No average fullback.

In fact, fullback used to be the glamor spot in the backfield, and that’s the position played by Marion Motley, Dan Towler, Tank Younger, Joe Perry, Alan Ameche, John Henry Johnson, Rick Casares, and the great Jim Brown. Jim Taylor and Paul Hornung both played fullback in Green Bay, while Keith Lincoln and Cookie Gilchrist were great fullbacks in the AFL. In 1966, Minnesota fullback Bill Brown led the NFL in carries. That wasn’t unusual, as fullbacks were key parts of rushing attacks in that decade: the four leading rushers of the ’60s — Jim Brown, Jim Taylor, Don Perkins, and Dick Bass — were all fullbacks. In 1965, fullback Tom Nowatzke went 4th overall in the AFL Draft while Ken Willard (a future four-time Pro Bowler) went second overall in the NFL Draft… just ahead of Dick Butkus and Gale Sayers.

The ’70s were dominated by great fullbacks, as future Super Bowl MVPs Larry Csonka, John Riggins, and Franco Harris were among the game’s best players. And while lacking in star power, Sam Cunningham, Mark van Eeghen, and Pete Johnson were all Pro Bowl-caliber players and key parts of their team’s offenses, too. As the passing game opened up after 1978, the role of the fullback changed. William Andrews was the throwback, but Roger Craig and James Wilder entered the league as fullbacks at a time when the position was evolving into a more specialized role, and had their best seasons after switching to halfback. In Wilder’s case, Tampa Bay switched to a two-tight end offense to get Jerry Bell and Jimmie Giles on the field (and removing running back Mel Carver from the field was an added bonus). For Craig, he played fullback when he was joined in the backfield with Wendell Tyler and Joe Cribbs and halfback when Tom Rathman replaced them.

Thus began the era of the specialized backfield. Seattle’s John L. Williams and later Arizona’s Larry Centers were outstanding pass catchers. The two best teams of the late ’80s/early ’90s had Daryl Johnston and Tom Rathman, fullbacks with solid hands and the ability to run inside, but who made their money as blockers. The fullback remained important in the West Coast Offense, and Green Bay (Edgar Bennett, William Henderson) continued to use a versatile fullback, too. For most of the league, though, the fullback turned into essentially just a blocking back, even if the players who piled up the rushing yards (Mike Alstott) or catches (Richie Anderson) became the more famous players at the position. The unsung heroes were guys like Howard Griffith, Lorenzo Neal, Tony Richardson, and Mack Strong, who achieved job satisfaction by blocking for 1,000-yard rushers.

And now, the fullback is practically extinct. Games go by without a team line up even once in the I-Formation, as the three wide receiver set has replaced more traditional looks. The WCO has been replaced by the spread offense. It’s fair to wonder if in ten years, the fullback will be gone for good: in April’s draft, only three fullbacks were selected — Harvard’s Kyle Juszczyk (pick 130), Kansas State’s Braden Wilson (204), and Wake Forest’s Tommy Bohanon (215). Two of the top rushing teams in the league are using converted defensive players as fullbacks (Bruce Miller in San Francisco and Darrel Young in Washington), while Seattle’s fullback is a former college quarterback (Michael Robinson). It appears the position is being as marginalized as much as possible.

There are several explanations for how the fullback became the NFL’s version of the human appendix. When Cookie Gilchrist and Jim Brown were stars, they were as big and as strong as many of the opposing defensive linemen they faced. The graph below shows the average weight since 1960 for all running backs (this includes halfbacks, tailbacks, and fullbacks) in blue, all linebackers in orange, and all defensive linemen in red:

The increase in the size of defensive linemen has made running up the middle less attractive. And now that passing is more effective than ever — i.e., there are fewer sacks, fewer incomplete passes, and fewer interceptions — a run up the middle is a less useful alternative. The rules changes and innovations in the passing game have essentially resulted in mass layoffs for fullbacks.

