Completion percentages continue to skyrocket, and part of the reason for the increase is the rise of low value completions. As a result, the best way to measure the consistency of a passing game isn’t with completion percentage, but with passing first down percentage. That’s defined as simply:

Passing First Downs / (Pass Attempts + Sacks)

As noted last week, the Giants and Texans provided good real world examples for 2018. Through four weeks, Houston ranked 25th in completion percentage but 8th in passing first down percentage. Meanwhile, the Giants ranked 2nd in completion percentage but 22nd in passing first down percentage. My proposition is that passing first down percentage is a better reflection of the passing game and a more meaningful statistic than completion percentage; and that’s why, through four weeks, Houston ranked 15th in points/game, while the Giants ranked 29th.

But does that argument hold up over time? How do we *know* that Passing 1st Down Rate is more important than Completion Percentage? Here’s a simply study I did.

1) Calculate the completion percentage relative to league average for every team since 1970.

2) Calculate the passing first down percentage relative to league average for every team since 1970.

3) Identify teams that ranked two percentage points better than league average in one metric and two percentage points worse than league average in the other metric.

4) Compare those teams. [continue reading…]

It’s time, once again, to release the first edition of the college football Simple Rating System ratings. While it’s too early to put too much weight on these ratings, they help to at least begin framing the discussion of which are the most impressive teams in college football. As a reminder, here is the methodology:

1) For each game not played at a neutral site, 3 points are given to the road team. After that adjustment, all wins and losses of between 7 and 24 points are recorded exactly as such. This means that a 24-10 road win goes down as +17 for the road team, -17 for the home team.

2) With one exception, wins of 7 or fewer points are scored as 7-point wins and losses of 7 or fewer points are scored as 7 point losses. So a 4-point home win goes down as +7 (and not a 1) and a 1-point home loss is a -7 (and not a -4). The one exception is that road losses of 3 or fewer (and home wins of 3 or fewer) are graded as ties. So a 21-20 home victory goes down as a 0 for both teams.

3) Wins/Losses of more than 24 points are scored as the average between the actual number and 24. This is to avoid giving undue credit to teams that run up the score. So a 75-point home win goes down as a 48-point win.

Once we have a rating for each team in each game, we then adjust each result for strength of schedule. This is an iterative process, where we adjust the ratings hundreds of times (to adjust for SOS, you have to adjust for the SOS of each opponent, and the SOS of each opponent’s opponent, and so on.) in Excel. Then we produce final ratings, where the SRS rating is the sum of the Margin of Victory and Strength of Schedule in every week. [continue reading…]

Eli Manning ranks 2nd in the NFL in completion rate with a remarkable 74.2% average. Houston’s Deshaun Watson, on the other hand, ranks 27th out of 34 qualifying passers with a 62.2% completion percentage. But that’s a bit misleading, because as I’ve written about before, first down percentage is a much more important metric than completion percentage.

For Watson, 62 of his 92 completed passes have gone for a first down, meaning just 33% of his completed passes didn’t pick up a first down. For Manning, just 53 of his 112 completions have gone for a first down, which means a whopping 53% of his completions didn’t pick up a first down.

Completion percentage is supposed to measure how consistent a quarterback is at making positive plays. A better formula than (completed passes/pass attempts) is (first downs gained via the pass / [pass attempts + sacks] ). In other words, the numerator should be passing first downs, not completed passes, and the denominator should include sacks. [continue reading…]

Previously:

• Week 1 Game Scripts
• Week 2
• Week 3

Minnesota, Indianapolis, and Pittsburgh all have franchise quarterbacks. Kirk Cousins, Andrew Luck, and Ben Roethlisberger are three of the nine quarterbacks with salary cap hits in excess of $23,000,000 in 2018. Perhaps, then, we shouldn’t be too surprised to see those three teams all choose to pass on over 75% of plays in week 4.

And it’s not like week 4 was an anomaly: these three teams lead the league in passing attempts (including sacks) per game so far in 2018. The Colts are averaging a whopping 51.2 passing plays per game (boosted by another pass-happy performance last night in week 5), the Vikings 50.5 passing plays per game, and the Steelers 48.75. The fourth-place team in this metric is Baltimore, and Joe Flacco is another one of the $23M salary cap hit club.

I noted in the offseason that you can break down the league’s 32 teams into a few simple buckets:

• Half of the league (including Indianapolis, Minnesota, Pittsburgh, and Baltimore) had a quarterback under a “franchise money” type contract

• 12 of the league’s teams are using quarterbacks on rookie contracts, including the Jets, Bills, Cardinals, and Browns who are now starting 2018 first round picks.

• 4 teams, all in the AFC, are stuck with veteran quarterbacks who don’t appear to be franchise quarterbacks. Of this group, Ryan Tannehill, Blake Bortles, and Andy Dalton are all playing well: their teams are all 3-1 and they have slightly above-average passing stats, which would count as exceeding expectations. The fourth player is Case Keenum, and you can make the case that the Broncos are the only team that doesn’t have its 2019 quarterback already on its roster. In other words, 16 teams have a franchise quarterback (or a quarterback with a franchise quarterback salary), 12 teams have a quarterback on a rookie contract and at least some optimism for a long-term future (with perhaps Tampa Bay and Dallas being the sole exceptions), and 3 teams have a middling option who is actually playing pretty well.

