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PostPosted: Wed Sep 20, 2017 10:17 am 
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Good article yesterday.

Seriously, they've swung way too far in favor of offense in the NFL.



How Football Stopped Being Fun

Completion percentage is at an all-time high, but watchability is trending in the other direction. Why has the 2017 NFL season been such a slog?

BY KEVIN CLARK SEP 19, 2017, 10:51AM EDT
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We are living in the golden age of failed completions, a statistic as grim as it sounds. Tracked by Football Outsiders, failed completions occur when a team doesn’t get 45 percent of the yards it needs on first down, 60 percent on second down, and 100 percent on third or fourth down. The stat goes back to 1989, and last season Joe Flacco set the record with 144. Nothing encapsulates this era of football as well as the failed completion: allegedly a success, but ultimately a bleak disappointment.

In the past five years of the NFL, offenses have reached unprecedented levels of scoring, quarterbacks have become more accurate than ever, turnovers have plummeted—and yet, it’s not fun. If you simply read the statistical markers, it would seem like every offense was as exciting as the pub scene from Inglourious Basterds. Sacks and interceptions hit all-time lows last year, but that just means that quarterbacks are getting rid of the ball quicker and opting for shorter, safer targets. We have reached one of the most frustrating eras in football history. Everything is fine and it doesn’t look good.

Through two weeks, scoring is down 2.4 points per game from last year, but this isn’t a statistical argument. This is about aesthetics. If a critical mass of fans agrees the game is ugly, then it’s ugly. If a listless 13-9 Bengals-Texans game doesn’t especially disappoint fans because everything looks like a 13-9 Bengals-Texans game, then that’s an issue. The national conversation about the NFL right now is about the game’s decreasing watchability; it doesn’t matter if offenses are hyper-efficient.

“If you show me a team with a great completion percentage, I automatically think, ‘Your offense probably sucks.’”
—Chris Simms
“If you show me a team with a great completion percentage, I automatically think, ‘Your offense probably sucks,’” said Chris Simms, a former NFL quarterback and now an analyst at NBC Sports and Bleacher Report. He said “the NFL has a sickness” in which nearly everyone on the field and on the sideline has become conservative to a fault. There’s been a dramatic rise in completion percentage since 2000—Sam Bradford broke the NFL’s record last season—but yards per catch has gone down over that same span.

How’d we get here?

For starters, rule crackdowns on defense prevented tight defensive coverage and allowed even the most mediocre quarterbacks to complete easy passes—or draw a pass-interference penalty.

“We’ve rewarded too much bad quarterback play,” Simms said.

Marry that with ever-worsening offensive lines that prevent offenses from considering long-developing routes and letting their quarterback hang in to finish a play.

“Offenses are adjusting to quicker-hitting throws and not having the quarterback do seven- or eight-step drops,” said Minnesota Vikings general manager Rick Spielman. “Offensive linemen are tougher to find coming out of college, and taking longer to develop, so offenses are going to more rhythm and quicker passes.”

This is not an isolated opinion about offensive linemen, either. “I’m amazed at how poor the technique is for the young players,” said former Giants offensive lineman Shaun O’Hara, now an analyst at the NFL Network. And so while rule changes have incentivized quarterbacks to get rid of the ball quickly, the offensive line predicament has made it more of a necessity.

Then you have the offensive coordinators, who, Simms said, are doing whatever they can to limit mistakes in order to earn the “quarterback whisperer” label on the back of some decent statistics.

“Everyone looks at the box score and says ‘The offense wasn’t that bad!’ But well, they sucked,” Simms said. “Quarterbacks and coaches are now very wary of mistakes. We crucify all the quarterbacks when they make a mistake and then, when it’s third-and-12, they say ‘I’m going to live to play another day’ and throw it short.”

Offenses like the New England Patriots, Green Bay Packers, or even the New Orleans Saints can still be beautiful to watch, but a growing number of offenses are not.

Ratings dipped again on Sunday. Sunday Night Football’s Packers-Falcons game was down 8 percent from last season and 23 percent from 2015. The curious thing about these dips is that the number of people viewing games is not down, but the amount of time they’re watching for is. Unless “only watching part of a game” is a new form of political boycott, that reasoning for the ratings drop doesn’t hold much water. (Yes, we have a year’s worth of data noting that people say they are tuning out because of boycotts. But we have roughly 200,000 years of data suggesting that what people say and what they do are often two entirely different things.)

The product is diluted, and fans are tuning in and then tuning out. If that doesn’t scare the league, then nothing will.

“When I came into the league,” said Trent Green, former NFL quarterback and current analyst for the NFL on CBS, “you had a good season if you threw for 3,500 yards and completed 55 or 60 percent of your passes. You’d chuck the ball down the field as far as you could, and if you couldn’t you’d check down. Now guys are hitting 67 percent and if you don’t have a 4,000-yard season or sometimes 5,000, you didn’t have a good season.”

Green was drafted in 1993 and played until 2008. In that time, he saw the game change dramatically.

