I have been thinking about this tweet a lot.
Explosive pass plays Wks 1-2 the last few years:
2020: 384
2021: 356
2022: 344
2023: 314
2024: 270— Sam Monson (@SamMonsonNFL) September 16, 2024
This is a bad thing, because I prefer to spend my time thinking of old Simpsons quotes, and as little time as possible thinking about anything from the Elon mind virus machine, but I think it’s worth focusing on this for a moment because the NFL may have a real problem on their hands. The NFL is historically immune from difficulties and continues to grow at a truly staggering rate, but the NFL has also been quick to react whenever offense has slowed in the past, so they must be at least a little concerned that this could actually hurt them. And they probably also want Mel Kiper to go back into his box until April when he once against emerges and we find out whether we have six more weeks of winter or not. Or maybe that’s groundhogs, I don’t know, they have very similar hair.
People love offense, and every major sport takes great pains to ensure that scoring either stays level or increases. Except for baseball of course, which is totally fine with every pitcher throwing 98-plus until their elbows explode and no one ever scoring any runs, because “old men who fell asleep in the fifth” is baseball’s key advertising demographic. But that’s baseball, and football is not baseball, and the NFL will not tolerate this for long.
So what’s causing this downward trend in early-season scoring? There are a few theories. The first theory is that every quarterback is bad. This is a good theory with a lot of empirical support. For instance, if you look closely at this graph courtesy of RBSDM.com, you will notice that every quarterback is worse than Derek Carr.
Since we know Derek Carr isn’t a good quarterback it makes logical sense that every quarterback on this chart is terrible. The idea that all quarterbacks are horrible makes even more sense when you notice that the top three quarterbacks in CPOE are Carr, Sam Darnold, and Gardner Minshew. But, I don’t think this is entirely correct because by the same logic, there are ten quarterbacks who have a better EPA per Play than Patrick Mahomes, who is the greatest quarterback of all time. We’re blessed to be living in an age (in this case an age means “the last 14 days”) where there are so many who are Mahomes equal.
Most importantly, it’s early in the season and this chart has unfairly excluded Malik Willis for the sin of being SO good he’s only had to throw 15 total passes. As Willis is having one of the greatest quarterback seasons of all time, or at least of this age, I don’t really think we can blame the quarterback position here.
In the mentions to the Sam Monson tweet above, some hypothesized that newer limits on practice time and a shorter, more risk-averse preseason may be to blame. While I think this theory has some merit, in my expert football-watching opinion, this, plus the drafting and playing of Quay Walker, has mostly led to a leaguewide epidemic of absolutely horrific tackling, which should help offenses, and create explosive plays. And the running game is still going just fine, continuing its own four-year trend:
Meanwhile team’s are having huge success when rushing the ball this year. Yards before contact is up big
2021: 1.39
2022: 1.47
2023: 1.42
2024: 1.75— Chris Wecht (@ChrisWechtFF) September 18, 2024
Some believe it’s the proliferation of the two-high safety shell, which would partially explain all of this effective running, but two-high looks are actually slightly down from last season, and Darnell Savage has played 49 defensive snaps for the Jaguars, so it’s tough to put this on better safety play.
Some league wide trends from @FantasyPtsData
that could be resulting in lower passing outputs by NFL teams this yearTwo High Safeties is basically the same over the past 3 seasons
2022: 46.7%
2023: 47.7%
2024: 46.2%— Chris Wecht (@ChrisWechtFF) September 18, 2024
Fortunately, I think I’ve cracked this one, and the answer should make the internet happy by making the internet angry, which is the internet’s absolute favorite thing in the world. It’s the refs. Well, it’s not just the refs, it’s also defensive coordinators leaning into those conservative two-high shells, but those are working WAY better than they used to because of the refs. But mainly it’s the refs, and you know how the internet feels about refs. Here’s why.
You know how the NFL has “points of emphasis” every season? These are not necessarily rule changes per se, just extra emphasis on rules that may not have been as stringently enforced in the past. High-profile instances of “points of emphasis” include a greater focus on illegal contact penalties in order to prevent Patriots corners from beating the stuffing out of Peyton Manning’s receivers in the playoffs, or the emphasis on hitting and putting your weight onto quarterbacks in an attempt to prevent Aaron Rodgers’ clavicle from snapping in half again while simultaneously preventing Clay Matthews from being useful. This year’s “point of emphasis” is “illegal procedures” by the offense.
