GronkSmash

Rob Gronkowski is in a scoring slump. It’s one of the worst scoring slumps of his career. But more on that in a bit.

Jerry Rice once ^[1]Well, he actually did it three times, although the same 55 games were in all three stretches. caught 67 touchdowns over a 57-game period. This stretch was during all of 1987, 1988, and 1989 (including playoffs) and the start of the 1990 season. That pro-rates to an insane 19-touchdown per-season average for three-and-a-half seasons. Then again, the weirder thing is when Rice doesn’t top a receiving category.

Lance Alworth once caught 55 touchdowns ^[2]Three times, like Rice, with 55 of the same games. over one 57-game stretch from 1963 to 1967.

Only three other players since 1960 have ever had more than 50 touchdowns in any 57-game stretch (including playoffs): Randy Moss, Terrell Owens, and Art Powell, each of whom topped out at 53 touchdowns in 57 games. Cris Carter, Sonny Randle, Sterling Sharpe were at 49, Larry Fitzgerald was at 58, and Gary Collins, Anthony Freeman, Marvin Harrison, and Andre Rison were at 47.  Calvin Johnson topped out at 46 at one point in 2013.  Dez Bryant hit 46 in his last 57 after the Lions playoff game, but then went three straight games without a touchdown catch. [continue reading…]

Antonio Brown caught caught 17 passes (on 23 targets) for an incredible 284 yards today against the Raiders. He also had two carries for 22 yards. But while 306 yards from scrimmage is insane, Brown wasn’t a one-man show: DeAngelo Williams rushed 27 times for 170 yards and two touchdowns, while catching two passes for 55 yards. Together, the duo combined for an insane 531 yards from scrimmage. That’s the most in the NFL by any duo since at least 1960… by a whopping 50 yards!

But hey, Cleveland fans: the Steelers duo still wasn’t quite as good as Jerome Harrison and Josh Cribbs.

Last week’s ratings can be seen here.

The schedules of Baylor, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, and TCU are very backloaded. Other than Oklahoma’s game against Tennessee, none of the four teams had much of a threat in the nonconference schedule, and the B12 schedule just so happened to be incredibly backloaded. These four teams are the class of the Big 12, but many of their games were scheduled for later in the year. Below are the SOS ratings of each opponent in each game for these four teams, with weaker games in red and tougher games in blue:

Let’s use that same formatting but insert the opponent’s names. For Oklahoma, the three games against the other three teams are the last three games on the Sooners schedule. For the other three schools, the three round robin games are three of their final four games. There is a bit of randomness involved — if Texas or Kansas State or West Virginia was good this year, we wouldn’t have this situation — but it does make for an excellent final month of the season.

Below are the SRS ratings through ten weeks. As always thanks to Dr. Peter R. Wolfe for providing the weekly game logs. [continue reading…]

Today’s guest post/contest comes from Adam Harstad, a co-writer of mine at Footballguys.com. You can follow Adam on twitter at @AdamHarstad.

This guy can pick up first downs

Regular readers of Football Perspective are well acquainted with the sneaky-greatness of DeAndre Hopkins, who led the NFL in percentage of his team’s receiving yards in 2014 despite not even leading his own team in targets. ^[1]Hopkins had 127 targets in 16 games, or 7.9 per game. Then-teammate Andre Johnson had 146 targets in 15 games, or 9.7 per game. And, indeed, by “percentage of team receiving yards”, Hopkins is having another terrific season; his 37.0% share is slightly above the league-leading 35.0% he posted last year, (though it trails the 38.6% share he carried through his team’s first 14 games in 2014).

But Hopkins is having an even better season by a far less esoteric statistic: receiving first downs. As best as I have been able to determine, the all-time record for receiving first downs in a season is 92, set by Marvin Harrison in 2002 and tied by Calvin Johnson in 2012. ^[2]Obviously play-by-play data is virtually impossible to come by for older seasons. Thanks to frequent guest contributor Bryan Frye, I have complete first-down data going back to 1992; however (a) the … Continue reading Through eight games this year, Hopkins has converted for a new set of downs a remarkable 54 times, putting him on pace for 108, a ridiculous 17.4% more than the previous NFL record. (For context, if a quarterback wanted to break Peyton Manning’s single-season passing yardage record by 17.4%, he would need to throw for 6430 yards.) [continue reading…]

This week at the New York Times, a look at how it’s a season for old quarterbacks:

