The NFL may have reached its most parity ever this 2022 season, and the league is getting tighter games than ever.
But you can’t have it all. The NFL has a scoring problem, and there are people in league circles who are starting to worry.
NFL teams are averaging 20.76 points per game this season, the lowest output since the 2017 season and the second lowest in the last decade.
It comes two years after the NFL saw its most points in a season. The 2020 NFL season saw a record 12,692 points, surpassing the previous record of 11,985 points set in the 2013 season.
But it didn’t last. Even with an extra game for every team, the league still managed just 12,502 points in 2021. Now the pace of points has dropped even further.
NFL vice president of football operations Troy Vincent said at the owners’ meetings last week that he saw the cause of the drop in points in 2022 due to team inefficiency in the red zone. This year teams are scoring touchdowns on 56.5% of their drives into the red zone, the lowest mark since 2017.
Perhaps most notably, teams are coming away with fewer points in the red zone than in recent history. Red zone scoring percentage (ie a touchdown or a field goal) is 84.6%, by far the lowest over the last 10 seasons when it averaged 87%. In fact, the 84.6% red zone field goal percentage is the worst in the league since the 2009 season.
One league source believes defenses have caught on to the offense’s ways in the red zone, especially when it comes to the option to pass to the run.
I’m told there are no immediate changes to the rules. But 2017 was the last time that many of those low marks were achieved, and the league instituted the body weight rule to screw up the passer the following season.
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