October 5th, 1924 was not the most exciting day in pro football history. The Cardinals defeated the Packers 3-0 in a game that was representative of things to come. Elsewhere, the Duluth Kelleys beat the Minneapolis Marines 3-0, the Akron Pros won in Rochester against the Jeffersons by a 3-0 score, and the Milwaukee Badgers hosted and defeated the Kansas City Blues by the score of — you guessed it — three to zero. It was the only time in NFL history that four games all finished with the same score on the same day. [continue reading…]

The New England Patriots, New York Giants, New York Giants and Philadelphia Eagles are undeniably in the northeast. I think most would include the Buffalo Bills are as well, although they do play in western New York. The state of Pennsylvania is commonly included in the northeast, but I don’t think it’s reasonable to include Pittsburgh, on the western border, in as a team in the northeast. The Baltimore Ravens are only 100 miles away from Philadelphia, but they are also only 40 miles from Washington, D.C., and no sensible definition of “Northeast” should include the nation’s capital.

So I’m going to stick with the NE-NYG-NYJ-PHI-BUF pairing as the definition of Northeast football. And only two years ago, it looked really bad: [continue reading…]

From 2002 to 2021, NFL teams converted 38.9% of all third down attempts. Third down performance is really meaningful when it comes to winning games, but it can also be pretty random from sample to sample. So as a result, third down performance has an outsized performance on who wins and loses that game, but is probably not all that predictable as to who will win the next game.

I thought it would be interesting to look at this in the context of the pre-game point spread. Let’s start with a few basic numbers, looking at this 20-year period.

• Teams that were favored by 1 to 5.5 points won 58.7% of their games.
• Teams that were favored by 6 to 8 points won 73.6% of their games.
• Teams that were favored by more than 8 points won 83.4% of their games.

But let’s say you know that the favorite would lose the third down battle. How does that change things?

• Teams that were favored by 1 to 5.5 points but were worse on third downs won only 43.4% of their games.
• Teams that were favored by 6 to 8 points but were worse on third downs won only 54.2% of their games.
• Teams that were favored by more than 8 points but were worse on third downs won 68.2% of their games.

Now, saying an underdog just needs to win the third down battle is not very helpful, and only a little more precise (and about as useless) as saying they just need to score more points. But it does help to provide some guardrails about the magnitude of third down performance. It can flip a big favorite into a coin flip, and a huge favorite suddenly has a real chance of losing.

Can we quantify exactly how important third down success is? I’m glad you asked. As we know, each team has a 38.9% chance of converting an average third down. Suppose each team has 15 third down attempts in the game. Let’s say one team coverts 10 of 15, while the other only converts five opportunities. The expected number of third down conversions for both teams is 5.8 (0.389 multiplied by 15), so one team converted 4.2 more first downs than expected, while the other converted 0.8 fewer than expected. The net difference, of course, is five conversions — let’s call that the net third downs added. [continue reading…]

The Minnesota Vikings have played a lot of close games this season.  In fact, all but one of their games was decided by 8 or fewer points, and the average margin of victory — regardless of who won the game — has been just 5.15 points.

[continue reading…]

Every year, I publish a color-coded version of the NFL schedule the night it is released. Tonight is that night.

Download the Excel file here. [continue reading…]

It was just three years ago that the New York Jets decided they absolutely needed to trade into the top 3 of the 2018 NFL Draft. The decision was bad at the time and looks worse in hindsight: not only did New York whiff by drafting Sam Darnold, one of the biggest draft busts in recent history, but the Jets could have taken either Josh Allen or Lamar Jackson with the team’s original pick.

The package that New York sent to Indianapolis for the 3rd pick was massive: New York sent the 6th overall pick (Quenton Nelson), along with the 37th (Braden Smith) and 49th (Dallas Goedert) picks, plus a 2019 2nd round pick (34th overall, Rock Ya-Sin) for the rights to acquire whoever would be there at three. The Jets got “lucky” in that Darnold, for much of the pre-draft process considered the presumptive first overall pick, was even available to them at three. As I wrote at the time, the Jets chose the rights to the third quarterback ^[1]Which, after the Giants drafted Saquon Barkley, turned into the second available quarterback. available in the draft over getting Lamar Jackson plus four second round picks. It has worked out to such a poor degree that the Jets are one month away from using the #2 overall pick that the Darnold-led Jets very much earned on Darnold’s successor.

Well, the 49ers decided what was bad for the Jets would be good for them. Because San Francisco decided to acquire Miami’s 3rd overall pick in the 2021 NFL Draft — ostensibly the right to select the third quarterback in the draft after the Jaguars and Jets have their picks — for a similarly enormous haul. San Francisco sent the 12th overall selection, along with its 1st and 3rd round picks in 2022, and its first round pick in 2023 in exchange for that third overall selection.

Can we calculate just how much the 49ers overpaid for the rights to the third pick? Under my draft value chart, the 3rd pick is worth 27.6 points while the 12th pick is worth 18.8 points; of course, those are just average values, and the 49ers feel like the dropoff in quality between a quarterback available at 3 and a quarterback available at 12 is enormous.

Let’s assume that the 49ers two first round picks will be average; pick 16 is valued at 16.9 points. If we assume a 10% discount rate on future picks for each season, that puts those two picks at 15.2 and 13.5 points, respectively. The 49ers are also sending a 2022 3rd round pick which is a comp pick (in this case, compensation for the Jets hiring Robert Saleh as head coach); that pick should be right around pick 100, worth 5.3 points. Apply a 10% discount, and we get 4.8 points.

So the 49ers gave up draft picks worth 18.8, 15.2, 13.5, and 4.8 points, for a total of 52.3 points. That is, obviously, a significant package, equivalent to the first overall pick in the draft plus another top-15 pick. To move up from 12 to 3, the 49ers gave up more than the Jets did when they moved up from 6 to 3; the Jets overall sent more total value to draft Darnold than San Francisco did to draft QB3 this year, but overall, the teams are pretty similar: [continue reading…]

The 2020 Atlanta Falcons starting offensive linemen were all former first round picks. Atlanta drafted right guard Chris Lindstrom and right tackle Kaleb McGary in the first round of the 2019 Draft, five years after using the 6th overall pick on Texas A&M left tackle Jake Matthews. In 2016, Atlanta signed center Alex Mack, the 21st pick in the 2009 Draft, away from the Browns to a monster deal; he’s been the center of the team’s offensive line ever since. And in the 2019 offseason, the left guard spot was pugged by James Carpenter, who had been a first round pick out of Alabama and then played four seasons each with the Seahawks and Jets.

It should go without saying that that is a lot of highly drafted offensive linemen for one team, even if Atlanta only drafted three of the players. ^[1]The Falcons also had five first round picks on offense outside of the offensive line: the Falcons drafted QB Matt Ryan, WR Julio Jones, and WR Calvin Ridley in the first round, too, and added former … Continue reading Let’s compare them to the Green Bay Packers, who had arguably the best offensive line in the NFL and trotted out the following starting five:

• LT David Bakhtiari (4th round pick by the Packers in 2013)
• LG Elgton Jenkins (2nd round pick by the Packers in 2019)
• C Corey Linsley (5th round pick by the Packers in 2014)
• RG Lucas Patrick (undrafted free agent out of Duke signed by the Packers in 2017)
• RT Billy Turner (3rd round pick by the 2014 Dolphins, signed by Green Bay in the 2019 offseason)

The Packers had one of the least heralded group of offensive linemen in the league — at least from a draft perspective (in other news, the entire left side of the line made the Pro Bowl). How does that compare to the rest of the NFL? [continue reading…]

Adam Steele is back for another guest post. You can view all of Adam’s posts here. As always, we thank him for contributing.

With the 2020 NFL playoffs having just concluded, now seems like a great time to tackle a question I’ve had for years: How strongly does quarterback performance correlate with team success in the postseason?

First, we need to measure quarterback performance. I graded each playoff start on a 0-4 scale, with zero being terrible and four being dominant. I chose this because it matches the academic GPA scale we’re all familiar with. The grade is based on performance while adjusting for era, opponent, weather, and other contextual factors.

Now you may be wondering why I don’t just use stats to grade games. Well, for the tiny sample of a single game stats can be very misleading, especially given the opponent and weather extremes we tend to see in the playoffs. I also prefer a rough instrument for this study so parsing all games into five buckets is ideal.

I included all quarterbacks with six or more playoff starts, giving us a sample of 69 players and 745 graded games. We’ll look at individual quarterbacks later, but for now let’s evaluate the big picture: [continue reading…]

In 2020, Derrick Henry had a monster season, rushing for 2,027 yards. In an era where the game continues to shift more to passing every year, Henry’s effort was truly remarkable. It’s also interesting that Buffalo WR Stefon Diggs led the NFL with 1,535 receiving yards.

That made 2020 a bit unusual: in recent seasons, the player with the most receiving yards tends to have a higher number than the player with the most rushing yards. That’s a reversal of how things used to be. The graph below shows the NFL’s rushing and receiving king in each season, and how many rushing or receiving yards they gained. For non-16 game seasons, the numbers were pro-rated to a 16-game era. [continue reading…]

The Saints have been defined by Sean Payton and Drew Brees for 15 years. And because of that, we tend to think about the Saints as a team that won a Super Bowl — even if the New Orleans championship team was over a decade ago.

The current Saints team — with offensive stars like Alvin Kamara and Michael Thomas, and a host of talented defensive players (Demario Davis,  Cameron Jordan, Marcus Williams and Marshon Lattimore, among others) — has not tasted championship success despite a remarkable amount of regular season success. In fact, they haven’t even made the Super Bowl. And with Brees now retiring, it looks like the curtain will close on what is easily the best four-year run in New Orleans regular season history.

