In week 1 of the 2019 season, Lamar Jackson had a breakout performance that foreshadowed his MVP season. And while his performance in week 1 of the 2020 season wasn’t quite as dominant, it still was the most effective passing performance — at least, statistically — of any quarterback in week one.

I like to post the weekly passing numbers and analyze which quarterbacks had the most valuable stat lines. I am going to tweak the formula a bit this year. The normal formula is based on Adjusted Net Yards per Attempt, which is (Passing Yards + 20*Passing TDs – 45*INTs – Sack Yards Lost) divided by (Pass Attempts + Sacks). But this year, I will make a couple of changes. I will incorporate a first down bonus of 9 yards, and since all touchdowns are also first downs, that means the multiplier on touchdowns will be 11 instead of 20. In addition, I am going to include a penalty of 50 yards for fumbles. So the new formula is (Passing Yards + 9 * Pass 1st Downs + 11 * Pass TDs – 45 * INTs – 50 * Fumbles Lost) divided by (Pass Attempts + Sacks).

Baltimore’s third-year quarterback went 20/25 for 275 yards with 3 TDs and 0 INTs against the Browns, while taking 2 sack and losing 14 yards. That means Jackson had 429 Adjusted Yards on 27 dropbacks, or 15.89 Adjusted Yards per Dropback. Overall, passers in week 1 averaged 9.20 Adjusted Yards per Dropback. To calculate passing value, we multiply that difference (15.89 – 9.20) by Jackson’s 27 dropbacks. Therefore, Jackson added 181 adjusted yards over average this week, the best of any passer. The way this formula works, all passers will sum to zero value over the week, since we are measuring value compared to average.

That means some quarterbacks will have to fare poorly, and nobody did worse than Carson Wentz. The Eagles passer went 24/42 for 270 passing yards, with 2 TDs, but that’s where the good stats end. Wentz threw 2 INTs and lost a fumble, and was sacked a whopping 8 times and lost 62 yards, and only picked up 13 first downs on his 50 dropbacks. Wentz averaged 4.14 Adjusted Yards per Dropback, which means he produced -253 Adjusted Yards relative to league average.

The full week 1, 2020, passing stats below: [continue reading…]

Jacoby Brissett has a reputation as a guy who will take a lot of sacks. In fact, prior to 2019, he stood out as one of the most extreme examples of a quarterback who would rather take a sack than throw an interception. But among all starting quarterbacks in the NFL, it’s Brissett who has the longest active streak of pass attempts without a sack.

Earlier in the week, we looked at quarterbacks who had gone the longest without throwing an interception. Per reader Eric Drew’s suggestion, today we will look at the active streaks for all quarterbacks (through week 5, so excluding the Giants/Patriots TNF game) in terms of pass attempts without taking a sack. As you can see, Brissett has gone 85 pass attempts without a sack. During this stretch, he’s thrown two interceptions, while Deshaun Watson has the longest active streak of pass plays without a sack or an interception: [continue reading…]

Seven years ago, Neil Paine provided the formula for predicting the expected winning percentage for the home team at the start of a game, based on the Vegas point spread.  There were only 5 upsets where the favorite list, and a sixth game that was a tie with a 2.5-point spread.  The six biggest favorites all won, making this a pretty by-the-book week.

The table below shows the results of each game from the perspective of the home teams in week 1.  The “Expected W%” column shows the expected winning percentage of the home team based on the Vegas point spread; the Eagles were -10.5, so Philadelphia had a 78% chance of winning; the Dolphins were +7, so they had a 31% chance of winning.  The final column shows how likely or unlikely the result was: if the favorite won, the expected winning percentage number was used; if the favorite lost, the expected winning percentage of the underdog was used.  So when the Browns lost, that game gets marked as a 35% likelihood game. [continue reading…]

Eli Manning is going to be the Giants starting quarterback today, for the 15th consecutive season opener. Drew Brees and Philip Rivers are the week 1 starters for the Saints and Chargers, respectively, for the 14th straight year. The 2019 season marks the 12th time in a row that Matt Ryan and Aaron Rodgers opened up under center for the Falcons and Packers. And Matthew Stafford is Detroit’s opening game starter for the 11th straight year.

Those six teams have had the same week 1 starter for over a decade; meanwhile, 11 teams are turning to a different week 1 starter than they had this time last year. We can group them into three categories:

The Returning Starters (5): Baker Mayfield, Josh Allen, and Lamar Jackson were first round picks in the 2018 NFL Draft and ended their rookie seasons as starting quarterbacks; they will all be starting for their teams in week one of the 2019 season. Carson Wentz is the Eagles franchise quarterback, but he wasn’t fully recovered from the torn ACL injury that ended his 2017 season in time for the 2018 season opener. Jameis Winston was suspended for three games to begin the 2018 season for violating the NFL’s personal conduct policy, in connection with a female Uber driver accusing Winston of groping her.

