The NFL may have achieved its biggest draw ever this 2022 season, and the league is getting closer games than ever before.
But you can’t have it all. The NFL has a scoring problem, and there are some people in league circles who are starting to worry.
NFL teams are averaging 20.76 points per game this season, the lowest output since the 2017 season and the second lowest over the past decade.
It comes two years after the NFL saw its most points ever in a season. The 2020 NFL season scored a record 12,692 points, breaking the previous record of 11,985 points set in the 2013 season.
But he did not hold. Even with an extra game for all teams, the league still only saw 12,502 points in 2021. Now the pace of points has slowed down even more.
NFL EVP of football operations Troy Vincent said this past week at the owners meetings that he looked into the cause of the points drop in 2022 due to the inefficiency of the teams in the zone red. This year teams are scoring touchdowns on 56.5% of trips to the red zone, the lowest mark since 2017.
Perhaps what stands out more is that teams are coming with fewer points in the red zone than in recent history. Red zone scoring percentage — that is a touchdown or field goal — is 84.6%, by far the lowest in the last 10 seasons when he averaged 87%. In fact, the 84.6% red zone scoring percentage is the worst in the league since the 2009 season.
One league source believes defenses have picked up on the offense’s ways in the red zone, especially when it comes to the run-pass option.
There are no immediate changes to the rules coming, he told me. But 2017 was the last time many of these low marks were hit, and the league instituted the body weight rule on sacking the passer the following season.