Over the last four years, New Orleans has the most wins of any team (49), scored the second-most points behind Kansas City, and allowed the fifth fewest points.

Such great regular season success often results in a championship or two, and almost always results in a Super Bowl appearance. The Saints have a 0.766 winning percentage over the last four seasons, making them just the 4th franchise in the Super Bowl era to have such a high level of regular season success without making it to a Super Bowl.

The Dallas Cowboys from 1966 to 1969 had a similar streak of disappointing endings. In ’66, Dallas went 10-3-1 with the best offense in football; they lost to the Lombardi Packers in the NFL title game, the first time such game was the precursor to the Super Bowl. In ’67, Dallas went 9-5 but lost to the Packers in the Ice Bowl, again on the doorstep of the Super Bowl. In 1968, Dallas went 12-2, beating the Browns easily in the regular season but losing to them in the playoffs.

Don Meredith had led Dallas to a 27-9-1 mark from ’66 to ’68, but was embarrassed by Cleveland in the ’68 postseason, going 3 for 9 for 42 yards with three interceptions before being benched. At 31 years old, Meredith retired after the season. Enter Craig Morton, who led the ’69 Cowboys to an 11-2-1 mark in 1969… before the team again saw their season end at the hands of the Browns. Four seasons, a 0.768 winning percentage, and no Super Bowl appearances. The next year, Morton (with some help from Roger Staubach) and Dallas went 10-4 and finally reached it to the title game… before losing to the Colts. The year after, in 1971, Staubach helped Dallas finally reach the mountain top, winning Super Bowl VI.

The Oakland Raiders had a similar rough stretch from ’72 to ’75. In 1972, under Daryle Lamonica, the Raiders went 10-3-1 and ended the year on a 6-game winning streak. In the playoffs, it took the Immaculate Reception to defeat Oakland. In 1973, Ken Stabler became the starter, and while the Raiders would go 9-4-1 and avenge the playoff loss to Pittsburgh in the ’73 postseason, Oakland would still come up short against the defending Super Bowl champion Dolphins, who would repeat in ’73. In 1974 the Raiders went 12-2 and led the NFL in scoring; they would get their revenge against Miami in a memorable way in the playoffs, but once again were bested by the Steelers in the postseason. In 1975, Oakland had another great regular season that ended in a third straight loss in the AFC Championship Game, again to the Steelers. Over that 4-year run, the Raiders had a 0.768 winning percentage, but no Super Bowl appearances. Finally, in year five, Oakland would go 13-1, beat a depleted Steelers team in the playoffs, and then make — and win — their first Super Bowl.

The last franchise to discuss had a much longer run of frustration and did not ever result in redemption. The Los Angeles Rams from ’73 to ’76 had a 0.795 winning percentage, while the ’75 to ’78 squads went won 76.7% of their games. The ’67 to ’70 Rams also qualify with a 0.768 winning percentage during that four year run. Guard Tom Mack was on the Rams from ’66 to ’78; Merlin Olsen was a Ram from ’62 to ’77, so let’s call these the Mack/Olsen Rams.

Let’s look at the Rams from ’66, when Roman Gabriel took over as the starting quarterback, through the end of the ’70s. There was a constant shuffling of coaches and quarterbacks during the Mack/Olsen era,

The ’75 to ’78 Rams won 77% of their games and lost in the NFC Championship Game three times. From ’67 to ’70, Los Angeles twice missed the playoffs despite strong seasons, and twice lost in the division round to the eventual NFC Champion. But the period from ’73 to ’76 takes the cake: L.A. went 44-11-1 in the regular season but never made it to the Super Bowl. Minnesota went 45-10 and made it to three Super Bowls during this window, with Dallas (who beat the Rams in the playoffs in ’75) earning the other NFC appearance.

And then we have the Saints. New Orleans has won 11, 13, 13, and 12 games over the last four seasons. The 2017 season ended with the Minnesota Miracle; in 2018, the Saints earned the #1 seed but lost to the Rams in the NFC Championship Game, with a key defensive pass interference by Rams cornerback Nickell Robey-Coleman going uncalled. In 2019, New Orleans went 13-3 in the rare year where that landed them the three seed. That bad luck continued, with wildcard Minnesota once again upsetting the Saints and ending their season. And finally, in 2020, the Saints swept the Bucs in the regular season and earned the #2 seed in the NFC, but lost the third game against Tampa Bay in the Division Round.

