Back in May, CG Technology released point spreads for all NFL games during the first 16 weeks of the 2016 season. We can use these lines to generate implied NFL ratings — as of May 10, 2017 — for this upcoming season.

Basically, we take the point spread in each game, adjust for home field, and then determine how by many points Vegas thinks Team A is better than Team B.  When the Seahawks are favored by 13.5 points in a home game against the Rams, we can take this to mean that Vegas thinks the Seahawks are 10.5 points better than Los Angeles.  When Seattle is a 6-point road favorite in Los Angeles against the Rams, that tells us that Vegas thinks the Seahawks are 9 points better than the Rams.  That’s just two games, of course: Using the iterative SRS process, we can generate season ratings based on the 240 point spreads involved. Here are those ratings, again as of May 10, 2017.

Here’s how to read the table below. After adjusting for home field, the Patriots are expected to beat their average opponent by 6.6 points. On average, New England’s opponents (after adjusting for *their* strength of schedule) are 0.3 points better than average, which means the Patriots are expected to be 6.8 points better than average (difference due to rounding). That’s the best in the league, far ahead of the Seahawks, Cowboys, and Packers (the only other teams that are 4 points better than average). [continue reading…]

On Friday, I wrote about Rob Moore’s 1997 season, when he set the still-standing record for targets in a year. Moore had 208 targets, but as alluded to in that post, he did not set the record for percentage of team targets in a season, which is simply targets divided by team pass attempts (excluding sacks).

That honor belongs to Brandon Marshall, who was targeted on 40% of all passes for the 2012 Bears, and wound up with a post-1978 record 46% of the Bears receiving yards that year.  Remarkably, Marshall saw over 30% of his team’s targets on three different teams, and saw 29% of a fourth franchise’s targets in a season (2015 Jets). The table below shows all players since 1992 with at least 30% (okay, 29.5%) of their team’s targets in a season:

[continue reading…]

Regular readers know that I’m one of the writers at Footballguys.com. If you are a hardcore fantasy footballer (or daily fantasy sports player), you probably already know that Footballguys.com is the single best source for fantasy football information. If you are a more casual fantasy football player, you’ll find that the tools available at Footballguys will make life much, much easier for you to win your league(s). Either way, I think you’ll find FBG to be worthwhile at $29.95 for one season of the Insider PRO and $44.95 for the Insider PRO Plus.

I don’t make extra money if more people sign up for Footballguys or buy an app, but I hope my readers subscribe because I think a subscription is a really good deal. If you play fantasy football and want to win your competitive league or save hours doing research for your local league, a Footballguys subscription is well worth it. You get: [continue reading…]

If you find yourself talking about Rob Moore in the summer of 2017, it’s probably for one of four reasons.

1) You are a diehard Jets or Cardinals fan choosing to reminisce about Boomer Esiason and the halcyon days of the ’90s.

2) You just finished watching Jerry Maguire. That movie, which was released in December 1996, saw Cuba Gooding Jr. play the role of Rod Tidwell. Gooding’s character wore 85 and played wide receiver for the Arizona Cardinals, just like Moore (who even had a bit role in the movie, playing himself).

3) You are researching the best players in Supplemental Draft history, and Moore’s name came up. A star at Syracuse, Moore graduated early (back when it was still unusual for undergraduates to enter the draft), and therefore elected to enter the Supplemental Draft. The move cost the Jets the 8th pick in the 1991 Draft, which the Eagles used on Tennessee offensive lineman Antone Davis. Moore was the much better player.

4) You were wondering which player in the last 25 years (and, perhaps, for much longer) saw the most targets in a single season in NFL history. After some searching, you found out that the answer was Rob Moore, with 208 targets for the 1997 Cardinals.

Wait, what? Of all the players in the last 25 years, Rob Moore is the single-season leader in targets? The single-season leaders in receptions, receiving yards, and receiving touchdowns are Marvin Harrison, Calvin Johnson, and Randy Moss, respectively. The most targets (since 1992) that Jerry Rice ever saw was 176, and that was in 1995, when he gained 1848 receiving yards while playing for a 49ers team that threw 644 passes, the 2nd most in the NFL. So how did — just two years later — Rob Moore see 32 more targets than Rice in ’95? [continue reading…]

Today’s guest post comes from Ben Baldwin, a contributor for Field Gulls and Bryan’s site, http://thegridfe.com. You can find more of Ben’s work here or on Twitter @guga31bb. What follows are Ben’s words.

