Kyle Allen and Patrick Mahomes are at opposite ends of the quarterback spectrum. Allen was an undrafted free agent; Mahomes is one of the most talented quarterbacks in league history and was the 2018 NFL MVP.

Allen ranks 32nd out of 34 qualifying quarterbacks in the most basic (in a good way) of passing stats: net yards per attempt.

Mahomes ranks 1st this year in NY/A, after ranking 1st in the same stat last year among quarterbacks who started at least 8 games.  Net yards per attempt is a good stat, and Mahomes is excellent at it because he’s an excellent quarterback (or maybe vice versa).

But you know better than to expect this to be a “Mahomes good Allen bad” post. Because I did a triple take this morning when I noticed that Kyle Allen has thrown for first downs at a higher rate this season than Mahomes.  That seemed impossible, and I had to double check twice just to make sure the data wasn’t wrong.

In general, there is a significant correlation between Net Yards per Attempt (which is passing yards, net of sack yards lost, divided by pass attempts plus sacks) and Passing 1st Down Rate (which is passing first downs divided by pass attempts plus sacks).   Both of these are very good stats to measure quarterback play, and last year, Mahomes led the NFL with a 43.2% passing first down rate.   Passing 1st Down Percentage is a good quick and dirty stat, and one where the best quarterbacks tend to fare very well. It is certainly not biased against a player like Mahomes.  But this year, Mahomes ranks 13th in that metric despite still having a very good NY/A average, while Allen shockingly ranks 11th in the metric.

So we have two pretty good, and easy to calculate passing stats, that in general are very correlated.  How correlated? Take a look at the graph below, which shows the same data as the table above.  And while the logos are for teams, the data  is for individual quarterbacks, not team-level data. So the Jets logo is only Sam Darnold, not the full Jets passing stats in 2019. And for the Redskins, Titans, and Steelers, it’s Dwayne Haskins, Ryan Tannehill, and Mason Rudolph in the chart below.  The Panthers, and to a lesser extent, the Chiefs, stand out as a notable outlier: [continue reading…]

Previous Passing Stats:

• Week 1
• Week 2
• Week 3
• Week 4
• Week 5
• Week 6
• Week 7
• Week 8
• Week 9
• Week 10
• Week 11
• Week 12
• Week 13
• Week 14

It finally happened: last night, Drew Brees threw 4 touchdown passes, to pass Peyton Manning and to move into first place on the all-time passing touchdowns list. A few years ago, Bryan Frye detailed the history of the passing TD crown, from Benny Friedman to Manning.  Manning held the record for a little over 5 years, while Brees may not hold the record for very long at all if Tom Brady gets his way.  The shortest reign belongs to Bobby Layne, who held it for just over a year.

Oh, and Brees also set a record for the best completion in NFL history by a quarterback with more than 10 passes (trivia note: Kurt Warner holds the record, at 10, for most passes in a game without an incompletion).  Brees completed 29 of 30 passes, and he did that without taking a sack, either (Warner took two in his 10/10 game).  In the list of games with just one incompletion, everyone with more than 18 pass attempts had at least four sacks.  To complete 29 passes on 30 dropbacks is remarkable.  Only Steve Young (here)  and Warner (here) have had a game with 20+ attempts and less than three combined sacks and incomplete passes.

The table below shows the week 15 passing stats. The top passers of the week were Jameis Winston, Drew Brees, Lamar Jackson, and Russell Wilson, which is hardly surprising… but Dwayne Haskins also cracked the top group, along with Dak Prescott and Patrick Mahomes. The full week 15 passing stats below. [continue reading…]

Previously: Running Backs; Defensive Ends; Defensive Tackles

As you know, the NFL is announcing its top 100 players in league history as part of the league’s 100-year anniversary. The nominating committee selected 12 outside linebackers ^[1]There are three players with labeling issues to discuss here: Chuck Bednarik, Clarke Hinkle, and Junior Seau (who isn’t on the above list). We will get to them at the end of this article. as finalists, and with the exception of the lone active player (Von Miller), every player is in the Hall of Fame. For the final team, 6 outside linebackers were chosen. The table below shows the finalists and those selected for the official team: [continue reading…]

Marcus Peters was drafted by the Kansas City Chiefs in 2015. That year, he led the NFL in four categories: interceptions (8), interception return yards (280), interceptions returned for touchdowns (2), and passes defended (26).