The Rookie (1): Kyler Murray was the first overall pick in the 2019 NFL Draft, and he will start for the Cardinals in week one. There were two other first round quarterbacks — Daniel Jones in New York, Dwayne Haskins in Washington — and it is likely that both will follow the Mayfield/Allen/Jackson path, finishing their rookie years as starters and being the opening day starter in 2010.

The New Veteran Starters (5): In Washington, Alex Smith was the starter in 2018, but after suffering a gruesome knee injury, his future is in doubt. The Redskins brought in Case Keenum to replace him. Keenum was Denver’s starter last year, and the Broncos brought in Joe Flacco to replace him, after Flacco lost his job to Jackson in Baltimore. With Wentz and Winston back as starters, that left Nick Foles and Ryan Fitzpatrick without jobs: Foles landed in Jacksonville to replace Blake Bortles (backup for the Rams), while Fitzpatrick is the starter in Miami with the Ryan Tannehill era (now a backup in Tennessee) over. Finally, the surprise retirement by Andrew Luck has left the Colts turning to 2018 backup Jacoby Brissett as the team’s starter.

For the Browns, Mayfield has so clearly entrenched himself as the team’s starting quarterback that it’s easy to forget that he wasn’t the starter entering last season. And while the dysfunction appears to be over, Mayfield will now be Cleveland’s 7th different starting quarterback in week 1 in 7 seasons, tying an NFL record. The ’13-’19 Browns are the fourth team to have 7 different opening day starting quarterbacks in 7 years, joining the Ravens from ’97 to ’03, the Chargers from 1987 to 1993, and the Colts from 1984 to 1990.

The table below shows each team’s week 1 starting quarterback in each year since 2010. [continue reading…]

I have written before about the remarkable close-game success that Adam Gase and the Miami Dolphins had from 2016 to 2018. The disparity is remarkable: Miami went 3-19 in games decided by more than 8 points under Gase, the second-worst record in the NFL in non-close games (only the Browns were worse). But in games decided by 8 or fewer points, Miami went 20-6, the best record in the NFL.

So you have a huge split here: under Gase, the Dolphins were outstanding in close games but awful in non-close games. What does that mean? Was Gase an outstanding coach who could win any game as long as the talent level of the two teams were close? Or was Gase an awful coach who just happened to get really lucky? With a 23-25 record, Gase looks like an average coach — so perhaps he’s somewhere in the middle of these two extremes?

First, a quick visual to show how extreme this performance really was. The graph below shows each team over the last three years, and their winning percentage in close games (X-Axis) and non-close games (Y-Axis). A team that was awful in non-close games but great in close games would be at the bottom right of the chart: as you can see, Miami is all alone there. [continue reading…]

Last year, I wrote about the shrinking middle class of quarterbacks in the NFL. After the 2019 NFL Draft, things looked even more polarizing: with four QBs being selected in the top 10, and a fifth joining a “franchise QB” in Baltimore, there was a very small middle class of quarterbacks in the NFL, at least based on salary cap dollars.

That leaves just four teams with non-franchise, non-rookie QBs: the Dolphins with Tannehill, the Broncos with Keenum, the Jaguars with Bortles, and the Bengals with Dalton.

As you know, none of those teams were successful last year, and three of them have gone in a different (albeit similarly unexciting) direction at quarterback. Miami is going to release Ryan Tannehill, and the Broncos and Jaguars swapped out expensive veteran quarterbacks who aren’t franchise quarterbacks in Case Keenum and Blake Bortles for… expensive veteran quarterbacks who aren’t franchise quarterbacks (but have won a Super Bowl!) in Joe Flacco and Nick Foles.

In addition to those four teams, there are three other teams in quarterback purgatory. One is Washington, who lost Alex Smith due to injury (and are paying borderline franchise quarterback dollars to him this year, to the tune of a $20.4M cap hit) and replaced him with Keenum, who at least has an extremely modest base salary in 2019. Of course, going cheap at quarterback with a below-average passer is hardly a strategy teams look to employ, especially when it comes with spending an extra $20M on an injured quarterback. The other two teams found themselves in no man’s land thanks to inconsistent play from the first two picks in the 2015 NFL Draft. Tampa Bay and Tennessee both used the fifth year option to extend the contracts of Jameis Winston and Marcus Mariota, but that leaves them with cap hits in excess of $20M for 2019 despite neither player being a top-10 quarterback. That leaves the Titans and Bucs in a similar space — in terms of both salary cap dollars and quarterback production — to teams like the Bengals, Broncos, and Jaguars.

So, to recap: (i) two teams (Miami and Washington) are lost at quarterback and probably deserve an incomplete grade at this time: both are prime candidates to use a high draft pick on a quarterback in the 2019 Draft, and (ii) five teams (CIN/JAC/DEN/TEN/TB) are stuck paying between $16 and $22M to quarterbacks that are among the least desirable starting quarterbacks in the league.

