All the talking heads on ESPN go on about how the NFL is a passing league and anyone that watches the NFL would likely agree with that. Over the past 5 years we've had an insane amount of 4000+ yard passers . So I wanted to use this post to explore exactly how much the NFL play calling has changed over the past 20 years.
The graph on the side shows the progression of pass plays to rush plays in the NFL. From 1993 up until 2005ish we see that the pass:run play ratio is steady just below 1..15. From 1993 up until 2005, a span of 12 years, the pass:play ratio increases by 0.7% - basically nothing. In 2008 that number jumps up to 1.17 an increase of 2..2% and then again jumps up to 1.24 in 2011. (a change of 6.47%!). Clearly, the NFL is making a push toward a pass heavy league and the numbers certainly support it.
So what does it mean that the NFL is becoming a pass heavy league? Do you need a pass heavy attack to succeed? With the way the ESPN and other sports outlets talk about it it certainly seems like as though you need a star quarterback and a star passing attack to succeed in the NFL.. Given my Oakland Raiders have been starting below average quarterbacks since 2002 and have primarily been a run first team the past couple years, I was worried that the Raiders wouldn't be in the Superbowl anytime soon. I took all the pass:run ratio data I had for each team from the NFL seasons in the previous chart and then plotted it against winning percentage. From there I looked at the R squared coefficient. The R squared term basically tells you how close your data is related. A high R squared (0.8-1.0) generally means a high correlation, a middling R squared (0.6-0.8) generally means that there might be a trend and its best you try and find other data. Anything less than 0.6 usually means there is no correlation between the two points. Given everything I've been hearing about the importance of a quarterback in the NFL today I expected to find a strong correlation on the pass heavy teams and winning percentage, however I was wrong.
So what can we take away from this? Its tough to say. On one hand the first graph indicates that teams are passing the ball at an alarmingly high rate however the second graph shows that being a pass heavy team has no correlation between winning. An important point to note here is that teams that are generally ahead in games (and consequently win those games) tend to run the ball more, however that only applies in blowouts which certainly aren't the norm.
The facts that are presented state that the NFL is passing the footaball at an all time high, however pass heavy offenses (with respect to the rest of the league) do not find success any more than run heavy offenses. It seems, in conclusion, that teams should build put more emphasis than ever before when building their defense, but when building their offense it doesn't matter what you choose to focus on.