After a Decade of Explosive Scoring, N.F.L. Defenses Are Back on Top
Paywalled but a couple of quotes:
“ Through Week 8, N.F.L. games have averaged 43.6 points, according to league data, a decrease from 47 points at last season’s midpoint and the lowest total since 2017. The dip comes just two years after the N.F.L. shattered its record for most points scored in a season (12,692), when games averaged 50.4 points.
One big factor is that defenses have altered their coverage schemes, particularly by using two-high safeties, to counter the pass-centric offenses that were propelling those high scores.”
“ Two-high safeties have been deployed on 55 percent of total passing attempts in 2022 — the highest rate in a season recorded by Next Gen Stats — while creating the most interceptions (125) and allowing the second-lowest completion percentage (65.8 percent) with that coverage since 2016.”
Forces more reliance on the running game. Does that alter the value of resigning Barkley?
I hope the league rule makers allow the offensive and defensive thinkers to continue their cat -and-mouse game instead of changing the rules to allow more passing.
After a Decade of Explosive Scoring, N.F.L. Defenses Are Back on Top - (
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There is also just a QB deterioration right now that has little to do with league trends. Brady, Rodgers, Wilson, Stafford fell off from last year due to age/injuries and its hard to replace that level of production league wide.
There is also just a QB deterioration right now that has little to do with league trends. Brady, Rodgers, Wilson, Stafford fell off from last year due to age/injuries and its hard to replace that level of production league wide.
im not sure id say their fall offs are because of league trends. Wilson had been a mixed bag in seattle the last few years which is why there were tensions and the trade. rodgers is just aging, injured, and lost adams. brady and stafford had their OLs regress and similarly aging with injuries all around. gronk, adams, and whitworth have been bigger factors for tampa, gb, and lar than whatever opposing safeties have done. same with herbert losing allen/slater/williams.
on the flip side Mahomes, Burrow, and Allen are basically unchanged and tua has ascended thanks to mcdaniel and tyreek hill. the eagles too thanks to all the weapons around hurts.
so general point being that the personnel dynamics have shifted and this year maybe more than others recently a lot of top QBs have lost weapons for whatever reasons. which could be an outlier or it could be that some of those teams were just aging out, so maybe that 2017-2021 period just had an abnormal amount of quality QBs still in prime and now more have aged out of prime than aged in?
Wideouts who do not recognize/ know what to do with zone defenses. Instead of finding the spot and sitting down, they slow down and drift- typically right into the coverage. I've noticed that a lot this season.
Two high should be leaving opportunities in the middle of the field, and teams are not taking advantage. The scarcity at the TE position is apparent here. It is no wonder the few good te's are having a field day. OC's have not caught up and a lot of them are still using their TE's as 5 yard outlet receivers.
As it stands, through week 12, 2022 has 5th highest PPG average over the last 10 years in the NFL.
i think this is right in 2 ways.
brady and rogers stayed at an elite mvp level into late 30's early 40's. those 2 have actually won 3 of the last 5 MVPs. brees was close to that level into his late 30's too. that's 2 or 3 extra MVP candidates above usual, which is statistically significant since the 3 of them represent 10% of the starting QB universe. and now possibly done or at least diminished from that elite level.
mahomes, watson, jackson, allen, burrow, herbert all stepped in and played at MVP or near MVP levels right away, which never used to happen. Luck was really the first rookie QB who had ever done that. peyton is one of the best of all time and he didnt do that. brees, ben, eli, rivers, ryan are possible HOFers and they didnt do that either.
so it may have just been that the 3-5 year period of overlapping elitism between those 2 groups is what drove the offenses being able to take advantage of all the new rules?