≡ Menu

Super Bowl LII set an NFL record for total yards in a game with 1,151. That’s not total yards in a Super Bowl, or total yards in a playoff game, but total yards in any game in NFL history. That’s pretty wild.

Also remarkable, and highly correlated with the incredible offensive output is the fact that the Eagles and Patriots combined for just one punt and two turnovers. There have been four games since 1950 (which is as far back as reliable punting data goes) where there were zero punts: two involved the 2014 Saints, one was the Peyton Manning/Trent Green playoff game between the Colts and Chiefs, and one was the Super Bowl that never happened — the ’90s Bills and ’90s 49ers facing off in week 2 of the 1992 regular season. That Buffalo/San Francisco game was a classic battle of passing attacks that I’ve written about before, where both passers topped 400 yards in a year where no other quarterback did in a single game.

From 1950 to 2016, there were just 24 games that featured fewer than 4 combined turnovers and punts. The Patriots had four unsuccessful drives that aren’t quite captured here — the clock ran out on New England in both the first and second halves, the Patriots lost the ball on downs, and missed a field goal (although I wouldn’t necessarily categorize that as a bad drive) — but otherwise, just four bad drives for both teams combined is pretty rare. The Eagles had just two bad drives out of 10! Remarkably, the Eagles and Patriots combined for 9 offensive touchdowns and 6 more drives that ended in field goal attempts.

That’s 15 drives that ended in offensive scores (or possible scores), and just three bad drives (punts or turnovers).  That +12 differential is tied for the most ever with this classic Peyton Manning/Tony Romo game from 2013 (17 good drives, 5 bad) and a random Rams/Chargers game from 2000 where St. Louis scored on every single drive of the game before kneeling (17 good, 5 bad).

By just about any measure, Super Bowl LII was one of the greatest offensive games in league history, but let’s throw this out to the crowd: what stats best show this in your opinion?

{ 27 comments }