Entering week 15, one of the biggest storylines was that Johnny Manziel was set to make his first start of the season. Manziel’s opening performance was a flop: his -0.56 Adjusted Yards per Attempt average was the second lowest by a quarterback this season, although not the lowest by a quarterback in a Browns/Bengals game. The Bengals won 30-0 in a game that was never in doubt for much of the second half; Cincinnati’s +16.6 Game Script was the highest of the week.

The Patriots, Chiefs, and Saints all posted double digit Game Script scores as well. In the process, New England clinched the AFC East, Kansas City kept their playoff hopes alive and avenged an uglier loss to Oakland, and the Saints? Well, New Orleans still controls its own destiny for the playoffs despite a 6-8 record.

The comebacks were light this week, as only Detroit (-3.3) and the Jets (-1.5) managed to win with a negative Game Script. The table below shows the Game Scripts data from week 15:

• The most run-heavy team of the week was… Cleveland? The Browns ran just 38 plays, a comically low number. But only 21 of them were passes! That is an insanely low number for a team that was blown out, and one of the reasons were the 17 rushing plays. ^[1]If you want to play around with end points, the Browns stand out as one of just 10 teams since 1980 with less than 19 pass attempts and less than 19 rushes. Teams with such large negative Game Scripts usually wind up very pass happy, so a 55.3% pass ratio indicates a run-heavy philosophy.

• Another run-heavy team was Denver, and with Peyton Manning sick/injured/struggling, the Broncos have really turned into a run-first team. C.J. Anderson rushed 29 times despite only gaining 85 yards, so you know somewhere John Fox is smiling.

• Just like last week, Houston continues to stand out for its run-first nature. Of course, with Arian Foster on one hand and the Texans down three quarterbacks on the other, this makes a lot of sense. The Texans trailed for the final 36 minutes of the game, but still favored a run-heavy approach.  The numbers here are slightly misleading because Tom Savage and Ryan Fitzpatrick had seven “rushing” plays, but the duo also only combined for 26 dropbacks, which equaled the amount of rushing attempts for Foster.

• On the pass-happy side of things, I present to you, the Oakland Raiders.  Sure, Oakland lost, but the Raiders passed on nearly 80% of plays on Sunday, while no other team hit the 70% mark. Derek Carr dropped back 60 times yet gained just 202 passing yards. That is really, really bad. That was enough to drop Carr into last place in Net Yards per Attempt for the season.

• With Adrian Peterson and Jerick McKinnon out, perhaps it’s not too surprising that the Vikings went pass-heavy against a stiff Lions run defense. ^[2]Detroit has allowed less than 900 rushing yards this year, while every other defense has allowed at least 1,000, and all but Denver have allowed at least 1,180 rushing yards. Excluding three Teddy Bridgewater runs, the Vikings rushed for just 46 yards on 18 carries, so a pass-happy approach (Bridgewater had 45 dropbacks) makes sense.  That said, passing on nearly 70% of all dropbacks while posting a Game Script of +3.3 definitely gets marked down as very pass-happy.

• Finally, the Steelers and Saints also had pass-heavy weeks, which makes sense given their Hall of Fame caliber quarterbacks. Despite being in control for most of their respective games, both teams wound up throwing on over 60% of their plays.

As always, you can view the updated Game Scripts page here, showing the data from every game this year.