By the time they reach the pros, modern quarterbacks have thrown more times than any group of quarterbacks in history. Among high schoolers, seven-on-seven flag football leagues have exploded this century. This type of football involves lots of quick passes and one-on-one coverage. It used to be that just kids in warm-weather states like Florida, Texas, and Southern California could play this game all year long, but now teenagers from all across the country travel to play in seven-on-seven tournaments. “There is going to be better completion percentage because there’s more reps,” said Green, whose son TJ plays at Northwestern.

Green also said that aiming for statistics has a long history in football. In the 1980s and 1990s, he said, quarterback rating became the en vogue way of measuring passing. Sacks were better than incompletions “and there were guys we knew wouldn’t throw the ball away. The offensive line coaches would be going nuts.”

“Until you get to a certain point of your career—stability within your team, stability with your contract—quarterbacks are thinking about rating, completion percentage, or points scored.”
—Trent Green
Today, completion percentage and a low interception number have become the envy of young quarterbacks. “Until you get to a certain point of your career—stability within your team, stability with your contract—quarterbacks are thinking about rating, completion percentage, or points scored,” Green said. Less-established quarterbacks are more likely to go for “the bubble screen or underneath stuff.”

“The great quarterbacks—[Aaron] Rodgers, [Tom] Brady, Big Ben [Roethlisberger]—they are looking for the daggers, the 25-yard throws,” Simms said. He thinks most coaches want to default to less adventurous plays—and that any excitement you do see is when the individual talent of some of the quarterbacks wins out. “Look at Aaron Rodgers, throwing a 40-yard missile after a backflip, into a keyhole.”

“One of the biggest problems is the conservative play-callers,” Simms said. “When I played, we’d think of something and they’d say, ‘I’ve never been taught that, you’d have to show that play on film.’ And of course there’s no way to do that. So if that’s the case, we’ll never have a new play ever. There’s the problem.”

Modern offenses run the risk of becoming so predictable that they give up their advantage over the defense. Scoring has skyrocketed in the modern era. Matchup-nightmare tight ends like Rob Gronkowski and the rise of flexible players, along with the favorable rule changes, routinely rocked opposing defenses. But more and more short passes? Yeah, defenses can handle those.

According to Spielman, the Vikings general manager, the way to build a defense in the modern era is changing. Since quarterbacks are getting rid of the ball quicker, defenses have to be faster.

“You need first-step quickness—an Aaron Donald—extremely quick off the snap,” Spielman said. The Vikings have a defensive line filled with, as he put it, “almost outside linebacker types” who are tall enough to bat passes down and light enough to move well. “We liked guys who are 6-6, 6-5, 6-4 and all in the 250s [pounds].”

If all 32 quarterbacks will get rid of the ball quicker, playing defense will likely become more about pushing the pocket and trying to bat down the ball rather than getting to the quarterback. Edge rushers could start to lose value, while inside rushers see their importance rise.

Meanwhile, the lack of competent offensive line play will be a boon for defenses. That, in turn, will muck up the game even more.

Offensive linemen, Spielman said, are almost exclusively pass protectors in college now and are rarely in three-point stances, which are a requirement in the NFL. Of course, it’s not easy for teams to coach up these young athletes, as the collective bargaining agreement caps the number of padded practices at 14 during the regular season. “You have to come up with creative ways within the collective bargaining agreement to give them the attention they need,” he said. “Keep them out there an extra 15, 20 minutes, or give them an extra period.”

Spielman wishes that teams could extend the “rookie development program”—which starts in May and can last most of the offseason thereafter—throughout the season.

“It takes time to develop those guys. The restrictions in the CBA put you behind the eight ball,” he said.

“Whether it’s the world league, XFL, that’s advantageous to the quarterback. Not just mental reps. Physical reps.”
—Matt Nagy, Kansas City Chiefs offensive coordinator
The lack of reps directly results in sloppy play, many coaches say. Matt Nagy, the Kansas City Chiefs’ offensive coordinator, said that he wishes all players could get more reps, particularly quarterbacks. That would likely have to come via another league, but there is no major American secondary league at the moment—no XFL, USFL, strong Arena League, or NFL Europe.

“I was able to play the game in the Arena League, I wouldn’t have gotten those reps on an NFL roster,” Nagy said. “Whether it’s the world league, XFL, that’s advantageous to the quarterback. Not just mental reps. Physical reps.”

Do sports have to be beautiful? That depends on who you ask. In soccer there’s a phrase called “anti-football” that gets thrown around quite a bit as an insult for teams that play too defensive or play too many long balls up the field. The game’s most popular figures reject the notion that ugly play is good play. In American sports, we haven’t put the same emphasis on aesthetics. Doug Baldwin called his Seahawks’ 12-9 win over the 49ers on Sunday “ugly as hell” and he meant it as a good thing.

Green thinks that the growing number of offenses that can only take up small chunks of yardage at a time will result in some teams going back to simple, ground-and-pound offenses. That certainly wouldn’t make the game any easier to watch.