The 2018 Draft Class was hailed as one of the best of all time. Where do things stand after three years? At a high level, it looks like there are three winners and two losers — after all, three of those quarterbacks will be starting games this weekend in the division round of the playoffs, while the other two were huge busts for their drafting team. But let’s dig a little deeper:

• Baker Mayfield was the first overall pick and has had an up-and-down run with Cleveland. Overall, he’s done enough to show that he deserves to keep the starting job, but he has not had a top-10 quarterback season since entering the league. Probably a bit below the expectations that come with the number one overall pick, but Cleveland fans are not unhappy.
• Sam Darnold was the third overall draft pick, selected by the New York Jets. It has not gone well.
• Josh Allen was the 7th overall pick and is probably the toughest player to evaluate. He was awful as a rookie, bad as a second-year player, and then played like a top-5 quarterback in 2020. He looks like a big win for Buffalo, and he adds a lot of value as a runner; that said, as a passer, he’s actually been below average over the course of his three seasons.
• Josh Rosen has been the clear worst quarterback of the group, and his team moved on from him after just one year. Rosen has been worse than Darnold on a per play basis, but given that Arizona replaced him with Kyler Murray, you could argue that the Cardinals were hurt less by the Rosen pick than the Jets were with Darnold. Rosen has been a fast burn, like a Johnny Manziel, while Darnold more fits the Joey Harrington or Rick Mirer slow burn mold.
• Lamar Jackson is the quarterback least capable of being evaluated solely as a passer, because he’s been the most dynamic runner in the NFL since he entered the league. Still, he’s been a very good passer through three seasons, and has clearly been the most productive quarterback through three years.

The graph below shows all quarterbacks drafted over a 50-year period, from 1969 to 2018. The Y-Axis shows how much passing value over average they produced — calculated by taking each quarterback’s Adjusted Net Yards per Attempt average relative to league average in each season, and multiplying that by the number of dropbacks. The X-Axis shows each player’s draft value, which is based on their draft selection. The more highly drafted players are on the left side of the chart, while the later picks are on the right side of the chart. For the 2018 1st round quarterbacks, I made their bubbles larger and color-coded them by team.

And here is the full dataset; the table is sortable and searchable.

Darnold and Rosen grade out as two of the five worst passers through three seasons in the entire study, although a pair of Jaguars have them both beat.

It is hard to beat a good team three times in a season, they say. Since the 1970 NFL Merger, there have been 21 instances where a team swept a team in the regular season and then had a third battle in the playoffs. The sweeping team has gone 14-7 in those games, which means it must not be *that* hard to beat a playoff team three times in a season. ^[1]For the historians out there, in the ’60s, the sweeping team went 3-1: the ’63 Chargers swept the Patriots and then beat them in the AFL Title game, the ’64 Bills pulled off that … Continue reading

It is worth noting that in 4 of these 21 trio of games, the sweeping team was on the road in the postseason. ^[2]The ’84 Seahawks swept the Raiders but finished three games behind them in the standings and lost in the playoff game, the ’92 Chiefs went 10-6 and swept the 11-5 Chargers and lost in San … Continue reading In the 17 instances where the postseason home team swept their playoff opponent during the regular season, the home teams went an impressive 12-5 in those games. The home team was, as you would expected, favored in all 17 games, with an average points spread of 5.8 points.

In the season opener, the Saints beat the Bucs by 11 points, and then the Saints shocked Tampa Bay on the road in the rematch, 38-3. Drew Brees threw 6 touchdowns and had no interceptions in the two games, while Tom Brady threw just 2 touchdowns and 5 interceptions while averaging just 5.13 net yards per attempt in those games. New Orleans won the two games by an average of 23 points a remarkable amount even for a two-game sweep. But it probably doesn’t mean much: there were three teams in our 17-paired sample where the sweeping team averaged a 17-point win or better during the regular season; shockingly, those teams went 0-3 in the playoff rematch.

The graph below shows the average margin of victory (on the X-Axis) for the sweeping team in the regular season, along with the results in the playoff game on the Y-Axis. Obviously if the dot is below the 0 line on the Y-Axis, that means the sweeping team lost in the postseason.

So yes, the Saints sure seem well equipped to handle Tampa Bay based on their dominant performance in the regular season. But I think it is probably best just to ignore that; for the most part, the sweeping teams usually win because they were the better team in the regular season and were at home in the playoffs. In this case, New Orleans is a 3-point favorite in the rematch, a pretty low number due to the low homefield advantage in this COVID-19 world and the extremely similar points differential the two teams had during the regular season.  I agree with Vegas: I’d make New Orleans the favorite, but this game feels close to a toss up.  And while I wouldn’t put much stock in the Saints regular season sweeps, I certainly would ignore any analysis that says it’s hard to go 3-0 against a good team.  Once you go 2-0, it’s actually not that hard!

The table below shows the 17 trio of games discussed above. Again, the home playoff team after sweeping their postseason opponent has gone 12-7 since the merger. The table below also includes links to all three games.

As always, please leave your thoughts in the comments.

The Colts have played 47 playoff games in franchise history, including 5 games apiece against the Steelers, Chiefs, and Patriots. But until today, the Colts have never played the Bills in a playoff game, one of just two AFC teams (Jacksonville) that the Colts have never played in the postseason.

