NFL scoring on pace to be second lowest
JOHN KRYK
Scoring is down in the NFL. Significantly.
Before Monday night’s Detroit at New York Giants game, teams so far this season were averaging 20.3 points per outing. That’s on pace to be the lowest since the 20.2 in 2001, and tied for second lowest in the past 24 years, according to annual stats posted at Pro-Football-Reference. com.
To put the 20.3 per-game output in further perspective, from 1994 to 2007 NFL teams averaged in the range of 20-21 points per game. From 2008 through last season, the average range rose to 22-23 — making it the NFL’s highest-scoring era since the early 1960s. Indeed the past five seasons produced the highest such averages of any five-year span in NFL history, as scoring ranged annually from 22.6 to 23.4 points per game.
Suddenly this season, however — pffffft.
Two weeks isn’t much of a trend, granted. But, as we Canadians all know, at this time of year you only have to take one whiff at night to know if a skunk’s nearby. What reeks, reeks. NFL teams averaged 20.2 points per game in Week 1, and before Monday night averaged 20.3 in Week 2.
The deeper into this you look, the uglier it gets.
Six of 30 teams this week amassed single-digit point totals. Ten teams scored fewer than 14, and 19 teams (nearly two-thirds of the league) scored fewer than 21. And the weather again on Sunday was absolutely beautiful, everywhere — so no excuses there.
Ugly yardage totals further reflect the drop in offensive production.
Fourteen of 30 teams playing in Week 1 (Miami and Tampa Bay had emergency byes owing to Hurricane Irma) failed to gain as many as 300 total yards. While that number dropped in Week 2 entering Monday night, to nine teams, if you raise that threshold by just 20 yards, to 320, you find that 13 teams failed to hit it this week.
And only four teams cracked the 400-yard threshold, one week after only three teams did.
Probablytheworstoffensiveshowing by any team thus far occurred at Carolina on Sunday, where QB Tyrod Taylor and the Buffalo Bills gained just 176 total yards — 52 of which came against soft coverage on Buffalo’s final desperation drive, which died 13 yards shy of the red zone. The Bills could barely advance the ball before that last drive, picking up just seven first downs while averaging an abysmal 3.4 yards per play.
Part and parcel is the dearth of touchdowns. Two teams haven’t even scored one yet: Cincinnati and San Francisco. After two games! Four other teams this week didn’t score a touchdown.
Reasons for all this? Pretty simple: (1) too many bad quarterbacks, (2) too many bad offensive lines and (3) some defences are better than expected.
Look, the winds of late autumn and the biting cold and snow of early winter are coming. Offences had better start scoring while the sun shines, or that 20.3 number will look good come the new year.