As regular readers know, PFR’s Approximate Value statistic uses Offensive Points Per Estimated Drive (OPPED) as its base statistic. Given the discussion yesterday regarding estimates drives and scoring, I thought it would be useful to provide a list of the single-season leaders since 1950 in this metric.

Let’s use the 2007 Patriots as an example. For modern teams, we have the data available on how many drives each team had, but for historical teams, it’s not so easy. There are two ways we can measure drives for all teams. One is to measure the end of drives. For example, the ’07 Patriots had:

• 50 passing touchdowns;
• 9 interceptions;
• 17 rushing touchdowns;
• 24 field goal attempts;
• 45 punts;
• 6 fumbles lost; and
• 0 safeties (i.e., the offense was never sacked in the end zone)

That gives us a total of 151 estimated drives. What we’re missing here are drives that end when the clock runs out and turnovers on downs. Unfortunately, that data is simply not out there historically, although it’s probably not all that important (and, at least with respect to the former, those drives arguably should be excluded, anyway).

We can also measure the start of drives.  The ’07 Patriots:

• Played 16 games, which means 16 times where the team received the ball at the start of each half;
• Recorded 0 safeties recorded on defense (which would lead to a possession);
• Allowed 23 passing touchdowns;
• Forced 19 interceptions;
• Allowed 7 rushing touchdowns;
• Faced 14 opponent field goal attempts;
• Forced 76 punts;
• Forced and recovered 12 fumbles.
• In addition, New England also had 3 pick sixes and returned 3 fumbles for touchdowns.  as a result, we need to subtract 6 from our total, since those turnovers did not lead to drives for the offense.

This method of estimating drives isn’t perfect, either, but if we average the two results, hopefully we get something pretty close.  New England’s offense had 161 estimated drives by this metric, giving them an averaged of 156 estimated offensive drives. ^[1]Note that the Patriots went 15/21 on 4th down attempts that year. FWIW, Football Outsiders has New England with 158 offensive drives.

What about estimated points? That one is relatively simple:

• Award 7 points for each rushing touchdown or passing touchdown;
• Award 3 points for each made field goal

There are flaws here, well, but this is probably the best we can do.  By this method, New England had 532 estimated offensive points, and 3.41 OPPED.  That is the most of any team since 1950.  The full list: