Why is offense/scoring down in the league the past few years?
 

So I'm trying to figure out what's happening here, anyone have any ideas?

Is it just that defenses have caught up to the offenses or?

Defenses evolved and adapted.

Several great QBs retired.

I prefer lower scoring games.

To me it just seems like offenses are behind schematically, they haven't been able to run the ball well enough to give most QBs a good chance against these fast secondaries that have LBs who can often cover just as good as the safeties.

started with mahomes, then allen, burrow..........play 2 deep safeties, make scoring death by 100 cuts, rather than give up the deep ball.

Offenses haven't adapted to the two deep shell and coverage backer scheme. In addition college linemen are not the road grader run first smashmouth type any more being much more athletic and able to operate in space.

The counter to a lighter front 7 and lots of DBs is a power run game to punish the lighter defense but O coordinators have not adopted that yet. Then PA pass off of that.

Average QB play is down. College QBs aren’t coming into the league developed well enough. Ditto rookie OLs. For the same reasons.


Kurt Warner has a video on the subject in his QB Confidential series on YT. Most Rookies are coming out early, so fewer reps/ less overall experience, and most have only seen one concept, and when it’s a simplistic system like RPO or whatever, these kids have little to no foundational knowledge going into the pros.

NIL and unlimited transfers probably aren't helping. If you can't rely on your players sticking around you have to simplify your scheme.

Ah, yeah, good catch. Warner listed that as a reason as well.

I think it's mainly defensive coordinators not being so stubborn and more coverage LBs and safeties. Against elite QBs you WANT the other team to run. You don't focus on simply stopping the run anymore. It's more of an afterthought.

QB play in the NFL and college has been atrocious from what I've seen this year.

Yeah, you just build your D to rush the passer and cover well. If the other team wants to run it down your throat more power to them because if you can score you'll most likely still win.

Yeah it mostly started with Mahomes, but now everyone is getting the same treatment. They don't mind death by 1000 cuts or getting gashed for 4-5 ypc as long as they can limit the damage the QB can do.

Like others have said, OLineman aren't roadgraders anymore, they're primarily pass blockers. So when you want to run the ball to punish a light box, you can't do it nearly as effectively unless you design your whole offense around it.

Other ideas that come to mind
-Maybe a lack of RB talent in the NFL currently?
-QB's aren't experienced enough to check into a run play when they see cover 2?

Chiefs shitty WR's

Teams don't mind being gashed by a thousand cuts because one holding penalty kills most offenses.

I can't embed it because it's a video with NFL content, but this pretty much nails it.

https://youtu.be/3sbnHgwCErs?si=FKikftCDZxTzsbQC

This. One Hold, one false start, one sack, one stop on 3rd down.

I really don't want to see scores each week of 47-42, 51-38, 39-35 or the like.

The old days of boring defensive games of 9-6, 14-3, 12-9 are mostly gone due to the better protection and safety of players.

I'm fine with the current level.of scoring and as a previous poster commented, defenses have made adjustments and figured certain things out.

It's funny. Mahomes was the first one exposed to the defense thats commonplace today. Now he's the one most adept at dealing with it. He's become the dink and dunk YAC master, while still making unreal throws from time to time. Everyone else has yet to catch up.

I saw that average passing yards was something like 185 yards? Yeesh.

I think a lot of it has to do with preparation too. I don't know why teams have decided to just not play their QB in the preseason. And lots and lots and lots of offense holdouts. An offense will take way longer to get into rhythm than a defense.

It’s the same strategy Belichick’s Giants defense used against the Jim Kelly Buffalo offense. The Giants were totally cool with letting HOFer Thurman Thomas run all over them, but they focused on slowing down Kelly’s receivers. And it worked. Buffalo’s offense averaged 47 points per game in 2 other Playoff games, but they scored only 19 points in the Giants Super Bowl.

Lousy QB play.

The whole making teams do long drives is a huge part bc yeah, it's damn near impossible to sustain 10-plus play drives without a drive killing penalty or turnover.

Makes the elite QBs even more valuable than ever cause they constantly gotta bail you out.

