Is the decline of offensive scoring in part being driven by punters becoming too good?

[Big Turk]

The NFL for a second year in a row is facing declining offensive scoring and production.  Part of this is driven by bad QB play, but I have to think part of this also is driven by punters becoming really good.

 

Analytically, every yard on the field is worth "x" amount of points gained or lost on an average drive, meaning it is typically harder to score the farther you are backed up(well...except maybe if you are the Bills).

 

I can't ever remember as many punts that have been bombed on a regular basis as what I am seeing this year. Even against the Bills, the D gets a stop and I think they will have great field position and then the punter bombs the balls and instead of starting at the 40 we are starting at the 15 because we either have to fair catch it or it gets so much hang time that our returner barely has time to do anything before the defending players are on him.

 

Looking at league leaders(which the Bills still don't have a qualifying player for), there are 5 players averaging more than 50 yards a punt and we have played the top two in Stonehouse and Townsend with Tennessee and KC respectively. The lowest punter is Matt Haack and he is averaging 43.9 yards, which is pretty high for a lowest player...

 

Funny to think about punting being so good as being a reason why offense is down, but I think this may be something to watch going forward.

 

Not that the Bills would know. 🤣

[BullBuchanan]

I wouldn't say that it has much to do with punting. I also don't think it's accurate to paint a picture that offensive production declined last year, because 2020 was an outlier as the highest scoring year in history. last year was still the 6th highest scoring season of all time and 3rd highest in the last 10 years.

Offenses have been putrid this year and I ascribe that to poor QB play and bad schemes. I can't remember seeing so many single digit halftime scores.

https://www.pro-football-reference.com/years/NFL/scoring.htm

[Bills2022]

Punters and kickers are getting ridiculously good.  I read how this is the Bonds/McGuire/Sosa error for punters and kickers.  I wouldn't be shocked if something "unusual" was going on.  Way too many guys hitting 60+ yard field goals that would be good from 70 and punters kicking a little too long.   I always wondered if our former ethically challenged punter was getting some additional help from somewhere. 

 

 

Edited October 17, 2022 by Bills2022

[GunnerBill]

We are not facing 2 years of declining scoring. 2020, the fanless year is not the appropriate benchmark. 2021 was up on 2019. 

 

I agree with @BullBuchanan I think it mostly bad QB play and bad coaching (seriously go look at the list of NFL OCs and some of their resumes.... I think we have a problem that any half decent OC with a couple of years production gets made a HC and is hollowing out the lower tiers of the offensive coaching ranks somewhat). The one thing I'dd add is bad offensive line play. Oline play is at an all time low league wide. I think it is why the refs seem to have stopped calling offensive holding. If they called it we might get more horror shows like the last two TNFs. 

[Gugny]

2 minutes ago, GunnerBill said:

We are not facing 2 years of declining scoring. 2020, the fanless year is not the appropriate benchmark. 2021 was up on 2019. 

 

I agree with @BullBuchanan I think it mostly bad QB play and bad coaching (seriously go look at the list of NFL OCs and some of their resumes.... I think we have a problem that any half decent OC with a couple of years production gets made a HC and is hollowing out the lower tiers of the offensive coaching ranks somewhat). The one thing I'dd add is bad offensive line play. Oline play is at an all time low league wide. I think it is why the refs seem to have stopped calling offensive holding. If they called it we might get more horror shows like the last two TNFs. 

 

How significant do you think the limited practice with pads rule in the CBA is with regard to the poor O Line play?  I feel like they go hand in hand.

 

Edited October 17, 2022 by Gugny

[GunnerBill]

Just now, Gugny said:

 

How significant do you think the limited practice with pads rule in the CBA is with regard to the poor O Line play?  I feel like they go hand in hand.

 

 

Yep. That and the fact that so few colleges actually get offensive linemen in a 3 points stance on a regular basis these days. I also just feel like the most athletic big guys seem to get put on the defensive side of the ball. Combination of those 3 reasons IMO. 

[mrags]

Teams are spending more picks and resources on defense. Have to stop all these high powered QBs. 
 

look what we did in the off-season. 

[Big Turk]

16 minutes ago, BullBuchanan said:

I wouldn't say that it has much to do with punting. I also don't think it's accurate to paint a picture that offensive production declined last year, because 2020 was an outlier as the highest scoring year in history. last year was still the 6th highest scoring season of all time and 3rd highest in the last 10 years.

Offenses have been putrid this year and I ascribe that to poor QB play and bad schemes. I can't remember seeing so many single digit halftime scores.

https://www.pro-football-reference.com/years/NFL/scoring.htm

 

2020 was also the year of no crowd noise and I think that likely played some role in the ability of both teams to be able to operate their offenses with neither having a disadvantage of crowd noise affecting what they could do and giving the defensive players an edge on getting a split second jump on the snap count

[Scott7975]

What is this thing you call "punt?"

[Big Turk]

Currently the top 3 punters in the NFL would all have broken the all time single season punting record and we have 6 of the top 20 punting averages in NFL history this year. So there really is no debate that punters are booting the hell out of the ball now more than ever,

 

Look at Slinging Sammy Baugh as the all time single season punting leader way back in 1940!  That is impressive as hell, and he wasn't a bad QB either...for 1940 that is.

