Early in the second quarter of the Los Angeles Rams’ wild-card playoff game against the Arizona Cardinals, Rams head coach Sean McVay faced a third-and-2 at the Arizona 33-yard line with a 7-0 lead. Running back Cam Akers had just gained 3 yards rushing up the middle on the previous play, and he substituted out […]
Anyone who follows football and can fog a mirror knows that winning the turnover battle is important. Games often hinge on a team getting an extra possession, and when analysts have tried to quantify the edge, they’ve found that it’s large: Teams win around 78 percent of the games in which they have a positive […]
Late in the fourth quarter of the divisional playoff against the Cleveland Browns, Kansas City head coach Andy Reid was faced with a decision: punt the ball and hope that his defense would hold, or attempt to seal the victory by going for it on fourth-and-inches. If Reid’s all-world quarterback Patrick Mahomes had not left […]
If you’ve watched the NFL this season and thought that there’s an awful lot of touchdowns being scored, you’re not wrong. Scoring is up across the NFL. Way up. Going into Week 5, teams had reached the end zone 371 times, the most through four weeks in NFL history. Teams are passing for 1.8 touchdowns […]
The 2019 NFL season will be remembered for a host of unusual storylines. Early in the season, New York Jets quarterback Sam Darnold came down with mononucleosis and missed the next three games to sickness and concerns about a swollen spleen. Shortly after he returned, as New York was trounced 33-0 by the Patriots in […]