doing this each week is that you tend to notice weekly outliers. And this week, there were no *awful* passing performances. In 5 of the first 8 weeks of the 2019 season, at least one team had a negative ANY/A. In two others, at least one team had an ANY/A below 1.00. Week 1 of the 2019 season was an outstanding passing week, as you may recall, and the Bucs had the lowest ANY/A of the week at 1.51.

Daniel Jones was bad on Monday Night Football, but not abnormally bad. He averaged only 3.7 net yards per pass, which is of course terrible, but he had 1 TD and 1 INT. It was the sort of bad game that nobody will remember, and it was the worst passing performance of the week.

By traditional passing stats, Gardner Minshew probably ranks last, since he threw 0 TDs and 2 INTs. But Minshew threw for 309 yards and averaged 6.0 net yards per attempt. An ugly game, sure, but not a completely inept one. Here’s the crazy part: other than Minshew, Ryan Tannehill (who had a mediocre but not bad game) was the only other player to throw more INTs than TDs in week 9! That’s because the entire NFL — yes, the entire NFL — had a 1.26% interception rate in week 9! This week broke the single-week NFL record for INT%, previously set in week 8 of 2016 (1.27%). This week also smashed the record for TD/INT ratio, at a whopping 3.91. The previous high was 3.54, also set in week 8 of 2016.

But while it was a very good passing week, but it also was one without a superstar performance, either (Russell Wilson fans, please don’t @ me; he was excellent, but he averaged “only” 7.5 net yards per attempt, which brings down his ANY/A). This was the first week all year where no team averaged 11.0 ANY/A; the 49ers led the way at 10.26 ANY/A, which normally could never lead the league. So things were bunched in week 9, which was probably an outlier, but still merits watching going forward. And keep in mind this happened with Drew Brees, Matt Ryan, and Jared Goff (along with the Bengals) all on their bye weeks.

Below are the week 9 passing stats: [continue reading…]

The 1996 Green Bay Packers were one of the best teams in league history for a variety of reasons. They are one of just two teams since the merger to lead the league in both points scored and points allowed, joining the undefeated 1972 Miami Dolphins. ^[1]The Packers accomplished this feat against an essentially league-average schedule, while the Dolphins were one of three teams since the introduction of the playoffs who managed to go an entire … Continue reading

But the most historically notable performance from the Packers that season didn’t come from Hall of Fame quarterback Brett Favre. Nor was it from Hall of Fame defensive end Reggie White. In fact, it wasn’t anybody from either the offense or the defense. No, the Packer who really broke football in 1996 was their return specialist, Desmond Howard.

In 2014, Chase used a simple method to rank every punt returner in history. He took punt return yards, added a 15-yard bonus for any touchdown, divided by total return attempts, subtracted the leaguewide per-return average, and then multiplied by the number of returns to generate a sort of “value over average returner”. By that measure, Howard’s 1996 was, indeed, the most valuable season by a punt returner, though the difference between Howard (330 value) and second-place Patrick Peterson (321 value) was small, and if you pro-rated his performance to sixteen games, Billy “White Shoes” Johnson would come even closer still (328 value).

But for several reasons, Chase’s simple analysis underrates Desmond Howard’s 1996 campaign. I believe with the proper context, Howard’s 1996 season isn’t just the top punt return season in history, it’s possibly further ahead of second place than any player at any position has ever been ahead of the second-best historical season in any statistic.

To make my case, I’ll compare Howard’s season to the next-best seasons by Chase’s methodology, Devin Hester‘s 2007 and Patrick Peterson’s 2011. ^[2]I would love to add Johnson’s 1975 campaign as well, but I record-keeping in the ’70s wasn’t robust enough for these comparisons. Regardless, this list of seasons passes the smell … Continue reading

Looking at the raw statistics, Howard doesn’t really stand out. Howard (58/875/3) had more yards than Hester (42/651/4) and Peterson (44/699/4), but fewer touchdowns and fewer yards per return. Adjusting for era doesn’t change any of this: Hester averaged 6.6 more yards per return than the average punt returner (excluding Devin Hester) in 2007, Peterson averaged 6.2 more yards per punt return than the average punt returner in 2011, and Howard averaged 5.3 more yards per punt return than the average punt returner in 1996. If you multiply these values by the number of returns, Howard created 308 marginal yards vs. 279 for Hester and 273 for Peterson.