The Bills have played 31 playoff games, including against the Dolphins four times. Buffalo has played a postseason game against all but two AFC teams: the Colts and the Ravens.

For half of Buffalo’s history, the Colts were a division rival; but the two teams were rarely both good at the same time. The graph below shows each team’s winning percentage in each season since 1960.

In ’64 and ’65, the Bills won the AFL Championship both seasons, while the Colts were one one of the top NFL contenders. Of course, the two leagues wouldn’t first play until the following season. At least one of the teams — usually Buffalo — had a losing record for most of the next two decades. The Bills would have a decade long stretch under Jim Kelly when they were a perennial contender, while the Colts were having mostly down seasons.

In 1999, the Bills went 11-5 under Doug Flutie while the Colts and Peyton Manning went 13-3; both teams lost in notable fashion to the Titans in the playoffs. This year, those records are reversed, but along with ’64 and ’65, ’99 and ’20 are the only seasons in 60 years where both teams went 11-5 or better (or the same winning percentage in a non-16 game season). The Colts had a long run of success under Manning while the Bills were having down years.

But today, the longtime AFC East rivals will finally play in a playoff game.

Cordarrelle Patterson just become the first player to be named a first-team All-Pro returner by the Associated Press for the fourth time in his career. Patterson is on the Mount Rushmore of all time great returners, as he has dominated this era of kickoff returners in outlandish fashion. And he continues to rack up the postseason honors to go with his tremendous return averages, even if it come with a bit of an asterisk.

The Associated Press began naming an All-Pro kickoff returner in 1976; despite the name, it’s far from clear whether the voters drew a distinction between punt and kickoff returns. ^[1]In 2011, Patrick Peterson received the most votes of any kickoff returner, and he was therefore the first-team All-Pro selection. Only problem: Peterson, who had a magnificent year as a punt … Continue reading That was due in large part to some great returners beginning to enter the league. The previous year, Cardinal Terry Metcalf set an NFL with 2,462 all-purpose yards, and he ranked 3rd in punt return average and 2nd in kickoff return average. In Houston, Billy Johnson, of white shoes fame, had three punt returns for a touchdown in 1975. Pro Football Weekly named Johnson as its All-Pro returner that year, and beginning in ’76, the AP followed suit with a special slot dedicated to kickoff returners.

In the inaugural year, Denver’s Rick Upchurch earned first-team All-Pro honors from the Associated Press; that would happen two more times in his career. In the ’90s, Mel Gray also earned 3 first-team All-Pro returner nods from the Associated Press, and Devin Hester (’06, ’07, ’10) would later become the third player to earn three such honors. [continue reading…]

After every year, I like to post the full results of the Associated Press voting for the All-Pro team, as the voting numbers are much more valuable than the binary answer to the question of whether or not a player was an All-Pro.

You were probably just getting to the new 2016 rules changes: that year, the AP decided to remove the fullback position in place of a “Flex” spot that goes to a running back, wide receiver, or tight end.  On defense, a “Defensive Back” spot was added

Historically, the voting has been wildly inconsistent at different positions, which has led to numerous embarrassing examples.  This year, the FLEX position and the Defensive Back position have been removed, with 3 WRs being selected and just one fewer defensive player. There were no positional issues this year, but the second-team process remains a joke. Raiders TE Darren Waller had 107 receptions for 1,196 yards and 9 touchdowns but was not a second-team pick.  He would likely have been a unanimous second-team pick if the All-Pro team had an actual second team; instead, because the first-team pick was unanimous, there is no second-team tight end selected.

The full results below.  The first-team picks are bolded. [continue reading…]

Previously:

• Week 1 Passing Stats
• Week 2
• Week 3
• Week 4
• Week 5
• Week 6
• Week 7
• Week 8
• Week 9
• Week 10
• Weeks 11 and 12
• Week 13
• Week 14
• Week 15
• Week 16

Week 17 was understated this year; with several playoff spots locked up, many teams rested starters and treated this like the final week of the preseason. With nothing to play for, the Eagles benched their starting quarterback midway through the game, putting in third stringer Nate Sudfeld. P.J. Walker, Chad Henne, and Mason Rudolph, saw significant action this week, while the Rams and Cardinals played one of the few meaningful games but with John Wolford and Chris Streveler as the starting quarterbacks. Remarkably, it was still a pretty good passing week for the NFL: the league averaged 6.30 ANY/A and a 91.8 passer rating in week 17.

The 5-10 Lions faced the 6-9 Vikings in a true meaningless game that turned out to be the most entertaining game of the early window. Kirk Cousins threw for over 400 yards and had a passer rating over 125; that happened only 6 times in the entire decade of the ’90s, but was the fifth time it happened in the 2020 season.