Yet, football is not going to end anytime soon, and those declaring the end of it have a long history of looking wrong. Esquire magazine asked if football still mattered in 1997. This isn’t even the NFL’s biggest problem—head injuries are—but it’s a problem nonetheless. In 2013, youth aged 12 to 24 named Lionel Messi as the fourth-most popular athlete in America. Today, anyone can access any play from any sport anywhere in the world on a phone, and football does not, at the moment, look as fun as Messi scoring a goal.

The NFL isn’t dying: 46 million people watched last year’s NFC title game and well over 100 million watch the Super Bowl. But whether or not they’re beautiful, sports are supposed to be fun. Two weeks into the football season, not many people are having a good time.


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PostPosted: Wed Sep 20, 2017 11:19 am 
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:lol: BRick and FF will love this.

Quote:
Seriously, they've swung way too far in favor of offense in the NFL.
Agree. Rules and the fact that nobody can hit in practice and teams only have about 11 practice in 'training camp' leads to lots of injuries and poor play.

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PostPosted: Wed Sep 20, 2017 11:30 am 
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I think this is a good complementary piece also about how the product becomes even more unwatchable as the tanking philosophy carries over to the NFL as well: https://www.theringer.com/2017/6/16/160 ... 9f3937811b

I think the emphasis on the pass has played a role in why tanking for draft position is starting to seem more commonplace in the NFL. It amplifies the importance of having a good quarterback to such an extent that teams now appear willing to throw away season just for the chance at getting the next great one.


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PostPosted: Wed Sep 20, 2017 11:31 am 
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Frank Coztansa wrote:
:lol: BRick and FF will love this.
There were a few valid criticisms here but nothing really ground breaking or that horrible.

It basically was, quarterbacks don't throw it long enough, the Texans-Bengals game was bad, and 12-24 year olds like Lionel Messi.

Football has always been about trends. It used to be that offenses dominated and now the defenses seem to be catching up.

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PostPosted: Wed Sep 20, 2017 11:34 am 
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Don't forget arbitrary rules which are enforced randomly based on the whim of old men who already have primary jobs!

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PostPosted: Wed Sep 20, 2017 11:42 am 
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Boilermaker Rick wrote:
Frank Coztansa wrote:
:lol: BRick and FF will love this.
There were a few valid criticisms here but nothing really ground breaking or that horrible.

-The curious thing about these dips is that the number of people viewing games is not down, but the amount of time they’re watching for is.
-There’s been a dramatic rise in completion percentage since 2000—Sam Bradford broke the NFL’s record last season—but yards per catch has gone down over that same span.

I would say those are pretty horrible.



And yes, leash. Don't forget about the catch-no catch rule(s) too!

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PostPosted: Wed Sep 20, 2017 11:48 am 
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Two words. Colin Kaepernick .

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PostPosted: Wed Sep 20, 2017 11:51 am 
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Frank Coztansa wrote:
Boilermaker Rick wrote:
Frank Coztansa wrote:
:lol: BRick and FF will love this.
There were a few valid criticisms here but nothing really ground breaking or that horrible.

-The curious thing about these dips is that the number of people viewing games is not down, but the amount of time they’re watching for is.
-There’s been a dramatic rise in completion percentage since 2000—Sam Bradford broke the NFL’s record last season—but yards per catch has gone down over that same span.

I would say those are pretty horrible.



And yes, leash. Don't forget about the catch-no catch rule(s) too!
The TV numbers are concerning but the NFL was doing insane numbers before. It was eventually going to go down.

I don't think high completion percentages are necessarily a bad thing. If it is less effective then the offenses need to adjust.

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PostPosted: Wed Sep 20, 2017 11:51 am 
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I think the fantasy frenzy has tapered a bit. Those that played because everyone was may have tuned out. They may be even less likely to watch than before fantasy because now they've been conditioned to only care when they have some ancillary interest in the game.


Also, the Thursday night games are a disaster. Forget player safety and quality of game, it makes the weekend games even less special.


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PostPosted: Wed Sep 20, 2017 11:51 am 
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NFL trying to woo back the Kaepernick should have a job boycotters with Jay-Z at the Super Bowl.


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PostPosted: Wed Sep 20, 2017 11:53 am 
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rogers park bryan wrote:
I think the fantasy frenzy has tapered a bit. Those that played because everyone was may have tuned out. They may be even less likely to watch than before fantasy because now they've been conditioned to only care when they have some ancillary interest in the game.


Also, the Thursday night games are a disaster. Forget player safety and quality of game, it makes the weekend games even less special.

It also doesn't help the New York, Chicago, and now LA all have pretty bad teams. Television bosses hate that Kansas City and Oakland are good.

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PostPosted: Wed Sep 20, 2017 11:55 am 
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Boilermaker Rick wrote:
rogers park bryan wrote:
I think the fantasy frenzy has tapered a bit. Those that played because everyone was may have tuned out. They may be even less likely to watch than before fantasy because now they've been conditioned to only care when they have some ancillary interest in the game.