Howard had one fewer return touchdown, but return touchdowns were lower across the board in 1996. In total, Desmond Howard produced 23.1% of all punt return touchdowns during the 1996 regular season while Devin Hester produced 23.5% and Patrick Peterson 20% in their respective years. Again, everything to this point looks fairly comparable. You might think all three players were similarly effective and Howard simply cashed in on the fact that he had 30-40% more opportunities, a factor that was largely outside of his control.

(The one area where Howard does stand out from the other two is fumbles. In 2011, Patrick Peterson fielded 44 punts and fumbled three of them. In 2006, Devin Hester fielded 42 punts and fumbled five of them. Despite fielding 58 punts in 1996, Desmond Howard only fumbled one of them.)

Football Outsiders compares every return to league average and estimates how many points a unit was worth in any given season ^[3]The usual caveats apply; performance of an entire unit reflects the contributions of all eleven players on the field, etc.. In part because of Howard’s superior ball security, Football Outsiders values the 1996 Packers’ return unit as worth 25.3 points, the 2007 Bears’ as worth 18.0, and the 2011 Cardinals’ as worth 20.0. If you divide those point values by the total number of returns, the Packers gained 0.44 points per return, the Bears gained 0.41, and the Cardinals gained 0.43. By this measure, the Packers were slightly more efficient per opportunity, but again, all three returners were in the same ballpark.

There is one significant problem with using total punt returns as a measure of opportunity, however. Some returners are more conservative, calling fair catch or letting a punt bounce. Being more selective about which punts to return will boost a player’s per-return average. Other returners are more aggressive, trying to return everything they get their hands on, which hurts their average but results in more yards for their team.

If we instead we measure opportunity by the number of punts faced instead of the number of punts fielded, Desmond Howard actually had the least opportunity of the trio. The 1996 Green Bay Packers, despite their vaunted defense, forced 90 punts compared to 92 for the 2006 Bears and 94 for the 2011 Cardinals. This means the Packers punt return unit added 0.28 points of value per punt faced compared to 0.20 for the Bears and 0.21 for the Cardinals, a significant difference. (Alternately: Howard averaged 9.7 yards per punt, Peterson averaged 7.4, and Hester averaged 7.1.)

Of course, measuring player performance per punt presents challenges of its own. Opposing punters might deliberately kick shorter to prevent a return, which means the returner has impacted field position despite not touching the football. One way to attempt to control for this is to look at the gross and net punting averages of all punters to face each returner.

In 1996, the teams Green Bay played averaged 43.3 gross yards per punt over the whole year and 42.5 gross yards per punt against Green Bay. Teams that faced the 2007 Bears averaged 44.2 gross yards per punt over the whole season but just 40.5 per punt against Chicago. Teams that faced the 2011 Cardinals averaged 46.2 gross yards per punt over the whole season and 44.4 against Arizona. By this measure, Hester was probably the most-feared returner as punters seemingly went out of their way to avoid him, sacrificing a whopping 3.7 gross yards per punt against Chicago.

But what about net average? The teams that faced the 2011 Cardinals averaged 39.1 net punting yards, but that figure fell to 36.8 against Arizona, a drop of 2.3 yards per punt. The teams that faced the 2007 Bears averaged 37.2 net yards per punt over the whole season but just 33.1 against the Bears, a drop of 4.1 yards per punt. The teams that faced the 1996 Packers averaged 35.2 net yards per punt overall but just 31.2 yards per punt against the Packers, a drop of 4.0 yards.

Taken together, these stats tell a compelling story. Peterson’s year, while incredible, takes a clear back-seat to Howard and Hester. Hester was probably the most-feared returner of the trio, but the stats tell us that Howard’s Packers were just as effective at gaining field position and substantially better in terms of ball security. Everything leads to the same conclusion Chase originally reached: Howard’s 1996 campaign was (by a relatively thin margin) probably the best season by a punt returner.

Everything so far overlooks one crucial fact, though. To this point, we’ve looked only at each player’s regular-season performance. While a punt returner can’t reasonably be held liable for his team’s overall success and failure, Desmond Howard didn’t play just 16 games in 1996, he played 19. And while we shouldn’t penalize Hester and Peterson for not reaching the Super Bowl, we similarly shouldn’t pretend that those extra games never happened for Howard. As good as Howard was in the regular season, he was even better in the playoffs, facing 19 punts and returning 9 of them for 210 yards and one more touchdown (23.3 yards per punt returned, 11.1 yards per punt faced).