Perhaps just as impressive was Aaron Rodgers in the afternoon game; he threw for a first down on 52% of his dropbacks, including four touchdown passes, in an easy win over the Bears.
[continue reading…]

It was the greatest passing season in NFL history… again. More on that in a moment, but first, let’s marvel at the game’s two best players. Aaron Rodgers and Patrick Mahomes were the top two quarterbacks in 2020, and the former MVPs both had magnificent seasons. Unfortunately for Mahomes, he faded slightly down the stretch, while Rodgers went into hyperdrive, throwing 8 TDs and nearly averaging 10 yards per attempt over his final two games.

In 2020, the league average was 6.40 ANY/A, the highest rate in NFL history. Rodgers averaged 8.89 Adjusted Net Yards per Attempt, a number that historians might feel sounds familiar: it’s the exact same number Mahomes averaged in his MVP campaign in 2018. In 2007, Tom Brady averaged 8.88 ANY/A, and in 2013, Peyton Manning averaged 8.87 ANY/A. It doesn’t quite crack the top 5 in this metric since 1970, or even make it the best season for Rodgers: he averaged 9.39 ANY/A in 2011.

But with an 8.89 ANY/A average on 546 dropbacks (526 pass attempts plus 20 sacks); since Rodgers averaged 2.49 ANY/A more than league average, we multiply those two numbers to conclude that Rodgers added 1,355 adjusted net yards of passing value over average. ^[1]That number is outstanding, but not all that noteworthy from a historical perspective. It 30th in history, in a near dead heat with Philip Rivers, 2009. From 2004 to 2019, there were 15 QBs who … Continue reading Mahomes averaged an excellent 8.33 ANY/A, or 1.93 ANY/A better than league average. He had more dropbacks than Rodgers (610), but that wasn’t enough to overcome the efficiency gap; Mahomes produced 1,176 yards of passing value over average. Deshaun Watson (8.22 ANY/A, 593 dropbacks, 1,077 yards of value over average) ranked 3rd in the greatest season by a QB who went 4-12 in NFL history.

But the Mahomes/Rodgers race was the story of the second half of the season.  In the chart below, I’ve shown how much cumulative value they provided by week, with Rodgers ultimately pulling ahead only in the final two weeks (and Mahomes, of course, sat in week 17).

Statistically speaking, it’s a narrow but clear win for Rodgers. In addition to leading the NFL in both ANY/A and Value, he also finished first in completion percentage and interception rate and touchdown rate. In fact, Rodgers joined Steve Young (1992) as the only quarterbacks since World War II to lead the NFL in completion percentage, interception rate, and touchdown rate in the same season.

Here are the full passing stats for each quarterback who threw 224 pass attempts in 2020. [continue reading…]

When the Jets traded an enormous sum of draft capital to draft Sam Darnold — more draft capital, mind you, than the number one overall pick — the organization expected big results. Instead, it get the smallest results possible, which is just one reason why the Jets fired GM Mike Maccagnan last year.

Darnold was drafted with the 3rd overall pick in the 2018 Draft, the second quarterback selected after Baker Mayfield. And from 2018 to 2020, among the quarterbacks with at least 600 pass attempts, Darnold ranked dead last in both Adjusted Net Yards per Attempt and passer rating. [continue reading…]

On the surface, Bears quarterback Mitchell Trubisky is having an unremarkable season. Through 16 weeks, there are 36 qualifying passers, and Trubisky ranks 24th in Adjusted Net Yards per Attempt. He is not doing particularly well in any conventional metric: Trubisky ranks 24th in completion percentage, 20th in yards per completion, 21st in sack rate, and a dismal 29th in interception rate! The only area where he’s really standing out is in touchdown rate, where he ranks 8th, but even his TD/INT ratio is relatively mediocre.

And yet, there is one area where Trubisky has not just been good, he’s been the best: the Bears fourth year quarterback is picking up first downs at the best rate in the NFL.
[continue reading…]

Longtime readers may recall that in 2017, Russell Wilson was basically the entire Seahawks offense. Due to multiple running back injuries and a poor offensive line, no Seahawks back rushed for even 250 yards, and Wilson accounted for all of the team passing yards. In late November, the media was publicizing the fact that Wilson had accounted for over 82% of Seattle’s offensive yards, and that such a feat was the highest in NFL history. I noted at the time that those headlines, while accurate, were surprisingly quiet as to who the current recordholder was…. and then I found out why. Jon Kitna, playing for the 3-13 Detroit Lions, set the NFL record when he produced 81.8% of all Lions offensive yards.

Wilson was having an MVP-caliber season, of course, so comparing him to Kitna wasn’t exactly a compliment. As a result, the headlines (well, other than mine) were mostly silent on the current recordholder and just noted the impressive-sounding fact that Wilson was responsible for a larger percentage of his team’s yards than any player had ever been.  As it turns out, Wilson finished the season with 81.5% of the Seahawks yards, falling just behind Kitna’s mark.