Also, the Thursday night games are a disaster. Forget player safety and quality of game, it makes the weekend games even less special.

It also doesn't help the New York, Chicago, and now LA all have pretty bad teams. Television bosses hate that Kansas City and Oakland are good.

Although I agree, there are always problems with the game. I remember Mac going on about the poor QB play in the NFL in the early 00s. So now we have super efficient QBs and that's a problem.


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PostPosted: Wed Sep 20, 2017 11:57 am 
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:lol: There may be some truth to that. The Raiders could win 10 games, but the other 4 probably will combine to win about 15.


Also agree on the Thursday games. They are pitiful. Have one to start the year, and the three on Thanksgiving. A Friday night game Thanksgiving weekend might be good too.

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PostPosted: Wed Sep 20, 2017 1:05 pm 
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rogers park bryan wrote:
I think the fantasy frenzy has tapered a bit. Those that played because everyone was may have tuned out. They may be even less likely to watch than before fantasy because now they've been conditioned to only care when they have some ancillary interest in the game.


Also, the Thursday night games are a disaster. Forget player safety and quality of game, it makes the weekend games even less special.


Could be.

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PostPosted: Wed Sep 20, 2017 1:08 pm 
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badrogue17 wrote:
Two words. Colin Kaepernick .


Liberal agenda.

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PostPosted: Wed Sep 20, 2017 1:14 pm 
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The Thursday games suck because for years they consistently show two terrible teams almost every single week. All the other factors mentioned are valid, but that is by far the most overlooked.

I find this whole "NFL is unwatchable narrative" beyond tired by now. If you find the NFL to be unwatchable then stop watching it. Writing and sharing dozens of think pieces on why you don't like it anymore just makes you come off like an insufferable asshole. I don't like watching golf, so I do something really novel and I don't watch golf. It's amazing how simple that can be.

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PostPosted: Wed Sep 20, 2017 1:37 pm 
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I watch a lot of pro football, but it is my third sport. So my emotional investment is much lower than many of you guys. Here are my personal feelings about the state of the game:

1) For years, the games seemed to be getting longer with way too many commercials. The reviews are annoying, and the stoppages after every kickoff and the like. I think they are cutting down on commercials this year.
2) I feel like every pass play has a penalty. Now that's an exaggeration, but I feel like penalties are too numerous.
3) Key components of every team get injured during the course of the game. Teams come into the game short handed, and by half it seems like several others are gone. The Bears can barely field an offensive line, and how many receivers are they down? We are two weeks into the season. I watched some of the Packers game and Jordy Nelson is out. It's not fun watching 2nd and 3rd tier players.
4) Sometimes it seems like an NBA basketball game where only the last few minutes matter, and those last few game minutes take forever. That's especially frustrating for Sunday and Monday games that run late where you just figure it will end in the last minute and not worth watching past half time.

I still watch quite bit and plan to do so.

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PostPosted: Wed Sep 20, 2017 1:55 pm 
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FavreFan wrote:
I find this whole "NFL is unwatchable narrative" beyond tired by now. If you find the NFL to be unwatchable then stop watching it. Writing and sharing dozens of think pieces on why you don't like it anymore just makes you come off like an insufferable asshole. I don't like watching golf, so I do something really novel and I don't watch golf. It's amazing how simple that can be.

The entire roster of regulars in the Bernstein & Goff section disagree with you.

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PostPosted: Wed Sep 20, 2017 2:46 pm 
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Good article today, even if you want to ignore the Kaepernick stuff(which I don't fully agree with)


NFL quality of play isn't worse (but Colin Kaepernick might make it better)


Bill Barnwell
ESPN Staff Writer

Does the NFL have a quality-of-play problem? Over the first two weeks of the season, it's fair to say that the league hasn't exactly delivered much in the way of exciting action. After a thrilling season opener between the Chiefs and Patriots, national contests such as Seahawks-Packers, Giants-Cowboys and Texans-Bengals have been marred by dismal offensive line play. We've had eight games decided by more than 20 points through two weeks, double last year's total, and that's without getting to the Lions and Giants on Monday Night Football.

I have to admit that I'm skeptical of most quality-of-play arguments surrounding the game. Most are anecdotal and products of a small sample, pointing to a bad play, a terrible quarterback or an ugly week of games. Often, they turn into a case of whack-a-mole. Once one surefire sign of subpar play pops up and is proved to be false, another entirely different argument leaps ahead. There's no definition of what actually represents bad football, and as such, both fans and professional analysts often start with the premise that the game has taken a turn for the worse and work backward to try to prove their point.

I'm going to suggest that those arguments don't have a strong case through two weeks in 2017. Furthermore, if you really believe that there's a quality-of-play issue built around offensive problems, there's a quarterback sitting in the free-agent market who would be an upgrade for a handful of teams and a high-quality backup in case of injury for just about every other team. You can't simultaneously make an argument saying that the league is suffering from a dearth of quarterbacks and also suggest that Colin Kaepernick doesn't deserve a meaningful role in the NFL. But more on him in a minute.


