Air Yards Buy Low Week 7, 2023 Edition
A Kickoff Return Right In The Nuts
What if I told you the NFL could boost scoring by over half a percent with one simple trick that was safe, easy and absolutely fool-proof? Or that individual teams could immediately gain almost five yards of field position on every kickoff they receive, on average? Would that be of interest to you, friend?
This year the league instituted a rule on kickoffs that allows the receiving team to fair catch the ball anywhere in the field of play short of the 25 and start their drive at the 25. When the rule was announced, the rationale given was player safety. A lot of concussions happen on special teams plays, where players are flying around at 20+ MPH speeds. The league did some modeling and estimated that with the rule change they could cut down on concussions by 15 percent — a laudable goal.
Coaches and Football Guys across the nation were predictably aghast. “This is not how football is meant to be played” was the general sentiment. But incentives are powerful things, and winning is what matters in the NFL, so we should expect coaches to act rationally and just take the sure thing in obvious situations — like when the kickoff travels all the way into the end zone.
After all, five things can happen when you return a kickoff, four of them bad:
You can be tackled short of the 25, costing your team field position
You can get injured
You can muff the ball instead of letting it bounce through the end zone
You can get penalized.
This is an absolute no-brainer decision. Right?
Not so fast, chief! These are NFL coaches we’re talking about. It turns out that through six weeks, all but five teams have done the seemingly unthinkable and returned the ball out of the end zone, forsaking a guaranteed start at the 25 in return for…well for what I can’t actually say.
The Green Bay Packers in particular — a team not known for their special teams acumen in recent years — absolutely love to take the ball out. Almost 40 percent of the time a kickoff makes it to the end zone, the Packers give their return guys the green light to lose yards, get penalties, and put their brains in jeopardy. In the 10 times GB has pulled this stunt so far this season, they’ve accumulated -63 net return yards and cost themselves around four and a half expected points.
Here’s the entire list of shame:
Data from nflreader. Code available from touchbackr package.
Just two teams have positive net yards on plays where they returned the ball out of the end zone: Las Vegas and Seattle. Everyone else is in the red.
Overall across the league, teams are averaging -4.5 net yards when they make the stupendous error of returning a kickoff. The traveling circus out of Denver muffed a kickoff. Collectively teams have been penalized 79 yards. 25.4 expected points have been set on fire, which is around 0.6% of the total points scored in the NFL so far this season. And Green Bay and Pittsburgh had a BYE week this week!
And this analysis is conservative. It only looks at kicks that made it to the end zone, where coaches could easily instruct their players not to even touch the ball. Taking a fair catch in the field of play is likely +EV up to the 10 yard line or so, perhaps even further out (I haven’t run the numbers).
Why is this happening, you might be asking yourself? Honestly, I got nothing. It makes about as much sense as snake mittens. It’s…dare I say…irrational. Petulance is my working hypothesis. “Don’t tell me how to football, NFL Rules Committee!”
Anyway I’m calling this play The Packer, and I expect to see much more of it in the coming weeks. Because as all good Football Guys know: To own the NFL Rules Committee, a team must first own itself.
The Air Yards Buy Low
No notes on the Buy Low this week. I did get it out early, though.