Last year, I reviewed the top offenses and defenses from the regular season. I am updating that post in two parts this week for the 2018 season. We will look at how each team did in the four major categories: passing offense and rushing offense today, and then passing defense and rushing defense tomorrow.

Passing Offense

The base stat we use to measure passing offenses is Adjusted Net Yards per Attempt, but if we want to be even more precise, we should incorporate first downs. As a result, the formula is:

(Passing Yards (net of sack yards lost) + Passing Touchdowns * 11 + First Downs * 9 – Interceptions * 45) divided by (Attempts + Sacks)

The table below displays team passing yards, which already deducts sack yards lost from gross individual passing yards. And since every touchdown is recorded as a first down for official boxscore purposes, this means that all touchdowns are still worth 20 adjusted yards. But to not make them worth 29 yards, we have to only credit each touchdown with 11 yards.

Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs had the top passing offense by this measure, with the Saints, Rams, and Chargers all standing out as elite passing attacks. The Cardinals and Bills were, by a large amount, the worst passing offenses in the NFL, with the Jets, Jaguars, and Redskins rounding out the bottom five.

Rushing offense

Todd Gurley and the Rams had the most efficient rushing attack in 2018. Los Angeles had 22 kneels which skewed their rushing stats downward a bit, but the Rams picked up a first down on a league-high 31% of all non-kneel rushing plays.

To measure rushing efficiency, I used the following formula:

(Rushing Yards + Rushing TDs * 11 + Rushing First Downs * 9 – Kneel Yards Lost) divided by (Rushing Attempts – Kneels)

Because kneels are included in rushing data, we need to add back in kneel yards lost ^[1]Since Kneel Yards Lost is a negative number, we minus it from the numerator. to the numerator and subtract kneels from the denominator.

Arizona finished the year with both the worst passing offense and the worst rushing offense.

Offensive Strength

With grades for both units, we can then put together offensive grades. Because of Simpson’s Paradox, I don’t think it is wise to grade an offense based on yards per play: I prefer to grade each passing offense and each rushing offense individually, and then combine the two to get an offensive grade. You can use whatever weights you want, but here’s what I did. To come up with team offense grades, I used 65% of the passing efficiency grade and 35% of the rushing efficiency grade. So the Chiefs offensive efficiency grade is based on 0.65 * 11.68 plus 0.35 * 8.04, for a total of 10.41 adjusted net yards per play. By this measure, the Chiefs, Saints, Rams, Chargers, and Falcons had the five best offenses in the NFL, which is pretty consistent with conventional wisdom (DVOA had the same top 4, and the Patriots 5th; New England ranks 6th here).

The 12 playoff teams ranked 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 6th, 7th, 11th, 13th, 14th, 16th, 17th, and 18th by this measure. And there are obviously extenuating circumstances with those last few years: the 18th-ranked offense was the Bears, who have the league’s best defense. The 17th best offense belongs to Baltimore, who have the second-best defense in the league and who were better under Lamar Jackson than they were under Joe Flacco. The 16th-ranked team is Dallas, who was a lot more effective after adding Amari Cooper at midseason. And the 13th-ranked offense belongs to Philadelphia, who snuck into the playoffs at 9-7.

On the flip side, the Falcons (5th) and Steelers (8th) missed the playoffs despite very good offenses. For Atlanta, a bottom-5 defense was the culprit, while Pittsburgh was a 9-6-1 team that lost a few close games.

What stands out to you?