The full week 4 Game Scripts data below: [continue reading…]

The table below shows the main statistics for the top running backs from week 5 of the 2017 season through week 4 of the 2018 season:

[continue reading…]

Through four weeks, teams have rushed 3,181 times. They have thrown 4,587 passes and been sacked 320 times, which means teams have rushed on 3,181 out of 8,088 plays. That’s a run ratio of just 39.3%, which would set a new record. This makes some sense, of course: given that this has been the most efficient passing season in NFL history, you would think teams are shifting more to the pass than the run. The graph below shows the percentage of running plays for each season in NFL history since 1950; as you can see, it’s not 1956 anymore.

[continue reading…]

As a rookie, Jared Goff threw 5 touchdowns on 205 pass attempts. In week 4, he threw 5 touchdowns on 33 pass attempts.
As, Mitch Trubisky threw 7 touchdowns on 330 pass attempts. In week 4, he threw 6 touchdowns on 26 attempts.

Both joined the exclusive 17/17 club of 17 Adjusted Yards per Attempt on 17 passes. ^[1]While I prefer using ANY/A to AY/A, the PFR Game Finder only has AY/A as a default search option, hence my use of AY/A there., making a remarkable three such performances in September 2018.

Meanwhile, there is Josh Allen, who became just the 19th quarterback since 2008 to finish a game with a negative ANY/A on at least 30 pass attempts.

And then there’s Matt Ryan, who for the second straight week found himself on the losing side of a passing shootout. He became just the 8th quarterback since the merger to average 11.0 ANY/A or better, throw for 400 passing yards, and lose.  The Falcons join the 1966 Giants as the only teams to score 36+ points in consecutive regular season games… and lose both games.

Note that it was a terrible week for AFC East quarterbacks not named Tom Brady, and actually not even a good week for Brady (because week 4 was absurd, Brady’s 6.97 ANY/A average was actually below-average). Below are the passing stats for week 4: [continue reading…]

Two weeks ago, we saw the greatest week in NFL passing history. For the entire week, the NFL averaged a passer rating of 102.6 and an ANY/A average of 6.99, both of which set new records.

Well, week 4 of the NFL season is likely going to finish as a more dominant week of passing. We still have Patrick Mahomes (and Case Keenum) to come tonight, but week 4 has been remarkable for efficiency but especially quantity. Washington and Carolina are on a bye, so there have been 28 teams to play this week. The average passer rating so far has been an outstanding 99.3, which would make it the second-best in NFL history. But what’s even more incredible are the other passing stats: the average ANY/A has been an insanely high 7.16! The big difference between passer rating and ANY/A is completion percentage, which is only reflected in the former statistic. An absurdly high completion percentage made the week 2 passer rating so high (69.4%), while teams have “only” completed 65.0% of passes so far this week. But while teams averaged 7.6 yards per attempt in week 2, they’ve averaged 7.9 yards/attempt so far this week.

Judging by ANY/A standards, this is the best week in passing history. But what about pure passing yards? Individual passers have averaged 304.5 passing yards per game (i.e., excluding sacks), and teams have averaged 286.3 passing yards per game (net of sacks). Yes, that means the average quarterback in week 4 has exceeded 300 passing yards, assuming one player throws all of his team’s passes. If every week was like this, we would expect a healthy quarterback on the average team to throw for nearly 4,900 passing yards and 34 TDs in a season! An average quarterback!

The best single week in terms of passing yards per game (excluding sacks) was week 6 of the 2015 season, when individual passers averaged 291.6 passing yards per game and 278.5 yards/game (net of sacks). In week 2 of 2018, those averages were 278.6 and 262.0, respectively. That makes the 304.5/286.3 really stand out: teams have never slung it around so often and so well before. Teams threw 36.7 passes per game in week 2, compared to 38.5 per game this week: in other words, the NFL may be figuring out that this passing thing makes sense.

Thought of another way, in the average game this week, each quarterback will throw for 300 passing yards and have a passer rating of 100. Remember, there have been 28 teams to play so far this week. Consider:

• 16 quarterbacks have thrown for 295+ yards
• Mitch Trubisky and Jared Goff both topped 16.0 ANY/A, while 20 quarterbacks averaged over 6.0 ANY/A; the average ANY/A in 2017 was 5.9. ^[1]Or how about the 17/17 club — 17 pass attempts, 17 AY/A? It’s happened three times already this season, with Fitzpatrick in week 1 joining Goff and Trubisky this week. Marino, Elway, and … Continue reading
• 14 quarterbacks have a passer rating of 99.0 or better.

In terms of both quantity and quality, this is the best passing week the NFL has ever seen. And that’s before Mahomes — or the Chiefs defense — hits the field.

