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Why is there so much bad football in the NFL?
A month has passed since Tom Brady’s public rumination on the state of the NFL game, and it seems that plenty of other bright football minds tend to agree with him.“I watch a lot of bad football,” Brady said in early October. “Poor quality of football. That’s what I see.”
The prime-time windows this season have often featured teams ill-prepared or ill-equipped to play entertaining football or to move the ball in the way we have come to expect in the pass-happy NFL. On-field coaching decisions and in-game management have seemed, to many inside and outside the league, more baffling than ever. The inevitable officiating controversies (this year mostly surrounding roughing-the-passer calls) haven’t helped. Penalties have been a scourge for some teams, quarterback play has been erratic, and one of the more salient scenes from the first half of the season featured Denver fans leaving in droves as the Broncos and Colts headed to overtime during what would end up a 12-9 blemish of a football contest.
“The product is low quality right now,” a prominent player agent said, unsolicited, during a conversation about a different topic. (He spoke on the condition of anonymity in part not to offend some of his clients.) “There’s too much low-IQ football being played. Too many games are tough to watch. If you want to know what people who have been in this league a long time are talking about right now, this is it.”
Scoring is down, from 2.48 offensive touchdowns a game in 2021 to 2.31 now. Passing touchdowns per game are down from 1.54 to 1.38. Entering Week 9 last year, the average NFL passer rating was 94.5 — 12 qualified passers had a rating of at least 100 — with 408 touchdowns thrown to 191 interceptions. Entering this week, only seven qualified quarterbacks had a rating above 100, and the average rating was 90.2, with 338 touchdown passes and 188 interceptions. Couple that with what many executives believe to be a coaching crisis, and you might have found the epicenter of the unsightly product.
“How many teams have the right coach and the right quarterback?” asked one successful general manager, speaking on the condition of anonymity so as not to alienate his peers or incur penalties from the league office. “There’s not that many. If you have one or the other, you’ll win enough games to hang around and be in most games, which the league wants. Parity.
“If you only have one, there’s going to be some inconsistencies in your play but you won’t be getting blown out every week. That’s probably 70, 75 percent of the league. If you’ve got both, you’re going to win consistently. And if you don’t have either, you’re f----d and you’re dragging down the quality of play for everybody.”
Determining which franchises truly have a winning coach and quarterback is obviously open to interpretation, and in a league of constant transition with tanking no longer prohibited, some general managers argue that not enough time and patience are granted to either position. In my own estimation — feel free to play along at home — only five of 32 teams receive double check marks, which feels telling.
Last season at this time, Russell Wilson led the NFL in passer rating (125.3!), Kyler Murray was an MVP favorite, Brady and Aaron Rodgers were deep into potential MVP campaigns, a healthy Dak Prescott was tearing it up, and Matthew Stafford was second in the NFL with 22 passing touchdowns to just four interceptions. This year, well, Russ is getting cooked, the Buccaneers and Packers have broken offenses, the league is baffled why Murray and his coach got contract extensions, Prescott has missed more games than he has completed and Stafford has seven touchdowns to eight interceptions.
“Some Hall of Fame quarterbacks have walked away [in recent years], some older quarterbacks might be hitting the wall, and these [recent] quarterback classes might not be that good,” another general manager suggested, with the 2021 class drawing particular scrutiny. “Then you look at who is coaching some of them, and that’s a problem, too. Too many of these coaching searches are s--t shows. Too many owners don’t know what they’re doing or what to even look for.”
Of the quarterbacks drafted in 2021, top overall pick Trevor Lawrence certainly hasn’t looked generational yet, although being saddled with inept Urban Meyer his rookie year didn’t help. Jets fans are clamoring for second overall pick Zach Wilson to be benched, third pick Trey Lance has barely played for the 49ers, and the Bears finally got around to leaning into 11th pick Justin Fields’s strengths just a few weeks ago. Mac Jones (15th overall) lost his job in New England, at least briefly, to Bailey Zappe (the 137th pick this past spring).
As for the first-time head coaches hired that year: Meyer is (mercifully) already gone, and the backward Texans fired David Culley after one year; meanwhile, Dan Campbell (Lions) and Brandon Staley (Chargers) got much hype, but their accomplishments have been scant.
Cronyism and nepotism still offer a fast track for unworthy coaching candidates, people around the league lament. Then factor in how many of the young coaches stack their staffs with similarly inexperienced assistants, and consider how all this newness impacts skill players already having to learn new systems.
There are more explanations. We saw an unprecedented offseason of blockbuster trades involving both quarterbacks and wide receivers changing teams. The preseason is shorter than ever, and fewer teams are actually playing their starters for any meaningful period of time in those exhibitions. Injuries to key players have been prevalent — with players rightfully indignant over the lack of mandatory grass fields — and executives grumble privately that the ever-expanding slate of international games doesn’t help the quality of play across a regular season that is also longer than ever.
There is an interesting subplot to consider, however. Believe it or not, the NFL running game is thriving like never before.
The average NFL rush this season is gaining 4.54 yards (it was 4.33 last season and 4.28 entering Week 9 a year ago). The highest figure in NFL history was 4.42 yards in 2018, while about 4.0 yards per rush are the historical norm. Teams aren’t running much more often — 42.2 percent of plays have been rushes in 2022 compared with 41.1 percent at this point last year — but they are doing it more efficiently in a game that has incentivized the downfield pass, even if casual fans haven’t caught on.
“What are they all b----ing about?” one grizzled NFL personnel executive asked when probed for his thoughts on the quality of play. “Let me guess: Scoring is down, and everybody wants more points? Listen man, it’s all cyclical, and no one is talking about it, but running the ball is coming back.
“You hear a lot about all the spread formations in college and how they don’t produce offensive linemen. But since it’s so small now [with college teams using so many three-or-more wide receiver sets], they aren’t producing [defensive] tackles, either. I’m on the road every week [scouting colleges], and they aren’t around like they used to be. The best offenses attack what you give them, and people in this league stopped paying for run-stuffers years ago, and there aren’t as many good ones coming out. So why wouldn’t you attack them in the run game?”
Perhaps we have unlocked the NFL’s “Moneyball” equation: YPC (yards per carry) in 2022 = OBP (on-base percentage) in 2000? Worthy of attention in the second half, if nothing else.