Moose leads the way.

The fullback could replace the tight end, in theory — a three-wide receiver, two-back offense would still force defenses to play in nickel. But tight ends are now among the most athletic players in the game, and the fullback is essentially a shorter, slower, tight end. Most of the top fullbacks (Leach, Kuhn, Darrel Young, Greg Jones) are all in the six-foot, 250-260 pound range. One exception is Minnesota’s 6’5 Rhett Ellison, although he’s a hybrid tight end/fullback, and the Vikings have a more traditional fullback in Jerome Felton. If you want a fullback to lead block, the shorter player has an advantage by having a lower center of gravity, but in most other situations, teams want the bigger player. You’ll never see the fullback completely eliminated for this reason, but teams aren’t looking to leave a multi-dimensional tight end or a slot receiver off the field for a six-foot lead blocker.

Could the fullback as pass catcher model be revived? Larry Centers caught 200 passes in 1995 and 1996 while Richie Anderson caught 88 passes in 2000. But those teams rarely used slot receivers, and offenses that revolved around the fullback did so more out of necessity than design. No offensive coordinator is spending his time thinking about how he can get the ball into the hands of his fullback more often.

From an evolutionary perspective, the 15-year-old high school football player isn’t thinking that playing fullback is his ticket to the NFL. A fast fullback becomes a running back, a tall fullback becomes a tight end, and a strong fullback puts on weight to become a linebacker. From an athletic standpoint, it seems that fullback is now the position choice of last resort.

Belichick checks to see where he is on the list.

Yesterday, I looked at the most pass-happy active head coaches and offensive coordinators in the NFL. If you’ve been a loyal reader of my previous posts on Game Scripts, you understand the methodology I’ve used today to grade each coaches. The quick summary is I’ve come up with the term “Game Scripts” to determine the average points margin over each of the 3600 seconds in each game; from there, I also came up with Game Scripts scores for each season.  If you then take each coach’s pass/run ratio, adjust for the league average pass/run ratio, and then adjust for Game Scripts, then you can determine each coach’s passing identity.  I’ve done this for every season since 1940.

The table below lists the 252 coaches I have in my database who have been either a head coach or an offensive coordinator for at least four seasons. I suggest using the search box to find your favorite coaches, but as always, all columns are sortable, too. In the table below, the number of HC/OC seasons includes all seasons, but the games, wins, losses, ties, winning percentage, and wins over .500 columns all include only the coach’s records as a head coach. The Game Script column shows each coach’s average Game Scripts average over each season, while the “P/R” column does the same for pass/run ratio.  The next three columns are all indexes centered around 100. The “SCRIPT” column is the Game Scripts rating, the “PASS” column is the Pass/Run Ratio rating, and the Pass Identity column is a combination of the two columns. (You can read some of the other Game Scripts articles for more explanation).  Based on his time in Green Bay with Aaron Rodgers, Joe Philbin comes in as the most pass-happy coach, but that number seems likely to decline the longer he coaches. George Seifert built his reputation as the defensive coordinator for the 49ers, but having Joe Montana, Steve Young, and Jerry Rice turned him into a pass-friendly coach. As for the next two men on the list, modern NFL fans need no further explanation.

I’ll give you some quick thoughts, but I’d love to hear your reaction in the comments. For the most part, these results aren’t surprising. Rex Ryan, Jack Del Rio, and Romeo Crennel rank as very run-heavy coaches, which jives with what we have all witnessed over the last few years. Bill Belichick is the most pass-happy coach among the group with 150 wins. It helps to have Tom Brady, although Belichick had some pass-happy years in Cleveland, too. Take a look at his yearly results:

It’s easy to think of the old ’70s Dolphins when thinking of Don Shula, but the Larry Csonka years weren’t enough to overshadow the Dan Marino and Johnny Unitas seasons. Shula’s teams hovered right around league average in pass/run ratio, but since his teams were generally very good, he gets labeled as a passing coach. The table below shows Shula’s yearly results:

While Shula might be more pass-happy than his reputation, Paul Brown goes the other way. Brown is rightly remembered as a passing innovator, and he and Otto Graham gave the Browns an unstoppable offense for close to a decade. But he also coached Jim Brown for six years, and had some run-heavy teams with the Bengals in the pre-Bill Walsh days.

And, just because, how about Saint Vince?

Mike Smith checks the score, calls for a pass.

There will be 64 head coaches and offensive coordinators in 2013; I went back and looked at every season those coaches were either head coaches or offensive coordinators in the NFL.¹ Two head coaches — Gus Bradley in Jacksonville and Chip Kelly in Philadelphia — have never been a head coach or offensive coordinator at the NFL level. In addition, the following seven offensive coordinators will be entering those roles for the first time, too: Harold Goodwin (Arizona), Nathaniel Hackett (Buffalo), Adam Gase (Denver), Pep Hamilton (Indianapolis), Jedd Fisch (Jacksonville), Doug Pederson (Kansas City), and Dowell Loggains (Tennessee). The table below shows the career Game Scripts averages, Pass/Run Ratios, and Pass Identities for the other 55 head coaches/offensive coordinators entering 2013.

Here’s how to read the table: Joe Philbin has been the most pass-happy OC/HC of the current coaches. He will be the Dolphins head coach in 2013, and has spent six seasons as either a head coach or offensive coordinator. The average Game Script score in each of his six seasons has been 3.8, and his teams have averaged a 58.8% pass rate.² Philbin’s Game Script rating is 122.5, which means his team’s Game Script has been about 1.5 standard deviations above average (100 is average, 115 is one standard deviation above average, 130 is two standard deviations, etc.); Philbin’s Pass rating is 107.6, which indicates that his pass/run ratio is above one-half standard deviations above average. Take those two together, and he has a passing identity of 30.1, the highest in the league.

Philbin’s high score comes from his years as the offensive coordinator in Green Bay, but I’m not sure how much credit he really deserves for that (he was not the playcaller and coached under an offensive head coach). Last year, the Dolphins had the 27th highest Pass Identity. In my opinion, you could make a pretty good case that Andy Reid is the most pass-happy coach in the NFL and one of the most passer-friendly coaches in history. Here are his yearly ratings:

In 2004, with Donovan McNabb and Terrell Owens, the Eagles passed on 62.1% of their pass plays despite having an average lead of 4.8 points in every second of their games. Reid’s Eagles were generally pass happy, and his first and last years in Philadelphia were his two most run-heavy seasons. It’s hard to know how that will play out in 2013, because the 2012 Chiefs had by far the strongest rushing identity (i.e., run/pass ratio after adjusting for Game Script) of any team last year. Kansas City has been a run-heavy team for years, and it’s hard to imagine Kansas City trusting Alex Smith more than Jamaal Charles.

The Jets will be another interesting team to watch. Rex Ryan has been the most run-heavy coach in the league, but he seems ready to move on from his “ground and pound” philosophy. It’s difficult to see a pass-heavy attack based around Mark Sanchez or Geno Smith succeeding, but Marty Mornhinweg was brought in as a breath of fresh air after the failed Tony Sparano experiment. The Jets old offensive coordinator, Brian Schottenheimer, is coaching under another run-heavy coach in St. Louis. But the Rams seem ready to air it out this year under Sam Bradford, after signing Jake Long and Jared Cook, and drafting Tavon Austin and Stedman Bailey.

1. At least, according to my database. I won’t have missed any head coaching years, but it’s possible I’ve missed some seasons where a coach was also an offensive coordinator.
2. This is an average of the seasonal averages, not an average of the totals.

Over at Footballguys.com, I analyzed how the fantasy value of quarterbacks, running backs, wide receivers, and tight ends have changed since 1990. The NFL is a very different beast than it was 23 years ago, but you might be surprised to see what that means for fantasy football. To measure value, I examined the VBD curves for each of the four major positions in fantasy football.