And I think they've learned most of the current QBs in the league aren't the technicians needed to orchestrate these long drives putting the ball in tight windows over and over again without making a mistake. The majority of them do something bone-headed before they finish the drive. A lot of QBs have trouble taking what you give them and will eventually get impatient and force things. I think that has played out MUCH MORE than anyone ever expected when teams started running the shell defenses though. I mean common sense would tell you they're professional QBs and they will be patient and sit back and pick you apart, but in most cases that hasn't really come to fruition.

Young QBs and coaching carousel.

Then you have bets getting injured.

Also, QBs either don't receive enough time or they have lousy coaches.

Colleges also don't produce pro style QBs.

I still don't understand the rationale behind benching your starters in the preseason. It's almost as if a bunch of coaches got together and tried to pull a Todd Haley by outsmarting the league with this stuff. Like, how did they all come to the same conclusion this preseason

Pretty much this. DCs figured out a way to slow down Mahomes' deep ball and it worked well against others too.

They all listened to BWillie. He's world renowned for his football advice.

Because we are the Chiefs

Something that no one talks about is that, as players have gotten bigger and faster, the field has stayed the same size.

This leads to less space for the offense to operate in by default.

It's a give and take. If you are a bad team or a team that might not make the playoffs it probably behoves you to play guys in the preseason. If you KNOW you are making the playoffs there is no reason to play starters outside of maybe rookies or new guys. Yeah you won't be as sharp game 1 or 2. So what...you are making the playoffs and keeping everyone healthy.

If you get hurt in PS, chances are pretty high it would've happened in the first couple games of the regular season, so it actually benefits a team to get it over with earlier; maybe the player gets hurt in PS but can come back before the end of the regular season/playoffs.

Now, I can see sitting some older veteran players if they are coming off an injury.


Otherwise, play them a little in PS; it ain't hurting anything that much, and maybe the team knocks most of the rust off in the meantime and doesn't look like an absolute shitshow (ATL, hello) and loses to a team without a QB.

The NFC QB's suck. When half the league's QB's are Alex Smith it doesn't bode well.

I think a lot of it has to do with they type of quarterbacks being drafted. Mahomes broke the league. Everyone wants a quarterback that can scramble and make off platform throws. So they're drafting the athletic running quarterbacks instead. Those guys generally look great at first, but once the league gets tape on them, they tend to fall back. There's only one Mahomes. Teams would be better off going back to a traditional pocket passer. Unfortunately, there's not a lot of college quarterbacks running a pro style offense anymore, so those types are harder to find. But until that changes, that's just how it's going to be. These running quarterbacks have never been sustainable against NFL defenses. That hasn't changed. Sure, there are exceptions. Lamar has had good career playing that way.....if you're satisfied with regular season success. But his playoff numbers are pathetic. Yeah, he got to the AFCCG last year. But he did it by going against another running quarterback. I'm guessing that Stroud doesn't put up close to what he did last year now that tape is out on him.

Teams would be better off going back to a traditional pocket passer. Unfortunately, there's not a lot of college quarterbacks running a pro style offense anymore,


Yeah, no one runs a "pro style" offense in college anymore.

Immobile pocket passers aren't coming back.

It's called the Fangio cover 6. Simply stated defenses are covering with six players to not allow the offenses to throw down the field. So you've got to play this methodical near mistake-free football and you have to complete a lot of passes around the line of scrimmage which is the West Coast offense.

The best team in the league the past few years at beating the Fangio cover 6 is the Kansas City Chiefs and they do so by running 3-1 splits better than anybody.

People don't really run a pro style offense in the pros anymore, either. At least not near as many.

Yeah, that stuff was already out by the time Mahomes came in the league yet when he was drafted idiots were talking about "snaps under center" and pro style blah blah blah.


;)


The 1980's aren't coming back.

There is a limit to how far and fast a qb can throw on offense within a given window if the pass rush is getting home or even close to getting home. You can always drop more into coverage and slow the game down.

It's Cover 6 with the following look:

Split the field in half with two deep safeties.

Cover 4 to the side with most passing assets, Cover 2 to the other side.

Commit to running the ball and you'll destroy it.

There was a bit of conversation on Twitter today among analytics folks wondering if the efficiency of running plays is going to catch up to passing. It's been trending that way and week 1 this year was skewed toward running efficiency, although to be fair most of that was due to QB scrambling. But even some of that could be argued is a result of defenses playing such safe pass coverage. It's certainly helped Mahomes. It seems defenses should just keep playing the odds and forcing teams into long drives where one drop or penalty can mess you up. It makes sense from an efficiency standpoint.

