NFL Championship Week Corners
Getting Ready For Sunday
Quick Author’s Note: Starting to write again was one of the real joys of the last quarter of 2022. One of my 2023 resolutions is to write much more often. Today, I’m back with two quick NFL corners as the season wraps up Sunday.
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The Myth of NFL Offense
Why do we keep talking up all these quarterbacks?
The NFL quarterback is the most prestigious, coveted, and important position in American sports. Every broadcast is filled with QB talk - an explanatory soliloquy about their importance in the team’s success, stories about their work habits, and even ruminations on their relationships (ESPN constantly covers that topic). The thirst for content is so real one website publishes new QB rankings each week.
The attention spills over to the offense: more ink is spilled on offensive coordinators and strategy with every coming year. We get a constant drumbeat of articles like “Can defenses keep up in the NFL’s offensive revolution?”, telling us we exist in a golden era of offense.
It’s a fun narrative. Fans love offense. More points = more fun. Nobody shows up on Sundays to watch passes hit the turf.
But time to don the Grinch outfit… it’s also bunk.
Yes, technology has allowed offenses to innovate and excel - new concepts, better play-calling, the rise of spread offenses, etc. The growth of analytics mean coaches are much less likely to leave points on the table by kicking field goals inside the 5 or punting on the opponent’s side of the field. However, all of that together… barely makes offenses better at what they are designed to do - score points.
This graph looks at the average points per game by NFL teams in the last 60 years. While the recent peak looks like an overall increase in offense, the changes are marginal. Offenses scored fewer points per game in 2022 than they did in 1962 and just one more than they did 25 years ago. The averages overall haven’t really moved much since the early 1990s. Over the last two years, defenses have clawed back 15 years worth of offensive gains.
Zooming out on yards per game tells a slightly better story for the offense. Yards per game has been going up basically non-stop since the early 90s, powered by the quarterbacks. Yet, again, most of those gains happened in the early 2000s. In 2002 - not exactly know as the Year of the Quarterback - teams averaged 328 yards and 212 passing yards. In 2022, teams averaged 340 yards and 219 passing yards. That’s an annual growth rate of 0.17%. You’d be forgiven for calling it zero.
Dak’s Gonna Be All Right
And Peyton Manning is a bigger choke than you remember.
The ‘points scored’ framing is a good one for the raging sports radio debate of the week: should the Cowboys keep Dak Prescott? As a quick recap, Dak is the quarterback of America’s Team, the Dallas Cowboys. He’s the most important player on the most followed team in America’s most important sport. Debates about his future are Internet catnip.
Dak had a lousy game Sunday, when the Cowboys lost to the San Francisco 49ers, 19-12. He threw two interceptions, scored 0 points in the 4th quarter, and his team got eliminated before the final four for the seventh time in his seven seasons. He’s squarely in the NFL’s Hamlet Zone, a tragic hero good enough to play in important games, but not good enough to win them. Call him Gen Z Phil Rivers. Chiseled Matt Ryan.
Now, yes, QBs aren’t the whole team - you can win or lose games on defense / special teams. But what’s their main job? To score points. Dak is actually historically great at this - the Cowboys led the league in 2021 and were fourth in 2022. Across his 100 starts, they average 27 points. The league averages 23. Very solid!
It doesn’t translate to the playoffs. There, Dak’s teams average 23. He had 31 in his first game, and since 24, 22, 17, 31, and 12. Not great, Bob!
I was curious if this drop was normal, so I charted Dak’s regular season / post-season points per game against each other QB w/5+ playoff starts since 2010. For QBs who qualified for two separate teams, I split their stats. Take a look.
My read: Cowboys fans should relax.
Now, Dak’s posteason play still looks anemic. Only 8 QBs scored fewer points, and it’s not a pretty list. However, I reckon the most important thing is his regular season production, where he ranks 7th overall.
Wait? Why would we care more about the regular season than the playoffs? Aren’t we forecasting his ability to win in the playoffs?
First, it’s a larger sample - 100 games v. six. Dak could be 4-2 in the playoffs with two throws gone differently. Second, scoring a lot of regular season points means you make the playoffs a lot. Each playoff run is a lottery ticket. Given how injuries and in-game randomness dictate football, if you don’t have an all-timer (top right quadrant), all you can ask for is more shots on goal. History tells us one year your defense figures it out and the ball bounces your way. Of the QBs who made the playoffs at least five times, 11 of 12 made the Super Bowl at least once, and 9 won it. Dak's got in 4 times, and he's just 29. Every QB above him on the regular season PPG list has won save one1. He’ll be cool.
Some other quick observations from an awfully revealing chart:
The points per game metric tracks well to QB quality - bad QBs can win with good defenses (Flacco2, Garoppolo) but not consistently score points. Each QB in that top right quadrant had a >50% win percentage
Time to bring back the mid-2000s “Peyton Manning choke artist” takes. His Broncos were 10 points per game worse in the playoffs!!
This reset a bit how I think about Joe Burrow. He’s the toast of the town after winning his 5th playoff game in six tries, and I’d have him as the second best QB in the NFL right now. And still… there’s a whiff of early career Joe Flacco here. Across those 6 games, his team has given up only 19, 16, 24, 23, 17, and 10 points. To be monitored!
“Top Right Pat Mahomes” strikes again - his distance from the field is incredible
And that guy, Jimmy Garropolo, led by 10 with six minutes to go.
An article for another day, but I reckon Flacco is a bit underrated historically given his clutch play. The defense carried him early in his career, but here are his points scored in his last three playoff runs: 20, 20, 24, 38, 28, 34, 30, 31. In that run to the title, they outscored opponents 31-22. He did his part on an offense with 0 Hall of Famers.
This feels like a bit of a Red Queen effect. The offenses can still be way more sophisticated and exciting than 50 years ago and yet still not score any more because the defense is equally more sophisticated (and I'd argue exciting, but I know that's a minority opinion). I guess what I'm trying to say is that you can have an entire offensive revolution happen just to keep up with the better defense, and vice versa. I'll freely admit that the commentators who are paid in proportion to how many fans listen to them are probably hyping things up more than is warranted haha...
In terms of why people keep talking up QBs, I honestly don't have the numbers to back this up, but it feels like the single position in football where an outlier player (Brady or Maholmes) can have the same kind of impact as an NBA star like LeBron or Steph or Jokic, just singlehandedly lifting a team. No one else gets to touch the ball as much. I think the converse might be easier to prove, that a truly bad QB can sink even a great team with a few too many picks a game.