Post by Guvmintcheeze on Oct 28, 2015 8:12:20 GMT
NFL’s Quality of Play Hits Rock Bottom, No One Cares
A litany of penalties, mistakes and backup quarterbacks hasn’t stopped captivating America
By Kevin Clark
Oct. 27, 2015 7:35 p.m. ET
When a television show falls off a cliff in quality—think “True Detective”—viewers tune out and move on. When the NFL has a dip in quality, when backups are starting and games are decided by special-teams errors, America not only tunes in, it becomes totally transfixed.
Through seven weeks, it’s become clear that this isn’t a particularly glamorous year in the NFL. If you tuned in Sunday as Dallas Cowboys backup quarterback Matt Cassel uncorked passes that appeared intended for defensive backs, referees threw a flurry of illegal contact penalties or yet another kicker doinked an extra point off the upright, we’re not telling you anything you don’t already know.
But as tens of millions of viewers continue to tune in regardless, it’s worth considering why so many of the games seem borderline unwatchable.
Why the standard of play in the NFL is in the midst of a downturn is due to a confluence of wacky events, some of them intended, some decidedly unintended.
In some respects, the league has been wildly unlucky this season. High-flying star quarterbacks like Tony Romo, Ben Roethlisberger, Drew Brees and Andrew Luck have missed games through injury, replaced by understudies like Brandon Weeden and Landry Jones, who are, to put it kindly, not high-flying stars.
This had led to miserable runs for teams like the Cowboys, who have had their Super Bowl aspirations wiped away, for now, until Romo can return from a broken collar bone.
But it’s also fair to say that some of the ugliness the league has served up this season might actually be by design. Consider this: The NFL has more passing than ever, but those passes are getting shorter.
While quarterbacks like Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers can still sling pretty passes downfield into the hands of barely-open receivers, the majority of quarterbacks are forgoing spectacular bombs down the field in favor of safe, modest throws that won’t show up on the highlights. The average length a pass travels in the air has dropped 7% since 2011—it now stands at just 6.11 yards—and the average length of a completion has dropped 10% in that span.
So while Brady and Rodgers are still launching pretty passes downfield, recent Super Bowl quarterbacks like Baltimore’s Joe Flacco and even (gulp) Denver’s Peyton Manning both average 6.5 yards per attempt or less, among the worst in the league.
It’s no coincidence that teams have moved toward this style of play. Quarterback accuracy, honed by years of passing-coach gurus and youth football leagues, has created a world in which a short pass is almost certain to be completed. Teams have begun to view short passes as “long handoffs” that can essentially replace their running games. The upshot is that in an era when the boring, old run-first offenses have all but disappeared, they’ve been replaced by something more frustrating to watch: a passing game that is now as dull as the running game.
Anecdotally, coaches and executives admit that offensive line play has never been worse. That is not backed up by much data—the league’s quarterback sack numbers haven’t risen dramatically this season—but simply watching on Sundays seems to confirm that something is amiss. Beyond doubt is the fact that referees think teams are more mistake-prone. Penalties have shot up from 12.6 per game in 2011 to 14.80 a game this season. This has created games with endless stops and starts, or worse, for the Buffalo Bills—whose 670 penalty yards are 137 more than anyone else in the league—games that are only stops, no starts.
Coaches point to the collective bargaining agreement that, when signed in 2011, limited practice time, which they say has hurt young players’ development. A movement for some sort of off-season league or changes to the practice structure is growing behind the scenes, but it would take more than a couple of extra practices to clean up all the errors seen this season.
If you ask people around the league why the quality of play has dropped so far, you’ll get enough answers to fill a playbook. One theory: the league is struggling to come to terms with a blitz of rapid rules changes. Laws to protect player safety have made building a team with “smash-mouth” tendencies harder than ever. This has created problems for hard-nosed coaches, whose physical approach no longer fits in an era where referees police illegal hits closer than ever.
What’s clear is that no one has a single explanation for all the bad football on our screens. But one thing is certain: As Cassel prepares to lead the Cowboys into a long-odds matchup against the resurgent Seattle Seahawks this weekend, it doesn’t really matter. Everyone will still be watching anyway.