It seems Jim Harbaugh is coming back into the NFL at the right moment. Obviously he is escaping the NCAA violation problems at Michigan. But he has always focused heavily on the run game, and now he'll be going against a bunch of defenses focused on slowing down the passing game. That plays right into what he prefers to do as a coach.

And unlike clueless orgs like the Texans and Colts he knows you protect the franchise first. You pay your O line and grab your play makers from the dollar bin. A good QB can make average very good but he's got to be upright and healthy.

He will win playoff games eventually. Not super bowls or topping Mahomes, but he'll get them some...

Good discussion here fellas.

Take away explosive plays, make them be methodical. Especially with the lack of practice time, that becomes more difficult.

I vote for:
-poor QB play. NFL GMs are desperate for "the next PM or LJ" and due to the more sophisticated offenses in high school, QB camps, and College, rookies APPEAR to be ready to contribute immediately, but it appears they suffer from not having the year or more apprenticeship that was standard for decades. Some learn, some get overwhelmed by the pressure and poor class habits. I believe that Ds are incredibly fast, especially CBs, but I think teams badly undervalue a "Purdy", and overvalue a "Willis". QB is hard to get right, but you have to have a guy that understands what he sees at the LOS.

Agree, the pendulum always swings and you have to be on the leading edge. His play action heavy schemes will likely give the Chiefs fits, as they always have/do, all the way back to when he was under center.

Yeah - the Fangio shell is doing what it was designed to do.

The other element of that, however, is that it compounds onto YOUR offense.

So sure, you go out there and utilize death by 1,000 papercuts and make them march slow and methodically down the field. Sooner or later they probably pull it off. but in the process now your offense has gone from getting 13 possessions to getting 11.

So when teams play that defense, it makes THEIR offense less prolific. And when both squads are playing that, you could see 9-10 possession ballgames. And then scoring suffers.

It's....{shudder}...Hermball. On a leaguewide scale.

I'm not sure it's actually conducive to winning for a great deal many teams. But it IS gonna keep scoring down. On both sides of the ledger.

It's just put a premium on efficiency and in today's league that's just tougher.

There's become such a wide margin between the elites and the mid tier/bottom feeders that you pretty much have to hope to small sample size it and win.

Why is offense/scoring down in the league the past few years?
 

Other teams have seen the Chiefs and just given up.

Exactly.

Teams hope that the shorter the sample size, the less a better team is able to run and hide with it and they can get the big break (penalty, turnover, whatever) that allows them to steal it.

Which is why I say that too many teams are running it. If you're an average or better team, unless you're playing Mahomes or Allen, you probably shouldn't be running that defense. You're as likely as not to win it 'straight'. By playing so much Cover 6, you're essentially putting your outcomes up to chance.

There are 10-12 teams that are well served running that defense, IMO. And some of those teams don't have the personnel in their defensive secondary to do it well. The rest of the teams are just playing follow the leader - as is custom in this league.

Which is why Campbell is trying to attack it with power running. Harbaugh appears to be content doing the same in LA. The 49ers sure seemed happy to do it last night. Physical teams will continue to attack it in the trenches.

ALEX SMITH WAS AHEAD OF HIS TIME

For the record, I HATE it. I don't think the Chiefs should be running that cloud coverage much at all. And by and large they don't.

If they score, they score. Fine, whatever.

This defense should be aggressive. It should be physical and attack. If they gash you, let them gash you quickly and get the ball back to your offense. The last thing I want to see is this team getting 55 offensive plays/gm.

Stay aggressive, win quickly or die trying. Create a quick punt, turnover or fast touchdown drive in the process. And in the process you'll be better equipped in the red zone than teams that are so passive (those teams get brutalized inside the 20, IMO). And now you're more likely to turn a 7 into a 3, which is a win for this team.

Teams with good offenses shouldn't be running the Fangio crap.

FYP

and as an Iowa fan it is boring and sucks

I wonder if scoring\offense continues to go down if the NFL will adjust the rules to stop this.

Well then you'd start splitting hairs with some people because losing a game in week 1 or 2 could be the difference between the 1 seed bye and the 2/3 seed or a wild card spot and missing the playoffs etc etc.

It's just calculated risk. I have to assume Andy has a "feel" for how much football his guys need to be decently ready for week 1.