Through eight weeks this season, over half of all passing yards have come from quarterbacks who are on the “wrong” side of 30. The same is true of passing touchdowns. What’s more incredible is that 55 percent of all wins this season have come from quarterbacks who are 30 years or older. Peyton Manning and Tom Brady are the two oldest starting quarterbacks in the N.F.L., but are two of the four quarterbacks on 7-0 teams. The top four leaders in passing touchdowns are 34 or older: Brady, Carson Palmer, Philip Rivers and Eli Manning. And the seven leaders in passing yards through eight weeks were 30 or older, too: Rivers, Brady, Matt Ryan, Palmer, Drew Brees, Joe Flacco and Eli Manning.

You can read the full article here.

This week at the Washington Post, a look at some unusual midseason awards.

Unsung Rookie of the Year: Offense – Stefon Diggs, Minnesota Vikings

With the types of seasons being had by a pair of SEC stars in Georgia’s Todd Gurley and Alabama’s Amari Cooper, there is little hope for Diggs — a fifth round pick out of Maryland — to bring home any hardware at the end of the season. But after being inactive during the first three games of the season, the Vikings wide receiver has been the model of consistency since then, catching six or seven passes each week for at least 87 yards. Over the last five weeks, Diggs ranks fifth among all players in receiving yards despite the Vikings bye week taking place during that stretch.

You can read the full article here.

Let’s start with a piece of good news: I have created a 2015 Game Scripts page, where you can access the Game Scripts data from every game this season. That will likely be updated on Tuesday or Wednesday of each week.

The Rams are suddenly interesting to watch on offense. St. Louis traded into the top ten to draft Todd Gurley and Tavon Austin, and both players showed off their talents in week eight. Gurley had a 71-yard run, the highlight of a 20-carry, 133-yard day, while Austin ran for a touchdown and caught a 66-yard touchdown. Together, the duo combined for 265 yards from scrimmage as part of a run-heavy day for St. Louis. The team rushed 41 times compared to just 23 dropbacks, giving St. Louis the most run-happy identity of the week.

In losing efforts, two other teams stood out as run-happy. One, surprisingly, was Green Bay: The Packers were blown out, the sort of environment that usually leads to a 40-pass day. Instead, Aaron Rodgers had just 25 pass attempts, while the Packers finished with 21 carries. That ratio was supported by the efficiency metrics, though, as Green Bay shockingly averaged just 2.0 Net Yards per Attempt (compared to 4.3 yards per carry on the ground.)

The table below shows the week 8 Game Scripts data: [continue reading…]

The Jets are 4-3, and it would not be an exaggeration to say that the team’s success is heavily tied to New York’s ability to control games on the ground. The Jets running backs have rushed for over 150 yards in three games this year, wins over Washington (190), Miami (173), and Cleveland (155). The Jets have also had three games with 60 or fewer rushing yards, losses against New England (60), Philadelphia (34), and Oakland (28). The seventh game, a win over the Colts, saw the Jets running backs operate at a reasonably effective pace of 26 carries for 95 yards.

In other words, when the Jets run well, they win, and when they don’t, they lose. That sounds simplistic, and it is: it’s a bit of an over exaggeration, although one grounded in some truth. In general, teams run more when they win — or, more precisely, when they have favorable Game Scripts — and run less often when they have negative Game Scripts. And the Jets games have had pretty strong Game Scripts in the four wins, scoring a +6.1 against Washington, +6.5 against Cleveland, +7.3 against the Colts, and +11.9 against Miami. Those are the sorts of games where it’s easy to produce good numbers, and Jets running backs ^[1]This is meant to exclude Ryan Fitzpatrick and other non-running backs. have averaged 153.25 rushing yards in these four wins.

The losses to Philadelphia (-10.6) and Oakland (I haven’t calculated it yet, but it will certainly be in the double digits) were ugly; the Patriots game (-0.6) was the only game that unfolded with a neutral Game Script. Still, in three losses, the Jets running backs have rushed 54 times for just 122 yards. So the causation arrow isn’t pointing only one way here: the Jets are winning when they run more effectively, and losing when they aren’t, on top of whatever bonus the raw totals get out of Game Scripts. [continue reading…]

Barnidge even scored against the Broncos… twice

For seven years, Gary Barnidge was one of the hundreds of nondescript players in the NFL. He played in 92 games for two teams, but logged just 25 starts. He caught 44 passes for 603 yards, an average of less than 100 yards a season, with just three touchdowns. He averaged 6.6 yards per game during this seven-season stretch in his 20s.

