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…]

Since the start of the 2010 season, no player has more rushing yards than LeSean McCoy. It is easy to forget, but McCoy spent some time as the starting running back for the 2019 Chiefs, even though he did not get a carry in the playoffs. McCoy rushed for 465 yards and 4 touchdowns in the regular season and did earn a ring with Kansas City and his former head coach.

It might be even easier to forget that McCoy is a member of the 2020 Buccaneers. He was signed in early August, before Leonard Fournette would make his way to Tampa Bay.  McCoy has been the team’s fourth string running back, behind Ronald Jones, Fournette, and Ke’Shawn Vaughn. But no matter: McCoy is, technically, back in the Super Bowl, for the second year in a row.

If Tampa Bay wins, McCoy — who was arguably the best running back of the 2010s — will close out his career with a pair of rings with two teams that nobody will ever associate him with. That said, he would join a pretty exclusive list. Here are the eight players who have won back to back rings with different teams.

• The two famous members of the club pulled off this trick in 1994, as members of the San Francisco 49ers, and in a surrounding year with the Dallas Cowboys. One was Deion Sanders, who left Atlanta for San Francisco in 1994, and then San Francisco for Dallas in ’95. The other was Ken Norton, Jr., who spent the first six years of his career with Dallas, and won the Super Bowl in 1992 and 1993. Norton then joined the 49ers in ’94, where he spent the final seven seasons of his career. Hochstein and Norton are the only two players to win Super Bowls in three consecutive seasons.
• Guard Russ Hochstein was the next player to do so. He was drafted by Tampa Bay in 2001 and played in one game in 2002; he was waived in October and signed by the Patriots a week later. He stayed in New England through 2008, so Hochstein picked up a Super Bowl ring for his cup of coffee with the Bucs and then earned two more the next two seasons in New England. Hochstein was also a freshman with Nebraska in 1997, when the Cornhuskers were named national champions by USA Today and ESPN. He’s got a lot of hardware!
• Defensive back Derrick Martin played in five games for the Packers in 2010 and 14 for the Giants in 2011. Sure, Martin had just 1 interception and 14 tackles during those two years, but it counts!
• Brandon Browner was the next to do it, and he had a big role in both title teams.  He was a star on the ’13 Seahawks, although he was suspended towards the end of the season and did not play in the team’s postseason run. He joined New England in 2014, and then made the play of the game — or, perhaps, the assist of the game — to help the Patriots defeat his former team. ^[1]Caylin Hauptmann was also a member of the 2013 Seahawks, and he was signed by the 2014 Patriots.  I don’t believe he should be included, but if you want to, feel free!
• LeGarrette Blount led the NFL in rushing touchdowns in 2016 with New England, picking up a ring with the Patriots that season.  The next year he joined the Eagles, and scored a touchdown in Philadephia’s Super Bowl win over his former team. Chris Long was also a rotational defensive linemen on both the ’16 Patriots and ’17 Eagles.
• Surely you don’t remember that Kenjon Barner was the kickoff returner for the ’17 Eagles, do you?  Barner, a star of Oregon under Chip Kelly, joined Philadelphia under Kelly’s watch and survived with the team through 2017.  The next season, he was signed by the Patriots and rushed for 71 yards before being cut in midseason.  No matter: when the ’18 Patriots went on to win the Super Bowl, Barner received a ring.  Literally.  Oh, and guess what? Barner is also a member of the ’20 Buccaneers, although he is unlikely to play in Super Bowl LV.  But I assume he is definitely ready for a third ring in four years.

 

How do Kansas City and Tampa Bay compare to previous Super Bowl participants when it comes to scoring and preventing points? Without any adjustments for era, these two teams look like awful defensive teams and very good (but not historically great) offensive teams.

In the graph below, the X-Axis shows points scored per game, while the Y-Axis shows points allowed per game. The best teams would be in the lower right, at least according to this metric. The Bucs and Chiefs are color-coded, with Super Bowl winners in black circles and losers in white circles. The ’99 Rams are in the lower right corner at 33 points per game and 15 points allowed per game; the ’13 Broncos are the team at the far upper right, while the ’11 Giants, of course, are in the upper left: they are the only Super Bowl team to allow more points than they scored. [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.

Two years ago, I wrote that 2018 gave us The Most Offensive-Powered Final Four Ever. Well, Tom Brady and Patrick Mahomes are back, this time joined by the Packers and Aaron Rodgers and the Bills and Josh Allen (as opposed to the Saints and Drew Brees and the Rams and Sean McVay–bot in ’18). In 2018, the top four teams in scoring made it to the final four: it doesn’t get any more clear cut than that.

This year, the top three scoring teams — Green Bay, Buffalo, and Tampa Bay, in order — are in the final four. They are joined by the Chiefs, who ranked 3rd in the AFC (behind Tennessee) and 6th in the NFL in scoring (also behind New Orleans). Saying that Kansas City has the worst offense of any playoff team left is a bit like saying that Batman is the superhero with the weakest powers; you may have a bunch of evidence, but nobody is going to take your claim very seriously. It is also worthwhile to point that that the Chiefs ranked 2nd in the NFL in scoring after 16 weeks, before benching Patrick Mahomes and several other starters in a meaningless week 17 game and falling to 6th in the rankings.