11 teams, meanwhile, are rolling with quarterbacks on rookie deals, including all 5 from the 1st round of the 2018 Draft (CLE/NYJ/BUF/ARI/BAL), with the possible chance that Arizona may in fact replace last year’s 1st round QB with a new 1st round QB. The other 6 teams? 3 took QBs in the 1st round of 2017 (CHI/KC/HOU) and all are very happy about that: those three teams have a 2-year window with those rookies on cheap deals. The other 3 took QBs in the 2016 Draft: two with the first two picks (LA/PHI), and one (DAL) with a late round pick. The Cowboys are likely to give Dak Prescott a big contract before the start of the ’19 season, as Dallas doesn’t have the fifth year option at its disposal since Prescott wasn’t a first round pick. Prescott’s contract is up after this season (Dallas can of course use the franchise tag on him), while the Eagles and Rams can — if they choose — wait a year on both Jared Goff and Carson Wentz. Of course, as the Bucs and Titans can attest, the fifth-year option is hardly cheap, but based on their productivity, both Goff and Wentz would still be good values at $21M in 2020 (it helps that they’ve been much more effective than the top two picks in the draft the prior year).

That leaves 14 teams with “franchise QBs” at least measured by dollars (whether Derek Carr or Eli Manning still qualify is a different matter), although Jimmy Garoppolo (another player on whom the jury is still out) — by virtue of having an insane $37M cap hit last year — is only counting for $19.35M against the 2019 cap. These are the quarterbacks you would expect, so there’s not much more to say about them. Last year, Washington and Baltimore were on this list, but both have much cheaper quarterbacks in ’19 (again, with the Redskins being a weird case due to Smith’s injury).

So we have 14 teams that paid big dollars to franchise quarterbacks and another 11 that are trying to win with “cheap” rookie deal quarterbacks. The other 7 teams include two incompletes and five teams that basically lost the quarterback carousel and are still looking to find the answer.

Below is a graphical representation of the NFL landscape, in terms of starting quarterbacks: [continue reading…]

Over the Jets last 32 games, New York is 10-22, a 0.3125 winning percentage.

Over the Giants last 32 games, New York is also 10-22.

For the Giants, that numbers is a bit backloaded: Big Blue is 4-20 in their last 24 games, and 6-2 in the 8 games before that. By the end of the year, you could envision the Giants going 6-26 over their last 32 games (a 0.1875 winning percentage). The Jets went 5-11 last year, and another 5-11 season is a reasonable guess: that would bring them to 10-22 over their last 32 games.

If that happens, it would mean, on average, New York football would have a 25% winning percentage over the last two years. Which is really, really bad…and also pretty rare. The Jets and Giants may not always be very good, but it’s unusual for both teams to be bad for a notable stretch of time. The graph below shows the trailing 32-game winning percentage for both the Jets and the Giants since 1960. The Jets, of course, are in green; the Giants, in blue. [continue reading…]

The color-coded schedule is back!

Download the Excel file here

Some notes:

As usual, the games are color-coded based on time: Thursday (the Thanksgiving slate is week 12, with Detroit/Chicago as the early game, Dallas/Washington in the afternoon, and Atlanta/New Orleans at night) games are in light red, Saturday games are in gray, Sunday games at 1PM have no color, Sunday afternoon games are in orange, Sunday night games are in green, and Monday night games are in blue.

There are four international games: in week 6, the Seahawks and Raiders (as the home team) play in London at 1PM Eastern. In weeks 7 and 8, the Titans and Chargers (home team) and then Eagles and Jaguars (home team) play in London at 9:30 AM on the east coast. In week 11, the Chiefs and Rams (home team) play in Mexico City on Monday Night Football. That game is color-coded in blue for Monday Night, but with yellow font for international. Yes, my schedule grid has an easter egg.

There are 17 MNF games. In week 1, the Jets and Lions are the early Monday Night game at 7:10, with the Rams and Raiders kicking off that night at 10:20. There is no Monday Night game in week 17.

There are two Saturday games, both in week 15: the Texans at the Jets and the Browns at the Broncos. No times have been set just yet. In addition, there will be two games on Saturday in week 16, but those will be announced during the season.

From 2001 to 2004, the Patriots won three out of four Super Bowls, which was widely considered to form a dynasty. Sure, New England missed the playoffs in ’02, but the Patriots matched the ’90s Cowboys by winning three Super Bowls in just four seasons.

Well, the Patriots have been so good since then that it’s sometimes hard to realize that the Patriots are on the verge of forming another dynasty. After all, with a win in Super Bowl LII, New England will join the ’01-’04 Patriots and the ’92-’95 Cowboys as the only teams to win three Super Bowls in four years.

Which, you know, is pretty remarkable.