Two years later, Peters again led the NFL in interception return yards, with 137 on 5 interceptions. The next season, with the Ravens, he had 107 return yards on three interceptions.

This year? He’s recorded 5 interceptions for 210 yards and 3 touchdowns — leading the NFL in all three categories — while splitting his time between the Rams and Ravens.

Since the start of the 2015 season, Peters has 27 interceptions; no other player has more than 17 (Darius Slay).  Over half of his interceptions have brought above over 20 yards, and he has just 6 interceptions where he hasn’t returned the pass.

Since the start of the 2015 season, Peters has 6 picks six; Aqib Talib is second with 4, and no other player has more than three.

Since the start of the 2015 season, Peters has 797 interception return yards; that’s over 150 more yards than the number two and three players (Talib and Stephon Gilmore) combined. Peters has produced a monstrous edge in this category since entering the league. [continue reading…]

Previously:

• Week 1 Game Scripts
• Week 2
• Week 3
• Week 4
• Week 5
• Week 6
• Week 7
• Week 8
• Week 9
• Week 10
• Week 11
• Week 12
• Week 13

One of the big upsets of the year came in week 14: the Broncos were 8-point underdogs to Houston, and jumped out to a 31-3 halftime lead.  That sort of blowout by a large underdog only happens about once every two years.  There was also a large comeback in week 14, as the Eagles beat the Giants with a -6.4 Game Script. The Giants raced ahead to a 17-3 halftime lead, but Philadelphia scored three touchdowns — one in each of the final three quarters — to win, 23-17.

It was a pretty run-heavy week 14; no team passed on even 71% of their plays. There were 6 games in week 13 where a team passed on at least 71% of plays, and then zero last week. If you squint, you could call the Giants, Cowboys, and Colts pass-happy last week, but none were all that one-sided.  The full Game Scripts data below:

 

Meanwhile, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, and Washington were all pretty run-heavy.  The Redskins/Packers game reminded me a bit of the Broncos/Packers game from week 3; the Packers controlled the game, but the other team still deployed a run-heavy game plan.  Dwayne Haskins had 31 dropbacks (and no rushing attempts other than a kneel), while Adrian Peterson and company had 26 carries.  Washington opened the game with 3 3-and-outs. The first one was run for 0, run for 1, sack. The second was sack, incomplete pass, pass for 9. The third was run for 3, run for 6, incomplete.  Give the Redskins credit for variety, at least.

With the Ravens, we expect run-heavy game plans every week, and week 14 was no exception.  Lamar Jackson had 26 passing plays, while Baltimore had 33 runs (two kneels).  Interesting, none of Jackson’s 10 runs were scrambles.

As for the Steelers, Devlin Hodges led a run-heavy game plan with Pittsburgh, made easier by an 85-yard punt return touchdown in the first quarter. Against the Cardinals, Hodges went 16 for 19 for 152 yards with a TD and three sacks; he also had 4 scrambles. Pittsburgh’s running game wasn’t particularly effective, as the running backs had 28 carries for 98 yards and just three first downs.  But Hodges picked up 12 first downs on his 26 dropbacks (including scrambles), and that was enough — along with a strong Steelers defense — to carry the day.

Six years ago, I wrote about tweaking the passer rating formula. I am going to update that article today, to better analyze the remarkable season that Ravens second-year quarterback Lamar Jackson is having.

The main updates:

1) There’s no reason to exclude sack data from passer rating. Sacks happen on passing plays, and a quarterback should *not* get more credit in the passer rating formula for taking a sack rather than throwing an incomplete pass.

2) Scrambles should be treated like completed passes, and rushing yards should be counted the same as passing yards. I am going to broaden this today to include all rushing attempts, excluding kneels. A 10-yard run is just as valuable as a 10-yard pass, and a scramble on 3rd down should impact completion percentage the same way a check down to the running back does.  However, I am going to exclude all kneels from the data, which really shouldn’t be recorded as rushing plays to begin with.

3) Rushing touchdowns should be counted with passing touchdowns. This is self-evident.

4) Lost Fumbles should be counted with interceptions. Also self-evident.