But Barnidge turned 30 on September 22nd, and then transformed into one of the most dominant tight ends in the NFL. Barnidge has played in six games since his 30th birthday, and has caught 36 passes for 512 yards and 6 touchdowns.

Let’s say Barnidge finishes the season with 1,000 yards in 16 games. That would mean his career average in receiving yards per game will have jumped from 6.6 to 14.8, a pretty remarkable increase for a player in his eighth season. In fact, Barnidge would become just the third player to have his career receiving yards per game double at any point after their fifth season in a year where they gained at least 500 receiving yards.

The last player to do so is Jim Jensen, a utility football player for the Dolphins who saw time at quarterback, running back, wide receiver, and tight end in his career. In his 20s, he totaled just 414 receiving yards in seven seasons, but he broke out in 1988 with 58 catches for 652 yards and five touchdowns. [continue reading…]

As they did last week, the Clemson Tigers top the SRS ratings through nine weeks. Little changed in the top five, this week, or well, anywhere in the top 25. In fact, none of the teams in the top 20 of the SRS last week lost in week nine. The highest ranked teams to lose were West Virginia (#21) and Cal (#22), but both of those teams lost to higher-ranked teams (TCU and USC, respectively).

As a result, the standings will look pretty similar to what we saw last week. Below are the SRS ratings through nine weeks. As always thanks to Dr. Peter R. Wolfe for providing the weekly game logs. [continue reading…]

Writing is a tough business. That is especially true for sports writers, and sad news emerged yesterday: after four years, Grantland decided to suspend publication, effective immediately. There are a lot of great writers at Grantland, and the site’s lead football writer, Bill Barnwell, was one of the biggest supporters and promoters of this site. Bill was always willing and eager to link to Football Perspective from his larger platform, and that helped grow the readership of this site tremendously. I’ll always be grateful to him for the respect and admiration he showed for FP.

On a larger level, it’s frustrating and disappointing to see so many good writers unemployed: I wish all of them the best in their future endeavors. Another casualty is the Grantland NFL Podcast, hosted by Barnwell and Robert Mays. You can follow then on twitter at @BillBarnwell and @RobertMays, respectively, and I recommend that you do so you can follow them wherever they wind up. Their podcast made the NFL season simply more fun to follow, and hopefully we get to hear it again one day.

In one of their last podcasts, Mays noted that Jarvis Landry ran the 40-yard dash in 4.77 seconds, an incredibly slow time for one of the game’s most explosive young players. ^[1]Landry did tweak his hamstring at the combine during this run, which obviously may have impacted things. Mays made the comment that 5’11 wide receivers who run the 40 in 4.77 seconds aren’t supposed to do the things that Landry has done, and well, I agree.

In March 2014, I looked at the 40-yard dash times of all players since 1999, courtesy of the good folks at NFLSavant.com. I then took that database, and measured it against all wide receivers since 1999 who have averaged at least 50 career receiving yards per game (Landry is at 53 yards per game).

There are 51 wide receivers who entered the NFL since 1999, have averaged at least 50 receiving yards per game, and ran the 40-yard dash at the combine. ^[2]Michael Crabtree, Josh Gordon, Wes Welker, Roddy White, Allen Hurns, John Brown, Willie Snead, Mike Evans, and Brandon Marshall all have also averaged 50 yards per game, but either didn’t run … Continue reading In the graph below, I’ve plotted the height (on the X-Axis) and 40-yard dash time (on the Y-Axis, in reverse order, so the fastest and biggest receivers should be on the top right) of each of those wide receivers.  As you can see, Landry is indeed an outlier, as Mays suggested: [continue reading…]

Here are the SRS ratings as of this morning — that is, through seven weeks and the Patriots/Dolphins game last night. The formula here was pretty simple: I took the difference between each team’s points scored and points allowed in each game, and added 3 points for home field, and that was it. The Patriots have a HFA-adjusted average margin of victory this season of 16.1, against a schedule that (after iterating) has been 0.5 points below average. That gives New England an SRS of 15.7.

[continue reading…]

This week at the Washington Post, a look at one of the most surprising ten-game winning streaks in NFL history.

