NFL 2024/25 Setting The Scene

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Richard 'Tighty' Prew - Setting the Scene

Ahead of the first week of the season I thought I would talk about some of the structural themes taking place in the NFL. Firstly, they intrigue the nerd in me, secondly it saves making the weekly write-ups too long as many of these themes will influence the ideas behind the individual recommendations through the season.

You might remember last season an early season trend, that offenses struggled relative to defenses, was seen again. Part of this in intuitive, many starting offenses do not play much in  pre-season and it takes time to gel, especially if it’s a new scheme with new co-ordinators. This generally sorts itself by about week 5-6.

In recent seasons though offenses have found it tough. NFL scoring is currently at it’s lowest levels since the late 2000s. Last year across all regular season games there was on average 2.25 offensive touchdowns a game, down from 2.74 in 2020 and at its lowest level since 2014. Will we see a rebound next season?

Well the place to start with this is that the NFL is a cyclical game, whether in terms of which teams are ready to compete. The draft, free agency and coaching changes make it possible for teams to go from near the bottom to near the top quickly- it happens every season – a deliberate NFL strategy to encourage parity and have continual interest in all their Cities and medias.

The overwhelming current restriction on offenses is that defenses play two deep safeties with the primary aim of restricting big passing plays. Itself this is a response to rule changes that make it more difficult for defenses to play wide receivers without incurring penalties. At some stage this is going to swing back as innovative offense finds a solution. Is it this season?

Last season, NFL defenses played two-high coverage on 48% of opponent drop-backs (not including goal-line plays), with 23 teams over 40%. No team saw two-high more than the Chiefs, who dealt with it on 455 dropbacks in 2023. Understandable enough, you are facing Patrick Mahomes. First strategy has to be to try to prevent him beating you with big plays.

However the Chiefs have an all-time great coach, and they countered what they saw with “flood” concepts, putting four wide receivers in a bunch on one side of the field and completed 71.4% of their throws in this formation and turned in a 8-0 touchdown-to-interception rate when doing so. Expect more teams to follow in a response to the core coverages we are seeing from today's NFL defenses that are designed to limit explosive throws down the field.

In today's NFL, the ball is being delivered fast, as 16 quarterbacks registered an average time to throw of 2.8 seconds or less in 2023. I expect to see press coverage rates climb this upcoming season to counter the three- and five-step passing game.. Press coverage helps take away those quick-game targets, forcing quarterbacks to spend more time reading it out and making them more susceptible to opponents' pass rushes.

Meanwhile Pre-snap motion rates took over the NFL in 2023. Twenty-four teams used motion on at least 500 snaps, with the Miami Dolphins leading with 872 (successfully, Tyreek Hill lead the NFL in receiving yards in the NFL’s most explosive offense). In all, motion before and at the snap was used on 51.4% of all plays, the highest in a season since ESPN began tracking it in 2017 (when it was used on just 34.9% of plays).

In weeks 1-9, NFL teams used pre-snap motion on just 46% of passing plays. In the playoffs, this jumped to 64%. We see that the coaches of the best NFL teams were *deliberately* increasing their motion rates throughout the course of the season

In 2024, there are several coaching changes that are likely to bring fundamental changes in how teams use pre-snap motion in their playbooks with head coaches from the “coaching tree” of Shanahan (49ers), McVay (Rams) and McDaniel (Dolphins) now in place at six other teams. Offensive head coaches at the Packers, Bengals, Vikings and Falcons and defensive head coaches at the Jets and Texans, with a Texans offensive co-ordinator from the same system.

We saw last season the dramatic impact of a new coaching team and highly drafted rookie Quarterback at the Texans. This season there should be a dramatic change in the Falcons offense, to use an obvious example, and I’ll look to see if early season prices reflect this. The Falcons defense is such that we might be headed back to high scoring shootouts in their games, if the Falcons offense performs as a new scheme and all their talent implies now the huge discount for old-fashioned conservative coaching no longer applies.

Another example would be the New Orleans Saints where Klint Kubiak has arrived as offensive co-ordinator, calling plays too. Kubiak was the 49ers passing game co-ordinator last season under Kyle Shanahan (the second most motion heavy pass offense). The Saints were dead last in pre-snap motion rates in 2023. Expect the likes of Olave, Shaheed, and Kamara to be schemed up more creatively in 2024

NFL defenses played nickel (5 defensive backs, only 2 linebackers) on 65.6% of snaps last season, a rate that has steadily climbed since 2019. In fact, 14 teams had a rate of over 70% last season. So called “sub packages” have become the base defensive personnel in today's NFL, which gives offenses a lighter box to run against and forces the slot corner to tackle on the edge. Plus, with defenses running some 5-1 nickel fronts (five defensive linemen, one linebacker) often lack a true cut-back defender at the second level. Don't be surprised if teams run more this season to attack those sub-package fronts.

Finally, kick off rules have been changed for this season with the aim of making kick-offs a relevant offensive play again. I’ll list the new rules

• The kickoff team must have five players on each side of the ball.
• At least two players must be lined up outside the yard-line number and two players between the inbounds lines (hash marks) and the yard-line number.
• At least eight players of the receiving team must be lined up in the 15-yard “setup zone” prior to kickoff; only three receiving-team players can remain outside of the setup zone.
• No wedge blocks are permitted. A wedge block is defined as “two or more players intentionally aligning shoulder-to-shoulder within two yards of each other, and who move forward together in an attempt to block for the runner.”
• Double-team blocks can only be performed by members of the receiving team who were originally lined up in the set-up zone at the time of the kick.
• Until the ball is touched or hits the ground, no player on either the receiving or kicking team may block within the 15-yard area from the kicking team’s restraining line.
• The ball is dead if it is not touched by the receiving team and touches the ground in the end zone (touchback).

In 2023 preseason, 63% of kick-offs were returned. This preseason just finished saw 78% of kicks returned. Cowboys special teams coordinator John Fassel estimates that the return rate on kick-offs will be about 55 to 60% in the regular season compared to a 77% touchback rate in 2023, the highest since it moved the kick-off to the 35-yard line in 2011. Not so much for the early weeks of the season but something I will be watching to see if there might be player props (touchdowns etc) for kick-off returners worth playing.

I’ll be back with Week One write-ups before next weekend. Potentially I will have something for the opening game of the season, on Friday 7^th September at 1.20am UK time, the Ravens at the Chiefs in a repeat of last season’s AFC Championship game (which still keeps me awake at night as i exclaim "run the damn ball" to myself.) but in general I will be focussing on games on Sunday/Monday on a weekly basis.

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