A good comment by reader Mark Growcott this week noted that running backs are catching a lot of passes so far in 2018. Mark noted that running backs have more catches through three weeks than in any season since 2010.

I went ahead and calculated the receptions per game by running backs, tight ends, and wide receivers for the first three weeks of each season since 2002. Since not every team played three games in the first three weeks of each season, the data is presented on a per-game basis. As you can see, 2018 is a great year for running backs in the receiving game, but… it’s also a great year for every position in the receiving game: [continue reading…]

 

Back in June, I wrote about Championship Leverage in the NFL. My particular interest was determining the value of a postseason game relative to that of a regular season game (and vice versa). In the original formula, I used a figure for wildcard games that was not intuitive to me. After careful consideration and discussing it with my readers, I have tweaked the formula to change the 8.33% odds in the wildcard round to 6.25% odds. This means seasons since 1978 now have a higher weight for postseason games. Nothing else has changed yet.

Championship Leverage

Read the table below thus: In the 2017 NFL, there were 11 playoff games, 16 scheduled regular season games per team, and 32 teams. That means a generic regular season game changes a team’s odds of a title by 0.244%, and a first round playoff game is worth 25.60 times more than a regular season game (in this case, that’s the wildcard game. Relative to a regular season game, the divisional round is worth 51.20, the championship round is worth 102.40, and the championship is worth 204.80. [continue reading…]

Building on yesterday’s post, one reason the average football fan undervalues quarterback running is because yards per carry for quarterbacks is misleading.  It’s natural to want to compare a quarterback’s yards per pass average to his yards per rush attempt average; in almost all cases, the Y/A number will be higher, so it doesn’t feel like having 30 pass attempts and 5 runs is better than 35 pass attempts.

But yards per carry also undersells the value of the average quarterback run. Russell Wilson, for example, has 585 career runs for 3,296 yards, a 5.63 average.  But 84 of his career rushing attempts were actually kneel downs that lost 95 yards; remove those, and Wilson’s yards per carry average jumps to 6.77.  Wilson has also picked up a first down on 39% of his runs, which is extremely valuable, as no offense averages such a high first down rate.  By comparison, Wilson has averaged 7.8 yards per pass attempt and a 37% first down rate on pass attempts, which drops to 6.65 and 34% once you include sacks. ^[1]I note that it gets into a gray area here: if we include scrambles as runs, but only include sacks in the pass attempts column, we are biasing things in the direction of runs. [continue reading…]

Since entering the league in 2011, Cam Newton has been one of the better quarterbacks in the NFL. But you wouldn’t know it if you looked at his completion percentage, which ranks as just the 36th best out of the 40 passers with the most attempts since the start of 2011 through week 3 of 2018.

In the past, I have offered up the idea that, in some instances, it may be appropriate to consider categorizing rushing attempts as equivalent to pass attempts completed to the quarterback. There are a couple of reasons for that. One, a mobile quarterback may scramble while an immobile quarterback would throw a check down to a running back; in other words, the plays are equivalent, but the immobile quarterback will have his completion percentage increased. Two, the perceived benefit to a quarterback with a high completion percentage is lower variability; rushing plays have lower variability, too, so labeling a rushing attempt as a pass to the quarterback helps reflect that.

One issue with this, though, is you need to remove kneels from the data. Thanks to Bryan Frye, we can do that. Let’s look at Newton. Since 2011, he’s completed 2,065 passes out of 3,515 attempts, a 58.7% completion rate. But he also had 783 carries for 4,545 yards (after removing kneels); if you count those as completed passes, his modified completion percentage would be 66.3%. If you want, you can also label his sacks as incomplete pass attempts. That would drop him down to 62.5%.

The table below shows the 40 quarterbacks with the most pass attempts since 2011. [continue reading…]

Previously:

• Week 1 (2018) Game Scripts
• Week 2 (2018) Game Scripts

The Buffalo Bills pulled off one of the most remarkable upsets in NFL history in week 3, beating the heavily-favored Vikings 27-6. That game was notable for a lot of reasons on the Bills side, but here’s something interesting on the Minnesota side: the Vikings had just six rushing attempts all game, including just one in each of the final three quarters of the game. Minnesota running backs finished the day with just four carries:

The Vikings had 59 passing plays, on the other hand, which means over 90% of all Minnesota plays in week 3 were passing plays (in fact, the two Cousins runs were one scramble and one fumbled snap, so the Vikings ended the day with only four designed running plays). How remarkable is that? Well, it’s the first time in the history of the NFL that it’s happened! The Vikings ran on just 9.2% of all plays (again, generously counting the two Cousins runs as running plays), breaking the previously low of 10.3%, set by the Cardinals against the… 2006 Vikings.

Also super pass-happy in week 3: the Indianapolis Colts, despite (or because?) Andrew Luck setting a career low in yards per completion.  The Colts-Eagles game was tied after the 1st and 3rd quarters, with Philadelphia holding just a 3-point lead at halftime.  In other words, this was a really close game…. and yet Indianapolis passed on 77% of its plays!  That is quite unusual, and represents an extremely pass-happy game (albeit one where the passes were mostly short passes that operated as runs).