Is the football bad now?

It's true that games haven't been particularly close so far. Through the first 30 games of the 2017 season, the average contest has been decided by 12.9 points, and two-touchdown games usually aren't very interesting. Through the first two weeks of the 2016 season, the average margin of victory was just 8.9 points.

Of those two, though, the 8.9-point figure is more of an outlier than this year's mark. Since the league moved to 32 teams and its current schedule format in 2002, the average margin of victory over the first two weeks of each season has been 11.3 points per game, closer to this year's margin than last year's. In 2011, for example, the average margin of victory was an identical 12.9 points per contest. In 2003, the number was all the way up to 14.8.

Games are closer during the modern era of football than they were during whatever era you might want to classify as the glory days of football. Games during the first two weeks of seasons in the 1970s were decided by an average of 12.0 points per contest. That dropped to 11.5 during the 1980s, but it was back up to 11.9 during the '90s and hung around at 11.5 during the first decade of the 21st century. Since 2010, games in Weeks 1 and 2 have been decided by an average of 10.9 points per contest. Even with 2017's slate of relative blowouts, we're living in an era of more competitive games.

The problems so far in 2017 have been concentrated on offense, and while it might be reasonable to interpret that as defenses doing a better job of employing personnel, rotating pass-rushers and employing smarter coverage concepts, the argument instead seems to be that offenses -- and quarterbacks, in particular -- are playing worse than ever.

Scoring through two weeks is down. Through those 30 games, teams have produced an average of just 20.3 points, down nearly 11 percent from last year's two-week average of 22.5 points. It's reasonable to assume that poor quarterback and offensive line play is keeping teams from scoring points in bunches the way they have in years past.

Right? Well, again, not exactly. Teams have been scoring at record rates in recent years, which seems at odds with the idea that there are trash quarterbacks and offensive lines around the league. The average team produced 22.3 points per game through the first two weeks of the season between 2010 and 2017, the highest rate for any decade since the AFL-NFL merger of 1970 by more than a full point. Teams in the 1980s averaged 21.1 points per contest, while teams from the '70s were all the way down at 19.1.

This isn't a two-week fluke, either. The seven most recent seasons are also the seven highest-scoring seasons since the 1970 merger, with teams hitting a peak at 23.4 points per game in 2013. Teams averaged 22.8 points in 2016. If the offensive freeze struck and NFL teams averaged 20.3 points per game for the remainder of the season, it would rank 35th among the 48 post-merger NFL seasons, exclusively ahead of seasons from the '70s and '90s, which are being held up as a contrast to the disastrous, sloppy offensive play of today's NFL.

While there are certainly sloppy plays, the evidence that the NFL is a messier league than ever before just isn't supported by reality. As I wrote last year, turnover rates have dropped dramatically from previous eras to historic lows, even after accounting for the move to shorter passes. Some have blamed the proliferation of games on short weeks thanks to the expansion of the Thursday night schedule, but when I looked into the issue in 2013, turnovers and drops didn't occur more frequently on Thursday than they did in games played on Sunday or Monday. That hasn't changed, either; since the beginning of the 2013 season, 2.1 percent of the snaps on Thursday games have resulted in turnovers, better than the Sunday rate of 2.3 percent. Meanwhile, 3.8 percent of Thursday passes are dropped, which is below the 4.0 percent drop rate with full rest on Sundays.

It wouldn't be fair to suggest that these are foolproof measures of performance. There are things for which the numbers can't account. If these statistics did back up the idea that the quality of play in the NFL has sunk -- if the turnover rate was up on Thursday night or games were historically high blowouts -- they would be the cornerstones of those arguments. It's telling that the complaints about the lack of scoring and close games didn't come up when we were having these quality-of-play discussions last year. We can never refute the idea that quality of play is down, and I think there are certainly issues with offensive lines around the league, but there's certainly not a foolproof case that NFL offenses are playing worse than they did in days gone by.


The quarterback problem
The quote you'll hear if you watch the NFL closely for more than a week or two is that there simply aren't 32 starting quarterbacks to go around to play for 32 teams at any one time. It has always been a frustratingly naive quote, and there are a few reasons why it's an inaccurate cliché. For one, by definition, you can't have 32 above-average starting quarterbacks in a league with 32 starting quarterbacks. More important, the league doesn't operate in a way to get the best passers opportunities:

NFL teams aren't very good at scouting and sifting through quarterbacks. The Cowboys-Broncos game we saw on Sunday is a great reminder of how organizations that spend millions of dollars on both identifying and acquiring quarterback talent are led more by luck and circumstance than anything else. The Cowboys, who had former undrafted free agent Tony Romo as their starter for a decade, tried to trade up and grab Paxton Lynch in the first round of the 2016 draft. They were beaten to the punch by the Broncos for Lynch, with the Raiders subsequently pipping Jerry Jones & Co. to fallback plan Connor Cook. The Cowboys had to settle for Dak Prescott, who looks like every bit of a franchise quarterback, even if he struggled against the league's best pass defense in Week 2.

