Something I did last week and posted on a Packer board. The data I used was from NFL.com. Vikings were and even 50%-50%.
After 5 weeks I did a little number crunching. Since people keep telling me it’s a passing league I decided to put that to the test. I took the number of passing plays and rushing plays and found the percentages for each team. Below are the top 6 in passing attempts and top 6 in rushing attempts. This is based strictly on number of plays. NOT yardage. The cutoff was 57% (the NFL average is 56.7%) and higher for passing plays. That broke the teams into sections of 14 and 18. In week 4 it was an equal 16-16.
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W L % passing plays
New Orleans Saints 1 4 71
Oakland Raiders 1 3 70
Cleveland Browns 0 5 68
Dallas Cowboys 2 2 67
Tennessee Titans 1 4 67
Detroit Lions 1 3 65
Miami Dolphins 2 3 50
New England Patriots 3 2 49
Washington Redskins 2 3 48
San Francisco 49ers 4 1 46
Houston Texans 5 0 45
Seattle Seahawks 3 2 42
As you can see the top 6 passing teams have a combined record of 6-21, while the top 6 running teams have a combined record of 19-11. Does that mean that teams that pass more often, win less? Not really. Of the top 7 winning teams three have a higher percentage (than NFL average 56.7%) of passing plays than running plays.
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W L % passing plays
Atlanta Falcons 5 0 62
Houston Texans 5 0 45
Baltimore Ravens 4 1 61
Arizona Cardinals 4 1 61
Chicago Bears 4 1 51
Minnesota Vikings 4 1 50
San Francisco 49ers 4 1 46
One other thing that I noticed is that the 14 teams with the higher passing percentage, overall their combined record is 30-35 for .462 winning percentage, while the teams with more running plays had a combined record of 47-42 for a .528 winning percentage. So is it still a passing league? Passing is important but so far this year it looks like a more balanced offense is winning. I will attempt to look at if these numbers are off because teams get behind in games and are trying to pass to catch up. Because I know that is an issue, just not how big of one.