A litany of penalties, mistakes and backup quarterbacks hasn’t stopped captivating America
By Kevin Clark
Oct. 27, 2015 7:35 p.m. ET
When a television show falls off a cliff in quality—think “True Detective”—viewers tune out and move on. When the NFL has a dip in quality, when backups are starting and games are decided by special-teams errors, America not only tunes in, it becomes totally transfixed.
Through seven weeks, it’s become clear that this isn’t a particularly glamorous year in the NFL. If you tuned in Sunday as Dallas Cowboys backup quarterback Matt Cassel uncorked passes that appeared intended for defensive backs, referees threw a flurry of illegal contact penalties or yet another kicker doinked an extra point off the upright, we’re not telling you anything you don’t already know.
But as tens of millions of viewers continue to tune in regardless, it’s worth considering why so many of the games seem borderline unwatchable.
Why the standard of play in the NFL is in the midst of a downturn is due to a confluence of wacky events, some of them intended, some decidedly unintended.
In some respects, the league has been wildly unlucky this season. High-flying star quarterbacks like Tony Romo, Ben Roethlisberger, Drew Brees and Andrew Luck have missed games through injury, replaced by understudies like Brandon Weeden and Landry Jones, who are, to put it kindly, not high-flying stars.
This had led to miserable runs for teams like the Cowboys, who have had their Super Bowl aspirations wiped away, for now, until Romo can return from a broken collar bone.
But it’s also fair to say that some of the ugliness the league has served up this season might actually be by design. Consider this: The NFL has more passing than ever, but those passes are getting shorter.
While quarterbacks like Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers can still sling pretty passes downfield into the hands of barely-open receivers, the majority of quarterbacks are forgoing spectacular bombs down the field in favor of safe, modest throws that won’t show up on the highlights. The average length a pass travels in the air has dropped 7% since 2011—it now stands at just 6.11 yards—and the average length of a completion has dropped 10% in that span.
So while Brady and Rodgers are still launching pretty passes downfield, recent Super Bowl quarterbacks like Baltimore’s Joe Flacco and even (gulp) Denver’s Peyton Manning both average 6.5 yards per attempt or less, among the worst in the league.
It’s no coincidence that teams have moved toward this style of play. Quarterback accuracy, honed by years of passing-coach gurus and youth football leagues, has created a world in which a short pass is almost certain to be completed. Teams have begun to view short passes as “long handoffs” that can essentially replace their running games. The upshot is that in an era when the boring, old run-first offenses have all but disappeared, they’ve been replaced by something more frustrating to watch: a passing game that is now as dull as the running game.
Anecdotally, coaches and executives admit that offensive line play has never been worse. That is not backed up by much data—the league’s quarterback sack numbers haven’t risen dramatically this season—but simply watching on Sundays seems to confirm that something is amiss. Beyond doubt is the fact that referees think teams are more mistake-prone. Penalties have shot up from 12.6 per game in 2011 to 14.80 a game this season. This has created games with endless stops and starts, or worse, for the Buffalo Bills—whose 670 penalty yards are 137 more than anyone else in the league—games that are only stops, no starts.
Coaches point to the collective bargaining agreement that, when signed in 2011, limited practice time, which they say has hurt young players’ development. A movement for some sort of off-season league or changes to the practice structure is growing behind the scenes, but it would take more than a couple of extra practices to clean up all the errors seen this season.
If you ask people around the league why the quality of play has dropped so far, you’ll get enough answers to fill a playbook. One theory: the league is struggling to come to terms with a blitz of rapid rules changes. Laws to protect player safety have made building a team with “smash-mouth” tendencies harder than ever. This has created problems for hard-nosed coaches, whose physical approach no longer fits in an era where referees police illegal hits closer than ever.
What’s clear is that no one has a single explanation for all the bad football on our screens. But one thing is certain: As Cassel prepares to lead the Cowboys into a long-odds matchup against the resurgent Seattle Seahawks this weekend, it doesn’t really matter. Everyone will still be watching anyway.