2018's Offensive Explosion: What Gives?

[RandyMossIsBoss]

Early on, by week 2 or 3, people were already saying that the new roughing the passer rules had significantly altered the game and that offenses were now operating at a higher level than ever before. I scoffed at the notion, it'd only been a few weeks, offenses always seem to start hot but by mid season we see it balance out... but that has not been the case, if anything, offenses have gotten better (or defenses, worse). League average yards per game, points per game and passer rating are all on pace to be the highest in NFL history. Not too big of a shock in itself, yards and passer rating have been steadily rising for the past few decades (although it is not constant, as in YPG does not go up every year, there are dips). However, if you look at the data, these numbers this year have jumped far beyond what predictive models would suggest. I used excel's relatively simple Forecasting tool to see this, which uses exponential smoothing (more weight towards more similar variables, ie- 2017 numbers hold more weight than 2008 numbers), but considering we are just looking at 2 variables here, I doubt you'd find any model with much different results.

Scoring

 

Yards

 

Passer Rating

 

Passer rating shows the biggest leap. The average passer rating this year is a whopping 94.6, which is up a tremendous amount from last year's 86.9. However, last year's PR was the lowest in 3 years, but this year's 94.6 figure is still significantly higher than the previous historical high of 90.2 set in 2015. Passer rating looks at 4 things, TD%, INT%, Completion % and Yards per attempt, and I was curious if perhaps only 1 of those numbers has spiked, but alas, all 4 have just simultaneously increased within a reasonable rate to achieve all time highs.

 

Now let's take a look at the roughing the passer data (note that 2018 is obviously extrapolated based on the first 149 games of 2018).

 

Contrary to popular belief, it's really not being called at a much higher rate than it was in 2017. We're looking at 115 roughing calls as opposed to 105 the year before. 115 will be a 10 year high, but it will also fall well short of the 15 year high of 130 seen in 2004. The three stats we looked at had no such jump from 2003 to 2004, or 2016 to 2017, both bigger roughing the passer differences than what we saw from 2017 to 2018, like the jump we are seeing this year. Now it can be argued defenders are playing less aggressive due to the rules being "emphasized" and I would agree based on what I've seen, but A) unfortunately we cannot quantify that and B) is that really enough to explain this offensive explosion? I definitely do not think so.

 

 

So what do you guys think, why have offenses exploded in 2018? Do you just mainly attribute it to the increased emphasis on protecting QBs?

 

 

Two things to consider here, the jump from 2016 to 2018 in these three numbers, while still big, is significantly smaller than the jump from 2017 to 2018. Perhaps 2018 isn't the year we should be analyzing, but 2017? 

1. Why are offenses doing so much better in 2018 than they did in 2017?

2. Why were offenses doing so much worse in 2017 than they did in 2016?

I suspect if you answer one, you get the answer to the other, or at least a clearer picture.

[DontTazeMeBro]

I think the rules are part of it. But I also think play calling has gotten more creative.

Then you have the Chiefs no longer being held back by Alex Smith and Rivers and Luck finally getting good OL play. The Steelers finally living up to their talent with their new playcaller. The Saints who are always good on offense being the most talented they’ve ever been. Norv Turner getting the most out of Cam Newton. Deshaun Watson just being amazing. And McVay and Nagy doing their thing. And all this happening at the same time and injuries not screwing it up that much it could just kinda be the perfect storm

[43M]

Nathan Peterman after reading this thread....

[riceman80]

6 minutes ago, DontTazeMeBro said:

I think the rules are part of it. But I also think play calling has gotten more creative.

Then you have the Chiefs no longer being held back by Alex Smith and Rivers and Luck finally getting good OL play. The Steelers finally living up to their talent with their new playcaller. The Saints who are always good on offense being the most talented they’ve ever been. Norv Turner getting the most out of Cam Newton. Deshaun Watson just being amazing. And McVay and Nagy doing their thing. And all this happening at the same time and injuries not screwing it up that much it could just kinda be the perfect storm

Was thinking about this the other day. Sure does seem like alot more defensive injuries this year than offensive injuries.

Don't worry fellas. Raiders offense is here to keep those numbers in check tho

[El Ramster]

3 minutes ago, riceman80 said:

Was thinking about this the other day. Sure does seem like alot more defensive injuries this year than offensive injuries.

Don't worry fellas. Raiders offense is here to keep those numbers in check tho

With the hot 13 points a game. 