The 2014 Panthers entered December with a 3-8-1 record, and had not won a game in two months. Suffice it to say, they are one of the least likely teams to ever go on a 10-game winning streak. Prior to Carolina, there had been 140 teams since 1970 to go on a 10-game winning streak. On average, those teams had won 7.2 games in their previous 10 regular season games*, while all teams other than the 1975-76 Colts (who went 2-8 before going on an 11-game winning streak) had won at least four of their previous 10 games. The Panthers? They had gone an ugly 1-8-1 prior to ripping off 10 straight regular season wins.

You can full the article here.

The New England Patriots on Sunday provided one of the most incredible pass/run ratios in recent history. Last year, teams were very pass-happy against the Jets, as a result of New York having a great run defense and a terrible pass defense. The Jets pass defense is significantly better this year, but that didn’t stop the Patriots from pretending the run option didn’t exist.

New England finished the day with 54 pass attempts, 3 sacks, and just 9 carries, representing an incredible 86.4% pass ratio. If you consider that Tom Brady had two scrambles and a third “carry” that went down for zero yards but was a sack on a pass play where Brady managed to get back to the line of scrimmage, and the Patriots really meant to pass on 60 plays, while calling runs just six times. A fourth run was a Brady sneak, leaving just five rushing attempts for the rest of the team that totaled exactly one yard. Brady was effective but not stellar in the passing game, but it was pretty clear that passing was the best option for the Patriots offense on nearly every play.

Two other big notes from week 7: Washington fell behind 24-0 against Tampa Bay, but won in the final minute of the game. That gave Washington a remarkable victory in a game where the team posted a -9.3 Game Script, topping the Bears game against the Chiefs for largest comeback as measured by Game Script. And, on the far other end of the spectrum, Miami produced an unreal 25.9 Game Script, the top score of the season. There have been three Game Scripts this year of over 20 points, and two of them have come against the Texans. The third was the previous high of the season, Arizona’s 24.3 Game Script against the 49ers. [continue reading…]

This week at the New York Times: Todd Gurley is awesome; the AFC South is not.

Incredibly, Gurley turned 21 in August: He is now the youngest player to rush for 125 or more yards in three consecutive games since at least 1960. Despite not getting his first N.F.L. start until Week 4, Gurley is already making history. He is the first rookie in the N.F.L. since Eric Dickerson in 1983, a Hall of Famer and another Rams player, to rush for 125 yards and average at least 5 yards per carry three times in his team’s first eight games.

..

But this year, the division may reach a new low. Through seven weeks, the four teams in the A.F.C. South have won just four of 19 games outside the division. That puts the division 11 games below .500 in interdivision games. That is the second worst performance in the last 30 years and the worst by any division through seven weeks since the N.F.C. East began the season 4-17 in 1998.>.

You can read the full post here

The Patriots are 6-0, while all other AFC East team has at least two losses. Given that New England is the best team in the division and already has a large lead, the odds of the Jets, Bills, or Dolphins winning the division are really, really low. But considering the rest of the AFC — the South has zero good teams, the West has one, and the North has two if Roethlisberger is healthy — it’s pretty likely that the AFC East will send a second team to the playoffs. Right now, 538 has the Jets playoff probability at 59%, Buffalo at 16%, and Miami at 15%. [continue reading…]

It’s time to start taking Clemson seriously. The Tigers began the season 6-0, but none of the wins were particularly dominant. Clemson beat up on a pair of non-Power 5 schools (Appalachian State and FCS Wofford), had solid but unspectacular home wins over mediocre ACC teams (Georgia Tech and Boston College), and squeaked by a decent Louisville team and a very good Notre Dame team.

But yesterday, Clemson laid waste to Miami, with a 58-0 final score going down as the most lopsided loss in Hurricanes history. At this point, the smart money is on Clemson to finish the regular season undefeated, landing the Tigers one of college football’s four golden tickets.

Clemson still has to face Florida State, and while the Tigers have lost three straight to the Seminoles, that game is in Clemson, and right now, Clemson is 10 points better in the SRS. The other remaining games: N.C. State (36th in the SRS), Syracuse (72nd) and Wake Forest (84th) in the ACC, before a season-ending rivalry game against South Carolina (77th).