For those unfamiliar with VBD, you can read Joe Bryant’s landmark article here. The guiding principle is that the value of a player is determined not by the number of points he scores but by how much he outscores his peers at his particular position. This means that in a league that starts 12 quarterbacks, each quarterback’s VBD score is the difference between his fantasy points and the fantasy points scored by the 12th best quarterback. The cut-offs at the other positions are 12, 24, and 36, for tight ends, running backs, and wide receivers, respectively.

The NFL in 2013 won’t closely resemble how the league looked in 1990, but what does that mean for fantasy football? To determine that, we need to see if VBD has evolved with the rest of the football statistics. Let’s start with a graph displaying number of fantasy points scored by the last starter at each position since 1990. As you can see, quarterback scoring has risen significantly over the last two decades, and the production of the 12th tight end has nearly doubled over that time period.

You can see the full article here.

Two weeks ago, I looked at the longest streaks where a team failed to have a player rush for 100 yards. Richie asked me if I could run the numbers on the longest streaks without a 1,000-yard rusher. The longest active streak in the NFL belongs to the Detroit Lions, who have not boasted a 1,000-yard rusher since Kevin Jones rushed for 1,133 yards as a rookie in 2004. Will Reggie Bush or Mikel Leshoure end that streak in 2013? Probably not.

It’s hard to look at these streaks across NFL history. For example, New York entered the NFL in 1925 and no Giant rushed for 1,000 yards until Ron A. Johnson in 1970. The Lions didn’t have a 1,000-yard rushing in their first 41 years, either. But we can look at the longest streaks that starter after the AFL-NFL merger. The modern Lions are the 12th team to go eight straight years without a 1,000 yard rusher over the last 43 years. As the longest streak? Well now we know why Miami drafted three running backs in consecutive rounds in 1996.

Insert obligatory Dan Marino comment here.

Green Bay didn’t use a first round pick on a running back, but the Packers did spend a second round pick on Alabama’s Eddie Lacy and a fourth round pick on UCLA’s Johnathan Franklin.  How much weight should we put on draft status when one team drafts two running backs just a couple of rounds apart?  One school of thought is that the Packers liked both players and are maximizing their odds of finding a star; another is that Green Bay prefers Lacy and wants him to win the job, since he was their first choice.  Here’s another thing to consider, courtesy of my good buddy Sigmund Bloom: the Packers traded down to grab Lacy and traded up to draft Franklin, indicating that perhaps the Packers were higher on Franklin than you might think.

How rare is it for teams to double dip at the running back position like this? That depends on how you want to categorize what the Packers did. I think a reasonable comparison would be to look at all teams that:

• Did not draft a running back in the first round but drafted one in the second or third rounds (this excludes combinations like Stepfan Taylor and Andre Ellington); and
• Then drafted a different running back within the next two rounds

Since 1970, only 34 teams have met those criteria, meaning this is a strategy employed roughly three times every four years. In three instances, a team drafted three running backs that met those two criteria, and we’ll deal with them at the end of this post. I’m going to exclude three teams that drafted fullbacks after selecting halfbacks, as the 2008 Lions (drafted Jerome Felton after Kevin Smith), 2003 Ravens (Ovie Mughelli after Musa Smith), and 1999 Dolphins (Rob Konrad after J.J. Johnson) don’t really fit the intent of the post. That leaves us with 28 pairs of running backs. The table below lists each pair. On the left, you will see the first running back drafted, his round and overall pick, his rookie rushing yards, his rookie fantasy points total (using 0.5 points per reception), and his career rushing yards; on the right, the same information is presented for the second running back drafted. The far right column shows the difference between the two players in terms of fantasy points during their rookie year. For example, Stevan Ridley scored 41 more points than Shane Vereen in 2011, even though the Patriots drafted Vereen first.