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Arguing on the internet

A common argument on the internet (e.g. Twitter, where I spent too much time) is that the efficiency of players like Dak Prescott and Russell Wilson in their rookie seasons (and subsequent seasons, for Wilson) was not impressive because they were not asked to throw the ball as much. Once they are asked to throw more often, the argument goes, we can expect their efficiency to fall off. Here is one of many, many examples:

Do quarterbacks really look good because they throw less? [continue reading…]

On Monday, I looked at the concentration index scores for a number of quarterbacks based on the number of touchdowns thrown to each receiver (more details on the formula available there and here). Today, the reverse: how diverse (or not diverse) were receivers with respect to the number of quarterbacks from whom they caught TDs?

Marques Colston, for example, caught 100% of his touchdowns from Drew Brees.  Rob Gronkowski has caught all but one of his touchdowns from Tom Brady. And Mark Clayton caught 94% of his touchdowns from Dan Marino.

At the bottom of the list are two of the most underrated receivers by modern fans.   Both were superstars in college and very high draft picks, but “disappointed” in the pros.  That’s probably because they were stuck with a revolving door of bad quarterbacks.

Joey Galloway caught 77 career touchdowns and was the 8th pick in the ’95 Draft, but he is chronically underrated due to the bad quarterback play he experienced. He only had double digit touchdowns with one quarterback: an in-his-40s Warren Moon.  His top four quarterbacks were responsible for only 51% of his career touchdowns!  Galloway played with a lot of quarterbacks, and most of them were below-average.

The other receiver with a concentration index of less than 11% was former number one overall pick Irving Fryar.  Regular readers may recall that Fryar is the odd duck who set his career high in receiving yards at age 35 while playing with Bobby Hoying!  Fryar has over 3,000 yards with three franchises, a very rare feat.  He spent his 20s with the terrible Patriots back when that was a thing, and he led New England in receiving yards in ’90, ’91, and ’92, then led the Dolphins in receiving yards in ’93, ’94, and ’95, and then led the Eagles in receiving yards in ’96 and ’97!  It’s pretty impressive to lead your team in receiving yards for eight straight seasons, but it’s really impressive to do it for three different franchises. [continue reading…]

Since 2001, the Patriots have been favored to win in a whopping 79% of all games, including postseason (giving half-credit as a favorite in games where the spread is zero). The Steelers are second at 73%, the Packers and Colts are next at 69%, the Eagles are at 68%, the Broncos at 67%, and the Saints at 61% are the only other team over 60%. In other words, the Patriots have been in a class by themselves when it comes to being favored.

But even that kind of underrates New England. The Patriots weren’t favored in any of the first 8 games of the 2001 season; the team was only favored in one of its first 12 games, at which point in time New England had a 7-5 record (and an 8-4 mark against the spread). There have also been 19 games since 2001 where Tom Brady was not the starting quarterback, and the Patriots were underdogs in 4 of those games (and a pick’em in a fifth). And there were meaningless week 17 games in 2006 and 2009 that the Patriots were underdogs because they were projected to rest their starters.

The graph below shows how many points the Patriots were expected to win in each game, regular and post-season, since 2001. I have included as red dots games not started by Brady or during meaningless week 17 games: [continue reading…]

Fran Tarkenton threw 342 touchdowns in his career, but you may be surprised to learn that he didn’t throw more than 25 touchdowns to a single player! He played with John Gilliam from ’72 to ’75, and Gilliam caught 25 touchdowns during those four seasons before signing with Atlanta in 1976.  Tarkenton played with receiver Sammy White during the final three seasons of Tarkenton’s career, from ’76 to ’78, and the duo connected for 24 touchdowns.  And Tarkenton threw 23 touchdowns to Hall of Very Good running back Chuck Foreman.  While with the Giants, Tarkenton also threw 20 touchdowns to Homer Jones; those were the only four players to catch 20 touchdowns from Tarkenton.

A couple of months ago, I discussed the concentration index as a way to measure how concentrated certain statistics are.  We can do that same thing to measure quarterbacks and receivers to see which players had the most varied passing games.  This will be skewed, of course, in favor of quarterbacks who played for multiple teams, but that’s arguably a feature and not a bug.