You see, last year, the NFL had too many fun, exciting plays that involved “pre-snap motion,” and “during the snap motion,” and “uncovered tight ends” (hot), and so in a bid to reduce the amount of fun and creativity available to play callers, referees have been calling procedure penalties like they’re going out of style.
(Note: I have to confess that I have never understood why doing something like it’s going out of style means that you are doing a lot of something. I guess you’re trying to do the things as much as you can before you can’t anymore because it’s uncool, but if it’s known to be going out of style, surely it’s too late? Fortunately, it doesn’t matter here as referees are extremely un-stylish with the striped shirts and the long white stripe down the side of the pants, although Rob Lowe almost made their hats cool once, which is something.)
I realize that there are, technically speaking, rules about where players can line up and who can go in motion, and in which direction, but on the other hand, this is America. And in America, rules about who can and cannot be a taxi company didn’t stop Uber from starting a taxi company and laundering billions of dollars in Saudi money through it. Rules about who can run a hotel didn’t stop Airbnb from starting a hotel chain that is both more expensive and labor-intensive than normal hotels with none of the normal amenities. And rules about the use of copyrighted and trademarked materials didn’t stop GenAI companies from scraping and copying the entire internet in order to produce works that also violate those copyrights and trademarks. Just because a few clever coaches are “disrupting” traditional football doesn’t mean we need to come down hard on their new, innovative ideas just because they “give their teams an unfair advantage by breaking established rules that you can’t compete with unless you also break established rules.”
Anyway, no matter how you feel about “illegal” procedure, the NFL has a penalty problem. The number of penalties called against the offense over the first two weeks of the season has increased every year for the last three years, from 183 in 2022, to 196 in 2023, to 217 this year. At the same time, the number of defensive penalties has steadily declined from 168 in 2022, to 159 in 2023, to just 138 in 2024.
Off Penalties – First 2 Weeks | Penalties | Yards |
---|---|---|
Off Penalties – First 2 Weeks | Penalties | Yards |
2021 | 216 | 1636 |
2022 | 183 | 1245 |
2023 | 196 | 1492 |
2024 | 217 | 1563 |
Def Penatlies – First 2 Weeks | Penalties | Yards |
2021 | 161 | 1728 |
2022 | 168 | 1669 |
2023 | 159 | 1493 |
2024 | 138 | 1406 |
All of those safe, two-high shells are predicated on the idea that if you make the offense run a lot of plays to score, they will eventually make a mistake, and this will result in a punt or a turnover. One of the “mistakes” they can make is a penalty, which officials have been calling at an insane rate, which has the effect of the making the boring Cover-2 extra appealing. If penalties were being called at a normal rate, you could punish an unaggressive defense (what we in Wisconsin call a “Joe Barry two-high shell”) until the coordinator was forced to do something more exotic. But if penalties are going to end drives, why bother with taking any risks on defense? Just wait for an illegal procedure, or a hold, or an offsides, or one of the other 217 penalties that have been called against the offense so far to make it 2nd and 15 or 20 or 25.
Compounding matters, officials are not handing out free first downs to the offense like they used to. In addition to only calling 138 penalties on the defense this year, those penalties have only totaled 1408 yards, the lowest in the last four years at least. In 2021 the league called 161 defensive penalties for 1728 yards in the first two weeks. That’s a big difference, especially when you consider the sheer number of defensive penalties that result in an automatic first down. Essentially, the league’s focus on ticky-tack nonsense has made Cover-2, their least favorite defense for TV purposes, work super well, and taken away a whole mess of free first downs they used to grant to the offense.
In the Packers’ first game against the Eagles (which wound up being a high-scoring game anyway) the officials called 22 penalties (five of which were declined) for 128 yards. The Packers’ second drive of the game went from being a likely touchdown to a field goal due to an Elgton Jenkins holding penalty. Their third drive went from being a likely touchdown to a field goal due to an OPI call on Romeo Doubs. In the middle of the third quarter, two separate illegal shift penalties on Tucker Kraft resulted in a punt from Daniel Whelan. And on the very next drive, one play before Jordan Love threw a crucial interception, Rasheed Walker was called for holding, turning second and one into second and eleven.
I’m not saying all of those penalties were incorrect or unwarranted, but I am saying there were too many of them, and they made offense worse, and we can’t have that. If the NFL wants to get the offensive economy humming again, it needs the equivalent of a penalty rate cut. It needs to make several offensive penalties a point of de-emphasis, and actually let the players play football. If we don’t act immediately, the Vikings may continue to be good.
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