Team	Year	RB1	Rd	Pk	Rk RYD	Rk FP	Car RYD	RB2	Rd	Pk	Rk RYD	Rk FP	Car RYD	Rk FP Diff
NWE	2011	Shane Vereen	2	56	57	12	308	Stevan Ridley	3	73	441	53	1704	-41
SDG	2008	Jacob Hester	3	69	95	37	400	Marcus Thomas	5	166	0	0	0	37
NYG	1999	Joe Montgomery	2	49	348	53	372	Sean Bennett	4	112	126	23	126	30
CAR	1996	Winslow Oliver	3	73	183	40	215	Marquette Smith	5	142	0	0	0	40
SDG	1995	Terrell Fletcher	2	51	140	24	1871	Aaron Hayden	4	104	470	73	784	-49
GNB	1995	William Henderson	3	66	35	7	426	Travis Jervey	5	170	0	0	503	7
GNB	1994	LeShon Johnson	3	84	99	33	955	Dorsey Levens	5	149	15	3	4955	30
PHI	1992	Siran Stacy	2	48	0	0	0	Tony Brooks	4	92	0	0	0	0
BUF	1990	Carwell Gardner	2	42	41	4	749	Eddie Fuller	4	100	0	0	39	4
WAS	1988	Mike Oliphant	3	66	30	22	127	Jamie Morris	4	109	437	57	777	-35
DET	1984	Ernest Anderson	3	74	0	0	0	Dave D'Addio	4	106	46	6	46	-6
MIN	1984	Alfred Anderson	3	67	773	127	2374	Allen Rice	5	140	58	26	1034	101
CIN	1984	Stanford Jennings	3	65	379	120	1250	John Farley	4	92	11	3	11	117
GNB	1982	Del Rodgers	3	71	175	27	315	Mike Meade	5	126	42	5	261	22
MIA	1979	Tony Nathan	3	61	68	49	3543	Steve Howell	4	107	8	5	235	44
TAM	1979	Jerry Eckwood	3	60	690	119	1845	Rick Berns	3	80	102	17	255	102
HOU	1977	Tim Wilson	3	66	343	73	1414	Rob Carpenter	3	84	652	98	4363	-25
STL	1977	George Franklin	2	47	0	0	-8	Terdell Middleton	3	80	0	0	2048	0
KAN	1977	Tony Reed	2	37	505	81	2340	Mark Bailey	4	92	266	74	564	7
PIT	1977	Sidney Thornton	2	48	103	23	1512	Laverne Smith	4	99	55	6	55	18
CIN	1977	Pete Johnson	2	49	585	90	5626	Mike Voight	3	76	0	0	20	90
DAL	1976	Jim D. Jensen	2	40	0	0	1126	John Smith	3	75	0	0	0	0
SEA	1976	Sherman Smith	2	58	537	140	3520	Andy Bolton	4	123	71	7	80	133
SFO	1974	Delvin Williams	2	49	201	40	5598	Sammy Johnson	4	90	237	52	830	-12
DET	1973	Leon Crosswhite	2	44	30	10	79	Jim Hooks	4	96	110	12	245	-2
ATL	1972	Les Goodman	3	67	0	0	189	Billy Taylor	5	109	0	0	0	0
RAM	1972	Jim Bertelsen	2	30	581	142	2466	Lawrence McCutcheon	3	70	0	0	6578	142
SFO	1970	John Isenbarger	2	48	43	30	80	Vic Washington	4	87	0	0	2208	30

The takeaway? Almost none of these 56 running backs had significant fantasy value as rookies. Most of them were mired in committees, which perhaps isn’t too surprising when a team drafts two running backs. None of these players ran for 800 yards as a rookie. The Packers aren’t a run-heavy team as it is, but this might throw some ice water on your plans to draft Lacy or Franklin and expect RB2 production.