Passer rating consists of four metrics, all weighted equally: completions per attempt, yards per attempt, touchdowns per attempt, and interceptions per attempt. I will use the same formula with the same weights and the same variables, but redefine what those variables are. Here are the new definitions, with the additions in blue. I have then shown the 2019 results, using the data as of this morning (i.e., through 14 weeks, plus the Ravens/Jets Thursday night game in week 15), for the 32 players with the most pass attempts so far this year. [continue reading…]

Previously: Running Backs; Defensive Ends

As you know, the NFL is announcing its top 100 players in league history as part of the league’s 100-year anniversary. The nominating committee selected 17 defensive ends as finalists, and with the exception of three non-eligible players (Peppers, Watt, Ware) every player is in the Hall of Fame. For the final team, 7 defensive ends were chosen. The table below shows the finalists and those selected for the official team:

The Great Decade

Is it really possible that the 4 best defensive tackles in history were all in their primes at the start of the 1970s?

Bob Lilly entered the NFL in 1961. Merlin Olsen joined a year later. Alan Page was drafted in 1967, and Joe Greene was picked two years later.

When Brad Oremland did his series on the greatest defensive tackles in history, he ranked these four as the top four ever: he ranked Page at 30, and put Greene at 16, Olsen at 13, and Lilly at 12. As Brad noted:

Associated Press first-team All-NFL defensive tackles, 1964-75: (1964) Bob Lilly and Henry Jordan, (1965) Bob Lilly and Alex Karras, (1966) Bob Lilly and Merlin Olsen, (1967) Bob Lilly and Merlin Olsen, (1968) Bob Lilly and Merlin Olsen, (1969) Bob Lilly and Merlin Olsen, (1970) Merlin Olsen and Alan Page, (1971) Bob Lilly and Alan Page, (1972) Joe Greene and Mike Reid, (1973) Joe Greene and Alan Page, (1974) Joe Greene and Alan Page, (1975) Curley Culp and Alan Page. That’s seven selections for Lilly, five for Olsen, five for Page, three for Greene (he added a fourth in 1977), and four for everyone else combined.

That’s a mean vertical leap.

Lilly, Olsen, Page, and Greene were more or less contemporary, competing with one another for honors — Lilly, Olsen, and Page especially, since they all played in the NFC. Lilly, for instance, almost certainly would have been first-team All-Pro in 1970 if Olsen and Page hadn’t both been in their primes at the same time. The All-Pro and Pro Bowl honors showered upon these players actually undersell how dominant they were. I tend to be skeptical about claims that all the greatest players were from the same era, especially when that era is the ’60s and early ’70s — but Lilly, Olsen, Page, and Greene really were the most outstanding defensive tackles in the history of professional football. Until Aaron Donald logs a couple more seasons, only Randy White is really even close.

In Sean Lahman’s Pro Football Historical Abstract, he ranks Olsen was the best defensive tackle ever, Lilly as the second-best, Green as his third-best, and Page as his fifth-best. Only Randy White — who, yes, has a very strong claim to being a top-5 DT ever — breaks the chain, as Lahman ranks White (drafted by the Cowboys in ’75 months after Lilly retired) fourth.

John Turney ranked the top 4-3 DTs ever last summer. Turney ranked Lilly as the best ever, followed by Greene, Olsen, and Page, and then White a tier below but in fifth place.

Bryan Frye put Page, Lilly, Greene, and Olsen on his personal DT Mt. Rushmore. At this point, I’d like to remind you that Page is typically ranked 4th among this group, and Frye noted that Page was the best DT in the league for 4 different seasons, with the other three all active those years.  In ’73, Page was the Defensive Player of the Year according to both the Professional Football Writers of America and the Newspaper Enterprise Association (Dolphins safety Dick Anderson, who led the NFL in interceptions and pick sixes, won the AP award). In 1971, Page won the AP MVP award — not the Defensive Player of the Year award, but the MVP award.  In 1970, Page was named the NFC Defensive Player of the Year (in a conference featuring Lilly and Olsen) by the NEA, and easily being named a consensus first-team All-Pro.  He was better that year than a 2nd-year Greene (who lost out on the AP’s All-AFC team to Jets DT John Elliott).  And in 1969, Page was one of the stars of arguably the greatest defense of all time.  He also was the NFC Defensive Player of the Year in 1974, although Greene was the AFC DPOY and overall DPOY.  So Page, playing in the most star-studded DT of all time, was the best defensive tackle in the league 3 or 4 times, and is typically the least-heralded of the bunch.  When the #NFL100 committee put together this list, only two defensive tackles were unanimous selections: Lilly and Page. Greene and Olsen should have been, too.