Since then?  Jameis Winston in 2019 was the only player to come close, and he now ranks 3rd all-time in the metric behind Kitna ’06 and Wilson ’17.  But all of that is about to change, at least if week 17 results hold to previous form.  Houston quarterback Deshaun Watson has thrown for 4,458 yards and has rushed for 432 yards. Watson has produced just about all the yards for the offense, with running backs David Johnson and Duke Johnson picking up the scraps.  Watson has 4,890 of Houston’s 5,828 yards, which is 83.9%.  This would set the new record.  And, in case it wasn’t clear, it would break the record held by Jon Kitna.

UPDATE: The Texans individual players finished with 6,309 yards from scrimmage in 2020, excluding yards lost due to sacks. Watson threw for 4,823 yards and rushed for 444 yards, giving him 5,267 yards of offense, or 83.5% of all Houston yards. A remarkable season for Watson! He topped 90% twice, against Pittsburgh (where non-Watson players rushed for 24 yards) and against the Patriots. Facing New England, Watson threw for 344 yards and rushed for 36, and his 380 yards represented 95% of the Texans offensive output that day (with non-Watson players rusheing 13 times for 19 yards).

Congrats, Deshaun!

PFR tracks air yards and YAC for quarterbacks, with that data available here. I went ahead and compiled the data at a team level, using quarterback statistics only. The graph below shows how air yards (on the X-Axis) and yards after the catch (on the Y-Axis) for each team so far in 2020.

[continue reading…]

Don’t look now, but it’s the Baltimore Ravens who lead the NFL in points differential. The Ravens had a historic season in 2019, easily leading the league in this category. But in 2020, it’s been a rough year for Baltimore: they had clinched the 1 seed this time last season, but are still needing a win or some help in week 17 to make the 2020 postseason. Not too long ago, the Ravens were 6-5 after a Wednesday night loss with a depleted roster to the Steelers. Since then, the Ravens have won four straight games by a total of 62 points. That is enough to give Baltimore the best points differential in the NFL entering week 17. [continue reading…]

Kyler Murray and Cam Newton have already both rushed for double digit touchdowns this season, a mark reached just five times by quarterbacks in the Super Bowl era prior to 2020. But they are far from alone:

• Josh Allen, who is having a breakout season as a passer, has 8 rushing touchdowns.
• Lamar Jackson has not been the force he was in 2019, but he has equaled his rushing touchdown production (7) from last season.
• Taysom Hill has rushed for six touchdowns (and then a 7th in week 16), while Teddy Bridgewater and Carson Wentz have five apiece.
• Justin Herbert, Ryan Tannehill, and Jared Goff each have four rushing touchdowns, and seven other quarterbacks have three rushing touchdowns. There are 17 quarterbacks this season with at least three rushing touchdowns, with two weeks remaining in the 2020 regular season.

In short: there have been a ton of rushing touchdowns this season by quarterbacks. With two weeks left to play, NFL quarterbacks have rushed for 110 touchdowns in 224 games (or 448 team games). That’s an average of one every four games, or about 4 per 16 games. Which is… an enormous amount. As recently as 1993, when there were 28 teams, NFL quarterbacks rushed for 28 touchdowns all season, or 1 for every 16 team games. In both 2009 and 2010, NFL quarterbacks rushed for 46 touchdowns, or 1.44 per team game. Three years ago, quarterbacks scored “only” 63 touchdowns on the ground, or just under 2 per team game. This year, we might double that mark! The graph below shows quarterback rushing touchdowns per team game for each year since 1970, with 2020 through 15 weeks. To call it a big outlier would be an understatement:
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In 2019, Buffalo quarterback Josh Allen averaged 5.71 Adjusted Net Yards per Attempt, which ranked 23rd among all NFL quarterbacks. The league average was 6.16 ANY/A in ’19, which means Allen was a bit below average as a passer: he averaged -0.45 ANY/A relative to league average.

This year, with two games to go, Allen has significantly improved. He is averaging 7.55 Adjusted Net Yards per Attempt, and will likely finish at least in the top 8 in the pass efficiency rankings. He is averaging +1.53 Relative ANY/A, given that the league average through 15 weeks is 6.40. [continue reading…]

Previously:

• Week 1 Passing Stats
• Week 2
• Week 3
• Week 4
• Week 5
• Week 6
• Week 7
• Week 8
• Week 9
• Week 10
• Weeks 11 and 12
• Week 13
• Week 14

The entire NFL had a passer rating of 99.1 in week 15, while averaging 6.91 ANY/A; in other words, the average quarterback this weekend was better than the average performance by Steve Young. So let’s focus on a couple of the rare duds.

A few weeks ago, Ben Roethlisberger was enjoying the high life as the quarterback of the 11-0 Pittsburgh Steelers. But after dropping three straight games, the situation is now ugly in Pittsburgh, and Roethlisberger is a big part of the problem. He is averaging an anemic 5.18 yards per attempt and 8.44 yards per completion over the last month of the season. On Monday Night Football, the Steelers lost to the Bengals in one of the biggest upsets in franchise history. Roethlisberger produced the worst passing performance of week 15: he threw for only 6 first downs on 38 pass attempts (plus 1 sack), making it one of the most anemic Steelers passing attacks of the last two decades.

