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Interesting stat on passing leaders


bigbuffs

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5 minutes ago, bigbuffs said:

The top 5 players in passing yards this season did not make the play-offs. Not sure what it means, but I thought it was very interesting. (I would argue that if Brees doesn't get injured, he would have been top 5 but he was injured.) 

Maybe it means the NFL is shifting back to ball control and solid D?

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It appears there are no trophies for 300 yard passing games? Go figure! 

 

It also seems that as teams have gotten lighter and faster to cover the passing game, they have become more vulnerable to a pounding running game. The Patriots have known this for a few years. They are not winning with Brady’s noodle arm, they are just playing smarter than the rest of the league. Too often one step ahead of the rest.  

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I think the league is becoming more balanced again. It was pretty pass happy for a while. 
 

This led many teams to run a lot more nickel, get their defenses smaller and faster, etc.

 

Offenses have countered that move by going back to a more balanced game plan. 
 

Ebbs and flows will always occur. 
 

I’m sure if the Ravens win the Super Bowl a bunch of teams will try to emulate that offense. 
 

And defenses will try to counter that, and so on and so on...

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3 minutes ago, peterpan said:

 

Teams who are winning at the end run more.  Teams losing heave it deep against soft coverage. 

 

 


yup, Montana sacrificed several thousand yards to grind out the clock at SF

Edited by row_33
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Balance and college style plays are now in fashion. There’s always been cycles in the NFL. 3-4, 4-3, run and shoot, west coast , 46, etc etc. Some of the best passing teams may not have good defenses as well. Probably many factors at work, but the nature of quarterbacking is starting to change as well. 

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And the worst offense in the playoff????  Buffalo.....  Next closest is GB (and then NE who was garbage since November), that had a much tougher schedule & did too struggle, yet somehow Rogers did have 4 300 yard passing games....  

 

How about 5 of the top 10 defensive teams didn't make the playoffs......  Or Three teams ranked in the 20's in defense did make the playoffs....  

 

Yes much has been written about Winston & we know others like Ryan & Stafford makes for easy fodder.....

 

Stop your crusade......

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No person with a high football IQ has considered raw passing yards to be an important statistic in the last 20 years.  Raw passing yards has no correlation with winning an losing.  A team may have 5000 yards and blow out every team each week as a result.  Or a team may be throwing for 150 yards against a soft prevent in a losing effort in the fourth quarter every week.   The lack of correlation of raw passing yards to wins is not a new thing. It is actually a well known thing.   On the other hand Passer Rating does have a meaningful  correlation to wins. 

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12 minutes ago, Billsfan1972 said:

And the worst offense in the playoff????  Buffalo.....  Next closest is GB (and then NE who was garbage since November), that had a much tougher schedule & did too struggle, yet somehow Rogers did have 4 300 yard passing games....  

 

How about 5 of the top 10 defensive teams didn't make the playoffs......  Or Three teams ranked in the 20's in defense did make the playoffs....  

 

Yes much has been written about Winston & we know others like Ryan & Stafford makes for easy fodder.....

 

Stop your crusade......

If ever there was a perfect example of the pot calling the kettle black......

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11 hours ago, row_33 said:


yup, Montana sacrificed several thousand yards to grind out the clock at SF

I didn't realize Joe was back playing in SF this year.

23 minutes ago, Billsfan1972 said:

And the worst offense in the playoff????  Buffalo.....  Next closest is GB (and then NE who was garbage since November), that had a much tougher schedule & did too struggle, yet somehow Rogers did have 4 300 yard passing games....  

 

How about 5 of the top 10 defensive teams didn't make the playoffs......  Or Three teams ranked in the 20's in defense did make the playoffs....  

 

Yes much has been written about Winston & we know others like Ryan & Stafford makes for easy fodder.....

 

Stop your crusade......

Wrong, the top 4 defenses made the playoffs and 7 of top 10.

Also, only two teams in the bottom half of the league in defense made the playoffs.

 

Edited by BuffaloSol
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12 hours ago, row_33 said:

Maybe wins is more important than padding passing stats?

 

 

Well a lot of times passing stats get padded when teams are down in the 2nd half and have to resort to throwing the ball almost every down.

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9 hours ago, Mr. WEO said:

Picking an outlier year to divine some meaning is foolish

Your favorite team the Patriots won the Super Bowl last year by holding the Rams to 3 points, your boy Brady only threw for 250 yards. It's not an outlier Millennial.

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13 minutes ago, BuffaloSol said:

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Wrong, the top 4 defenses made the playoffs and 7 of top 10.

Also, only two teams in the bottom half of the league in defense made the playoffs.

 

 

No they didn't. The NFL officially ranks total offense and defense by yards. You might disagree with it, but that is the way it is done. 5 of the top 10 teams in total defense missed the playoffs (Steelers, Bears, Cowboys, Jets and Chargers). Though you are correct that the top four defenses (Patriots, 49ers, Bills and Ravens) all made it.

 

Your calculation is by points.... and that is fair enough. But comparing defenses by points to passing offenses by yards is not exactly apples to apples is it? Points per game 8 of the top 10 offenses made the playoffs.

 

It is true that fewer of the playoff teams than has been typical in recent years have highly productive passing games - only New England, New Orleans and Kansas City of the playoff teams were top 10 in passing yards (two of those started backup QBs for multiple weeks) - but then Houston, Seattle, San Fran and Philadelphia are all lurking just outside that top 10 and inside the top half of the league.

 

I just think a little bit much is being made of it. It is a bit of an outlier at this point. Let's see next season if it becomes a sustained pattern.