The other interesting riser this week: Oklahoma. Given how good Baylor and TCU were last year, and the fact that the Sooners lost to Texas, it’s easy to think of the Big 12 as a two-team race. Not so fast! Oklahoma looks to be outstanding this year, and that 7-point win in Tennessee — the Vols’ worst loss this year — is looking better each week. The Sooners just destroyed a Texas Tech team that nearly (and probably should have) beaten TCU, so circle November 14th, November 21st, and November 27th on your calendars: those are the dates Oklahoma travels to Baylor, TCU travels to Norman, and the Bears head to Fort Worth, respectively. Given that each team hosts one game in this round robin, the ultimate Big 12 disaster scenario is a 1-1 record for each team during these games (well, other than Oklahoma State upsetting one of these teams, too). [continue reading…]

In my Washington Post article this week, I noted that Ryan Fitzpatrick was doing well as Jets quarterback in part because he was often playing with the lead. Fitzpatrick threw a whopping 58 times against the Eagles, and all but two of those plays came with the Jets trailing. In his other four games, Fitzpatrick threw just 18 passes while trailing. And, this year, Fitzpatrick has a 6.5 ANY/A average while throwing passes with the lead, and 4.8 ANY/A while throwing passes while trailing. ^[1]Frankly, even that understates the split. Fitzpatrick was terrible in the Eagles game, which, admittedly, may have more to do with the Eagles defense than the Game Script. But Fitzpatrick averaged … Continue reading

But I thought it would be fun to see how every quarterback has fared this year while leading and then while trailing, with a minimum of 30 pass attempts in each situation. That’s what graphed below, and the two guys who really stand out are Cam Newton and Andy Dalton.  The Bengals quarterback has been outstanding this year in both situations, while the Panthers quarterback has been significantly more impressive this year while trailing.  In the graph below, the X-Axis shows ANY/A while leading; for Newton, that’s a pedestrian 5.5 ANY/A.  The Y-Axis shows ANY/A while trailing, which is an incredible 9.2. [continue reading…]

Jamaal Charles, Matt Forte, Chris Johnson, Justin Forsett, Jonathan Stewart, Danny Woodhead, Mike Tolbert, Darren McFadden, Marcel Reece, and Jerome Felton all entered the NFL in 2008. So did Steve Slaton, the rookie rushing leader that year, and Ray Rice, Rashard Mendenhall, Michael Bush, Peyton Hillis, and Felix Jones. Analyzing where the ’08 class ranks in NFL history is a project for the offseason, but today, I thought it would be fun to look at rushing yards by running backs by class year.

The graph below shows that data through six weeks of the 2015 season. As you can see, players in their 8th NFL season — those who entered the league in 2008 — are doing quite well.

The class with the most rushing yards so far in 2015 are the rookies. That class is currently led by Thomas Rawls, but has also received strong production from higher picks like Todd Gurley, Melvin Gordon, and T.J. Yeldon. After the class of ’15, there’s a gradual decline with respect to production by older classes. And then, there’s the class of 2008. [continue reading…]

This week at the Washington Post, a look at how the Jets built an offense the “wrong” way.

Fitzpatrick is the team’s leading passer, Ivory the leading rusher, and Decker and Marshall the two leading receivers.

It’s very rare for a team’s top passer, top running back, and top two weapons in the passing game to all come from other teams. In fact, the 2015 Jets will become just the second team in the last 10 years to meet those criteria, and just the 12th since 1970. The question now is how well this core can sustain this high level of play. As you can see from the table below, which illustrates the first 11 teams that featured out-of-house core fours, success isn’t that common for teams of this type.

You can read the full article here.

The Jets have long been one of the most run-happy teams in the NFL, particularly after accounting for Game Script.  That rung true again in week 6, when New York was in control for most of the game against Washington.  The Jets had a solid +6.1 Game Script, but most teams would still pass at least half of the time with that sort of game flow.  But not the Jets, who passed on just 38.8% of pass plays and recorded a league-high 41 runs in week 6.

Four of those runs were from Ryan Fitzpatrick (an 18-yard touchdown, a 15-yard scramble, and two kneels), but Chris Ivory and Zac Stacy rushed 33 times for 192 yards (less impressive: Bilal Powell with four carries for -2 yards). The Jets are always going to run the ball, and when the Game Script goes their way, they will put up some truly impressive rushing totals. There have been just four games this year where a team has rushed more than 40 times, and two of those came in New York’s last four games. With a date in Foxboro this weekend, tracking the Jets pass/run ratio will be very interesting if the Game Script doesn’t go the Jets way. In New York’s only loss, the Jets had 59 passes and just 16 runs.