Below are the results for the quarterbacks with at least 100 touchdown passes: [continue reading…]

Mike Anderson was the 189th pick in the NFL Draft, and one of the most unlikely rookie of the year winners ever. He played at Utah in ’98 and ’99, not getting there until four years in the United States Marine Corps and two years at junior college. On the other hand, Anderson’s success wasn’t entirely shocking: perhaps the biggest hurdle to his success was just becoming the team’s starting running back. From ’96 to ’00, Denver’s top running back averaged over 90 rushing yards per game in each season; the Broncos were responsible for 5 of the 21 instances when a rusher hit that mark while playing in at least 12 games.

Last year, Dak Prescott (the 135th pick) became another extremely unlikely rookie of the year winner. He helped turn around a Cowboys passing attack that was the worst in the NFL the prior year. Of course, there was quite an impressive infrastructure in place there, too: in 2014, the Cowboys passing game was great, too.

In 1974, Don Woods took the league by storm in 1974, despite being the 134th pick in the draft. A star quarterback at New Mexico, like most black quarterbacks of his time, he was converted to another position upon reaching the pros. Woods was cut by the Packers, but signed with the Chargers (who already had a pretty good quarterback on the roster). In the final 11 games of the season, Woods averaged over 100 yards from scrimmage and scored 10 touchdowns, while averaging 5.1 yards per carry.

In 1975, RB Mike Thomas was the 108th pick to the Redskins. Thomas totaled 1,402 yards in 14 games, and found himself in the company of the game’s top running backs by topping 75 yards in 12 of 14 games.

The graph below shows where the AP Offensive Rookie of the Year was selected in each season: [continue reading…]

Congrats to the 2017 Hall of Fame Class that will be inducted tonight. We spend a lot of time debating and talking about someone’s Hall of Fame worthiness, but today is a day to celebrate and honor some of the game’s best players. We have an 7-person class (Commissioner Paul Tagliabue) being enshrined tonight:

• Kenny Easley (Tommy Rhodes, high school coach)
• Jason Taylor (Jimmy Johnson, HC with Dolphins)
• Morten Andersen (Sebastian Andersen, son)
• Terrell Davis (Neil Schwartz, agent & friend)
• LaDainian Tomlinson (FB Lorenzo Neal, teammate with Chargers)
• Jerry Jones (Gene Jones, wife)
• Kurt Warner (Brenda Warner, wife)

It is a pretty remarkable class of players (and congrats to Jones, too, though I am not going to get into his accolades here).  Consider: [continue reading…]

When it comes to the AP Defensive Rookie of the Year award, one thing is clear: being a high draft pick really, really helps. On average, the last 15 players were drafted with the 11th overall pick, and all but one was a top-18 pick! This award is extremely skewed in favor of early draft picks. Take a look:

[continue reading…]

I appeared on Chris Harris’s podcast yesterday, talking yards per carry and game scripts. You can listen to it here, beginning at the 41:36 mark.

All yards gained on special teams are done outside of the context of the series (down and distance) environment that defines most games. A kickoff return from to the 30 or to the 40 represents a difference of 10 yards, but those 10 yards are not as valuable as the difference between a gain of 5 yards and 15 yards on 3rd-and-10. The former are, quite literally, special teams yards. They don’t provide any value in gaining any additional first downs, or keeping a drive alive. This is why we don’t spend a lot of time thinking about all-purpose yardage leaders, or the difference between a kickoff returner who averages 28.0 yards per return or 24.0. Special teams yards, while obviously valuable, are — just as obviously — the least valuable yards possible.

On a 3rd-and-10, a 15-yard pass provides a significant amount of value by providing a first down. But let’s get a bit more precise: the first 10 of those yards were really valuable. The last 5? Well, those were special teams yards. The difference between gaining 10 yards and gaining 15 yards on 3rd-and-10 isn’t that significant: well, it’s about as significant as returning a kickoff for 30 yards or 35 yards. Those last 5 yards don’t help a team move the chains. [continue reading…]

Two years ago, I wrote this post titled “Take Away His X Best Carries and He’s Average.” The idea was simple: Suppose you sort each running back’s carries in descending order by yards gained. How many carries would we need to take away from him to drop his production to at or below average?

Browns running back Isaiah Crowell ranked 9th in yards per carry last year, with an impressive 4.81 average gain. But that number may be a bit misleading, to the extent it made you think that Crowell was consistently churning out big gains. Crowell was responsible for the longest run of the season last year, an 85-yard run in week 2 against the Ravens. And, for what it’s worth, it was one of the easiest long runs you’ll ever see:

In the last game of the year, Crowell had a more impressive 67-yard run against the Steelers. But here’s the thing: outside of those two runs, Crowell averaged just 4.08 yards per carry on his other 196 carries.