Also remarkable? Just four players in this run — QB Tom Brady, safeties Devin McCourty and Patrick Chung, and tackle Nate Solder — played in at least 40% of Patriots regular season snaps in 2014, 2016, and 2017.  The table below shows the percentage of offensive or defensive snaps by each player on New England in 2014, 2016, and 2017. [continue reading…]

When the Los Angeles Chargers started the season 0-4, it was tempting to think that the season was over. But, as I cautioned, not all 0-4 teams are created equally. And while only one team had ever gone from 0-4 to the playoffs (ironically, the Chargers in 1992), that was a little misleading. Most 0-4 teams don’t make the playoffs because of the 0-4 start *and* because they are bad teams. But if the team is a good team, an 0-4 start is not necessarily a death sentence.

Los Angeles is proving that to be the case. Right now, the Chargers rank 7th in the NFL in Adjusted Net Yards per Attempt, and 4th in Adjusted Net Yards per Attempt allowed. The Chargers rank 3rd in the NFL in ANY/A Differential — the difference between those two statistics — and rank 1st in the AFC in that category. Take a look: Take a look: the Y-Axis shows each team’s winning percentage, while the X-Axis displays ANY/A differential.
[continue reading…]

It doesn’t take an expert to realize that something is wrong with Cam Newton. Whether the cumulative effects of the various injuries he has suffered throughout his career have taken a toll on him, or there’s a specific injury causing a problem, it’s now clear that Newton is a shell of his former self.  In Newton’s last 16 games, he’s thrown just 16 touchdown passes… while throwing 16 interceptions.  In Newton’s MVP season of 2015, he averaged more than two passing touchdowns per game, and just over half an interception per game.  The Panthers scored just 9 points against the Bills last week, but the bottom fell out yesterday.

Facing what had been a historically bad Saints defense, Newton produced the single-worst game of his career:  He threw 26 passes but gained just 167 yards, while taking four sacks and losing 28 yards.  That’s an ugly 4.6 NY/A, but it gets much worse when you realize he had no touchdowns and three interceptions.  That translates to a 0.13 ANY/A average, the worst statistical performance of Newton’s career. Again: this came against the Saints.

This game also dropped Newton’s ANY/A over his last 16 games to below 5.00.  That’s right: over Newton’s last 16 games, he has the following stat line: 279/520 (54%), 3,528 yards (6.8 Y/A), 16 TDs, 16 INTs, 42 sacks for 337 yards, and 4.97 ANY/A. The graph below shows Newton’s single game ANY/A (in blue) and trailing 16 game ANY/A (in black) for each game of his career (playoffs excluded): [continue reading…]

The AFC West may be the most competitive division in the NFL. The Broncos and Chargers both have realistic playoff aspirations in 2017, but most observers would still rank the Raiders and Chiefs as the top two teams in the division. But if Oakland is going to win the division, it’s likely going to have to do it by getting an early lead; for the Chiefs, they just need to not fall out of the race before Thanksgiving, because Kansas City should be able to make up ground late. Why? Because while Kansas City and Oakland have similar schedules (the Chiefs draw Houston and Pittsburgh in the two variable games, while the Raiders get the Titans and Ravens), the Chiefs schedule is frontloaded (in terms of difficult games) while Oakland’s schedule is backloaded.

In the first six weeks, the Raiders get the Jets, Ravens, and Chargers at home, along with road games against the Titans, Redskins, and Broncos. Oakland should be able to get off to a 4-2 or 5-1 start against that schedule. The Patriots game comes in week 11 (and it’s a “home” game in Mexico City), but it’s the final four weeks that are scary: Oakland goes to Kansas City and hosts Dallas (on SNF) in weeks 14 and 15, before finishing with road games in Philadelphia (on Monday Night Football) and against the Chargers. A 2-2 mark would be more than holding serve.

Kansas City opens in New England on Thursday night, as tough a game as there is on any schedule. And nearly all the “easy” games for Kansas City come in the final six weeks. The Chiefs host Buffalo at the end of November and face the Jets the following week. The last four games are three home games — the Raiders, Chargers (on Saturday night), and Dolphins — and the final game is in Denver. Kansas City can realistic hope for a 5-1 finish to streak into the playoffs, so the Chiefs just need to get to 5-5 through ten games.

A similar disparity exists in the AFC South: all of those teams have easy schedules (more on this below). But one team with a very favorable early season schedule is the Colts, who… just might need it given the uncertain health status of Andrew Luck. The Colts open up with a road game against the Rams, followed by home games against Arizona and Cleveland. Indianapolis also hosts the 49ers and Jaguars in the team’s first seven games. The Titans have the second easiest schedule in the league, but it’s also really easy late. Tennessee’s December slate? Home for Houston, at Arizona, at San Francisco, home for the Rams, and home for the Jaguars. The Titans are in position to ride a late-season winning streak into the playoffs.