So yes, it really is possible that the four best defensive tackles all played in the same era.  Strange, but true. [continue reading…]

Leonard Williams was the 6th pick in the 2015 Draft.  He hasn’t been an outright bust by any means, but he’s certainly failed to deliver much in the way of big plays.   He’s never missed a game in his career, and will only finish 2019 with 15 games played because he got to experience two bye weeks: with the Jets in week 4 and then with the Giants in week 11.  He has recorded over 200 tackles in his career, but among first round defensive linemen with that number of tackles, his sack totals are shockingly low.

For years, Williams always seemed “on the verge” of a breakout season because of his quarterback hits numbers. He had 21 as a rookie, and then 7.0 sacks in a promising second season. In year 3, he had only 2.0 sacks but a whopping 25 quarterbacks hits…. and then in 2018 he had 20 quarterback hits and only 5.0 sacks. This year? He has 12 quarterback hits and zero sacks. In general, you expect about a 40-45% ratio between quarterback hits and quarterback sacks. But Williams is an extreme outlier, recording 17 sacks against a whopping 97 quarterback hits over his 5-year career.

The graph below shows the sack totals (X-Axis) and quarterback hits totals (Y-Axis) for defensive players from 2015 to 2019. [continue reading…]

Previous Passing Stats:

• Week 1
• Week 2
• Week 3
• Week 4
• Week 5
• Week 6
• Week 7
• Week 8
• Week 9
• Week 10
• Week 11
• Week 12
• Week 13

Patience is a virtue best served cold for Dolphins fans. It took six failed breakout seasons, but eventually, Dr. Kevorkian finally came for the Ryan Tannehill era in Miami. Maybe all Tannehill needed for his breakout season to be realized was to change teams?

On Sunday, Tannehill had yet another career game, completing 21 of 27 passes for 391 yards, with 3 TDs and one tipped interception. Shockingly, he didn’t take a single sack, for just the 7th time in his career. He threw for 15 first downs. In Tannehill’s last game with the Dolphins, he was seen throwing for just 8 first downs on 35 dropbacks (31 attempts, 4 sacks). His success in Tennessee is unsustainable — he’s not going to average 13.4 yards per completion or complete 73% of his passes — but he’s been legitimately great over the last two months. Nobody ever knows how the Ryan Tannehill Experience will change week to week, but it’s been a fun ride for a player who never could put it together for long with the Dolphins.

The table below shows the week 14 passing stats. [continue reading…]

Previously: Running Backs

As you know, the NFL is announcing its top 100 players in league history as part of the league’s 100-year anniversary. The nominating committee selected 17 defensive ends as finalists, and with the exception of three non-eligible players (Peppers, Watt, Ware) every player is in the Hall of Fame. For the final team, 7 defensive ends were chosen. The table below shows the finalists and those selected for the official team:

For years, the defensive end position was a perfect place for a Mount Rushmore designation. While historians rarely agree on everything, many agreed that there were four defensive ends who separated themselves from every other player to play the position.

We begin with Colts great Gino Marchetti, who was a first-team All-Pro selection in 9 straight seasons from 1956 to 1964. He is one of the most decorated defensive players in league history, and had the ultimate respect of opposing coaches and players. Those who saw him had no question that he was the best defensive end of his time.

In 1969, a recently-retired Marchetti was named as the defensive end on the century on the NFL’s 50th anniversary team. In 1994, Marchetti was joined by Reggie White and Deacon Jones as the three defensive ends on the 75th anniversary team. Marchetti was the first true pass rusher in NFL history, coming to age in the 1950s as the passing game was becoming more specialized. He was a sack artist who was great against the run, making him about as perfect as it gets at defensive end. Marchetti was the rare first ballot Hall of Fame choice at the position, one of just five to earn that honor (the others being the other three members of DE Mt. Rushmore, and Jason Taylor, who was ignored by the 100th anniversary committee). [continue reading…]

Drew Brees had yet another remarkable game today. The 40-year-old threw five touchdown passes and rushed for another on a sneak from the 1-yard line. The future Hall of Famer has now thrown 537 touchdowns in his regular season career, rushed for another 23, and even caught one (from LaDainian Tomlinson back in 2003).