The full week 3 Game Scripts data: [continue reading…]

Here was Matt Ryan’s stat line in week 3: 26 completions on 35 attempts, 359 passing yards, 5 TDs, 0 INTs, 146.3 passer rating, 12.08 ANY/A.

Somehow, Ryan’s Falcons lost. There have been 93 teams in NFL history to average at least 9.0 net yards per pass attempt, throw for 300 passing yards, and have a passer rating of at least 145. Those teams are now 91-2, with Atlanta on the winning side of things in a game against Pittsburgh in 2006.

Or how about this stat: what do you think the record is of quarterbacks who average 10 yards per pass attempt, with 5 TDs, and 0 INTs? Try 50-2, with Ryan now joining Dan Marino in one of his crazy games against the ’80s Jets.

Or what about this: 300 passing yards, no interceptions, and a passer rating of 145? Teams were 117-0 when their quarterbacks did that, until Ryan became the first one to ever lose such a game on Sunday.

So yeah, Matt Ryan had a remarkable game on Sunday, but his Falcons somehow lost. The reason? They were facing Drew Brees, who was nearly as good. This was the second time in three weeks that Brees and the quarterback facing the Saints were two of the best three quarterbacks of the week. If we want to play with a bunch of endpoints, consider: there have been 5 games this season, where a quarterback threw for 370 yards and 3 TDs, with a passer rating of at least 115 and a completion percentage of at least 73%.  Four of those five games came with the Saints on the field.

In between the best (Ryan) and 3rd best (Brees) performances of the week was Ryan Tannehill.  The Dolphins star had a wonderful game, even if his numbers were inflated a bit by a 74-yard touchdown “pass” and an 18-yard touchdown “pass” where the ball traveled about one foot from Tannehill’s hands each time.  Add in an Albert Wilson touchdown pass — he had a remarkable game, too — and it was one of the most efficient passing games in Miami history.

As for the league as a whole?  It was a less remarkable passing week than the historic numbers we saw in week 2, but it was still pretty darn efficient.  The league averaged 6.38 ANY/A, a passer rating of 94.6, and 257 passing yards per game. The table below shows the full week 3 results: [continue reading…]

Yesterday, Andrew Luck completed 25 of 40 passes for just 164 yards. That is an anemic 6.56 yards per completion average, making him just the 10th player to have such a low average on 25 completions. Once again, that’s Andrew Luck, who ranked 3rd in yards per completion as a rookie in 2012, ranked 5th in the metric in both 2014 and 2016.

Luck missed 9 games in 2015 with first a shoulder injury and then an abdomen/kidney laceration. In 2016, he had a frayed labrum in the preseason, but played in 15 games, missing just one game with a concussion. And in 2017, of course, Luck missed the entire year after shoulder surgery (to, you know, repair the shoulder that caused him to miss zero games in 2016).

Since he’s returned, Luck has had three of the worst games of his career in terms of yards per completion, culminating in yesterday’s career-low.  The graph below shows the yards gained per completed pass for each game of Luck’s career: [continue reading…]

The Bills/Vikings game today was supposed to be a blowout. Minnesota was favored by 16.5 points, which made a lot of sense: the Vikings are one of the best teams in the league, while Buffalo ranked 31st in scoring (11.5 points/game) and scoring defense (39.0) through two weeks.

Since 1978, there have been 67 games where a team was favored by more than 14 points, and a team won by more than 14 points. Today was the 67th such game, but it was the first where the winning team was the underdog. That’s right: Buffalo pulled the massive upset, winning 27-6 (and leading 27-0 for over 30 minutes until a late Vikings touchdown).

So yes, this is the first time in history (well, since at least 1978) a team has won by 15+ points while being an underdog of 15+ points. The graph below shows all games since 1978 where a team was an underdog of 14+ points. The point spread is on the X-Axis (and remember, an underdog of 16.5 points would be listed at +16.5). On the Y-Axis is the final points differential. As you would expect, much of data is bunched in the bottom right quadrant of the graph — this indicates a large positive point spread on the X-Axis and a large negative points differential on the Y-Axis.  But the Bills/Vikings game was the big outlier, at +16.5, +21. [continue reading…]

On Thursday night, Sam Darnold had an ugly performance against the Browns in a 21-17 loss. Darnold completed 15 of 31 passes for 169 yards, with no touchdowns and two interceptions (he also took two sacks). Now, if you didn’t watch the game, you might think Darnold’s two interceptions were the worst part of his game, or the main reason the Jets lost. But that’s not true: Darnold two picks came on his final three passes of the game. With 90 seconds left, the Jets trailed 21-17 with the ball at their own 37-yard line. Darnold was 14 of 28 for 144 yards with no interceptions and two sacks — a still terrible stat line that translated to an average of just 4.5 Net Yards/Attempt.