I went ahead and created my own team ratings. You may disagree with them slightly, but the only reason I generated them was to generate SOS ratings. So even if you disagree with some of the ratings, it shouldn’t impact each team’s SOS that much. The ratings below represent how many points each team would beat an average NFL team by on a neutral field. [continue reading…]

The 2017 season will be the 58th season in Jets franchise history. It is also the least anticipated season by Jets fans in that 58-year history. New York went 5-11 last year, and probably wasn’t even that good (the Jets had an SRS of -8.5, 4th worst in the NFL). In the NFL, the way to give a fan base hope is to be good or to make some exciting changes in the offseason. The Jets retained the same general manager (Mike Maccagnan) and head coach (Todd Bowles) from last year’s uninspiring squad, and while New York switched quarterbacks, the addition of 38-year-old Josh McCown somehow feels like a downgrade on Ryan Fitzpatrick.

How bad is it? The USA Today had the Jets going 0-16. Multiple other outlets have spent time discussing that possibility, too. It’s only a question of degree, at this point: everyone assumes that the Jets are going to be horrible.  McCown is a 38-year-old quarterback who has won 8 games since 2006.  The offense is almost certainly the least talented in the NFL ignoring the quarterback position.  And if you were wondering how they got here, well, since the end of 2016, the Jets also said goodbye to:

• David Harris
• Nick Mangold
• Eric Decker
• Brandon Marshall
• Sheldon Richardson
• Darrelle Revis
• Ryan Clady
• Quincy Enunwa (placed on injured reserve)

And again: this team was terrible last year with those players.  So is this really the least optimistic season in Jets history?  Let’s run through things in reverse order, and explain why Jets fans were feeling better on September 1 of every other season than on September 1, 2017.  For brevity’s sake, I’m going to skip seasons where the Jets went at least .500 in the prior year, because, those seasons obviously had more hope than this one. [continue reading…]

Saints wide receiver Michael Thomas is in about as good a situation as it gets. Here’s what he has in his favor:

• The Saints pass the ball a ton. The last three years, New Orleans ranked 2nd each season in pass attempts, finishing 2 attempts behind the Colts in 2014, 9 attempts behind the Ravens in 2015, and 5 attempts behind the Ravens last year. The Saints have an even 2,000 attempts over the last three seasons, the Ravens are 2nd with 1,909, and the Colts are 3rd with 1,864. It’s true that New Orleans did just add Adrian Peterson, but the Saints are well-established as the league’s preeminent pass-heavy team.

• Thomas, unlike players on the Ravens, gets to play with a superstar quarterback in Drew Brees. Because more important than the 2,000 attempts is that New Orleans has thrown for 14,808 gross passing yards the last 3 years, more than 1,000 yards more than anyone else. Only the Falcons, Steelers, and Patriots have even 13,000 passing yards.

• As a rookie, Thomas and Brandin Cooks were essentially WR1A and WR1B in New Orleans. Cooks had 117 targets, 1,173 receiving yards, and 8 TDs in 16 games, while Thomas had 121 targets, 1,137 yards, and 9 TDs despite missing one game. But here’s where it gets exciting for Thomas: Cooks was traded in the offseason, and will be replaced with 32-year-old Ted Ginn.

Is there a more favorable situation for a WR to produce massive stats? Unless you just think Thomas will be harmed by all the attention — and that’s where Peterson should help — this is basically as good as it gets. He’s on the league’s most pass-happy offense, with a top-3 quarterback, and he is likely going to get fed a significant amount of targets. As a rookie, Thomas was targeted on 18.2% of passes. That number is almost certainly going to rise this year. The most targets any Saint has had with Brees is 149, set by Jimmy Graham in 2011.

But there is one other thing that helped Thomas last year. The Saints threw 59% of their passes to wide receivers last year, a new high in the Brees era. That coincided with just 17% — a record low since 2008 — of passes going to tight ends. In 2006 and 2007, Reggie Bush was a target monster while Mark Campbell and Eric Johnson were the top tight ends. But beginning in ’08, the Saints had Jeremy Shockey and then Jimmy Graham and a breakout season from Ben Watson in 2015. Last year, Coby Fleener was the tight end, and he was underwhelming. Fleener had a lower catch rate than any Saints wide receiver last year, and that’s not exactly how its supposed to work.

In 2014, Siants receivers had 47% of targets, then 54% in 2015 and 59% last year. Meanwhile, TE targets dropped from 27% with Graham to 24% with Watson and then 17% with Fleener. Take a look: the graph below shows the percentage of targets in New Orleans by position since 2006: [continue reading…]

The normal way to measure a franchise’s winning percentage is the simplest. All you need to do is take the team’s total number of wins, add to that number the total number of ties divided by two, and then take that sum and divide it by the team’s total number of games.