There were 42 running backs last year who had at least 100 rush attempts; those players averaged 4.19 yards per carry last year. So if you remove Crowell’s two best carries, he falls below that average.

On the other hand, Steelers running back Le’Veon Bell averaged 4.86 yards per carry last year, and his six best runs went for 44, 38, 33, 26, 25, and 24 yards. Remove those, and Bell still averaged 4.23 yards per carry, which means you need to remove his seven best runs to drop him below average.

Jets running back Bilal Powell was the star of this metric.  He averaged 5.51 yards per carry last year, but he was a consistent producer of big gains.  He had 12 runs of 13+ yards, and you need to remove all 12 to bring Powell below average.  Remove those 12 carries and his average finally dips to 4.16 yards per carry.

Below are the 19 running backs to exceed that 4.19 yards per carry average last year, and the fewest number of carries you would need to remove to bring their production below average: [continue reading…]

Regular readers know that I’m not a huge fan of yards per carry as a metric to evaluate running backs, or even rushing attacks. Given the limited numbers of metrics available, sometimes it is a useful measure, but we also much caution ourselves against relying on it too often. Today’s post is another example of that.

I looked at all rushing attacks since 2002, and calculated the yards per carry gained by each team’s top running back and second running back (excluding pure fullbacks and situations where the second running back had fewer than 50 carries), as measured by carries. If yards per carry was the best way to evaluate running backs, and coaches wanted to play their best players most frequently (and, of course, coaches were able to identify their best players), then RB1s should be better at RB2s at yards per carry.

Last year, Bears rookie Jordan Howard averaged 5.2 yards per carry on 252 carries, while backup Jeremy Langford (who actually opened the season as the starter) gained just 3.2 yards per carry on 62 carries.  That’s a piece of evidence that YPC is useful: Howard was much better than Langford at YPC, and he gained way more carries.  But that +2.0 discrepancy was the largest in football last year: this is an outlier, not a typical example.

How about an outlier in the other direction? The Jets top running back last year was Matt Forte, who started 13 games and handled 218 carries; he averaged 3.7 yards per rush. Meanwhile, backup Bilal Powell averaged 5.5 yards per carry on 131 carries.  This might mean that Powell is better than Forte, but at least last year, the Jets didn’t seem to think so — or maybe thought so too late.

These are two interesting examples because they show some of the drawbacks to actually trying to properly analyze the issue.  Howard was the backup, but because he was so much better than Langford, he gets graded as Chicago’s top running back.  This biases the study in favor of RB1s: if a running back is producing at a high rate, even if he’s the backup, he may wind up leading his team in rushes that year (thanks to earning more carries in the second half of the season), which means RB1s in generally will appear to have higher yards per carry than RB2s.  In that way, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

On the other hand, look at the Jets example.  I think we would all agree that Powell was the Jets best running back last season. He actually finished with more yards from scrimmage than Forte (thanks to playing in two more games), and nearly outrushed him, too. Forte was the (moderately) high priced veteran free agent signing, while Powell was intended to be the backup. By the end of the year, it was clear Powell was the Jets best running back (if not best player), but he didn’t have enough carries to overtake Forte for RB1 status. So in some ways, this study may not properly identify a team’s true top running back and backup running back, if we only classify those players by carries.

So there is some issues with this on a case-by-case basis.  That’s why the best thing to do is to aggregate the data.  The graph below shows the average yards per rush gained by the average team’s RB1 and average team’s RB2 in each year since 2002: [continue reading…]

On twitter, I’ve been doing some fun screenshots of player stats where you need to guess the player based only on all — or just some — of his stats. You can follow with the hashtag PFRScreenShots.

I thought this was a fun one:

Okay, you may say how the heck could I know that? Well, You have more than enough info there! The number 5235 can only be a reference to one thing in season stats: passing yards. And it’s not in bold, which means its not a league leader. So the real question is can you recall a player who threw for 5,235 passing yards but didn’t lead the league in passing?