Yes, Darnold’s interception on the next play cost the Jets a chance to complete a comeback (and his second interception was close to meaningless from a win probability perspective), but the main reason the Jets lost was the ugly play over the first 58:30, not the last 1:30.

Not all interceptions are created equally, and Browns fans know this well. In the season opener, Cleveland had the ball at the Steelers 43 with 23 seconds left in the game. It was tied 21-21, and the Browns had 1st-and-10. The Browns had a great chance of winning, but Tyrod Taylor threw an interception on the next pass, ending Cleveland’s chances of winning the game in regulation.

The next week, Cleveland led New Orleans 12-10 with 5 minutes left in the 4th quarter. The Browns had somewhere between a 3-in-5 and 2-in-3 chance of winning the game at this point, facing 2nd-and-4 from the Cleveland 30-yard line. A moment later, Taylor threw an interception, and now the Saints had a 60-66% chance of winning the game. One could argue that Taylor has thrown the two most impactful interceptions of the season thus far.

The best way to analyze the impact of interceptions is through win probability. But that’s not always easy to understand or readily available, so let’s use some quick workarounds. If nothing else, the analysis here should help provide some context around interceptions.

I looked at all passes that were intercepted over the prior three seasons. [continue reading…]

It has been a horrendous start for the 2018 Arizona Cardinals.  On offense, the team is performing like an expansion team. Consider that through two weeks:

• The Cardinals rank 31st in ANY/A, ahead of only the Bills.
• Arizona ranks 31st in rushing yards, ahead of only the Saints.
• The Cardinals rank 31st in yards per play, ahead of only the Bills.
• Arizona ranks dead last in offensive yards, with just 350.

Things aren’t much better on defense.

• Arizona ranks 31st in ANY/A allowed, ahead of only the Saints.
• The Cardinals rank 28th in rushing yards per game allowed.
• Arizona ranks 28th in yards per play allowed and 30th in total yards allowed.

But perhaps it’s easiest to see how poorly Arizona’s done this year with a graph. I have plotted each of the league’s 32 teams in the graph below, with their total yards of offense through two games on the X-Axis, and total yards allowed on defense through two games on the Y-Axis. Obviously you want to be low and to the right — gaining a lot of yards while allowing few. Arizona, plotted below in Cardinals colors, is high and to the left. And like, really high and to the left: [continue reading…]

Previously:

• Week 1 (2018) Game Scripts

In week 2, the two best Game Scripts belonged to the two Los Angeles. The Rams blanked the Cardinals 34-0 in the most lopsided game of the week. Arizona was never competitive, and Los Angeles outgained Arizona 432-137, and won the first down battle 24-5. Buffalo didn’t fare much better against the Chargers, falling behind 21-3 after 20 minutes, and trailing by 15+ points for all of the second half until the final minute. This is a good example of how Game Script can tell a more accurate story of a game than the final score: both of these games were blowouts, but the Chargers won by “only” 11 points.

The Titans were the league’s most run-heavy team of the week. Blaine Gabbert threw just 20 passes (he had a sack, and two non-QBs threw a pass for Tennessee), an extremely low number given that Tennessee actually trailed in the 4th quarter of this game. But the Titans were happy to ride Derrick Henry (18 carries) and Dion Lewis (14 carries). Did it work? Not really — neither Gabbert no the running backs were particularly effective. Tennessee won the game on special teams, with a touchdown, winning the time of possession battle, and Houston missing a field goal.

The table below shows the full week 2 Game Scripts data: [continue reading…]

Last week, the Buffalo Bills had the worst quarterback in the NFL. And after switching from Nathan Peterman to Josh Allen, Buffalo had… the second-worst quarterback in the NFL in week two.  Sam Bradford was bad in week 1, but he was really bad in week two: the journeyman quarterback averaged under 5.3 yards per completion, the lowest of any quarterback since 2009.

Meanwhile, Ryan Fitzpatrick and Patrick Mahomes were once again two of the top three passers in the league.  The big story, of course, was that the league as a whole averaged an NFL record 6.99 ANY/A in week two; that means when Matthew Stafford throws for 347 yards and 3 TDs with no interceptions on 53 dropbacks, and averaged 7.07 ANY/A, he was basically average.  That is going to take some time to get used to.

The full week two results, below:

This Week In Completion Percentage Is Meaningless

Eli Manning ranks poorly in ANY/A this week despite a sparkling 75% completion percentage.  Do you know why? Because the Giants had one of the worst performances for a team that completed 75% of their passes, at least as measured by simple net yards per pass attempt. New York’s first five drives ended in punts, and the sixth ended in a fumble. The 7th drive was a field goal and the 8th drive was a 3-and-out, before the Giants scored 10 points on their final two possessions. Even still, New York averaged just 3.81 yards per play, the third worst performance by the Giants since the start of the 2015 season.

Stop the presses: Cleveland is a favorite this week. The Browns host the Jets on Thursday night, and as of Tuesday evening, are 3-point favorites. That is breaking news, and it would really be breaking news if the Browns won. The 2015, 2016, and 2017 seasons, along with the first two games of 2018, give us a nice 50-game sample for Cleveland. And over the team’s last 50 games, they have been favored just four times, and won only one of those games: a win over the Blaine Gabbert/Jim Tomsula 49ers.