 

Edited October 17, 2022 by Big Turk

[Malazan]

I'm sure it has some impact and it plays into the changes in the game. Defenses have adjusted to a pass happy league. Everyone complains about the bend/don't break defense, but all of the top defenses play this way and want to force teams to go down the field by dinking/dunking then stop them in the red zone. On the other side, the high scoring has increased aggressiveness by teams going for it on 4th down (especially in the red zone) more taking points off the board. 

 

The Bills, for example, don't really play 4-3 or 3-4. Their base defense would best be described as "nickel". You're also seeing a lot more exotic coverages. The Bills deployed some schemes where they played zone on half the field and man on the other side. After two years of high scoring, it's not surprising to see defenses figure out ways to slow it down. 

[Jauronimo]

Bad QB play.

[Allen2D̶i̶g̶g̶s̶TBD]

I think a big reason for the scoring decline this year is that a lot of the older star qb's are finally showing signs of a decline.

 

Brady, Rogers, Tannehil, Ryan, Wilson, and Stafford all look significantly worse than they did last season.

 

There have been some emerging young qb's the last couple years like Burrow, Herbert, and Hurts, but the success rate of 1st round Quarterbacks has been pretty bad over the past 5 years. 

[BobbyC81]

36 minutes ago, BullBuchanan said:

I wouldn't say that it has much to do with punting. I also don't think it's accurate to paint a picture that offensive production declined last year, because 2020 was an outlier as the highest scoring year in history. last year was still the 6th highest scoring season of all time and 3rd highest in the last 10 years.

Offenses have been putrid this year and I ascribe that to poor QB play and bad schemes. I can't remember seeing so many single digit halftime scores.

https://www.pro-football-reference.com/years/NFL/scoring.htm

There are many factors like reduced practiced times & practice with pads, teams not using star players in preseason games, and vanilla game plans in preseason games.  With the latter, schemes and plays are only tested in practice until the regular season games.

 

The main factor may be the 2 deep zone.  Teams aren’t getting as many big pass plays vs this defensive scheme.  They have to “matriculate” down the field on long drives with lots of check downs and other short passes, which takes a lot of time off the clock.  We’ve seen the Bills have several 8 and 9 minute drives.  Those are huge chunks of a 60 minute game.  When those long drives don’t result in touchdowns (Ex: Miami game), scores are going to be lower.

 

So, will the NFL now create new rules to increase scoring?  Maybe force the safeties to be within 10 yards of the line of scrimmage until the ball is snapped?  Any violation is a defensive illegal formation penalty.  We shall see.  
 

Remember that the NBA banned zone defenses,  college basketball established a shot clock and the NHL banned the NJ Devils trap defense in attempts to create more scoring.  Now, MLB is talking about banning shifts.

[Goin Breakdown]

Behind every good punter is a good long snapper??? 

[Virgil]

All I know is, the Chiefs punted was amazing yesterday.  Just a fantastic job

[TheFunPolice]

For the most part, offensive line play is bad to terrible league wide, and the talent pool is very shallow so one or two injuries and you've got awful OL players trying to block the highly paid athletic freaks on the DL.

 

We have a pretty solid OL. So many teams are just terrible and that destroys your ability to do much on offense. 

[appoo]

2 minutes ago, Virgil said:

All I know is, the Chiefs punted was amazing yesterday.  Just a fantastic job

And a ***** casual 62 yard FG INTO the wind.

[colin]

part is punting, part is qb/ol decline.  another part is the nfl is cyclical, and the o was on a big up cycle, but now ds are catching up some.

 

the next big o will be something else too, no idea what.  i formation two qbs on the field at once?  i hope so!

[BobbyC81]

1 hour ago, Big Turk said:

The NFL for a second year in a row is facing declining offensive scoring and production.  Part of this is driven by bad QB play, but I have to think part of this also is driven by punters becoming really good.

 

Analytically, every yard on the field is worth "x" amount of points gained or lost on an average drive, meaning it is typically harder to score the farther you are backed up(well...except maybe if you are the Bills).

 

I can't ever remember as many punts that have been bombed on a regular basis as what I am seeing this year. Even against the Bills, the D gets a stop and I think they will have great field position and then the punter bombs the balls and instead of starting at the 40 we are starting at the 15 because we either have to fair catch it or it gets so much hang time that our returner barely has time to do anything before the defending players are on him.

 

Looking at league leaders(which the Bills still don't have a qualifying player for), there are 5 players averaging more than 50 yards a punt and we have played the top two in Stonehouse and Townsend with Tennessee and KC respectively. The lowest punter is Matt Haack and he is averaging 43.9 yards, which is pretty high for a lowest player...

 

Funny to think about punting being so good as being a reason why offense is down, but I think this may be something to watch going forward.

 

Not that the Bills would know. 🤣

I have to agree with you that the punting game does have an impact.  It doesn’t seem that long ago that Brian Moorman became the first NFL punter to have a Net Average of 40.0+ yards.   Now just about all of the punters do.

 

It’s been only 6 weeks but I don’t recall a punter averaging about 55 yards per punt, like Stonehouse is.  Townsend also has near a 50 yard Net Avg.  That’s really flipping the field.