Input Volatility, Week 14
More about 2024's scoring environment
Last night was a bummer for the biggest must-win game I have this week, where I happen to be starting Jayden Reed and playing against Josh Jacobs. One of the things I talked about at the start of this week’s Signals Gold is I’ve learned over the years that as the playoffs approach, and the impact of decisions ramps up, there are subscribers and those who value my opinion who also more or less more urgently hope I can predict the future. I don’t mean to say that rudely, but I am trying to frame it in a way that helps you understand the issue, which is that I don’t know anything.
All year long, I write about variance, and uncertainty, and chaos. The decisions get ratcheted up right now. “So if you don’t know, then how do I make the right decision?” This is the part where it sucks. The reality is this: In the most impactful moments of your season as a fantasy manager, you don’t have much control. Most of your matchups will be decided by the core guys in your lineup — like when Reed throws up a donut because the Packers want to go two-TE heavy, and Jacobs scores three TDs because Jordan Love misses open passing touchdowns that become runs — not that final roster decision you’re laboring over. Obviously you should still try to get that right, because it very well could be the deciding factor, but my point is that the draft and roster management decisions you made weeks and months ago have far more of an impact on your ability to win your league than the last-minute things you’re ratcheting up the importance of.
It’s natural, and I do it with all my teams, too, but I’m trying to absolve you of too much guilt or frustration or heartbreak. The reality of this silly little hobby of ours is that there’s a ton of chaos and variance in the sport itself, and the player results are a degree removed from that (and thus even more chaotic), and so it really does come down to doing the best you can, and getting your chips in with the best hand (to steal a poker concept), but then living with the results. You can’t “what if” this stuff. To carry that poker analogy forward, you can’t make a proper fold decision and then see your gut shot straight would have hit on the river and decide you made a mistake. That’s just reacting to variance.
It’s way harder to understand in football terms, but the outcomes are removed from the decisions, and you gotta accept that. You can have a moment to tell yourself you would’ve won if you’d started someone else, but don’t dwell on that shit. Accept it, by realizing the two options were very close at the point the decision was made, and it could have gone the exact opposite way. No one knows anything. Some analyst who ranks a guy one spot ahead of someone else rather than one spot behind isn’t the smartest guy in the room just because he was the only guy who had your start/sit correct. We apply all sorts of importance to pseudoscience and snake oil because of the illusion of control and because we want to believe we have more of an impact on the successes and failures of our silly little fantasy football team. We’ve ridden with these guys for months. It’s super fun, but understand how dumb those ownership emotions are so you can free yourself of the frustration of a few outcomes that have outsized impact on who wins and loses in our hobby.
Again, see all that for what it is, and you’ll enjoy this next month far more. The truth is, in all likelihood, you’re not going to win your league. You’ve made it this far, but now you gotta win out, more or less, and you gotta do that by beating all the best teams in your league. If you’ve already clinched, and maybe even have a bye, great. Your journey starts in a couple weeks. But even then, you’ll be playing a team in Week 16 that was good enough all season to make the playoffs and then also good enough recently to win in Week 15. Each week you advance, you’ll play a team who is also advancing that much further, and beating that many other good teams. The championship very rarely features a weak opponent.
Sometimes the lesser teams win in the playoffs — we’ve all seen that. It’s particularly brutal when you build the much better team and actually create a real advantage in a playoff matchup — a tough thing to do — and still lose. Variance be like that. In a standard normal distribution curve, only something like 68% of outcomes fall within one standard deviation of the mean, which is to say that nearly a third of all outcomes tend to swing decently to the positive or negative side of variance.
For some of you, this fantasy season is going to end in frustration, with the better team, as the “deserved” winner, but not the actual one. It might be the best shot you have to win your favorite league’s title in the next several years, or maybe it’s the best shot you’ve had over the past decade as you’ve been hoping to end a drought.
For others, you’ll win. Appreciate it. I’m writing this intro as much for you as those who will fall, because you need to understand how fortunate of a result it is. We don’t enjoy our wins enough in this space — it’s easy to feel like we should win, or are going to win, and then there’s only room to meet expectation or fall short (if we don’t win, which is overwhelmingly likely). Lower those expectations. Recognize it’s a tough path. And try to enjoy the ride, even as things go poorly.
For my team that had Reed and was up against Jacobs, it’s not done yet. There’s a whole Sunday of players who could flip the outcome. I’m not going to mourn that team until it’s dead.
After yet another high-scoring game, I also wanted to talk this morning about the NFL’s current scoring environment. I know it seems like all I talk about, but I promise the macro stuff matters to understanding how to play the different teams. So today, we look at how much scoring has rebounded this year, and why. Here are average points for each team (per game) over the past decade.
2024: 22.8
2023: 21.8
2022: 21.9
2021: 23.0
2020: 24.8
2019: 22.8
2018: 23.3
2017: 21.7
2016: 22.8
2015: 22.8
Scoring drops as you move further back from there — every season between 2000 and 2010, for example, lands between 20.0 and 22.0.
What we see is the pandemic year in 2020 with empty stadiums was a clear outlier, and then 2018 was another strong year that got up over that 23.0 mark, but the 22.8 we’re at this year is right at the median of the list. That’s exciting, after 2022 and 2023 were worse than every season from 2010 to 2015.
Here’s a big colorful thing to reference as I talk about this further (data from Pro-Football-Reference).
One of the fascinating things about 2024 is total yards haven’t really improved, and total plays are actually way down, meaningfully lower than the lowest figure we’ve seen since 2008 (which was itself a bit of an outlier in that regard). A lack of pass attempts is the biggest driver — more runs also leads to more running clocks, and fewer overall plays — and turnovers are down largely because interceptions are way down. Coupled with the increase of rush efficiency, you can really visualize the broad shift toward rushing if you look at all the data in one place.
One of the biggest macro trends I think this displays is the shift toward more mobile quarterbacks, as studies have shown QB rushing explains most of the positive shift in yards per carry over the past few years, and QBs that are taking off and running aren’t checking down for those cheap RB completions which will also hurt the pass attempt numbers. Passing attempts and passing yards are the lowest they’ve been since that 2008 season.
The other really interesting thing is points rebounding despite fewer plays and no real gain in yardage. A big cause of that could be the dynamic kickoff, which is pretty cool. That kickoff adjustment alone, and starting some drives at the 30-yard line, as well as creating a few more big plays in the kicking game (and reducing injuries), could be credited with making the entire sport more watchable this year.
But the thing I really want to highlight here is drive stats, because that’s where we find data that’s been steadily improving through eras.
The first thing I’d point out here is you could argue when viewed this way, offense does really continue to improve, even as defensive strategies have been more challenging for explosive plays and those things in recent years.
Teams are getting fewer and fewer drives, in part because of the increased rushing and other changes to the sport, but also in part because the average length of drives is rising. Plays per drive and yards per drive did dip some in 2022 and 2023, but really relative to 2020 and 2021, not necessarily earlier seasons. The rebound in those stats in 2024 makes 2024 third in plays per drive and fourth in yards per drive, for as far back as PFR has drive-based data, which is 1999 (but 2024 presumably ranks that high if we had data going further back).