In just three playoff games, Howard managed to record what at the time were the 3rd- and 5th-highest single-game punt return yardage totals in postseason history. (They still rank 4th and 9th.) Out of 118 players with at least 6 punt returns in a single postseason, Howard’s 23.3 yard per return average is the best by 4.9 yards. (There are 132 more instances of a player having either four or five punt returns in a single postseason; Howard’s 23.3 yard per return average is better than all but two of these seasons, too.)

Moreover, Howard capped off his season by becoming the first and only player in history to win Super Bowl MVP for his contributions on special teams. A large part of that was based on a kickoff return touchdown (which is beyond the scope of this post), but he also set a still-standing Super Bowl record for punt return yards.

Overall, in 1996 Howard had the most regular-season punt return yards in history, the second-most playoff punt return yards in history, and the most Super Bowl punt return yards in history. Combined, Howard returned 67 punts for 1085 yards and 4 touchdowns, which isn’t just the highest total in history, it’s 46% more than second place.

Nobody has ever come close to the combination of volume and efficiency that Howard produced. Howard had the 2nd-most returns in history; of the top 50 seasons, Howard is the only player to average more than 13 yards per return. Counting regular season and playoffs there have been 126 players who fielded at least 45 punts in a season; only one other player (Jermaine Lewis for the 2000 Baltimore Ravens) is even over 14 yards per return, and no others are over 15. Again, Howard cleared 16.

There have been 975 seasons in history where a player returned at least 25 punts. Since a picture is worth a thousand words, I’ll close with two charts that hopefully help illustrate just how far ahead of the rest of the field Desmond Howard’s 1996 campaign truly was.

 

The last 100 years have shown us that the only constant in football is change, so I hesitate to call any record unbreakable. I will say that of all the records, this is one of the ones I’d be most surprised to see fall. In 1996, Desmond Howard didn’t just break records; for one season, he broke punt returns entirely.

You probably don’t think much about Vince Young these days, but I wrote a bit about him this summer. One thing that stood out to me about Young’s career was that for a running quarterback, he didn’t take many sacks. There are 20 quarterbacks since 1970 to rush for 1,000 yards and average at least 20 rushing yards per game in their careers; Young (5.98%) and Steve McNair (5.29%) are the only two quarterbacks with a sack rate below 6.5%.

Young’s best sack season was 2009, when he had just 9 sacks. Young actually finished with more rush attempts (55) than sack yards lost (36), which seemed basically impossible. Young remains the only player since at least 1970 to accomplish that fact, among quarterbacks with enough pass attempts to qualify for the passing title.

For his career, Young had 3.4 rush attempts for every sack, which is outstanding and the best mark among quarterbacks with at least 500 pass attempts (Tim Tebow was at 4.8, but he had just 361 pass attempts). But Lamar Jackson is hot on Young’s heels, and is quickly establishing himself as the best combination of rushing threat/sack avoider in NFL history.

Last year, Jackson didn’t qualify for the passing title, but he was even more impressive than 2009 Young when it came to sack yards lost and rushing attempts. As a rookie, Jackson had 147 rushing attempts and lost just 71 yards to sacks! Along with ’09 Young, he became just the third player with at least 6 times as many rushing attempts as sacks, minimum 150 pass attempts.

Jackson averaged 43.4 rushing yards per sack, which is basically an unfathomable number for a quarterback. And this year, Jackson’s sack rate has dropped from 8.6% to 7.3%; and while he’s running less, his rushing yards to sack ratio is still outstanding.

The top four seasons since 1970, minimum 100 pass attempts, in rushing yards to sacks are:

1) Lamar Jackson, 2018 (43.4 to 1)
2) Lamar Jackson, 2019 (33.9 to 1) [current through week 8]
3) Steve Young, 1991 (31.9 to 1)
4) Vince Young, 2009 (31.2 to 1)

For his career, Jackson is averaging 7.0 rushing attempts per sack. Tebow is at 4.8, Ray Lucas at 3.5, Young at 3.4, and then Kordell Stewart is fifth at 3.3. It is just as, if not more dramatic, when we look at rushing yards per sack.

Lamar Jackson is the leader at 38.5, followed by Tim Tebow at 24.1, Terrelle Pryor at 20.2, Michael Vick at 19.3, a young Josh Allen at 18.4, and then Vince Young at 17.6.