Meanwhile, in Washington, Dwayne Haskins threw 55 times and somehow still didn’t reach 300 passing yards. It was even uglier through three quarters: he was 25 of 36, but for just 192 yards with only 10 first downs, and 2 interceptions and a sack. And then, somehow, his week got even worse.

The full week 15 passing stats, below. [continue reading…]

Previously:

• Week 1 Passing Stats
• Week 2
• Week 3
• Week 4
• Week 5
• Week 6
• Week 7
• Week 8
• Week 9
• Week 10
• Weeks 11 and 12
• Week 13

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Previously:

• Week 1 Game Scripts
• Week 2
• Week 3
• Week 4
• Week 5
• Week 6
• Week 7
• Week 8
• Week 9
• Week 10
• Weeks 11 and 12

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On Thanksgiving Day, 1965, the Baltimore Colts and the Detroit Lions battled to a 24-24 tie. In the New York Times report of the day, it was noted that Unitas was sacked four times by the Lions defense; well, technically, it was reported that he was “trapped” four times.

That wasn’t such a big deal: the Lions defense would go on to lead the NFL in sacks with 49 that season, and no defense recorded more sacks than Detroit from 1960 to 1965. But the Thanksgiving performance was notable because it marked the 76th consecutive game that the Detroit Lions sacked the opposing quarterback.

The streak would end the following week against division rival San Francisco. John Brodie was a difficult man to take down; in 1965, the 49ers offense had the lowest sack rate in the NFL. Earlier in the season season, Detroit registered just one sack on Brodie, and in the rematch, Brodie dropped back 35 times without being trapped for a loss. [continue reading…]

In 1980, after 11 games, Chargers tight end Kellen Winslow had 878 receiving yards, more than 300 ahead of every other tight end in the NFL. Houston’s Mike Barber (576) and Tampa Bay’s Jimmie Giles (506) were the only other tight ends with even 500 receiving yards. The Oilers other tight end, Dave Casper, was acquired via trade midseason and had just 387 yards at the time. By the end of the year, Casper would finish with the second most receiving yards of any tight end in football, at 796. But Winslow blew him out of the water, with 1,290 receiving yards. That number was second in the entire NFL, but also just second on San Diego in receiving yards behind John Jefferson (and just ahead of teammate Charlie Joiner, who ranked 3rd in the AFC in receiving yards and 4th in the NFL).

Twenty years later, Chiefs superstar Tony Gonzalez had 828 receiving yards through 11 games; Shannon Sharpe (602), Freddie Jones (582) and Kyle Brady (570) were the only other tight ends with 500 yards at that time. By season’s end, Gonzalez would rack up 1,203 receiving yards for Kansas City, nearly 400 yards ahead of every other tight end in the league (Sharpe finished with 810).

Twenty years later, the current Chiefs superstar tight end is threatening to set a new record. Travis Kelce has 978 receiving yards after 11 games, and no other tight end is within shouting distance of him. Raiders TE Darren Waller is second in the NFL with 542 receiving yards, Lions TE T.J. Hockenson has 530, and Chargers TE Hunter Henry has 502 (by NFL fiat, the Chargers must always have a good tight end). Kelce could stop playing today and he’d probably finish the season with the most receiving yards of any tight end. Right now, he has a lead of 436 receiving yards, a remarkable 39.6 yard per game average.

Interesting trivia aside, I didn’t bring up the 20-year intervals at random. Those two seasons represent the largest difference in receiving yards between the top tight end and number two tight end in history. ^[1]I will note that there is some ambiguity in position labels from the early 1960s, and you may be able to argue that say, Mike Ditka had a larger lead if say, you want to quibble with calling Monty  … Continue reading Sharpe’s advantage was 393 yards, while Casper’s edge was a mammoth 494 yards. But Kelce is on pace to shatter that record, and should easily win the receiving TE crown by around 600 yards. It is even possible, if unlikely, that he will have more than twice as many yards as every other tight end in the NFL. Kelce, like Winslow in 1980, is second in the AFC in receiving yards and second on his own team: Tyreek Hill leads all AFC players with 1,021 yards, second in the NFL only to Seattle’s D.K. Metcalf (1,039).

It was only last season that Kelce quietly made history: he led the AFC in receiving yards, the first tight end to lead a conference in receiving yards since 1972. But this year, Kelce looks even more valuable. In part, his dominance is a reflection of the struggles for the other top tight ends in the league. George Kittle missed most of 2020 with an injury, Waller has been hurt by the addition of Nelson Agholor and a more run-heavy offense, Mark Andrews has disappeared with the rest of the Ravens passing offense, and Zach Ertz has gone down with the Carson Wentz ship. But let’s not take anything away from Kelce: He’s been absolutely outstanding for years, and yet might be currently in the middle of his best season ever.