On that day, Johnny Manziel was the team’s quarterback.  So yeah, it’s been a long time.  Of course, the Browns have only won 4 (and tied a fifth, of course) of those games, with the last coming back on December 24th, 2016.  That day, Robert Griffin III was the team’s quarterback.

So yes, it’s been a rough few years… or decade… or two decades, for Cleveland.  Over the team’s last 58 games, the Browns have been favored to win and actually won just one time — that game against the 49ers.  There have been a lot of bad days in Cleveland over the years, of course: the graph below shows each Browns game since 2008, along with the pre-game point spread.  Remember, a positive number means the team was the underdog.  In the graph below, you can see that most of the dots are above the 0 line, meaning Cleveland was usually an underdog.   The games that Cleveland won are in white dots with orange borders; the games that Cleveland lost are in brown dots with orange borders.

Do the Browns have a reason to be optimistic since the game is at home and the Jets will have to travel to Ohio on short rest? From 2012 to 2017, there were 87 games played on Thursday night excluding week 1, when both teams have equal rest. In those games, the home team won 49 times (a 0.563 winning percentage), although the home team was favored 52 times and a pick’em once. Of the 52 home teams that were favored, 37 won (0.711) and 28 covered (with 24 failing to cover). When the spread has been tight — the home team favored by between 1 and 3 points — the home team has won 9 of 16 games.

If the Browns manage to win the game, it will be just the second time Cleveland has been favored to — and actually won — a game in primetime.  The second-to-last time the Browns won a primetime game they were favored to win? They did it against a team that doesn’t exist anymore, with Bill Belichick as the head coach.

Week 2 is not yet in the books, but NFL teams had the greatest regular season day of passing the league has ever seen.  There were 28 teams playing yesterday and the group completed 711 passes out of 1,006 attempts — an astounding 70.7% completion rate! Those passes gained 7,848 yards, for a remarkable 7.8 yards per attempt average. And these players threw for 55 touchdowns against just 16 interceptions. The average team throws about 550 passes per season. On a per-550 attempt basis, this means the NFL yesterday was at 389 completions for 4,291 yards with 30 TDs and 9 INTs. And remember: this is the average quarterback.

As a whole, the league produced a 105.1 passer rating. Week 2 is not yet in the books, and the Thursday Night game drags the rating down slightly to 103.4, but no matter: week 2 will go down as the best week in NFL history by passer rating.

How do we know? Because prior to this week, the best single week in NFL history by passer rating came in week 10 of the 2010 season, at 94.8. The next three after that: week 12 of 2016 (94.1), week 3 of 2014 (93.9), and week 2 of 2015 (93.8). This week will blow every other week out of the water, and it’s not hard to see why: NFL defenses have been neutered. Penalties are out of control, according to some defenders, and this impacts the passing game in two ways. Quarterbacks are safer than ever in the pocket, as defenders are wary of getting a flag for hitting quarterbacks too low, too high, or even in the middle (a new rule prohibits a defender from using “all or part of his body weight to land on the quarterback immediately after the ball was thrown”). As a result, what used to be a hurried pass or a sack is now an opportunity for a quarterback to stand tall in the pocket and deliver an accurate throw.

In the secondary, things are just as tough, as defensive backs can’t hit defenseless receivers (and a “receiver is considered defenseless throughout the entire process of a catch, up until the player is capable of avoiding or warding off impending contact.”) The NFL also decided to more strictly enforce the illegal contact rule, meaning “a defender cannot initiate contact with a receiver who is attempting to evade him” after five yards. In other words, it’s harder for defensive backs to stop receivers from getting open, and it’s harder for pass rushers to sack quarterbacks.

This didn’t quite show up in week 1 (teams had a passer rating of 82.4). But that just makes this all the more remarkable. Last season, the league average passer rating was 85.1. It was slightly below that in week 1. And then, all of the sudden, a league that never hit a 95.0 passer rating for a week suddenly has a week where teams have produced a 103.4 passer rating. This remarkable turn of events needs to be monitored, as now the average quarterback is putting up Aaron Rodgers numbers (no, really: Rodgers has a career passer rating of 103.9).

On Sunday, there were 28 quarterbacks who threw passes. If you had a passer rating under 105, you ranked outside of the top 14. A remarkable 16 of 28 quarterbacks had a passer rating over 100 (17 if you remove a Nick Foles spike to stop the clock), and 23 of 28 had a passer rating over 95!

Just 5 of the 28 quarterbacks had a passer rating below the 2017 average of 85.1, which might be the most remarkable of all these stats. Welcome to the 2018 NFL, September 16th edition, where over half of the quarterbacks completed over 70% of their passes.