And while this year may not have the final four according to the ranks, it is certainly up there as one of the highest-powered final fours of all time. In 2020, NFL teams averaged 24.8 points per game; the Packers led the league by averaging 31.8 points per game, or 7.0 points per game better than average. There have been 204 teams to make it to the conference championship game since 1970, and I calculated how many points per game each team scored relative to league average in each season. I also did the same for points allowed. The graph below shows all 204 teams, with their points scored per game relative to league average on the X-Axis, and the points allowed metric on the Y-Axis. In other words:

Top right = good offense, good defense
Top left = bad offense, good defense
Bottom left = bad offense, bad defense
Bottom right = good offense, bad defense

As you would expect, most of the teams that make it to the conference championship game fall in the upper right quadrant. I have color-coded the 2020 teams in the graph below. [continue reading…]

There are, of course, a lot of similarities between Aaron Rodgers and Mark Sanchez.

Both players were born in California, played college football in California, and were drafted by cold-weather teams.

Both players were first round picks to teams in green jerseys.

Both players have thrown exactly 89 career interceptions in the NFL.

And one season, at the start of a new decade, both Sanchez and Rodgers got trounced by a Tom Brady-led team. In 2010, in a game against the Patriots, Sanchez went 17 for 33 for 164 yards with 0 TDs, 3 interceptions, and 1 sack for 15 yards, producing an anemic 0.41 ANY/A as the Jets lost 45-3. In 2020, in a game in Tampa Bay, Rodgers went 16 for 35 for 160 yards with 0 TDs, 2 interceptions, and 4 sacks for 42 yards, a 0.72 ANY/A average; the Packers lost 38-10.

But Sanchez would get a chance to exact revenge in the postseason, and it was served ice cold: the Jets won, the largest regular season margin ever avenged in a game at the same site in the playoffs. This year’s Packers/Buccaneers game is a little different. For starters, the Jets actually had beaten New England earlier in the year, while Green Bay and Tampa Bay are no longer division rivals and only played once during the regular season. More importantly, while the 2010 Patriots were the better team and the home team, this time around, Brady’s team looks to be the worse team and is on the road.

So enough with the constant Sanchez/Rodgers comparisons. Let’s begin looking at situations similar to what will be playing out on Sunday in the NFC Championship Game: that is, times where a team met once (and only once) during the regular season, and then met again in the playoffs.

There have been three 40+ point wins in the regular season that saw rematches in the postseason: in all three, the regular season team won again.  Those three games were, with the team that got blown out listed first, 1969 CLE @ MIN, 1991 DET @ WAS, and 2018 PHI @ NOR.  You will notice that in all three games (along with many of the other, less than 40 point blowouts), the team that got blown out — for lack of a better words, let’s call them the Packers of history — were on the road in the rematch.  And that’s part of what makes the Green Bay/Tampa Bay game less common.

The Packers will be 3.5 point favorites in the NFC Championship Game. So a better comparison might be the 2016 Chiefs and Steelers. In 2016, Kansas City was very good: they finished 12-4, but they were blown out, 43-14, on the road in Pittsburgh during the regular season. Pittsburgh went 11-5, and so the postseason game was in Kansas City. That sounds similar to the upcoming Green Bay/Tampa Bay game, with the rematch switching venues to the home of the better team. The Chiefs were 2.5 point favorites in that game, which they… well, lost, 18-16.

There have been 20 teams in the Super Bowl era that are facing something “similar” to what the Packers have this weekend. That means they:

• Lost by double digits in the lone regular season game against the playoff opponent
• The rematch was at the site of the “Packers” team
• The “Packers” were favored to win the postseason rematch

How did previous Packers teams fare? They went 14-6, meaning the Chiefs/Steelers game referenced above was an outlier. If you want an example that Packers fans will be happy about, let’s use a very topical pair of teams. In 1993, the Buffalo Bills hosted the Kansas City Chiefs for the AFC Championship Game. In the regular season, in a game on the road at Arrowhead, the Bills were easily handled by the Chiefs, 23-7. In the rematch, Buffalo — the “Packers” in this example — was favored by 3 points, despite going up against an old man considered the greatest quarterback of all time: Joe Montana. Buffalo did win the rematch easily, 30-13, and knocked Montana out of the game.

Here are all 20 games, with the “Packers” team — the one that got blown out in the regular season but hosted the rematch — listed first. Excluding four games that are red herrings, the home team went 11-5 in the rematch. Whether you think that’s good (hey, they got blown out the first time and won over 2/3s of their games) — or bad (they were favored to win and only won 11 out of 16 times) is up to you. It’s also worth pointing out that at least three of the times the home team exacted revenge involved some pretty miraculous circumstances, ^[1]The Comeback, The Catch II, Ray Hamilton. and this pretty easily could have been an 8-8 split.

Please leave your thoughts in the comments.

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!