Which got me to wondering: which passers had the most impressive raw statistics while not leading their league in that category? [continue reading…]

Over the last four days, I wrote about the one great team that didn’t win it all on the six greatest dynasties in the NFL since World War II:

• 1990s Cowboys: Missing Links In The Dynasty Chain, Part IV
• 1970s Steelers: Missing Links In The Dynasty Chain, Part III
• 1960s Packers: Missing Links In The Dynasty Chain, Part II
• 1950s Browns, 1980s 49ers, modern Patriots: Missing Links In The Dynasty Chain, Part I

And while these dynasties never played each other, of course, there was some overlap among the quarterbacks.

Starr vs. Bradshaw

Otto Graham played from 1946 to 1955, while Bart Starr didn’t enter the NFL until 1956.  But Starr had a long career, sticking around in Green Bay through 1971.  And on December 6th, 1970, a very special game in NFL history took place: the only meeting with Starr and Terry Bradshaw.  Even if it wasn’t quite Brady/Manning.

In 1970, Bradshaw was the first pick in the draft, and as a rookie, he was terrible, finishing 3.30 ANY/A below average. Starr was washed up by 1970: he ranked 21st out of 25 qualifying passers in ANY/A. [continue reading…]

On Tuesday, we looked at three of the best teams on three of the greatest dynasties in football history: the ’53 Browns, the ’87 49ers, and the ’07 Patriots. Wednesday, the focus shifted to Lombardi’s ’64 Packers, while yesterday we looked at the ’76 Steelers. Today, we complete the series with some notes on the ’94 Cowboys, and how Dallas not only nearly became the first team to win three Super Bowls in a row, but the first team to win four.

Dallas won the Super Bowl after the ’92, ’93, and ’95 seasons, and lost in the NFC Championship Game against the ’49ers after the ’94 season. Given that the Super Bowl would have been against the Chargers, there’s little doubt that the Cowboys would have been Super Bowl champs had they defeated San Francisco. Back then, the NFC Championship Game — which was between the 49ers and Cowboys three straight years — was the Super Bowl. So was the ’94 version of the Cowboys worse than the other three teams? Let’s look at the rosters. [continue reading…]

On Tuesday, we looked at three of the best teams on three of the greatest dynasties in football history: the ’53 Browns, the ’87 49ers, and the ’07 Patriots. Yesterday, the focus was on the ’64 Packers, a talent-rich team sandwiched around repeat champions from ’61-’62 and ’65-’67. All four teams were dynasties with Hall of Fame coaches and quarterbacks, and that trend continues today with a look at the ’70s Steelers, and the historic combination  Chuck Noll and Terry Bradshaw.

And as with the Packers, we will look at a Steelers team that didn’t win the Super Bowl but was in the middle of the team’s dynastic run.You know that Pittsburgh won four Super Bowl titles in six years, but less understood is how the team evolved over that period.

Four of the Steelers Hall of Famers were drafted in 1974, the year of the team’s first championship. Jack Lambert, John Stallworth, Lynn Swann, and Mike Webster were all green 22 years olds that season, and only Lambert was a major contributor as a rookie; Stallworth, Swann, and Webster combined to start just six other games.

A fifth Hall of Famer, QB Terry Bradshaw, was drafted in 1970, but he was far from Terry Bradshaw even five years into his career.  The ’74 Steelers featured one of the worst passing attacks to ever win the Super Bowl, and Bradshaw’s passing numbers were below average in each of the first five seasons of his career.  In fact, it was Joe Gilliam who won the training camp battle for the starting job; Bradshaw didn’t even start the first six games of the 1974 season.  Four years later, he was the AP MVP.

What about the rest of those famous Steelers? RB Franco Harris was drafted in 1972; he was an immediate star, and made his third straight Pro Bowl in ’74.  LB Jack Ham was drafted a year earlier, and he made the first of six straight AP 1st-team All-Pro teams in ’74 (and the second of eight straight Pro Bowls).

In 1970, Pittsburgh drafted not just Bradshaw, but Mel Blount. The famed cornerback was a full-time starter his first five seasons, but he didn’t make his first Pro Bowl or earn any All-Pro recognition until 1975, when he led the league with 11 interceptions.  And in 1969, the Steelers drafted DT Joe Greene and the best Steeler with four rings not in the Hall of Fame, DE L.C. Greenwood.  Both were in their prime by ’74.

So while the ’74 Steelers had the names, only half of them had actually developed into stars by 1974. Stallworth, Swann, Webster were reserves, Bradshaw had been benched and underperformed, and Blount had yet to break out. The ’74 team went 10-3-1 and had an SRS of +6.8; the ’75 version was much, much better: that team went 12-2 and had an SRS of +14.2, and rested starters and lost the final game of the regular season. And the ’76 version? Well, after a very rough start, it finished with an SRS of +15.3, the best in Pittsburgh history.