But here’s the real surprise: there were three exceptions to the rule that if a team drafts multiple running backs, neither player will be a fantasy factor. And all of them happened when a team drafted three running backs in rapid succession.

• With the 75th pick in the draft, the 1979 Falcons drafted James Mayberry out of Colorado; four picks later, Atlanta selected William Andrews (Auburn). Then in the fourth round, Atlanta selected USC’s Lynn Cain with the 100th overall pick. Andrews rushed for over 1,000 yards as a rookie and went on to have a great career with the Falcons, making the Pro Bowl each year from 1980 to 1983. Cain wound up starting opposite Andrews (who was technically the team’s fullback) and had a career-high 914 yards in 1980. He also caught 55 passes for the Falcons in ’81, and had a solid six years with the team. Mayberry played in 48 games for Atlanta in ’79, ’80, and ’81, but gained just 400 yards from scrimmage and never played again in the NFL.
• With the 31st pick in the 1986 draft, New Orleans drafted local star Dalton Hilliard out of LSU. But then in the third round, the Saints added Rueben Mayes (Washington State) and Barry Word (Virginia) – and those two backs were sandwiched around a third third round pick for the team, Pat Swilling. Word went on to have a 1,000-yard season with the Chiefs, but rushed for just 133 yards in two season with the Saints. Mayes turned out to be the immediate star of the group, winning Rookie of the Year in 1986 and rushing for 2,270 yards in his first two years. Hilliard did not have immediate success, but stuck around the team longer, rushing for 1,262 yards and making the Pro Bowl in his fourth season.
• In 1996, Jimmy Johnson’s Dolphins drafted Karim Abdul-Jabbar (UCLA) at the end of the third round, fullback Stanley Pritchett (South Carolina) in the fourth, and Jerris McPhail (East Carolina) in the fifth. The players were more complementary parts than competitors: Abdul-Jabbar the grinder, Pritchett the fullback, and McPhail the third-down back. The Dolphins got some immediate dividends from Abdul-Jabbar (more on this over the weekend), who rushed for 2,968 yards in his first three seasons. But he averaged only 3.5 yards per carry and was traded to Cleveland in 2000.

If you liked Franklin more than Lacy before reading this article, I don’t think anything you’ve read today will make you reconsider that opinion.

How bad were the Chiefs last year?

• Kansas City went 2-14, tied for the worst record in the league with Jacksonville. Since the Chiefs faced an easier schedule, they received the first pick.
• With an Simple Rating System score of -14.0, Kansas City had the worst SRS rating in the league. They ranked 32nd in points scored and 25th in points allowed, leaving them 32nd in points differential. With a slightly easier than average schedule, that left them 32nd in the SRS, too.
• The Chiefs ranked in the bottom three in both NY/A and NY/A allowed.
• With a -24 turnover differential, K.C. tied several other teams, including the 2012 Eagles, for the third worst turnover differential since 1978.
• Brian Burke ranked the Chiefs 31st overall, 31st on offense, and 31st on defense, just edging out the Jaguars (who ranked 32nd on offense and 30th on defense).
• Kansas City finished 32nd in Aaron Schatz’s efficiency rankings, as Football Outsiders ranked them 31st on offense, 30th on defense, and 22nd on special teams.

Make no mistake: the Chiefs were a terrible team very much deserving of the first pick in the draft. Based on their underlying statistics, they earned every bit of their 2-14 record. That said, there are reasons to be bullish on the Chiefs. Consider:

