Preliminary NFL Outlooks for 2024 Based on Drive Percentages
Setting the Stage for Summer Analysis
Thanks to everyone providing positive feedback to our recent NFL articles focusing on TD-per-drive percentages. Will continue with that in today’s article. We’ll review the positive and negative differentials, taking a quick glance at how things might change in the coming season.
Let’s start with these premises and see where they lead us…
*It’s easier to build a strong defense than a strong offense…because athletic tacklers are easier to find than superstar skill position players. Not to diminish defensive stars. We’re at the elite end of the bell curve on both sides of the ball. But…at this level…teams can build quality defenses with a combination of athletes and schematics more easily. You almost need a “superstar” quarterback to have a shot at the Super Bowl. There aren’t 32 superstar QBs in existence. There is a significant volume of very good and pretty good defensive players in the pool of options that at least allow you to build playoff caliber defenses.
*Having a great season on offense probably involved some good luck, particularly with injuries. We should expect some regression on that side of the ball from extremely good offenses. Not collapses, but regressions back a few percentage points. A few will collapse because of injuries or other dynamics. As a whole…it’s unlikely ALL of the top offenses will match what happened last season in 2024.
*Coaching changes can have a big impact in either direction. At the very least, they should pull teams toward the middle. Bad teams will improve after a coaching change. Good teams are at least vulnerable to a possible decline.
*What Bill James has called “The Law of Competitive Balance” has a way of pulling everyone toward the middle over time. Bad teams make changes that cause them to improve. Good teams get complacent, get old, or get caught a step slow when the game evolves. Just as true in football as in baseball (really, in all LIFE as we know it).
Because trying to talk about 32 teams at once can be daunting, let’s break the league into groups based on the “standings” we ran recently. You regulars know we counted up the percentage of drives that each offense scored on…the percentage of drives that each defense ALLOWED a TD on…then ranked the differentials. This passed the eye test really well. So well that…what was that old Norm MacDonald joke…it will appear in the quarterly edition of “Duh” magazine. “Wins are Based on Touchdown Differential!” But FORCING ourselves to FOCUS more attention to this reality may help us make smarter predictions in the coming season.
TOP CHAMPIONSHIP THREATS
San Francisco +17 (34% on offense, 17% on defense)
Baltimore +16 (28% on offense, 12% on defense)
Dallas +10 (30% on offense, 20% on defense)
Buffalo +10 (28% on offense, 18% on defense)
Miami +9 (31% on offense, 22% on defense)
Detroit +7 (30% on offense, 23% on defense)
Kansas City +5 (21% on offense, 16% on defense)
New Orleans +5 (21% on offense, 16% on defense)
Green Bay +3 (24% on offense, 21% on defense)
LA Rams +3 (24% on offense, 21% on defense)
New Orleans is probably an outlier. Saints played an easy schedule last year in a crappy division. And, the eye test certainly doesn’t match those numbers. That said, might be some indicators in this stat scenario suggesting the Saints are closer to arriving than we had been thinking.