So when it comes to missing rings, the obvious starting place to look is the ’76 Steelers. The ’73 Steelers were far too young, while the ’80 Steelers were over the hill; the only other choice would be the ’77 squad, but that one was doomed before the season even started, with the team chemistry hindered by lawsuits and holdouts. No, the Steelers team that should have won it all — but didn’t — was perhaps the best Pittsburgh team in franchise history. [continue reading…]

Yesterday, we looked at the three of the best dynasties in NFL history, and one of the very best teams on each of those dynasties that somehow fell short of winning it all. For the ’07 Patriots and ’87 49ers, shocking playoff losses as double-digit favorites were the the result of ferocious pass rush engineered by the Giants and Vikings, respectively. For the ’87 49ers and ’53 Browns, these losses were followed by back-to-back championships, signs of the talent-laden rosters these teams possessed. And for the ’53 and ’07 Patriots, all-time great seasons by all-time great quarterbacks ended with bitter disappointment.

Today? A look at yet another dynastic team that had all the talent in the world, sandwiched between its inexperienced championship teams of yesteryear and its aging veteran championship rosters of tomorrow.

1964 Packers

Yesterday, we talked Brady/Belichick, Montana/Walsh, and Graham/Brown. Today we focus on one of the only other coach and quarterback combinations that can compare to those three. The Packers won their first title in the Vince Lombardi / Bart Starr era in 1961. The 1962 Packers may have been the greatest team in NFL history. In 1963, the Packers again led the NFL in the Simple Rating System, and ranked in the top 2 in points and points allowed. The problem for Green Bay? The Chicago Bears had one of the greatest defenses in NFL history: the Bears led the NFL in points allowed, yards allowed, turnovers forced, net yards per attempt allowed, passing yards allowed, rushing yards allowed, and yards per carry allowed. Green Bay finished 11-2-1, with both losses coming to Chicago (including one game that Bart Starr missed).  And, of course, in 1965, 1966, and 1967, the Packers three-peated as NFL champions.  By ’68, Lombardi was gone, and the Packers Hall of Famers were largely retired or past their prime.

So what rings did the Packers miss? There are only three years from which to choose: ’60, ’63, and ’64.  In 1960, Green Bay made it to the title game, but that team was the baby Packers. There were 13 all-time great players to play for the ’60s Packers, and 12 of those made it to the Hall of Fame. Here is how old each player was in ’60, ’63, and ’64. [continue reading…]

A decade ago, NFL Networking aired a series called America’s Game: The Missing Rings, looking at five great NFL teams that failed to win a Super Bowl. These were the Minnesota Vikings from 1969 and 1998, the 1981 Chargers, the 1988 Bengals, and the 1990 Bills. None of those franchises have ever won a Super Bowl, but those five teams all came very close to winning or at least making a Super Bowl.

But what about the 6 great pro football dynasties since World War II? The ’50s Browns, ’60s Packers, ’70s Steelers, ’80s 49ers, ’90s Cowboys, and modern Patriots all had (at least) one great team that failed to win it all, too. We don’t spend a lot of time thinking about the great Brady/Belichick, Graham/Brown, and Montana/Walsh teams that didn’t win it all. But in some cases, those were the very best teams they ever fielded.

2007 Patriots

You know the story. New England became the first and only team to ever go 16-0, and the first and only team to ever outscore its opponents by 300 points. QB Tom Brady was the NFL MVP, and WR Randy Moss, LT Matt Light, LB Mike Vrabel and CB Asante Samuel were all 1st-team All-Pros. WR Wes Welker led the NFL in receptions, and G Logan Mankins, C Dan Koppen, and NT Vince Wilfork all made the Pro Bowl (and the defense also had veteran stars in LB Junior Seau, DE Richard Seymour, and S Rodney Harrison). The year before, without Moss and Welker, the Patriots nearly won the Super Bowl: New England lost in the AFC Championship Game to the Colts, a game the Patriots led 21-3 early on. [continue reading…]

In 1987, the Associated Press voters were faced with a difficult choice. This was a year disrupted by the players’ strike, which led to a 15-game season that included three games featuring replacement players. Jerry Rice was the rare unanimous first-team All-Pro selection at wide receiver, courtesy of a record-breaking 22 touchdown receptions in 12 games.  How remarkable was that? Eagles receiver Mike Quick was second in the league in receiving touchdowns with *11*, and no other player had more than 8!  And for good measure, Rice scored a 23rd touchdown on a rush against the Falcons.