I wonder if Football organizations hire actuaries like Insurance companies or banks do to calculate the risk of situations like this. I mean, these are billion dollar organizations, I don't think they'd make decisions like this purely off of "feel".

What do you adjust? You gonna tell them they can't play zone anymore?

I just don't know how you address that. Teams have to answer it.

I suspect they will sooner or later. You'll see more teams looking to find physical WRs that will do what Rice does. Rather than getting beat by the run 5 yards at a clip, you'll get beat by the pass 12 yards at a clip.

And at that point, you're just as screwed as you are if you're playing single-high.

You'll see more slants, drags and underneath routes designed to get guys into space UNDER the safeties and into spots in the zone.

Again, I pointed this out 3-4 years ago when the Chiefs were getting abused by Tampa 2 stuff. This isn't new. Teams just stopped building around it after they murdered it in the early 2000s and opposing DCs had to stop running it.

They'll kill it off soon enough. It's not a terribly good defense, IMO. And it will get dissected again soon enough.

Eliminate zone like the NBA did ROFL

I figure we will continue to see those physical teams late in the playoffs, per usual.

Then you'll have the teams with elite QB's there.

But in terms of attacking it, I'd imagine you just have to bludgeon it until they come out of it.

EDIT: I read this wrong at first. Yes, if you are an elite or good team, I dont' know that I'd wanna play this style unless there's just a fire breather on the other side.

Yeah I don't know, like they could do what Pasta posted and eliminate zone defense. That would be extreme though. One thing I thought of would be to require all d players to be within 10-15 yds of LOS.

Good lord, can you imagine how brutal that would be?

The impact would actually be counterproductive. Every CB, S and LBer would have to be able to play man. You'd have 4 down lineman and 7 dudes that weight 230 lbs or less.

It would turn into rugby at that point. You'd just use 22 personnel and grind that defense into powder.

Naw - can't get rid of zone. Football would become an unwatchable product.

Offenses will figure it out. Then it will be on to the next thing.

Slants and drags.

If you're running that defense, you're not sending extra pressure. And if you're not sending extra pressure, those slants/crossers/etc... will break open. And when they do you'll have guys catching balls underneath with a full head of steam and DBs that aren't allowed to kill them over the middle.

You'll just see more and more teams attack the intermediate/middle of those zones. And as that timing develops over the course of the year, it'll get more and more effective.

I do consider though 2 high safeties sitting 20 yds + back sort of like NBA centers camping in the lane.

Offenses figured it out decades ago.

They just haven't been doing it as much of late. They'll brush off some old tape and get back to what killed it back then. Start using oversized WRs in the slot again and you'll knock guys out of that in a hurry.

Or, like I suggested right before we traded Hill, put speed EVERYWHERE and attack it outside the hashes downfield. And again, with that split cover 2/4 setup, all you have to do is get one of your guys from the Cover 4 side over to the cover 2 side and he's gonna have MILES of grass to run in.

There are several ways to abuse it. Just gotta execute. Right now teams aren't executing terribly well and the entire concept of that defense is being idiot-proof. So you can play it at/near it's highest level and offenses are still trying to find their footing.

Eh.

Hit 'em in the seam with your TE or slot WR. Or run arrow routes with your backs and you'll have a wide open window about 8 yards deep as he comes out of the cut and then again at 12-14 yards as he clears the MLB. As they start to tighten up the safeties, start throwing post-corners at them.

There are just so many ways to beat this thing. It's a defense that relies on bad offensive execution to work. If you execute that Hybrid Cover 6 at the same level as the opposing offense executes, it gets wrecked.

It depends on entirely on the other offense making mistakes. As the season progresses, fewer and fewer of those mistakes will be made.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Week 1 passing touchdowns since 2018:<br><br>61: 2021, 2019<br>60<br>59<br>58<br>57<br>56<br>55<br>54<br>53<br>52: 2020<br>51: 2022<br>50<br>49: 2018<br>48<br>47<br>46<br>45<br>44<br>43<br>42<br>41<br>40<br>39<br>38<br>37: 2023<br>36<br>35: 2024</p>&mdash; Warren Sharp (@SharpFootball) <a href="https://twitter.com/SharpFootball/status/1833502009657344473?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 10, 2024</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Fewer practices and pre-season games means offenses are less sharp early in the season.