Meanwhile, the Broncos haven't gotten much out of Lynch. Their third-stringer is Brock Osweiler, whom Denver attempted to re-sign after the 2015 season with a reported three-year, $45 million offer, only for Osweiler to turn them down and sign with the Texans for an ill-fated campaign. The Broncos then traded up to grab Lynch, who has been subpar and lost consecutive training camp battles to former seventh-round pick Trevor Siemian, who has been on the roster all along and certainly appears to be the best quarterback of the three.

Both Prescott and Siemian would have lingered on the bench if it weren't for circumstances unexpectedly breaking their way. Prescott might be a backup stuck behind a franchise quarterback in a different city if the Cowboys had been able to nab Cook, and he only got his chance because Romo (and Kellen Moore) suffered an injury during the preseason. Had the Broncos re-signed Osweiler, he might have kept up his previous level of competence and Denver might have cut Siemian in favor of a veteran backup.

It would be foolish to assume that there aren't at least one or two more useful starters like Prescott and Siemian lurking on the bottom of rosters elsewhere around the league, waiting for a chance. There probably aren't enough starters to get to 32 useful players, but the 32 players who would represent the 32 best options in football aren't the 32 guys currently getting starting reps.

NFL teams often look for one prototypical quarterback archetype at the expense of other styles of play. What is true is that there aren't 32 pocket passers who are 6-foot-4 with incredible arm strength, which is the model teams try to target to an almost comical degree. They place a remarkable emphasis on height and a quarterback's ability to "make all the throws," which is how Brandon Weeden was drafted ahead of Russell Wilson in 2012, and why the 6-foot-6 Mike Glennon racked up $18.5 million in guarantees from the Bears this offseason despite having exhibited modest aptitude for the game in Tampa Bay.

Players who look like the quarterbacks that general managers dream about late at night also get second and third chances to prove themselves as viable passers. Sometimes, it works out: Sam Bradford was mostly a mess with the Rams and wasn't much better during his year in Philadelphia, but he held up behind a dismal offensive line with the Vikings last season and looked great in the season opener before missing Week 2 with a knee injury. Meanwhile, Blake Bortles has never been good and is entering his fourth season as a starter, while mediocrities like Glennon and Blaine Gabbert have racked up the opportunities to prove that they're not viable quarterbacks.

This isn't anything new: You might remember Doug Flutie spending most of his career in the CFL before being forced to split reps in Buffalo with another prototypical quarterback in Rob Johnson. What also isn't new is the idea that there are more starting jobs than useful starting quarterbacks. Look around the league and you'll see guys like Bortles, Glennon, Jacoby Brissett and Josh McCown starting games. Veterans Carson Palmer and Eli Manning appear to be fading, while rookie starters DeShone Kizer and Deshaun Watson are works in progress.

There isn't the sort of leaguewide depth you would hope for, but again, this isn't anything new. Consider the guys who started 20 years ago in Week 2 of the 1997 season. Sure, there were unquestioned franchise quarterbacks such as Brett Favre and Drew Bledsoe to go along with seemingly ageless future Hall of Famers Dan Marino and John Elway, just as there's unquestioned top-end talent among the best quarterbacks in football today.

What you forget is that there were all kinds of anonymously mediocre-or-worse quarterbacks starting for teams. There were rarely effective veterans such as Erik Kramer, Dave Brown and Scott Mitchell taking serious reps. Draft busts Heath Shuler and Jim Druckenmiller started games, with the latter making his first and only professional start after being taken in the first round of that year's draft. Third-stringer Steve Matthews also made his lone pro start as a replacement for an injured Mark Brunell in Jacksonville, while professional tall men such as Kent Graham and Todd Collins dutifully threw passes off line for bad teams.

The only reason anybody would be nostalgic for the quarterback play of 20 years ago, relative to now, would be that they remember the stars of 1997 as compared to the full breadth of NFL quarterback play today. (And even that's generous: Chris Chandler and Trent Dilfer made it to the Pro Bowl in 1997, suggesting that they were two of the top eight quarterbacks in the league.) Indeed, as Jason Lisk of The Big Lead noted last year in a must-read story, people have been complaining about the decline in both the quality of NFL play and the abilities of quarterbacks for 25 years now.


One possible solution ...
If you don't agree with all of that and believe that there's still a historically significant dearth of quarterbacks and problem with quality of play in 2017, you're entitled to your opinion. If that's true, though, it's close to impossible to make an argument against Colin Kaepernick starting for a handful of NFL teams right now, let alone being on an NFL roster. For whatever flaws Kaepernick has as a quarterback, a look at history suggests that there hasn't been a single quarterback in the post-merger modern NFL to play like Kaepernick did in 2016 without getting another shot at a job afterward.