And it’s not as though all Rice did was catch touchdowns. Cardinals wide receiver J.T. Smith crossed the picket line and played in all 15 games; he wound up leading the league in receiving yards, but Rice led the NFL in receiving yards per game for the second straight season.  A remarkable year from the greatest receiver in NFL history is certainly worthy of MVP honors.

The biggest threat to Rice capturing the MVP award appeared to be his own quarterback, Joe Montana.  The 49ers lost on opening day in Pittsburgh, but the 49ers went 10-0 in Montana’s remaining starts.  In part, this is because this was a dominant San Francisco team on both sides of the ball, but Montana led the NFL in completion percentage, touchdowns, touchdown rate, and passer rating.  He also ranked 2nd in ANY/A, behind Cleveland’s Bernie Kosar (the Browns went 8-4 in his starts, and Kosar received minimal MVP attention). Montana had three 4th quarter comebacks and three game-winning drives, while Kosar had none.  And in a head-to-head game on Sunday Night Football, Montana outclassed Kosar. And Montana was Montana, so it’s no surprise that peak Montana on a 10-game winning streak was considered the best quarterback in the NFL. [continue reading…]

Kirk Cousins was a good quarterback in 2015, and a very good one in 2016. He will probably be a very good quarterback for the Redskins again in 2017, and then will likely switch teams after the 2017 season. He will turn 29 this August, which means he would be 29 years old in the year before switching teams, and turn 30 in preseason next year with (presumably) a new team. That’s because the Redskins and Cousins can’t seem to come to terms on a long-term deal, and with Washington unlikely to tag Cousins again after the season, he will be free to move to another team.  And that will make him the extraordinarily rare case of a quarterback in his prime years hitting the open market.

Using my era-adjusted passer ratings, looked at all quarterbacks who had an above-average rating during a season in his twenties and then switched teams in the off-season. The two with the highest era-adjusted passer ratings before switching teams? Drew Brees with San Diego in 2005 and Neil O’Donnell with the Steelers in 1995.  Both left as free agents, with Brees going to New Orleans and having a Hall of Fame career, and O’Donnell going to New York and… playing for a 1-15 Jets team. [continue reading…]

Ramin Mohajer is a good friend of mine and one of the most genuinely good human beings I know. He’s been working at a nonprofit for years, but alerted me to a new development yesterday: his nonprofit is launching an educational fantasy football platform and scholarship competition based on fantasy football! The new program, GM Genius, was recently featured on ESPN.

Here’s some more information about it, straight from the source: [continue reading…]

On Tuesday and Wednesday, we looked at the average age for each team’s offense and defense in 2016. Today, let’s look at the overall picture (ignoring special teams). By that measure, the Jaguars, Browns, Rams, Bucs, and Texans have the five youngest teams in the NFL. Take a look: [continue reading…]

Being young isn’t by itself a virtue: the Browns ranked in the bottom 5 in points allowed, yards allowed, net yards per attempt allowed, net yards per rush allowed, turnovers forced, and first downs allowed. But Cleveland was, by far, the youngest defense in the NFL last season.

Yesterday, we looked at the age-adjusted offenses from 2016. Today we do the same for defenses, and the Browns were the youngest group in the league last year, with an average age of just 25.2 years. [continue reading…]

After each of of the last five years, I’ve presented the AV-adjusted age of each roster in the NFL. Measuring team age in the NFL is tricky. You don’t want to calculate the average age of a 53-man roster and call that the “team age” because the age of a team’s starters is much more relevant than the age of a team’s reserves. The average age of a team’s starting lineup isn’t perfect, either. The age of the quarterback and key offensive and defensive players should count for more than the age of a less relevant starter. Ideally, you want to calculate a team’s average age by placing greater weight on the team’s most relevant players.