That’s simplest and makes sense and is perfectly correct. However, it also means games in 1960 are given the same weight as games in 2016. And depending on what you want to measure, that may not be what you want to do. If you want to measure something like the amount of pleasure a fanbase receives from its team ^[1]Why would you want to do this? I have no idea., you want to put more weight on recent seasons. [continue reading…]

The color-coded schedule is back!

Download the Excel file here

Best version for an iPhone 6s

Who Plays On What Days?

There are 17 games on Thursdays this year, which matches the number of weeks of the season. There is one game each week of the season most weeks, but there are no Thursday games in weeks 16 and 17, and three on Thanksgiving (week 12). The three Thanksgiving games: Vikings at Lions, Chargers at Cowboys, and Giants at Redskins. The Browns and Jaguars do not get one, but the other 30 teams get at least one Thursday game. That means four teams play twice on Thursday: the Chiefs (week 1 at New England, week 7 at Oakland) and Patriots (week 5 at Tampa Bay) play in both the NFL Kickoff Game and during the regular Thursday night schedule. And Washington and Dallas — who play different opponents on Thanksgiving — play against each other on Thursday the following week.

Once the college regular season ends, the NFL does take over two Saturdays: December 15th and December 23rd. Those games are all rivalry games: Bears/Lions and Chiefs/Chargers in week 15, and the Colts going back to Baltimore and the Vikings and Packers the following week.

There are 17 games on Monday night football, and 18 games on Monday: one each week for 16 weeks, with no week 17 game, but two in weeks 1 and 16. The Saints travel to Minnesota in the early MNF game in week 1, while the Chargers visit Denver in the last game. At the end of the year, the Steelers head to Houston on Christmas Day, which falls on a Monday, to play in the 4:30 time slot. That night, the traditional MNF game is Raiders/Eagles, which is sure to feature a pair of merry fanbases.

Neutral Site Games

There are five special site games: the Patriots play “at” Oakland at 4:25 on the east coast in week 11 in a game in Mexico City, to go along with the four London games. The Jaguars, Dolphins, Rams, and Browns all lose home games, too, to face the Ravens, Saints, Cardinals, and Vikings respectively. Those London games take place in weeks 3, 4, 7 and 8: all but the Rams-Cardinals game in week 7 kick off at 9:30 on the east coast, while the NFL thankfully isn’t making west coast fans wake up at 6:30 to see the Rams/Cardinals, which kicks off at 1:00 on the east coast.

I’m very short on time, so Bryan Frye agreed to help keep the streak alive here by asking me to reproduce his All-Time 53 Man NFL Roster. What follows is a reproduction of his work here on his all-time 53 man roster. Given that I am short on time, maybe you are long on time (is that how time works?), in which case — get ready for a great read.

******************

Sometimes when I am bored, I make football lists or rosters in my head (what is the all-time Steelers team, what is the current all-NFC South team, what is the all-time Hispanic team, etc.). Of all the whimsical thought experiments in which I have engaged, the one with the most decisions and revisions has been my all time 53 man NFL roster (with coaching staff).

The purpose of building an all time 53 man NFL roster is not to simply pluck the best 53 players out of history. If I did that, I’d end up with an unbalanced roster, with as many as seven quarterbacks. Having seven Hall of Fame passers would be nice, but it’s completely unnecessary. The important thing to me is depth, which means I value versatility from the players on the roster. Yes, Jan Stenerud was a great kicker, but why put him on the team when I can have Gino Cappelletti kick, return kickoffs and punts, take handoffs, and catch passes? You get the idea. I will make exceptions for most starters, but I want most of my backups to contribute in more than one area.

Having read the comments sections in some popular sports sites, I feel that it is necessary to make the following disclaimer: Players will be picked, in large part, based on how they performed in their respective eras. Danny Fortmann was one of the great interior offensive linemen of his generation, but it would be insane to posit that he could be plucked out of 1941 and be a star guard today at 6’0” and 210 pounds. That’s smaller than RG3. [continue reading…]

Through 10 weeks, the Packers were 4-6 with a -29 points differential, 8th-worst in the NFL. If Green Bay wins today, the Packers will become the 5th team to make the Super Bowl after being 2 games below .500 at any point during the season.

• In 1993, Emmitt Smith famously held out during the first two weeks of the season; Dallas lost both of those games (and a third game in November in which Smith left due to injury after just one carry), beginning the season 0-2.  The Cowboys went on to repeat as Super Bowl champions.

• In 1996, the Patriots began the season with road losses to Buffalo and Miami.  New England wasn’t a great team that year, but finished 11-5, and a Jaguars upset in Mile High cleared the path for the Patriots to make it to the Super Bowl.

• Five years later, the Patriots again began the season 0-2, with Drew Bledsoe of course being injured in the second game of the season.  Enter Tom Brady, who won his first game but lost his second, meaning the Patriots were against two games under .500 at 1-3 after four games.  New England, of course, won the franchise’s first Super Bowl that season.