Without Ben Roethlisberger — and with Le’Veon Bell — the Steelers have become quite the run-happy team. Pittsburgh has now run more than its passed over the last three weeks, including a pass ratio of just under 40% despite posting a negative Game Script against the Cardinals (don’t let the 12-point final margin of victory fool you). The Steelers have completed just 43 passes over the team’s last three games.

Below are the week 6 Game Scripts data. As you can see, the biggest comeback of the week belongs to the Carolina Panthers. [continue reading…]

This week at the New York Times, a look at how the famous rookie wide receiver class of 2014 is faring this year:

The 2014 N.F.L. draft provided the greatest rookie class of wide receivers in football history. Last year’s rookies recorded 12,611 receiving yards, the most receiving yards produced by any single class year in the N.F.L. last season. Even more incredibly, 2014 rookie receivers caught 92 touchdowns, 20 more than any other class year produced during the 2014 season. So how are these players doing as sophomores?

You can read the full article here.

Also, I wrote about how the NFL’s idea of parity is well, kind of a joke.

The Panthers have made the playoffs in each of the past two seasons, making them the closest thing to an upstart among the unbeaten franchises. Both the Broncos and the Bengals have made it to the postseason in four consecutive years, while the Packers and the Patriots have made the playoffs in six straight seasons. Right now, the odds overwhelmingly favor each franchise making it to the playoffs again.

You can read the full article here.

Ben Watson has played 153 regular season games, and 11 more in the postseason. Yet it was in his most recent game that he set his career high with 127 receiving yards. It was just the third 100-yard game of his career, and topped his previous career high by 20 yards. That just doesn’t happen to a player who was 34 years, 301 days old at kickoff…. right?

I looked at all players to enter the NFL since 1960 who have at least 500 career receiving yards and played in 100 career regular season games. Among that group, here were the three players who, prior to 2015, set their career-high in receiving yards at nearly 35 years old or older. [continue reading…]

Last week, Michigan topped the SRS. Following the Gift Six, the Wolverines fall to the fifth spot after one of the craziest games in recent history. Jumping into the top spot is Baylor, after the Bears scored 56+ points for the sixth time in six games this year.

Baylor wide receiver Corey Coleman already has 16 touchdowns this year. 16! In six games!  Okay, the Bears have only played two games of note — against Texas Tech two weeks ago and against West Virginia on Saturday — but the Bears also have the track record to show that they’re a top five team.  Are they truly the best team in college football? We won’t find out more until a date with Oklahoma in four weeks, and the showdown with TCU two weeks later still looms as a de facto playoff game.

Without further ado, below are the SRS ratings through seven weeks. As always thanks to Dr. Peter R. Wolfe for providing the weekly game logs. [continue reading…]

With just 21 catches for 204 yards and two touchdowns through five games, Jimmy Graham is hardly making a big impact in Seattle. Consider that over his last four years in New Orleans, he averaged 5.6 receptions, 69.7 yards and 0.73 touchdowns per game, while he is at 4.2, 40.8, and 0.4 in those metrics, respectively, so far with the Seahawks.

So what’s wrong? Well, let’s start by focusing just on receiving yards. The drop from 69.7 to 40.8 is quite significant, but is there one main factor driving it? We can break receiving yards down into several components. For example, we can parse out four different metrics from simple receiving yards:

Receiving Yards = Team Pass Attempts * (Targets/Team Pass Attempt) * (Receptions/Target) * (Yards/Reception)

[continue reading…]

Friend of the program Bryan Frye is back for another guest post. As regular readers know, Bryan operates his own fantastic site, http://www.thegridfe.com. You can view all of Bryan’s guest posts here, and follow him on twitter @LaverneusDingle.

Five weeks of regular season football have come and gone. Those five weeks have seen quarterbacks attempt 5,470 passes and take 5,817 dropbacks. Throw in rushes, and quarterbacks have been involved in 6,184 action plays thus far. ^[1]Keep in mind this was written before the Thursday night game featuring Matt Ryan and Drew Brees. That seems like a large number, but it is only a fraction of the average 20,764 action plays quarterbacks have been involved in over the last two seasons. ^[2]Quarterbacks are currently on pace for just over 21,000 plays, which would be the highest total in history by a small margin. There are still 358 games left in the regular season (69.9% of the schedule), and we cannot know with epistemic certainty what is going to happen between now and January 3.