[iknowcool]

There are some different reasons (heavier RB involvement as receivers, advanced offensive schemes, rule changes albeit I don't think any defensive penalty has been more or less emphasized this year other than RTP), but I think an overlooked reason is the simplest one: the QB position is as strong as it has ever been.

You have the old shield still playing at a high level (Brady, Rivers, Brees, Rodgers, Ben).  You have the late 2000s and early 2010s QBs still in their prime and playing as expected of them (Ryan, Luck, Wilson, Newton, Cousins).  Then you got the guys who were recent high draft picks and are balling out (Goff, Wentz, Mahomes, Watson, Trubisky).  Stafford, once they get a better team around him, should start putting up better numbers too.  The only one of those guys who you could really say are drastically out-performing what was/is expected of them is maybeeee Trubisky?  But it's entirely possible we just underrated him or he's not as good as the #s suggest (not taking either side).  Mahomes too I reckon is out-performing expectations but only because he looks like '84 Marino rather than a normal first-year starter, but when you consider his coach and surrounding talent, it isn't 100% surprising he's been able to maximize his potential.

So you got a bunch of guys in or around there prime, everyone is healthy and playing, and for the most part a lot of the guys are playing in good schemes with good surrounding offensive talent.  That would be my best bet anyway.  Rule changes have helped offensive scoring as a whole over the years, but I don't think it would explain the jump from 2017 to 2018.  I just think it might be as simple as we are actually seeing the best group of QBs at one time ever, aided by the fact the old guard has lasted for a long freakin' time.  The QB position would look a lot weaker without some of those oldies.  And IMO you are still seeing the QBs you'd expect to struggle to well, struggle.  That is another reason why I think it just has to do with the quality of the top guys.  You could point at Ryan Fitzpatrick, but even he's thrown 9 INTs in 7 games and most of his #s are coming when the Bucs are already down big.

I'd expect to see a regression to the mean in 2019.  I'm enjoying it right now though.

[ET80]

4 minutes ago, iknowcool said:

I think an overlooked reason is the simplest one: the QB position is as strong as it has ever been.

I was going to say this - the QB position might be at an apex right now compared to other years. 

[FinSting]

Lucky for us, Brock Osweiler doesn't have this explosion problem

[Malfatron]

nobody invited the packers to the offensive explosion bus

 

[BleedTheClock]

There really aren't a lot of god-awful QB's this year either. While there aren't as many ungodly QB's like there were 5-6 years ago, there aren't nearly as many stinkers.

[sammymvpknight]

30 minutes ago, ET80 said:

I was going to say this - the QB position might be at an apex right now compared to other years. 

This is my answer. I went into the fantasy football season with a deliberate plan to wait as long as possible for two QBs because the QB position is insanely deep right now. And looking at the 2018 QB class...it will probably only get better next year. 

[Bobikus]

Interestingly, Sack% is pretty high this year too, hasn't been higher since 2004.  From how it looks though, 2017 seems to be the bigger outlier year in the general upwards progression, making this year look like even more of an explosion than it is compared to the overall recent trend.

 

Curious on how much the forecasts and CIs change if 2017 is either omitted or given the same values as 2016.

[game3525]

1 hour ago, ET80 said:

I was going to say this - the QB position might be at an apex right now compared to other years. 

Yeah, it seems like at least 18-24 teams have a competent starter or a guy they think will be the answer for the future. The position isn't as top end heavy as it was from 2009-2014, but it is deeper now then it has ever been. 

[Hunter2_1]

Some good answers above, so I wont reiterate. Maybe offer a different perspective; key defensive injuries? No more Shazier, D Jones, J Bosa, E Reid etc. Some of those made it very tough to play offense. 

QBing is at an apex, but why? I suspect if you answer this, you have the answer for the OP as well. Why is QBing at an apex this year? 

[AFlaccoSeagulls]

If you look at the "Who has a good defense?" thread, Ray Lewis had a segment where he just outlines how much defensive players are completely lacking fundamentals. Everyone wants to make that one "splash" play but nobody wants to play as a unit and do their job. This leads to huge plays for offenses and just overall really bad defensive play. Ray pointed out it might have something also to do with less time in training camp because players advocating for more time off.

Either way, defenses this year are just atrocious and it's really not the coordinators who are bad, it's just the players being stupid and selfish.