• In ’07, the Patriots lost the Super Bowl to a Giants team that started the year 0-2 with two losses.  New York allowed 80 points in those games, but it turned out to be a bit of a scheduling issue: those games came against the 13-3 Cowboys and 13-3 Packers, teams the Giants later beat in the playoffs.

The Packers would be a bit of a different case, of course, as 4-6 is different than 0-2 (although I’m not sure which is more “impressive” to come back from).  The latest in a season a Super Bowl team was under .500?  The 1979 Rams were 5-6 after 11 games, which means the Packers would “tie” this record if Green Bay wins today.  What about Super Bowl champions? Well, that would be the ’01 Patriots, at 3-4 after 7 games; so if the Packers win two more games, they would set that record. [continue reading…]

Today at 538: A look at how bad the Rams offense has been under Jeff Fisher.  After a 3-1 start this year, things have quickly gone downhill.

Since then, L.A. has gone 1-7, with the lone victory coming in a 9-6 snoozer against a bad Jets team featuring quarterback Bryce Petty in his first NFL start. And if there’s a theme to the Rams’ unyielding mediocrity under Fisher, it’s a bad offense that seems to get worse the more resources it’s given.

L.A. ranks last in scoring, yards and first downs, and in the case of the latter two categories, for the second year in a row.

You can read the full article here.

In light of last night’s surprising results, I can’t get too focused on writing an article about football. There will be really good articles written by smart people out there today, but it all starts and ends with the maps. Here was 2012:

And here is 2016, according to the NYT:

[continue reading…]

The Washington Redskins have made five Super Bowls in their history:

• To conclude the 1972 season, with Republican Richard Nixon in office as President of the United States;
• At the end of the 1982, 1983, and 1987 seasons, with Republican Ronald Reagan as the sitting POTUS;
• In January 1992, during the final year of Republican George H. W. Bush’s presidency.

During the Super Bowl era, Washington has gone 272-180-3 while a Republican is in office. That translates to a .601 winning percentage, the best of any team.

But the Redskins have been a lot worse with a Democrat in office. In fact, Washington has a lowly 150-201-5, a 0.428 winning percentage that is the fourth worst of any team during the Super Bowl era. Washington’s best years came under Reagan, Bush, Ford, and Nixon, while the franchise’s worst years have been under Obama, Clinton, and LBJ.  Take a look: [continue reading…]

Today at 538: a look at the Chiefs and Texans game this weekend, with both teams trying to vault into the top tier in the AFC.

The AFC has an established hierarchy. The New England Patriots have appeared in the title game in five consecutive seasons, and teams only become legitimate AFC contenders after proving they can defeat the Pats. Denver has beaten New England three of the last four times the teams have played — including in last year’s title game — and won the AFC West in five straight seasons. And whichever team emerges from the top-heavy AFC North can’t be ignored, either: Baltimore won the Super Bowl four seasons ago, the Bengals have won 44 games since 2012, and the Steelers look like the second-best team in the AFC.

Two other teams are threatening to break into the AFC’s upper crust, and they happen to face off in Week 2. Kansas City has won 11 consecutive regular-season games, the longest active streak in the NFL. Houston finished 2015 on a hot streak of its own, winning seven of its final nine games; after an opening-day win in Chicago, the Texans join the Chiefs as the only AFC teams to win at least eight of their last 10 regular-season games. Yet despite those results, neither of these teams are viewed as part of the AFC’s top tier. And that’s because both teams are viewed as having relatively low ceilings. So the question for this season is, can either team raise its ceiling?

You can read the full article here.

Today at 538, a look at the history of the Thursday Night Opener and how teams fare in Super Bowl rematches.  Also, in researching for this piece, I found one of my new favorite pieces of trivia:

On January 31, 1993, the Cowboys obliterated the Bills 52-17 in Super Bowl XXVII.  364 days later, Dallas beat Buffalo in the Super Bowl again, 30-13, the only time the same teams have ever met in consecutive Super Bowls.  But in between those historic games, the teams also met in Dallas during Week 2 of the 1993 regular season. The Cowboys, missing Emmitt Smith because of a contract dispute, lost 13-10 on a late field goal. It was a result symbolic of that entire Bills era: in games started by Hall of Fame quarterback Jim Kelly from 1990 to 1993, Buffalo went 14-0 in the regular season against the NFC, including a 4-0 mark against Dallas, New York, and Washington. Against those same teams in the Super Bowl, of course, the Bills went 0-4.

You can read the full article here.

I’m entering a Survivor Pool this year, so I plan on posting about my picks for exactly as long as I stay alive. Given the uncertainty involved in projecting an NFL season, I don’t think the payoff is there to project every week in the preseason and produce a model telling you which team to will use in each week. By week 5, a lot of our assumptions will have changed, injuries will make some teams an easy one-week play, and so. Flexibility is just as important as foresight, and there’s a lot of uncertainty about the future.