Some of Jackson’s crazy numbers here are just the result of him being the most rushing-heavy quarterback in modern history. He’s averaging an absurd 55 rushing yards per game for his career and an even more absurd 81 rushing yards per game since becoming a starting quarterback. But most of the other really run-oriented quarterbacks had bad sack rates: Tebow was at 10.2%, Bobby Douglass 12.2%, and Michael Vick was at 9.8% when with the Falcons. Jackson is at 7.9%, and I’ll be curious to see if he can keep this going.

I’ll close with a graph showing all quarterbacks since 1970 with at least 224 pass attempts. The X-Axis shows career rushing yards per game, while the Y-Axis shows career sack rate. See if you can spot Jackson.

And yes, it was important to get this in before Jackson faces the Patriots this weekend.

Yesterday, we looked at the pass identities of each offense. Today, we will use the exact same methodology to examine NFL defenses. We would expect defenses to have less control over their pass identity than offenses, because of the obvious fact that it’s the offense that gets to choose whether to pass or run. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t some interesting outliers.

Let’s begin with the Houston Texans, who have a basically neutral team. The Texans blew out the Falcons by 21 points, but otherwise have been in all one-score games. In fact, despite a 5-3 record, the Texans actually have a slightly negative Game Script of -0.6. So you would think opposing teams would pass a normal amount against them. You would be wrong: Houston opponents have passed on 66% of all plays this year, the second-highest rate in the NFL behind only the Patriots (against whom opponents are forced to pass from the opening gun).

Why? Well, the Texans have a pretty bad pass defense and a pretty good run defense. Given that in general it’s smarter to pass than to run, and the Texans offense is pretty explosive, you can see why teams tend to pass against Houston. To particularly egregious examples: the Chiefs passed on 77% of plays, and the Chargers 74%, in their games against Houston. In both games, the Texans had a -2.4 Game Script. In both games, Houston trailed 10-0, but their opponents threw on 3 out of every 4 plays. That says a lot about the Texans secondary, and maybe also fear of the Houston offense.

Conversely, we have the San Francisco 49ers. Despite having the second best Game Script in the NFL and an undefeated 7-0 mark, teams have passed on only 60.1% of all plays against San Francisco this year (through 8 weeks, at least; this was written prior to the Thursday Night Game). Teams appear afraid of throwing against the 49ers, and it appears with good reason: the team’s pass defense has been dominant.

The graph below shows each pass defense this season. The X-axis shows Game Script, and the Y-Axis shows pass ratio by that team’s opponents. I have shaded the Texans and 49ers data points, along with the Jets. It’s not all that interesting because of how bad the Jets have been, but the Jets actually have the strongest pass identity of any defense this season, even more than Houston. More on them in a moment. [continue reading…]

The graph below shows the Game Script (X-Axis) and Pass Ratio (Y-Axis) for every game this season. For new readers, a team’s Game Script is simply its average margin of lead (or deficit) over every second of a game. Pass ratio is simply passing plays (pass attempts plus sacks) divided by all offensive plays (pass attempts + sacks + rushing attempts).

As you can see, there’s a clear relationship between the two variables: on average, the better the Game Script, the lower the Pass Ratio.

We can also create season ratings of Game Scripts and Pass Ratios for each team. Let’s use the Patriots and Eagles as examples.

New England has had an average Game Script across its 8 games of +13.1. This year, New England’s pass ratio in those 8 games is 58.2%. Philadelphia has had an average Game Script of -2.2, and a pass ratio of 55.0%. It might strike you as odd to see that New England has a higher pass ratio — i.e., it’s passed more frequently — than Philadelphia. It should! That’s because New England has the strongest passing identity in the NFL, while the Eagles have the strongest rushing identity in the NFL.

The Patriots have, by far, the best average Game Script this season; all else being equal, you might expect New England to therefore have the lowest pass ratio in the NFL. Instead, the team is barely below average, ranking 19th in percentage of passing plays. Philadelphia has the 25th-best Game Script this year, as the Eagles had a -4.4 Game Script against Atlanta, a -4.9 GS against Detroit, a -9.9 vs. Minnesota and a -14.8 against Dallas. And yet the Eagles have just the 25th-best highest passing ratio in the league! That’s very run-heavy, as noted yesterday.

The graph below shows the Game Script (X-Axis) and Pass Ratio (Y-Axis) of each offense this season. I have shaded in team colors the Patriots and Eagles data points: [continue reading…]