Let's leave aside Kaepernick's abilities as a runner -- which are still significant, given that he led all quarterbacks in rushing DYAR and was fourth in rushing DVOA last season -- and ignore his two-plus excellent seasons as a quarterback under Jim Harbaugh, both of which would be treated as reasons to shell out millions on any other quarterback's résumé. Instead, let's simply look at what Kaepernick did last season under Chip Kelly on a frustratingly bad 49ers team while throwing to Jeremy Kerley, Quinton Patton and Garrett Celek as his most targeted receivers. (They've combined for four catches through two weeks in 2017.)

The best simple metric for quarterbacks using raw stats is adjusted net yards per attempt (ANY/A), which is essentially a supercharged passer rating with better coefficients and sacks incorporated. Pro-Football-Reference.com provides index statistics that allow you to compare a quarterback's numbers to players from his era and scales them to a 100-point system through standard deviations above and below the mean. Kaepernick's 2016 ANY/A+, the index statistic for ANY/A, was a 97. He was one-fifth of one standard deviation below the mean as compared to every other 2016 quarterback, finishing 23rd among 31 qualifying quarterbacks in the category.

It's rare for a young quarterback who gets regular reps in the NFL in any given season to finish his career without getting at least another shot or two. How rare? I went looking for quarterbacks who had not yet hit their 30s and threw 200 passes or more in a season without ever playing again. Kaepernick will turn 30 in November, so 2016 was his age-29 season.

There are only 14 other quarterbacks besides Kaepernick to do that in NFL history, not including other passers from 2016 who were hired elsewhere (such as Osweiler and Matt Barkley) or Teddy Bridgewater, whose future is uncertain after a catastrophic knee injury. Kaepernick's 97 ANY/A+ was third best among the group, but even if he'd played worse in 2016, it shouldn't have mattered. Every one of them had an excuse for ending their career without getting another shot at an NFL job that wouldn't apply for Kaepernick.

Six of the quarterbacks suffered career-ending or career-shortening injuries, including Neil Lomax (arthritic hip), Steve Ramsey (double ankle surgery), Tim Couch (rotator cuff), Heath Shuler (repeated foot injuries) and Gary Marangi (shoulder). Pat Haden suffered a knee injury and retired while rehabbing the injury to take a broadcasting job. Johnny Manziel and JaMarcus Russell left the league amid substance-abuse issues. Kaepernick would not fit into either of these categories.

The other six quarterbacks -- each with a fraction of Kaepernick's résumé and a less impressive final season as a regular quarterback -- were given one or more opportunities to sign with an NFL team but never made it back onto the field for a regular-season pass. Joey Harrington, Mike McMahon, Cade McNown, John Skelton, Craig Whelihan and Randy Wright each went to training camp with one or more teams without making it onto the field. This was also true of some of the injured players. Consider that Marangi went 0-7 as a starter and set a still-standing league record for lowest career completion percentage. The Packers still tried to trade for him, only to be rebuffed when Marangi failed a physical. The Browns signed Marangi anyway.


Colin Kaepernick has worked out for only one team -- Seattle -- since opting out of his contract after the 2016 season. AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez, File
The other arguments about Kaepernick's on-field abilities are flimsy. He isn't a great pocket passer, but he has posted a totally reasonable in-pocket passer rating of 87.6 over the past three seasons, better than plenty of other backup types who racked up millions of dollars in contracts this offseason. Teams might want a quarterback who knows their system having gone through camp, but in a league in which Jacoby Brissett can go from Patriots third-stringer to Colts starter in eight days, it's hard to believe Kaepernick can't even make his way onto a roster whatsoever.

The 49ers were 4-20 in Kaepernick's final 24 starts, which is a totally arbitrary end point but admittedly not good. They also allowed an average of 27.5 points per game in those starts. It's fair to wonder why a bad record would keep Kaepernick out of the league, while Josh McCown, who was 2-22 in his most recent 24 starts before this season, signed a one-year, $6 million deal with the Jets. The best argument is that McCown would somehow be a useful mentor to Bryce Petty and Christian Hackenberg, which ignores the reality that McCown's list of pupils hasn't exactly been impressive.

There's no on-field precedent for a quarterback as active as Kaepernick to linger in free agency without a job after serving as a regular quarterback the previous season, let alone one as effective. The reasons Kaepernick is unemployed right now have to be off-field, then, and they're also filled with holes. The word "distraction" is tossed around as some vague catchall, but Kelly told Adam Schefter that Kaepernick and his decision to protest was "zero distraction" to the team last year.

If the idea is that Kaepernick will continue to draw attention for protesting the national anthem, that also doesn't hold up. It was reported in March that Kaepernick would stand for the anthem in the future. Furthermore, players around the league have continued to kneel or sit during the anthem without repercussions or any notable public outcry in 2017, including Eric Reid, Marshawn Lynch and Michael Bennett, the latter of whom was the subject of a pregame rally before Sunday's 49ers-Seahawks game. The rally also showed support for Kaepernick, once a Seattle arch-nemesis.

The other anecdotal arguments haven't held up. Kaepernick has continued to make steady donations to charity to hit the $1 million donation target he set last year. There were questions about whether Kaepernick wanted to play, but firsthand reports on Sunday revealed that Kaepernick wants to play football and is in shape to suit up.