My solution has been to use the Approximate Value numbers from Pro-Football-Reference.com, and to calculate age using each player’s precise age as of September 1 of the year in question.  Today, we will look at offenses; tomorrow, we will crunch these same numbers for team defenses. The table below shows the average AV-adjusted age of each offense, along with its total number of points of AV. Last year, the Rams, Jaguars, and Titans were the three youngest offenses. Each of those three are still in the top five this year, joined by the Bucs at #1 and the Seahawks at #4. [continue reading…]

Today’s guest post comes from hscer, a frequent commenter here at Football Perspective. Hscer is starting a project on his website, MVPQB.Blogspot.com, where he is working on his most valuable quarterback for each season since 1951. Here’s a sample chapter today: as always, we thank our guest posters for their contributions.

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 “When .500 is a Miracle” – The Giants trade a number of picks for Fran Tarkenton and immediately go from a one-win team to a .500 club.

The Stats

Unitas (AP1): 255-436 (58.5%) 3428 yards (7.86 y/a) 20 TD 16 INT, 83.6 rating, 7.13 AY/A, 11-1-2 record in starts (4 4QC, 3 GWD). Rushing: 89 yards on 22 attempts (4.0 avg.), 0 TD, 4 fumbles.

Tarkenton (MVQB): 204-377 (54.1%) 3088 yards (8.19 y/a) 29 TD 19 INT, 85.9 rating, 7.46 AY/A, 7-7 record in starts (2 4QC, 2 GWD). Rushing: 306 yards on 44 attempts (7.0 avg.), 2 TD, 4 fumbles.

The Argument

For older selections, I’ve often deferred to the AP when they pass over a quarterback on a weaker team to give their All-Pro nod to an established star on a great squad. I won’t do that here.

The 1966 Giants went 1-12-1. Much of that was due to a putrid defense which allowed 501 points, many of them in an infamous 72-41 loss to the Redskins. But the offense could not be absolved from blame. Gary Wood, Earl Morrall, and Tom Kennedy split time at quarterback, and no rusher exceeded 327 yards. As a result, New York was 12th in the 15-team NFL with 263 points scored, and 8th in yards. Just two seasons later, Morrall would be putting up Unitas-like numbers on Unitas’ own team.

In ’66, New York’s top 5 pass receivers were Homer Jones, Joe Morrison, Aaron Thomas, Chuck Mercein, and Bobby Crespino. In ’67, they were Thomas, Jones, Morrison, Ernie Koy, and Tucker Frederickson, the last two of which were also on the ’66 squad. Four starting offensive linemen returned, and the only new one was 1966 eighth-round pick RT Charlie Harper. [continue reading…]

Today’s guest post comes from hscer, a frequent commenter here at Football Perspective. Hscer is starting a project on his website, MVPQB.Blogspot.com, where he is working on his most valuable quarterback for each season since 1951. Here’s a sample chapter today: as always, we thank our guest posters for their contributions.

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“Say What?” – Was Ken O’Brien really better than Dan Marino at any point in time? For one season, he at least had an argument.

The Stats

Marino (AP1): 336-567 (59.3%) 4137 yards (7.30 y/a) 30 TD 21 INT, 84.1 rating, sacked 18-157, 6.21 ANY/A, 12-4 record in starts (4 4QB, 6 GWD). Rushing: -24 yards on 26 attempts (-0.9 avg.), 0 TD, 9 fumbles.

O’Brien (MVQB): 297-488 (60.9%) 3888 yards (7.97 y/a) 25 TD 8 INT, 96.2 rating, sacked 62-399, 6.60 ANY/A, 11-5 record in starts (1 4QC, 1 GWD). Rushing: 58 yards on 25 attempts (2.3 avg., 0 TD, 14 fumbles.

The Argument

Yes, really. Even though Ken O’Brien took far too many sacks in ’85—62 to be exact, losing 399 yards—when he got the ball off, he was better than Marino. Even when he didn’t, his passing edge was large enough to secure a higher ANY/A than The Man in Miami. Dan Fouts was another reasonable selection despite missing four games by throwing for 3638 yards and 27 TD with a league-leading 7.02 ANY/A in the games he did play, but this year comes down to Marino and O’Brien.

Dan Marino was coming off of the greatest season an NFL quarterback has ever enjoyed in 1984, still the best ever in my opinion. This likely helped his cause. It didn’t help O’Brien’s cause that he had one of the ugliest season debuts you can imagine. In a 31-0 loss to the Raiders, he was 16-29 for 192 yards, 0 TD, 2 interceptions, and sacked a whopping 10 times for -61 yards, producing an adjusted net yards per attempt of 1.05. In the final 15 games, his ANY/A was 7.14, but the first game counts all the same. [continue reading…]