Golden Age of NFL passing has arrived and the revolution will be televised

Passing is king, and some of the unlikeliest heroes are the poster boys through Week 1.

The biggest story,at least on the field, from the first week of this NFL season comes out of Baltimore, where a quarterback that some thought shouldn’t even be playing the position had a passing performance that has rarely been matched in the entire history of the league.

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Lamar Jackson put on an absolute clinic against for his Baltimore Ravens against Miami. Yes, the Dolphins appear to be in full #FishTank mode, but if you had to pick a position of strength for them you’d probably land on their secondary.

Jackson wasn’t the only one with a game to remember this week. The Bengals' Andy Dalton, Dallas QB Dak Prescott, and Washington's own Case Keenum all had career days as well. Derek Carr looked less like Blake Bortles and more like 2016 Derek Carr in the Raiders opener. Rookie sixth-round pick Gardner Minshew (who?) completed 88% of his passes in a game he wasn’t even supposed to be playing for the Jacksonville Jaguars.

Altogether, these points paint a larger picture of what you probably are already aware of. The NFL is a passing league now.

In this piece, I’ll attempt to answer who, what, when, where, and why the NFL has trended in this direction.  But first, let's take a peek at where teams stand after week 1 with our EPA power rankings.

No big shocker at the top, as Baltimore's 49-point drubbing of Miami puts them firmly at the top of the EPA leaderboard.  The Titans, on the back of 3 interceptions from their defense, are the surprise team at #2.  Their offense was pretty average, but the way they held Baker Mayfield and the Browns to just 13 points really launched them up early.

San Francisco, also with 3 picks in their first game, jumps immediately to #6 here, but their negative offensive impact will likely drag them back down next week unless we see something better from Jimmy Garoppolo.

Near the bottom, Atlanta's offense is somewhat of a surprise, being completely shut down by Minnesota.  They'll be at home in week 2 against an Eagles defense that got slashed through the air by Case Keenum last week, so they're offense is a good bounce back candidate in week 2.

The Chicago Bears, the EPA leaders from last year, start this year all the way down at 25.  Their defense, while not yet on par with their incredible performance last season, is still a top-10 defense.  But their offense was worse than every other team in week 1 except for the Cleveland Browns.  All eyes will remain on Mitchell Trubisky this week as we wait to see if he can be the quarterback the Bears need him to be to make a deeper playoff run in 2019.

Speaking of the importance of Trubisky, let's get back to the idea of the modern passing NFL.  What exactly has been going on the last decade or so in regards to the forward pass?

Who?

Basically every coach born after Mike Zimmer is putting an offense on the field that passes more.

What?

The decrease in pass attempts in 2017 appears to just be a random blip, as 2019 has already jumped up to the highest passes per game since at least 2009. This isn’t just an increase in total plays because of faster paced offenses either, as the number of plays per game has largely leveled off since 2013, while the number of run plays has seen a decrease that mirrors the increase in pass plays.

When?

The decision to call a pass play or a run play is largely dependent on in-game factors such as down, distance, score differential, and time remaining in the half. On third down specifically, we can usually predict whether a play is going to be a pass or a run simply based on the distance to go. But what about early downs? This is where teams have more leeway in terms of calling the plays they want to call, rather than the ones they need to call in order to convert the series, and this is where we see the increase in pass attempts.

Third-down pass attempts after the first week of 2019 are about the same as they were in 2012. Meanwhile, both first and second down pass attempts have seen an increase of about 2 per game. This is telling us that teams are passing more when they don’t have to pass.

Where?

A lot of talk around the passing boom comes around to the middle of the field opening up for wide receivers. In old school football, any time a receiver went over the middle of the field, they were going to get lit up, but with new rules focusing on player safety that’s no longer the case (more on that later). So is the middle of the field really being targeted more than it used to be?

The first week of 2019 has the middle getting targeted at the highest rate this decade, but that’s a pretty small sample size. Looking behind this year, the share of targets per game towards the middle of the field in 2018 was by and large the same as it was in 2011, with a dip in 2014. The bigger difference comes in the depth of the average target over time.

Teams have been embracing shorter, higher completion probability throws with each passing year. Throws at every location on the field are traveling less through the air than they were in 2012. This year could be bringing back the deep middle throws, or maybe that increase is just Lamar Jackson’s fault. Throws to the outside of the field have been decreasing in air yards almost every season since 2012, and have taken a nosedive early on in 2019. A rise in running back targets over the years has to play a large factor here, with high-powered offenses like the Saints and Chiefs showing the potential of having a good short passing game.

Why?

The importance of a strong running game and being able to defend against the run is ingrained in football coaches, players, and fans everywhere. Even in today’s NFL, coaches still can’t help but preach the importance of establishing the run. So why is the run game fading while the pass game rises? One factor is the increase in penalties that affect the passing game more than the running game. Penalties on pass plays that resulted in a first down for the offense in the first week of 2019 were the highest they’ve been since 2014, when an emphasis on defensive holding and illegal contact was implemented after the “Legion of Boom” in Seattle held the best passing offense in NFL history to just 8 points in the Super Bowl.

Coaches are also using play-action at a higher rate than ever as well, which improves quarterback numbers almost universally. Combining forward thinking coaches with secondaries that have to avoid contact with receivers at all costs leads us to a very basic truth that really underlies all of the statistics regarding the passing boom.

Passing just works.

The EPA/pass in 2018 was 3 times that of 2009. Coupled with the increase in pass attempts, we’re looking at a total value of 1200 EPA over the course of a full season being added through the air in the last decade.

It’s a passing league now, and Lamar Jackson showed us on Sunday the true potential of what that really means. Just for some extra perspective on his day: Last season, the Ravens finished with 34.7 passing EPA, 21st in the league. The Chiefs, with MVP Patrick Mahomes, finished with 239 passing EPA. Lamar Jackson last week is on a 16-game pace for 495 EPA through the air.

Well, coaches did say they wanted to get their running backs more involved in the pass game.

Lamar Jackson scored 5 TD passes today: "Not bad for a running back."pic.twitter.com/OoVzUugdY6

— Dov Kleiman (@NFL_DovKleiman) September 8, 2019