Bills Mathia: Does the modern NFL favor offense?

As promised, there’s discussion about the Buffalo Bills in this episode. A qualifying phrase that’s constantly used by analytics nerds such as myself is “The Modern NFL.” Why? Because the game has changed over time and it’s helpful to discuss the notion that the current analytics/math/stats based conversation is rooted in the more current era. It allows us to better compare apples-to-apples.

With that in mind, something you hear very often about “The Modern NFL” is that it’s an offense-driven league. This sentiment is quite frequently accompanied by the notion that the current state of the league is a not offense-driven, but lopsided toward that side of the game. Is that true? Bills Mathia seeks to answer that question and add in a bit of Buffalo context.

For this episode it might actually be faster to watch the video than read this recap, as I came in under the five-minute mark. Not too shabby and very little investment if you’re wondering what I sound like.

On topic, I don’t want to give away the answer, but we look at drive statistics to come to a conclusion. The basic premise is that in a league skewed toward offense, the expectation is that they’d fulfill their primary objective more often than not. Put in simpler terms, in an offense-skewed league, teams would score more than 50% of the time when they have the ball.

I give a quick answer on whether or not that’s the case, and compare data from 2000 and 2012 to the most recent NFL season to find out if the NFL has shifted one way or the other. It’s a jam-packed five minutes of video and, aw hell...

The NFL is actually a defense-driven league. Watch my dang video and find out why I say that.