That gives Brees 561 career touchdowns, the most in regular season history.

Most career total touchdowns:

1. 561 – Brees (537 passing, 23 rushing, 1 receiving)
2. 558 – Tom Brady (536 passing, 22 rushing)
3. 557 – Peyton Manning (539 passing, 18 rushing)

Back in the 2018 offseason, I wrote that Brady and Brees were in a close race to dethrone Manning as the all-time career passing touchdowns king. Both players finished the 2015 season tied with 428 career touchdown passes. They finished the 2017 season tied again with 488 career touchdown passes. And after week 14 of the 2019 season, Brees is up on Brady 537-536. Brees is about year and a half younger than Brady, and is playing better this season; the odds are Brees will be the one who ultimately retires as the all-time passing touchdowns king. But it’s still a toss-up as to who breaks Manning’s record first, even if today Brees set a similar record that almost nobody noticed.

Coming up next: Brees and the Saints host the Colts on Monday Night Football in week 15, and Brees will be a strong favorite to throw passing touchdowns 539 and 540 in that game.  A home game on primetime? Yes, Brees will be gunning for the record books. That said, the Patriots face the Bengals the day before, and I wouldn’t put it past Brady to throw 4 touchdowns in that game, too, being the first to break the record.  This may turn into a McGwire/Sosa race after all.

The goal of an NFL game is to win the game. If your opponent scores 17 points, you want to score 18 points, but anything more than 18 points is unnecessary. On the other hand, if you lose a game, all of the points you scored were unnecessary: losing 17-0 counts the same as losing 17-16.

With that logic, most points in an NFL game are “wasted” or unnecessary points. The Bengals started the season 0-11, so all points scored by Cincinnati were wasted during that stretch. In the 12th game, when Cincinnati won 22-6, you could claim that 15 of the 22 points scored were wasted, too. That means 172 of the 179 points scored by the Bengals this year — or 96% — were wasted points. Said differently, Cincinnati could have scored 7 points this year, not 172, and if allocated correctly, have the same record.

For Seattle, it’s a different story. The Seahawks are 10-2 and have scored 329 points; the minimum number of points Seattle could have scored and still achieved a 10-2 record is 240 points, given how many points the team has allowed each week. That means only 27% of the Seahawks points this year have been “wasted” points:

The graph below shows all 32 teams in the NFL this season.  The X-Axis shows points per game; the Y-Axis shows the “wasted” points per game, based on the following formula:

• In a win, all points scored after 1 point more than your opponent scored are wasted.  In a 20-17 victory, there are 2 wasted points.  In a 30-17 victory, there are 12 wasted points.
• In a loss, all points scored are wasted points.
• In a tie, since a tie is half a win, half of the points are wasted (i.e., you could have scored 0 points and had zero wins).

We can also look at this on a percentage basis. As you might suspect, the Bengals have wasted the highest percentage of their team’s points this year, at 96%, while the Seahawks have wasted the lowest percentage, at just 27%.

In its simplest terms, what we are solving for here is the fewest amount of points a team could have scored and still finished with the same record. And as it turns out, the Seahawks are historic outliers. Since 1970, the most “efficient” team at scoring was the 2016 Raiders. Oakland scored 416 points that season, and in 4 losses, scored 28, 13, 10, and 6 points for a total of 57 points. In the team’s 12 wins, the Raiders average margin of victory was only 6.67, which means only 5.67 points per game were wasted in wins, or 68 total. Overall, this means the Raiders wasted only 125 of the team’s 416 points; said differently, for the 2016 Raiders to go 12-4, given how many points they allowed in each game, the team needed to score at least 291 points. They actually scored 416, so the team only “wasted” 30% of their points. That’s the lowest of any team since 1970.

The table below shows the amount of wasted points by each team from 1970 to 2018.

If the Seahawks can keep this up, they will wind up being the most efficient team at distributing their points across games for any team since 1970.