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4 minutes ago, BuffaloSol said:

Your favorite team the Patriots won the Super Bowl last year by holding the Rams to 3 points, your boy Brady only threw for 250 yards. It's not an outlier Millennial.

Yep another pointing out one superbowl to defend their position.

 

20 minutes ago, BuffaloSol said:

I didn't realize Joe was back playing in SF this year.

Wrong, the top 4 defenses made the playoffs and 7 of top 10.

Also, only two teams in the bottom half of the league in defense made the playoffs.

 

I'm using yards allowed....  Tenn, Houston & Seattle....  Can play with #'s however you like, but again to pretend Offense doesn't matter.....  

 

As I showed earlier an interesting stat was that our Defense too played much worse then average Offenses (League average 20.7 in the league) vs. the Offense played on average the 15.7 strongest defenses).  Again skewed by Jets & NE X 2, Balt & Pitt.  

 

Again too this isn't fair as every team has different schedules.  However the Bills faced maybe 4 strong offensive teams all season (Philly, Dallas & Baltimore?), while also playing some of the very worst (Pitt, NYJ, Cincy, Wash & Den), including rookies & 3rd string QB's (Pitt, Wash & Den) & the 4th easiest Schedule (NE, Dall & Philly had easier).

 

 

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5 hours ago, GunnerBill said:

 

Agree. Especially in a year when Mahomes and Brees missed games. 

 

 

True--and they are back on fire.

 

This same thread subject was posted a few weeks ago as well.

31 minutes ago, Chaos said:

It is not an outlier year.   There is no meaningful correlation between raw yards and winning, let alone causation. 

 

 

So being a top 5 passing leader never correlates with appearing in the playoffs?

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14 hours ago, bigbuffs said:

The top 5 players in passing yards this season did not make the play-offs. Not sure what it means, but I thought it was very interesting. (I would argue that if Brees doesn't get injured, he would have been top 5 but he was injured.) 

 

There's more to the game than just passing for 400 yds ! We have seen this yr Mahomes pass for 300 + & 3 TD's & lose the game so if Josh can just do maybe 200+ a game & win then i'm all about it !

 

Sure its all good to watch & who doesn't like a 60 yd bomb for a TD during the game but the W at the end of the game is what counts ! 

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In the end, point differential is what really matters. It doesn't really matter how you get there. There were 14 teams with a + point differential and 11 made the playoffs. There were 18 teams with a - point differential and only 1 made the playoffs (Houston with a -7 - and they had a + differential until resting their starters in the last game).

 

There were only 3 out of 12 playoff teams that were not in the top 15 in both offensive points scored and defensive points allowed: Seattle, Buffalo, and Houston. Although, Seattle and Buffalo were both in the top 15 in point differential.

Edited by billsfan1959
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1 hour ago, Mr. WEO said:

 

 

True--and they are back on fire.

 

This same thread subject was posted a few weeks ago as well.

 

 

So being a top 5 passing leader never correlates with appearing in the playoffs?

"ever" does not imply correlation.   Do this exercise, look at the top 5 passing YARDAGE leaders (by team) for the last five year. Then look at the top five PASSER RATING teams for the last five years.    Remove all the teams that are top 5 in both.  You will almost certainly see that the list of top five passer rating teams are almost always in the playoffs even if they are not top five yardage teams.  You will see that the top five yardage teams without being top five passer rating teams will appear at the random percentage around 12/32 (12 out of 32 teams make the playoffs every year).

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4 minutes ago, Billsfan1972 said:

I have no problem admitting it.....  Three years & no 300 yard passing games....  Well done McD...........  Only coach that has accomplished it.  

 

How many coaches are 2/3 in playoff appearances during that time?

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2 minutes ago, eball said:

 

How many coaches are 2/3 in playoff appearances during that time?

Again last three years prior to McD 24-24, McD 25-23.....  Yep they made the playoffs at 9-7, while Marrone was 9-7 & missed it.....

Edited by Billsfan1972
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2 hours ago, Mr. WEO said:

 

lol....millenial

 

so good to be an X

 

never to be blamed for anything, never too much pressure, just the right amount of work and life enjoyment to pick off the tree.. .  :D

 

 

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2 hours ago, Chaos said:

"ever" does not imply correlation.   Do this exercise, look at the top 5 passing YARDAGE leaders (by team) for the last five year. Then look at the top five PASSER RATING teams for the last five years.    Remove all the teams that are top 5 in both.  You will almost certainly see that the list of top five passer rating teams are almost always in the playoffs even if they are not top five yardage teams.  You will see that the top five yardage teams without being top five passer rating teams will appear at the random percentage around 12/32 (12 out of 32 teams make the playoffs every year).

 

It's simpler (and on topic) to just look at the last 5 years of top passing yards teams.  In no year were there less than 2 that made the playoffs.  Overall, the incidence was 13/25.  5 of the other 12 missed playoffs were accounted for by 2 teams (NO and TB).

 

So this year is the outlier. It means nothing.

1 hour ago, row_33 said:

 

so good to be an X

 

never to be blamed for anything, never too much pressure, just the right amount of work and life enjoyment to pick off the tree.. .  :D

 

 

 

 

I'm a late model Boomer.  I don't know what that knucklehead is talking about.

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3 minutes ago, Mr. WEO said:

 

It's simpler (and on topic) to just look at the last 5 years of top passing yards teams.  In no year were there less than 2 that made the playoffs.  Overall, the incidence was 13/25.  5 of the other 12 missed playoffs were accounted for by 2 teams (NO and TB).

 

So this year is the outlier. It means nothing.

 

 

I'm a late model Boomer.  I don't know what that knucklehead is talking about.

 

you can hop on board to an honorary spot in X-ville if  you have freedom of mind or are left-handed

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