• RB Jamaal Charles, ILB Derrick Johnson, OLB Tamba Hali, SS Eric Berry, and P Dustin Colquitt were all named to the Pro Bowl; OLB Justin Houston, was selected as a Pro Bowl alternate, and promoted to the roster once Von Miller pulled out due to injury. Prior to 2012, no team since the merger with fewer than 6 wins had ever sent six players to the Pro Bowl, but setting Pro Bowl records is nothing new for Kansas City.
• The Chiefs went 17-15 over 2010 and 2011, so in some ways, the 2-14 season came out of nowhere. However, the 7-9 record in 2011 comes with an asterisk.¹ No team was “luckier” in 2011 than the Chiefs. According to their Pythagorean Record, Kansas City was a 3.8-win team in 2011, so a 2-win follow-up season doesn’t seem crazy in that light. The narrative entering 2012, however, wasn’t that the 2012 Chiefs were likely to regress but that K.C. was a darkhorse in the AFC race. In 2011, the Chiefs lost Berry, Charles, and tight end Tony Moeaki by the end of week two to season-ending injuries, and all three entered 2012 with a clean bill of health. The Chiefs also went 1-3 in 2011 when forced to start Tyler Palko at quarterback, making them .500 in their other twelve games. As it turned out, the 2012 Chiefs get marked down as a “win” for using the Pythagorean record and a “loss” for expecting improvement due to good health. Even with a fantastic season by Charles (albeit an inconsistent one), Kansas City played like the bad team they were in 2011, just without the good fortune.

So, when projecting the 2013 Chiefs, how much “bonus” credit do we give them for having a bunch of Pro Bowlers or for being a pretty good team (based solely on record) the prior two years? And what about the fact that they added Andy Reid, Alex Smith, Anthony Fasano, and Donnie Avery (and Eric Fisher, Travis Kelce, and Knile Davis) on offense and Sean Smith, Dunta Robinson, and Mike DeVito on defense?

Charles was in charge against the Saints.

The real issue for the Chiefs is that their Pro Bowlers are generally at unimportant positions. Having a Pro Bowl punter is a nice piece of trivia and little more. Running back and inside linebacker are two positions that are much less valuable than they were a decade or two ago. Berry was a Pro Bowler based on name recognition: not only did Pro Football Focus grade him as average in 2012, but it’s hard to come up with another explanation than “name recognition” to select a safety on a defense that allowed 29 passing touchdowns, forced just 7 interceptions, and ranked dead last in ANY/A allowed. And while Hali and Houston give the team a great set of outside linebackers, but the rest of the team recorded just eight sacks. Getting more out of last year’s first round pick, nose tackle Dontari Poe, would go a long way towards improving a defense that’s bigger on names than production. DeVito should help the run defense, but he’s not a pass rusher, which means the perennially underachieving Tyson Jackson will again be tasked as the team’s third best option to get to the quarterback. The Chiefs hired defensive coordinator Bob Sutton, who had been with the Jets over the past 12 seasons, hoping that his version of the 3-4 will be more successful than Romeo Crennel’s.

What benefit of the doubt should the Chiefs get due to them winning 17 games in 2010 and 2011? From ’93 to ’11, 39 teams won fewer than four games in a season.² On average, those teams won 2.3 games, but in the following year, the group averaged 6.2 wins. Regression to the mean is alive and well. As a team with a better track record, Kansas City is probably better off than your average 2-14 team. Thirteen teams won 16+ games in Years N-1 and N-2 before the bad season in Year N. As a group, they averaged 2.5 wins in Year N and 18.3 wins in Years N-1 and N-2; in Year N+1, they won 7 games. On the other side, of the 12 teams to win 11 or fewer games in Year N-1 and N-2, they averaged 2 wins in Year N, 8.9 in Years N-1 and N-2, and then only 5.5 in Year N+1.

Most bad teams experience a lot of turnover, and the Chiefs are no different. As bad as they were in 2012, a new coach and a new quarterback can solve a lot of problems. According to Vegas, the Chiefs are projected to be about 2.3 points worse than average, which jives with the 6.5 win total projected for the team. Kansas City has also hired Chris Ault as a consultant, and the father of the Pistol offense could mean the Chiefs are actually fun to watch this year. I’m cautiously optimistic about the Chiefs, but they seem unlikely to resemble last year’s version in style or production. That has to be considered a very good thing.

