This phenomenon occurs at the beginning of every NFL season. Here’s the formula: too much anticipation and too much time away from football equals fan EIBF. EIBF will infiltrate TV theaters and NFL stadiums starting Thursday with Bills-Rams and continuing through most of September. So I’ve put together everything you need to remember at the start of the 2022 season to combat the EIBF feeling.
There’s always a wild upset or weird result in Week 1
[Samuel L. Jackson voice] “Hold on to your butt.” This will happen. Prepare yourself. Want proof? I got you. In 2021, the Saints beat the Packers, 38-3, you know the same Green Bay team that would win 13 of their next 16 games and go down as the No. 1 seed in the NFC playoffs. In 2020 COVID-19, the final 1-15 Jaguars beat the playoff-bound Colts in a strange Week 1 contest that featured a single Gardner Minshew incompletion and a 2.4 yards per carry average for Jonathan Taylor. Pretty normal, right? There were no upsets to ruin the landscape in 2019, but the Lions and Cardinals tied 27-27 in Kyler Murray’s first NFL game. Arizona scored six points through three quarters before erupting for 18 in the fourth, and Detroit linebacker Christian Jones dropped what likely would have been a game-tying interception in overtime. On the same day, the eventual 11-5 Seahawks needed a fourth-quarter Russell Wilson-to-Tyler Lockett to beat the eventual 2-14 Bengals, 21-20. Strange. In last season’s opener, the Buccaneers, who eventually went 5-11, topped the NFC North champion Saints 13-3, 48-40. Ryan Fitzpatrick averaged 14.9 yards per attempt (!) and had a QB rating of 156.3. The Saints will finish eighth in Football Outsiders’ defensive DVOA, the comprehensive performance metric. In 2017, the 5-11 Broncos beat the 9-7 Chargers. In 2016, a 49ers team that eventually went 2-14 looked like the most complete team in football in a 28-0 rout of the nearly equally bad, eventually 4-12 Los Angeles Rams. Blaine Gabbert was the starting quarterback for San Francisco that afternoon. Jeremy Kerley led the 49ers in receiving. Heck, even in 2015, San Francisco beat the Vikings, 20-3, in Week 1. The 49ers finished 5-11. The Vikings won the NFC North 11-5. So if a score isn’t quite right in your Week 1 football-loving bones, it probably isn’t. A game always goes through a portal in The Upside Down.
At least one team will go from last place in their division a season ago to first place this year
Hey Ravens, Lions, Jets, Broncos, Jaguars, Giants, Seahawks and Panthers — I’ve got great news! At least one of you will win your respective division this season. For real! No lies. History says so. Basically. In 17 of the last 19 seasons this seemingly impossible phenomenon has occurred. Also remember, going from worst to first isn’t always the most obvious choice. How about last year, when the previously 4-11-1 Bengals were burned by almost everyone to win the AFC North, snuck past the Raiders in the first round of the playoffs, upset the No. 1 Titans in Nashville, then challenged shocked the sports world by erasing two 14-point deficits to beat the Chiefs at Arrowhead Stadium in the AFC Championship. The worst of the first will happen. Buckle!
Your team needs to pass more
Yes, that’s been the bedrock call of the NFL analytics movement for a while now. It was included in last year’s article. But no matter how annoyed you are with it, it’s true. Your team needs to go through more this season. And it can start by doing it more often on first down. Strictly from a quarterbacks’ perspective, only five teams — the Colts, Seahawks, Eagles, Browns and Buccaneers — had a positive EPA in all rushing games.
Now, if new-age analytics are your thing, you probably know about Estimated Added Points (EPA). If it’s not, to summarize — it assigns points to games relative to the expectations of that given situation based on all-time history. And “all-time history” is a rather large sample size, wouldn’t you say?
In 2021, there were 10 teams that finished with a negative EPA (net offense loss) in passing games, which, recently, is actually a high number. Conversely, however, 27 teams had a negative EPA on run plays. Huge difference.
And don’t even get me started on first-down runs. I suggest they be written out of every offensive game plan in the NFL.
This, from a season ago, shows that each team’s EPA is experiencing the football and throwing the football on that historically neglected but vital first down.
Yes, Bill Walsh was right. First down is the best pass down. RBSDM.com
Notice the difference in the baselines between the rushing and passing games. It’s shocking. Only the Colts — with Jonathan Taylor and possibly the league’s most pulverized offensive line — had a positive EPA on first-down rushing plays. Read it again. Meanwhile, only five teams had a negative EPA on pass plays. This is!
I rest my case.
Watch out for the differential!
NFL blowouts matter. Here’s why. Six of the last seven and seven of the last nine Super Bowl winners finished in the top 5 in point differential during the regular season. We had a nice run of top Super Bowl teams by 5 points until last year’s Rams took home the Lombardi Trophy and got those epic Super Bowl rings. But, hey, Los Angeles wasn’t all dark. That team was sixth in point differential. And randomly cutting into the top 5 because it’s a round number is kind of silly, isn’t it? How about the average point differential for Super Bowl winners? Over the past six seasons, they’ve averaged a point differential per game of 8.58 points, which equates to nearly +146 points in point differential during the regular season, which is between the Chiefs and Buccaneers’ point differential from a season ago . I bring this up because a lot of times teams win a collection of close games, which of course leads to a quality record and the idea that said team is really good. In fact, in almost every case, this team isn’t really as good as its record. As the season progresses, it’s almost better to check a team’s point differential before their record. No disrespect, Bill Parcells. But clubs are not what their track record says. Let’s use the 2021 bills as an example. They went a solid but unspectacular 11-6 during the regular season, yet led the NFL in point differential at +194. Now, of course, one bad bounce here or one bad communication there in the playoffs and you’re out, and the latter is exactly what happened in Buffalo. But we were all watching. This Bills team was Super Bowl caliber. Point differential was a stronger indicator of the quality of this team than their record.
The Saints will have a chance to make NFL history by beating all five ‘bird teams’ this season
Dizzy. At no point in the NFL’s long history has one team won all the birdies — the Eagles, Ravens, Cardinals, Falcons and Seahawks — in the same season. Of course, the programming world must align for a club to even have a chance to pull off such a feat. Those universes have aligned to give the Saints a chance to do so this season.
Your team needs to use more action play regardless of their ground game situation
The analytics community has figured it out — play success has nothing to do with play-action effectiveness. It doesn’t matter how you run it — only returnability, committee run. Negligible difference. Last year, 28 of the top 30 qualifying quarterbacks in play-action yards per attempt (YPA) had a higher YPA when using play-action than when not using it. Of course, a drastic difference in sample size must be taken into account here. But, hello, offensive moderators. Time to hit the play-action section of the call sheet more often. If we saw more play-action, would it essentially be rendered useless because it’s expected? Nobody really knows. But you should hope that your team’s offensive coordinator will try to find the optimal usage rate this season.
There will be a lot of new teams in the playoffs
In 2021, half of all playoff teams were new teams, clubs that did not qualify for the postseason the previous year. In 2020, there were six new playoff teams. This is close to the normal average of recent history. Thus, “chalk” represents almost half of the postseason field each season. Adjust your season predictions accordingly. Now, having read this article, you have completely combated the brain fog caused by excitement. Are you ready. Enjoy every second of the 2022 season.
