In week 9, the Dolphins lost 21-14 to Kansas City. That game was notable because Tua Tagovailoa passed for 193 yards, slightly outgaining Patrick Mahomes, who threw for 185 yards in a winning effort. That doesn’t sound so unusual, especially given how close the totals were: Miami’s quarterback passed for more yards than Kansas City’s quarterback, and Miami lost the game.

But that was unusual: in fact, that is the only game this season where that happened for the Dolphins. In 12 games this year, Miami has had more gross passing yards (excluding sacks) than they have allowed; in those games, the Dolphins are 11-1. In four other games, opposing passers have more passing yards than Dolphins passers; the Dolphins are 0-4 in those games. So in 15 of 16 Miami Dolphins games, the team with more gross passing yards has also won the game.

And that is both rare and a perfect example of the 2023 season.  Because while Miami with Mike McDaniel  and Tua are outliers, the 2023 season is pretty big outlier, too.  In general, throughout the course of NFL history, there is not much of a correlation between which team has more passing yards and which team wins the game. As we know, teams that are trailing late in games throw more frequently — and can rack up the passing yards — than teams with a lead. The same reason you hear starts like “Team X is 15-2 when RB Y has 20 carries or more” is why passing yards isn’t all that correlated with winning.

From 1966 to 2022, teams that threw for more gross passing yards won 51% of their games. In other words, in the Super Bowl era, there hasn’t been much of a correlation between the quantity of a team’s passing game and their likelihood of success. And this hasn’t changed much even as teams pass much more now than they used to: from 2013 to 2022, the team with more gross passing yards won 52% of their games. In 2020 — a year that saw Tom Brady, Patrick Mahomes, Aaron Rodgers and Josh Allen as the quarterbacks of the final four teams — the team that threw for more yards had a losing record during the regular season.

But this year, teams that win the passing yardage battle have a remarkable 0.671 winning percentage. That is, by a good margin, the best winning percentage of the Super Bowl era. So while in general, throwing for a lot of yards hasn’t been correlated with winning, in 2023, it certainly has been:

Take a look at the top 7 leaders in passing yards: they are all (as of today, at least) leading playoff teams.  None of the top 11 players in passing yards has a losing record, and just one of the top 16 leaders in passing yards has a losing record.  That is incredible and extremely out of character with the rest of NFL history.