Kirk with some good thoughts on early bad football.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">&quot;September football is becoming what August football used to be,&quot; <a href="https://twitter.com/KirkHerbstreit?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@KirkHerbstreit</a> said of NFL&#39;s week one. <br><br>Why? A fascinating theory on the quarterback position and how it&#39;s changing from the high school game and beyond. <br><br>*Excellent* This Is Football ahead of Bills-Fins TNF. <a href="https://t.co/OS2OUuihRR">pic.twitter.com/OS2OUuihRR</a></p>&mdash; Kevin Clark (@bykevinclark) <a href="https://twitter.com/bykevinclark/status/1833524979763450309?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 10, 2024</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

I think that this season, we're going to see Andy put in a class on how to beat the Fangio defense and they will lead the league in scoring in the process. With Brown and Worthy stretching the field and Kelce and Rice in the middle, along with Pacheco in the backfjeld, that defense is going to get beat like a drum. You can't commit to stopping the over the top plays without leaving yourself vulnerable to the short and intermediate plays. Kelce and Rice are YAC monsters. They will feast now that we have the personnel to exploit it.

Yup.

You saw the gameplan against Baltimore. And once you get Hollywood out there running crossers instead of JuJu running...whatever...you'll see it fully formed.

Being able to create numbers advantages on those drags/crossers that get through the strong side of a hybrid coverage will also be a big deal. So if those backers start to cheat forward on the slants but then have Hollywood running a 12 yard drag behind them but underneath the safeties, those are gonna pop wide open on the back-side of the play.

This defense is NOT going to work against KC. At all.

Nothing worse than watching the other team run 10 minutes of clock to score a touchdown. :(

If you’re a LB or bigger safety with athletic traits that can defend the pass well and be even marginal at tackling you’ll get paid and be very valuable in this league.

Chamarri Conner is this guy at 6 ft, 200 lbs with a 6.91 3 cone and can bench 20 reps. You see why they wanted him.

You need those types of corner/safeties in this league to play in the slot or you’ll get torched like Roquan Smith.

https://youtu.be/7quyQ-N_cYM?si=4QN71ueLLpv91ilj

Give that a look, explains a lot about what happened, it's also funny that it's a year old and a bunch of these guys got fired.

That would be interesting. Mahomes is actually really good vs zone. It may help elite WRs more than elite QBs.

Just more info backing this up. Apparently defenses played 60% two-high safety looks this past weekend. Across the board teams are just playing safe on defense and daring offenses to run the ball more than ever.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">&quot;Defenses are making quarterbacks into a bunch of checkdown artists.&quot;<br><br>—<a href="https://twitter.com/minakimes?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@minakimes</a> on quarterback performance across the league in Week 1 ✍️ <a href="https://t.co/rnvGrngHPs">pic.twitter.com/rnvGrngHPs</a></p>&mdash; NFL on ESPN (@ESPNNFL) <a href="https://twitter.com/ESPNNFL/status/1834345647685730651?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 12, 2024</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Vic Fangio might have ruined offense for the foreseeable future.

He knew the only way to have a chance against us was to play deep cover 2 and force us to run the damn ball and take 10+ play drives. Everybody copied it in 2021 when Mahomes went through his first major slump.

Another thing is LB’s have become so much better in coverage bc it became a full on passing league about 10 years ago. Nick Bolton’s were left behind and Willie Gay’s/Leo Chenal’s/Deue Tranquill’s took over to where if they weren’t great at coverage at least they had the athleticism to be in their zone on time.

OL and QB has gone downhill big time. Lot of people think it’s bc of the spread offense. Quick passes and YAC with fewer long plays to read defenses. Same with OL. Quick passes means they don’t have to pass block as often.

NFLPA pushing to cut down practice time was a big reason as well.

Another weekend of shit offense (minus the Saints). In a league with rules favoring the offense, the defense is owning the majority of offenses.

This is an excellent high level summation.

You can't even run defenses out of that look either. They're just stubbornly saying "no, we will not let you have the big play" even at the cost of 100+ yard games from the running back.

They coach the players to strip the ball. Some teams do it better than others (Cincy). Force the offense to go slowly down the field, strip the ball when you get a chance.

I'm not confident it's going to change soon. From an efficiency standpoint it makes sense to force teams to work for their points. The only worry is wearing out your defense.