The single most important question facing the NFL right now: is this new level of efficiency here to stay? If so, we are about to enter an era of football that is significantly different than the league that Tom Brady entered in 2000, where the average team completed 58.2% of their passers and had a passer rating of 76.2. But this is what I suspect the NFL wants: quarterbacks and receivers are less likely to get injured, teams will continue to shift towards passing over running, and quarterbacks will look like superstars with record-breaking numbers.

In the last 8 days, Ryan Fitzpatrick — sorry, journeyman, Harvard graduate Ryan Fitzpatrick — just produced two of the best games of his career.  He had one of the best games in recent memory in week 1, completing 21 of 28 passes for 417 yards and 4 TDs with no interceptions or sacks.  Today, against the defending Super Bowl champions in week 2 of the 2018 season, Fitzpatrick went 27 of 33 for 402 yards with 4 TDs, although he did add one interception and two sacks for nine yards.

Fitzpatrick averaged 17.75 ANY/A in week 1 on 28 dropbacks; if we use the NFL average ANY/A from 2017 as our estimate of what the average will be in 2018, this means he produced 332 Adjusted Net Yards of Value over average. Today, he averaged 12.49 ANY/A on 33 dropbacks, which is a still remarkable 230 ANY over average.

Fitzpatrick started his career with the Rams in 2005, then the Bengals, then the Bills, Titans, and Texans. In Houston, Fitzpatrick had the other remarkable game of his career: he went 24 for 33 for 358 yards and 6 TDs, averaging 14.48 ANY/A in a game against one of his many former teams, the Titans. Given the league average in ’14 of 6.14 ANY/A, this means Fitzpatrick had 276 ANY of value over average.

Then Fitzpatrick went to the Jets, and while he had some good games, it also produced the worst game of his career: a 6-interception disaster against the Chiefs that produced -356 ANY over average.

The graph below shows — color-coded, of course — each game of Fitzpatrick’s varied career.

Are Fitzpatrick’s last two games a mirage? You take a look at the graph and tell me…

Let Emmitt Smith always stand out as the counterexample to the idea that a heavy workload is bad for a player’s future. Smith is the only player in NFL history to record 2,000 carries before the end of his age 26 season (he also has a record 279 postseason carries through his age 26 season).  And yet Smith remains the only player in NFL history to pick up 9,000 rushing yards from age 27 through the end of his career.

Yesterday, I looked at the question of when is a player’s career half over.  The sample there was all retired players with at least 5,500 career rushing yards and at least 750 rushing yards in their best season.  The most common age to be the “midpoint” of a player’s career was his age 26 season. Today, a look at the amount of rushing yards gained by players through their age 26 season (on the X-Axis), and from their age 27 through the rest of their career (on the Y-Axis).

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Le’Veon Bell turned 26 years old in February, which means — if he winds up playing much in 2018 — he might be halfway done with his career by the end of this season.

Does that feel like an exaggeration to you?  I looked at all players who had at least one season with 750+ rushing yards, had at least 5,500 career rushing yards, and were retired. And about half of those players had rushed for at least half of their career rushing yards by the end of their age 26 season. That season was by far the most common mid-point, with 34 out 94 players hitting their 50% career mark during their age 26 season. This includes Walter Payton, Barry Sanders, LaDainian Tomlinson, Jerome Bettis, Eric Dickerson, and Marshall Faulk; it’s also where Adrian Peterson and Marshawn Lynch would be had they retired after 2017. [continue reading…]

The Game Scripts are back! Below are the Game Scripts from week 1:

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There are seven new head coaches this year: Jon Gruden in Oakland, Matt Nagy in Chicago, Pat Shurmur in New York, and Frank Reich  in Indianapolis.  On the defensive side, Mike Vrabel is in Tennessee, Steve Wilks is in Arizona, and Matt Patricia is in Detroit.  In week 1, all seven teams lost, and other than Nagy’s Bears (who nearly upset the Packers despite being 6.5-point underdogs), none of the teams even covered against the spread.  Five of the seven teams lost at home.

The table below shows the 15 teams that lost in week 1, and how they fared against the spread: [continue reading…]

The Ravens blew out the Bills on Sunday, 47-3, giving Baltimore the biggest win of week one. Baltimore was a 7.5-point favorite, so the 44-point win means that the Ravens covered by 36.5 points.

That’s a lot. Last year, the Rams shocked the Colts with a 46-9 win, covering by 33.5 points.

Last night? The Jets began the Sam Darnold experience in the most ugly way possible: the rookie quarterback from USC threw a pick six on his first pass, something Jets fans are all too familiar with.

And then? It was a script for the ages for the Jets. Darnold went 16/20 for 198 yards with 2 TDs and 0 INTs the rest of the way. Free agent acquisition Isaiah Crowell rushed for 102 yards and 2 TDs on just 10 carries. Quincy Enunwa returned from a devastating injury and had 6 catches for 63 yards and a touchdown. 2016 first round pick Darron Lee, who has had an up and down career, recorded two interceptions, including a pick six. 2017 first round pick Jamal Adams picked up his first career interception. Trumaine Johnson, the team’s big acquisition at cornerback in free agency, had an interception; so too did the team’s big acquisition at cornerback in 2017, Morris Claiborne. Oh, and the Jets added a 79-yard punt return from Andre Roberts.