As a result, rather than getting too technical, I am simply going to place an early focus on trying to stay alive, with some emphasis on saving good teams for later. And to always look one week ahead.

Those two masters are in conflict right away, as one of the league’s most dependable teams is also the clear best choice in survivor leagues for week 1. Take a look at the current spreads: [continue reading…]

Arian Foster‘s emergence as a star was almost as sudden as his (likely) exit. An undrafted free agent in 2009, Foster rushed for 100 yards in his first start — in week 17 of the ’09 season. Then, in 2010, he led the NFL in both rushing yards and rushing touchdowns, beginning a five-year stretch of dominance.  A ruptured Achilles tendon ruined Foster’s season in 2015, and he signed with Miami yesterday; at 29, it’s fair to wonder if Foster has much left in the tank.  A one-year, $1.5M contract is a sign that the NFL isn’t too optimistic about his future.  But that doesn’t make his past any less incredible.

From 2010 to 2014, Foster played in 70 games. But in two of those games in 2013, injuries limited him to just 9 combined snaps. And in the season finale in 2014, a hamstring injury caused him to exit after 10 snaps. In those three games, Foster had a total of 9 carries for 34 yards. [continue reading…]

Charles Tillman announced his retirement on Monday, marking the end of a remarkable career. From a game-saving interception (video here) during his rookie season to stop a Daunte Culpepper game-winning touchdown pass to Randy Moss, Tillman was known for delivering big plays in key moments for the Bears. But he will always be remembered for doing something cornerbacks don’t really do: or, given the rate at which he did it, maybe he should be remembering for intercepting passes at an abnormally high rate for a player who forced so many fumbles.

From 2003 to 2015, there were 49 players who recorded 20+ interceptions. During those same years, 52 players recorded at least 15 forced fumbles. Tillman had 38 interceptions and 44 forced fumbles.  To put that remarkable figure in context, take a look at the graph below, which shows all 95 players with either 20+ interceptions or 15+ forced fumbles from ’03 to ’15: [continue reading…]

Happy Independence Day, folks. July 4th, 1776 was the day our forefathers declared independence in a remarkable document that’s worth your full read. We at Football Perspective wish you a very happy, and very safe, Fourth of July.

153 years after America declared its independence, Al Davis was born. On January 30th, 1960, the AFL awarded Oakland the last franchise for the new league. Then, in early April, the team was named:

[continue reading…]

With free agency and the NFL Draft behind us, it’s a good time to take stock of the NFL landscape. Over at ESPN, Bill Barnwell is recapping each division, starting today with the AFC East. I thought I’d post the latest Super Bowl odds, courtesy of Bovada, along with the odds from the end of season (February 8th) and after the first rush of free agency (March 14th).

All odds have a vig associated with them; for example, the Patriots, at 7/1, would have a 12.5% chance (1 divided by 7 + 1) to win the Super Bowl if there was no vig; but if you take the odds of all 32 teams, they sum to 124.8%, not 100%. As a result, every team’s implied odds are divided by 1.248 to get their vig-adjusted Super Bowl odds, shown in the last column. [continue reading…]

In 2003, Larry Fitzgerald caught 16 touchdowns in Pittsburgh’s first 8 games, making him one of only three players to reach those marks since 2000. The second was Texas Tech’s Michael Crabtree, who had 17 as a freshman in ’07 through eight games. That was eclipsed — by three whole touchdowns — last year, when Baylor’s Corey Coleman caught 20 touchdowns through 8 games. At the time, Coleman had 58 receptions for 1,178 yards and 20 touchdowns. Unfortunately, his numbers tanked after that, thanks (i) to injuries to first starting quarterback Seth Russell and then backup Jarrett Stidham and (ii) the schedule getting significantly harder.

As good as Coleman’s numbers were, though, he didn’t even lead the country in receiving yards at that time. TCU’s Josh Doctson had 71 receptions for 1,250 yards and 14 touchdowns through eight games. In game 9, Doctson had six catches for 64 yards against Oklahoma State before suffering a wrist injury in the second quarter that effectively ended his season.

Now, neither player is being projected to go in the top half of the first round. That maybe isn’t too weird, given the inflated offensive numbers for Big 12 offenses. In a mock draft on November 2nd (which is right before the seasons went downhill for Coleman and Doctson), Matt Miller had Doctson going to Dallas at 12 while Coleman wasn’t even in Miller’s mock (I don’t know if it was because Coleman was a junior or if Miller had him going in another round). A November 16th mock by Dane Brugler had Coleman getting drafted at 29, with Doctson not being selected in the first round. A November 19th draft at the San Diego Union Tribune had the duo going in the back third (23/31) of the first round, although the same author had them going 15th and 23rd a week earlier. [continue reading…]