Kaepernick himself denied suggestions that his salary demands were preventing him from finding a new team, although it's hard to believe that a league which offers Jay Cutler $10 million a year to come out of retirement after being benched and cut by the Bears couldn't justify paying Kaepernick millions. Concerns about any financial hit after a Kaepernick signing don't make sense given that the vast majority of each team's income comes from fixed television rights, while Kaepernick still ranked 39th in jersey sales in August despite being a free agent.


It's true that you can find current players like LeSean McCoy and Joe Thomas who disagree about Kaepernick and suggest that he would be a distraction and isn't good enough to overcome whatever attention he might bring to a team. (McCoy also suggested that Michael Vick was 10 times the quarterback Kaepernick once was, which doesn't exactly lend credence to his case.) It's also true that both Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers have come out in recent weeks and expressed their surprise that Kaepernick isn't employed, and they're pretty qualified to talk about modern quarterback play.

There just isn't a strong enough case for teams to pass on Kaepernick, given the desperate public outcries for useful quarterbacks and the nature of his protests. Even if you disagree with his stance, it's bizarre to contrast his peaceful political dissent as a crime that should keep him off rosters in a league in which even marginal players embroiled with confirmed or alleged incidences of domestic and/or sexual assault can sustain careers.

Watching so many NFL teams willfully make ignorant choices and then complain about the lack of quarterback options while leaving a clearly qualified candidate on the sidelines makes it seem like the quality of decision-making in the modern NFL is far worse than the quality of play.

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PostPosted: Wed Sep 20, 2017 2:50 pm 
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FF can't just let Kap go.

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PostPosted: Wed Sep 20, 2017 3:00 pm 
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The real reason the NFL sucks is because the players don't give a shit anymore.

Once they get paid and have their FU money, they could care less about playing hard. There is little self-accountability anymore and no hard-nose coaches to get in peoples faces. What Alexi Lalas said recently of the U.S. national soccer team is true also of professional football, "too many soft tattooed millionaires."


Last edited by Dignified Rube on Wed Sep 20, 2017 3:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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PostPosted: Wed Sep 20, 2017 3:01 pm 
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leashyourkids wrote:
Don't forget arbitrary rules which are enforced randomly based on the whim of old men who already have primary jobs!


keep that talk in the Nazi thread

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PostPosted: Wed Sep 20, 2017 3:05 pm 
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pittmike wrote:
FF can't just let Kap go.

When there is significant change and he feels like that NFL Shield represents what it's supposed to represent, he'll let it go.

So save the weary act, Sparkles.

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PostPosted: Wed Sep 20, 2017 3:56 pm 
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I apologi if this was mentioned above, but with the joke of preseason games and training camp, this has been the case for the first quarter of the seasons for maybe 15 years now.

Plus there are 4 teams too many (& the obligatory complaints about Thursday & Monday night snorefests)

As I've said elsewhere, there are far too many horrible coaches in the league now

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PostPosted: Thu Sep 21, 2017 10:29 pm 
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Oddly enough, tonight's may be the best Thursday game ever. It's like a Sat. night Pac-10 game. The difference will be a missed PAT by none other than Robbie Gould.

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PostPosted: Thu Sep 21, 2017 10:55 pm 
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DannyB wrote:
Oddly enough, tonight's may be the best Thursday game ever. It's like a Sat. night Pac-10 game. The difference will be a missed PAT by none other than Robbie Gould.

Yeah tonight's game was awesome. Pleasantly surprised.

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PostPosted: Fri Sep 22, 2017 12:18 am 
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FavreFan wrote:
The difference will be a missed PAT by none other than Robbie Gould.


Couldn't happen to a better guy.

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PostPosted: Fri Sep 22, 2017 7:24 am 
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FavreFan wrote:
DannyB wrote:
Oddly enough, tonight's may be the best Thursday game ever. It's like a Sat. night Pac-10 game. The difference will be a missed PAT by none other than Robbie Gould.

Yeah tonight's game was awesome. Pleasantly surprised.

As an owner of Todd Gurley and Carlos Hyde, I agree.


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PostPosted: Fri Sep 22, 2017 8:12 am 
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Excellent article on why the NFL sucks.

A lot of what's wrong with the NFL can be fixed with a change in the rules about the bump and run. Give the defender 1 hit in 10 yards and eliminate the ticky-tacky illegal use of hands on CB's and S. A little contact as long as it's not holding should be allowed.

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PostPosted: Fri Sep 22, 2017 8:16 am 
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jimmypasta wrote:
Excellent article on why the NFL sucks.

A lot of what's wrong with the NFL can be fixed with a change in the rules about the bump and run. Give the defender 1 hit in 10 yards and eliminate the ticky-tacky illegal use of hands on CB's and S. A little contact as long as it's not holding should be allowed.


I honestly don't think more defense would help the league. I think the on field product is mostly bad now because defenses are too good.

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