The Jets won 48-17, with the game ending as both team took knees near the Lions goal line. New York was a 7-point underdog, meaning the Jets covered by a whopping 38 points. That’s more than the Ravens this year or the Rams last year; in fact, it’s the fourth largest cover in opening week history!

In 1987, the Bucs, as 2-point home underdogs to Atlanta, beat the Falcons 48-10, covering by 40 points.

In 1998, in a game that is near and dear to Jets fans’ hearts, New York stunned Seattle 41-3 as 6.5-point underdogs (44.5 point cover) in the opening game of the Bill Parcells era.

Finally, in 1989, the Browns shut out the Steelers 51-0 despite being just 2-point favorites.

For New York, it was the 4th-largest cover in franchise history (or, at least, going back to 1978), behind the Seattle game in ’98, this upset over Houston in 1988, and this upset over the 2002 Chargers.

It was a game that was shocking on just about every level.  The Jets hadn’t scored a defensive or special teams touchdown since 2013; they did both on Monday night.  Since 2000, the Jets had thrown 5 or more interceptions in a game three times, but hadn’t done so to an opposing quarterback since 1999.  They did that to a Pro Bowler in Matthew Stafford (4 INTs) and his backup (Matt Cassel) on Monday Night. The Jets draft history has been disappointing in recent years, but then the team’s last three first round picks all had big nights.

Will this last for the Jets? Probably not. But for one night, it was the game Jets fans dream about. [continue reading…]

If you knew before today that Ryan Fitzpatrick and Nathan Peterman were going to have historic performances today, you probably would have guessed that they would have been historically bad. In that case, you’d be half right.

Let’s start with Peterman, one of the least pedigreed and deserving week 1 starters in recent memory.  Well, against the Ravens, he completed 5 of 18 passes (27.8%) for just 24 yards with 0 TDs and 2 INTs. That’s a -3.67 AY/A average, since interceptions are worth -45 yards. Add in Peterman’s 3 sacks for 12 sacks, and his ANY/A average is -3.71 (sidenote: it’s remarkable that adding 3 sacks of -4 yards each barely moves the needle! That’s how bad Peterman was). It was just the second time since 2016 that a quarterback had at least 14 pass attempts and an AY/A of -3.5 or worse; the first was Peterman in his first start last year against the Chargers.

Perhaps more “impressive” is that even if we ignores the interceptions and the sacks, Peterman was flat out horrible. He gained 24 yards on his 18 attempts, a pitiful 1.33 Y/A average. In 1997, Tony Graziani of the Falcons also threw for 24 yards on 18 attempts (and also threw 0 TDs and 2 INTs); in fact, since 1982, Graziani and Peterman are the only two quarterbacks to throw 18+ passes and average under 1.35 yards per attempt.  Change the thresholds a little bit — say, 15 passes, 1.50 Y/A — and Peterman is still the only quarterback to hit that mark since the end of the 2009 season (and the games in 2009 both involved significant weather).

Buffalo mercilessly pulled Peterman after 10 drives. Those drives yielded one first down and just 21 yards! The Bills opened the season with seven straight three-and-outs!

Given the modern passing environment, I’m not sure a quarterback can do much worse than what we saw yesterday in Baltimore.

On the other hand, we have Ryan Fitzpatrick.    He completed 21 of 28 passes for 417 yards and 4 TDs. He didn’t take any sacks or throw any interceptions, giving him a yards/attempt average of 14.9 and an ANY/A and AY/A average of 17.75!

How good is that? Since 1970, just five quarterbacks have thrown for 400+ passing yards and also averaged 17.7 AY/A or better.  One was Joe Namath against the Colts in 1972, a game that might be the best passing performance game ever considering the era and opponent.  Mark Rypien had a memorable 6-TD game against the Falcons in 1991 and Nick Foles had a 7-TD game against the Raiders; both of those games make the 400/17.7 AY/A cut-off.  The fourth game was Steve McNair in 2003, and the fifth was Fitzpatrick on Sunday.

Fitzpatrick picked up a first down on 17 of his 28 dropbacks. How remarkable is it to gain a first down on 61% of your pass plays? No team did it last season, and just two (2016 Falcons, 2016 Cowboys; one time each) did it the year before.

It remains to be seen how good the Saints are, but let’s say (perhaps optimistically) that New Orleans allows 5.3 ANY/A again this year in all other games. That would mean Fitzpatrick, who had a 17.75 ANY/A average over 28 dropbacks, would have been 12.45 ANY/A above expectation, which translates to 349 Adjusted Net Yards above expectation. That would rank in the top 15 all-time.

So yeah, it was a pretty darn good day for Fitzpatrick and the Bucs offense. And it’s not the only remarkable game of his career: don’t forget the 6 TD, 0-sack, 0-INT game in 2014 where he averaged over 10 yards per pass.

For now, Bucs fans can sit back and enjoy this remarkable drive chart.