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"The NFL has changed ...." (1 Viewer)

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Footballguy
Someone made the argument that "the NFL has changed," and pointed to the several QBs with 5000+ passing yards in 2011, and the monster seasons by a couple TEs. I'm curious what people think about that. Are we seeing the beginning of a major shift toward passing in the NFL? Or was 2011 just a blip? Specifically, how many QBs will exceed 5000 yards in 2012? How many TEs will exceed 90/1000/9+?

Two immediate research questions that jump out at me are:

(1) How did the total number of passing yards in 2011 compare to prior seasons? It's all well and good to point to a few QBs with big passing totals, but in assessing whether a sea change is taking place, I'm more impressed if the total passing yards increased by a meaningful %.

(2) How did the total number of WR and TE receiving yards change from prior seasons? Did all TEs and WRs improve? Or just a select few?

I'm looking forward to the discussion on this.

 
2011: 117,601 passing yards

2010: 113,450

2009: 111,851

2008: 108,177

2007: 109,722

There is a definite upward trend of about 3-4% per year since 2008. I see no reason why the numbers will not continue this trend or at least stabilize at the current high number due to the current state of QB favorable rules on the field. Therefore, you can resonably conclude that there will be multiple QBs who exceed or at least come very close to 5,000 yards.

 
Here are the percentage increases/decreases in passing yardage by team from 2010 to 2011

Code:
New Orleans Saints	20.40%New England Patriots	32.15%Green Bay Packers	19.40%Detroit Lions   	26.35%New York Giants 	21.85%San Diego Chargers	-2.06%Dallas Cowboys  	3.93%Atlanta Falcons 	17.52%Philadelphia Eagles	5.22%Pittsburgh Steelers	12.58%Oakland Raiders 	24.59%Tennessee Titans	26.26%Carolina Panthers	67.28%Washington Redskins	-4.02%Buffalo Bills   	17.26%Tampa Bay Buccaneers	8.60%Arizona Cardinals	22.12%Houston Texans  	-15.40%Baltimore Ravens	2.64%Cincinnati Bengals	-11.34%New York Jets   	1.70%Seattle Seahawks	-7.06%Miami Dolphins  	-12.36%Cleveland Browns	3.38%Kansas City Chiefs	3.77%Chicago Bears   	-0.13%Indianapolis Colts	-35.02%Minnesota Vikings	-4.52%San Francisco 49ers	-12.69%St. Louis Rams  	-12.18%Denver Broncos  	-39.72%Jacksonville Jaguars	-28.91%
 
The passing/receiving has changed so much so, that I know several long standing leagues that are changing (or considering changing) the PPR rules.

A full point PPR has been scrapped in 3 of them. One removed it entirely, and the two others have backed it down to half-point per reception with a eye towards next year and removing it entirely if needed.

Two more leagues have yet to have their owner/rule meeting and the one that had no-ppr but had it slated to begin in 2012 (voted into the rules before 2010) now expects to scrap the implementation with an almost unanimous vote.

WRs, QBs and TEs have had a huge jump in not only production (maybe combined with some RB falloff) but in consistency. Which is why RBs were so prevalent in the early drafting of the past. Now its a handful of RBs and then very even value across the board at all positions. Part of the increased value for RBs was from supply/demand, but the demand has fallen off greatly.

FTR, in these leagues nobody is complaining, they just are just staying current.

As ppr and .5-ppr were are not needed as an "evener" with the current NFL system.

 
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Very interesting stuff. Looking at the bottom end teams, I realize that they might even hide the trend, since a stinky QB will always be a stinky QB regardless of whatever trends happen for the rest of the league. If we limited analysis to just the top 15 QBs, or maybe QBs 3-15 (to eliminate top-end outliers), I wonder if we might see an even more accelerated trend.

Also, I took a quick look at RB, and just eyeballing them, it looks like the yardage totals for the top 10 RBs have stayed relatively flat over the past 5 years. I would have expected them to be falling, since the passing totals are rising. Maybe I mis-read the numbers, or maybe there's just more total offense in the NFL.

If I have time next week, I might set up a data scraper in a Google Docs spreadsheet to look at these trends. If anyone knows of something that already exists, I'd appreciate a nudge in the right direction.

More thoughts please.

 

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