1. For that matter, so does the 10-6 record in 2010, when Kansas City rode an absurdly easy schedule to the playoffs
2. 1993 was the first year of free agency, so that seemed like a good cut-off point.

Twenty quarterbacks started all sixteen games last season:

Eli Manning
Tony Romo
Andrew Luck
Russell Wilson
Peyton Manning
Matthew Stafford
Sam Bradford
Aaron Rodgers
Matt Schaub
Ryan Tannehill
Matt Ryan
Christian Ponder
Drew Brees
Ryan Fitzpatrick
Tom Brady
Josh Freeman
Cam Newton
Philip Rivers
Joe Flacco
Andy Dalton

Mark Sanchez started 15 games for the Jets, but was benched for the week 16 game against the Chargers.  Carson Palmer (ribs/chest) and Brandon Weeden (shoulder) were each injured in week 16, causing them to sit out week 17 (although Weeden probably could have played if the game meant anything.) In addition, Jay Cutler (concussion) and Robert Griffin III (knee) each missed one — but only one — game due to injury.¹  As for the other seven teams:

• Ben Roethlisberger started 13 games for the Steelers, but missed three games with injuries to his right shoulder and ribs.
• Jake Locker missed five games with a shoulder injury.
• Michael Vick missed six games due to a concussion.
• Blaine Gabbert (right forearm, torn labrum in left shoulder) started the first 10 games of the season for Jacksonville before being placed on injured reserve.
• Alex Smith started the first 9 games for the 49ers before a concussion cleared the way for Colin Kaepernick.
• Matt Cassel started the first five games for Kansas City before a concussion sidelined him; he later replaced Brady Quinn for three games, after Quinn suffered a concussion.
• John Skelton somehow became the opening-day starter in Arizona last year, a relevant fact for nearly four quarters until an ankle sprain sidelined Skelton for a month.

Last year marked the first time in NFL history that 20 different quarterbacks started every game for their team. In fact, week 1 starting quarterbacks were responsible for 89.6% of all quarterback starts over the rest of the year, another NFL record. The table shows the number of teams to start one quarterback in every game, that number expressed as a percentage of the number of teams in the league, and the percentage of games started over the Rest Of the Year by the week 1 starters.

Kap took advantage of a rare quarterback injury last year.

As an aside, many of the missed starts are due to concussions. While that’s not going to make anyone on Park Avenue very happy, it’s fair to wonder how many of those quarterbacks might have still suited up if this was 2002, and not 2012.

1. Griffin was on the injury report twice for head injuries but did not miss a start due to concussions.

Shorts made the most of his one catch against the Colts.

The optimistic outlook on Shorts is simple. He missed two games with a concussion and took a couple of weeks to become a key part of the Jacksonville offense (he didn’t record a catch in week two, for example): in his final 12 games, Shorts averaged over 75 yards per game and scored 6 touchdowns. That would put him on a 1200-yard, 8-touchdown pace over a full slate of 16 games as a starter.

But there are other factors to consider. Shorts was only a fourth round pick and gained just 30 yards as a rookie, so he doesn’t have much of a resume beyond 2012. And while he may have produced impressive numbers, Jacksonville ranked 29th in ANY/A last year, making Shorts the co-star (along with Justin Blackmon) of a really bad passing offense. And what’s impressive about that?

So which view should carry more weight? The productive season he had as an individual or the fact that he’s a low-pedigree player who was only responsible for 26.1% of the receiving yards on a terrible passing team?

I decided to look at all second-year wide receivers since 1990 who gained between 23.1 and 29.1 percent of their team’s receiving yards. There were 36 such players before last year, when Shorts, Julio Jones, and Jeremy Kerley joined the list. The table below lists each second-year wide receiver, his age (as of December 31st) and receiving stats in his second season, percentage of team receiving yards, team ANY/A Rank, draft pick, and associated draft value. You can read the fine print here;¹ the table is sorted by ascending Team ANY/A rank.