After offenses lit up the scoreboard in week five, we were treated to the poorest quarterbacking of the year in week six. Both DYAR and QBR hit their low points in the 2021 season. What’s shocking is that this happened with the Jets on their bye week!
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InIn one of the first posts at Football Perspective, I looked at the leaders in rushing yards over every 10-year period. The question asked in that article was who would ultimately lead the NFL in rushing yards from 2012 to 2021. We can now answer that question.

The answer may surprise you.  I suggested that Trent Richardson was the obvious favorite. Among the names I offered as potential candidates were Mark Ingram, Dion Lewis, Jacquizz Rodgers, LeSean McCoy, Beanie Wells, DeMarco Murray, Doug Martin, David Wilson, Ronnie Hillman, Lamar Miller, Isaiah Pead, Kendall Hunter, and LaMichael James. I said that we could not rule out college stars like Marcus Lattimore or Michael Dyer or Montee Ball or Malcolm Brown or De’Anthony Thomas.

I said Ray Rice and Ryan Mathews, at 25-year-old in 2012, were probably too old to consider.  That logic applied to 26-year-old stars Arian Foster and Marshawn Lynch.  And while they may have been stud running backs, a quartet of 27-year-olds in Maurice Jones-Drew, Matt Forte, Adrian Peterson and Chris Johnson were clearly too old to consider.

I did not include Ezekiel Elliott or Derrick Henry, as both players were still in high school.  As it turns out, barring injury in 2021, they will both finish in the top 5 of rushing yards from 2012 to 2021 despite both entering the league in 2016.  Ingram, who was a 2nd-year player in 2012, will fall to 6th when Henry and Elliott pass him.  The top 3?  In a big surprise, the 27-year-old Peterson — then still recovering from a torn ACL — will wind up third on the list, and just over 300 yards away from the decade-lead. I named the 24-year-old McCoy one of the top candidates, and he will wind up 2nd on the list.   But the leader in rushing yards from 2012 to 2021? [continue reading…]

Finally, a week in which the best QB games were more extreme than the worst. The league saw DYAR and ANY/A reach their high points for any week in 2021. Oddly, this was the second worst week for QBR despite the meteoric conventional stats. There seemed to be an unusual number of highlight reel catches and long completions on busted coverages, both of which are likely discounted in QBR.

Fittingly, old man Brady tops the chart in the same week he became the all time leader in total DYAR. Brady and Lamar Jackson had the two best games of the year according to DYAR but fared much worse in QBR. In Brady’s case it’s likely because he faced almost zero pressure vs Miami, while Jackson gets taken to the woodshed for his goal line fumble (another example of QBR overweighting running plays).

Josh Allen had the opposite result – dominant in QBR but merely good in DYAR. He was very successful on his runs, completed his average pass a whopping 13 yards downfield, and didn’t have enough plays to pump up his counting stats. [continue reading…]

With it being the (almost) quarter point of the 2021 season, I’m going to skip commentary on the week four games and focus on quarterback performance across the first month of the season. [continue reading…]