However, it is still fun to take the plays we have seen (and the stats those plays have produced) and use them to assess the quarterback landscape of this young season. The following tables present raw, rate, and adjusted stats for the 35 quarterbacks who have attempted at least 70 passes this season. ^[3]The NFL official requirement for rate stat qualification. I’ll provide some brief commentary, but I’d like to let Chase’s educated audience come up with their own points. Without further ado, here are the raw stats… [continue reading…]

This week at the Washington Post, a look at some of good and bad fourth down decisions in both week 5 and this season.

The Atlanta Falcons are 5-0, and are quickly becoming one of the major stories of the 2015 NFL season. With a win tonight in New Orleans, the Falcons will match the team’s entire win total from the 2015 season. But without some aggressive coaching from Dan Quinn last weekend, the Falcons likely wouldn’t be among the league’s five remaining unbeaten teams.

With just under five minutes left in the third quarter, the Falcons faced a 4th-and-6 from the Washington 40-yard line, trailing by four points. Given that Atlanta had thrown incomplete passes on the previous two plays, most coaches would have punted or tried a long field goal. Instead, Quinn played to his team’s strengths, and Matt Ryan connected with Julio Jones for a nine-yard gain. Atlanta wound up scoring a field goal on that drive, which put the team in a position to tie the game late in the fourth quarter, and eventually win in overtime.

You can read the full article here.

In the first four weeks, the biggest “comeback” as measured by Game Script belonged to the Atlanta Falcons, who defeated the Cowboys despite posting a Game Script of -5.4. But Chicago won on Sunday despite a Game Script of -8.9! This game seemed like a Chiefs win from before kickoff — when Kansas City was a 9-point favorite — until the very end.

The Chiefs led 14-3 early in the second quarter, 17-3 at halftime, and 17-6 entering the 4th quarter. With five minutes left, Kansas City led by that same score. With 3:11 to go, Jay Cutler found Marquess Wilson for a 22-yard touchdown on 3rd-and-6, giving the Bears new life. After the failed two point conversion, the Chiefs went 3-and-out, and Cutler took over on his own 33 with 2:04 to go. He drove the Bears down the field again, and found Matt Forte for the game-winning touchdown with 23 seconds remaining. The Bears drive chart reads: Punt, Fumble, Field Goal, Punt, Punt, Punt, End of Half, Field Goal, punt, Downs, followed by an 88-yard touchdown drive and a 67-yard touchdown drive. File this in your memory bank the next time a coach decides to take the conservative approach because his defense had been shutting down the opponent all day.

And while not on the same level, the Browns (-4.9), Bengals (-3.8), Steelers (-3.4), Bills (-2.7), and Falcons (-2.1) all won with negative Game Scripts. That always make the numbers a bit more interesting to look at. So let’s do just that: below are the week 5 Game Scripts data: [continue reading…]

This week at the New York Times:  Peyton Manning is now being carried by his defense.

The Denver Broncos have been synonymous with offensive success since Peyton Manning joined the team in 2012. In Manning’s first three years in Denver, the Broncos scored 1,569 points, 100 more than any other team in football. But this year, the Broncos are 5-0 despite ranking 30th in offensive yards, 27th in yards per pass, and 31st in yards per carry. That’s because Denver’s success has been powered by a dominant defense.

It starts with the defense’s production on a per-play basis, where the defense leads all teams. The Broncos are allowing just 4.3 yards per play to opposing offenses; if that holds, it would be the lowest average allowed by any defense since the 2009 Jets. The Broncos are allowing a league-low 4.7 yards per pass attempt, thanks in part to an incredible 22 sacks, the most by any defense through five weeks. And there is no weakness to this unit, as the rush defense ranks in the top quarter of the league in both yards and yards per carry. Situation defense? The Broncos are covered there, too, as Denver’s third down defense has been the best in the league, allowing first downs just 29.7% of the time.

You can read the full article here. 

I also wrote this week about Devonta Freeman on Thursday at the Times.

In his first 18 N.F.L. games, Freeman had never gained more than 84 yards from scrimmage. In his first three starts, he has gained at least 149 yards in each one, making him the first Falcons player since Jamal Anderson (1998) with such a streak. He is currently the N.F.L. leader in yards from scrimmage (645) and total touchdowns (eight). And he is one of the best bargains in the N.F.L., too, costing the Falcons only $631,106 in salary cap dollars.

You can read the full article here.