NFL Midway Point: 5 trends and lessons to take from the 1st half, including a big lack of scoring
The NFL season has been weird so far. Maybe we should have seen that coming when Aaron Rodgers blew out his Achilles in the New York Jets' fourth offensive play of their season opener.
This season has been disjointed. There have been a lot of results in games that make no sense, like the Arizona Cardinals beating the Dallas Cowboys in Week 3. There have been a lot of low-scoring, ugly games. There's no obvious MVP favorite because great seasons have been hard to come by. Everything seems to change from week to week.
But it's still the NFL. There's still drama. We can't wait to see what happens next. Near the midpoint of the season, let's take a look at five trends and lessons from the first half.
QB play is down and so is scoring
Maybe this is finally the year when voters don't look at just quarterbacks for MVP and pick the top one. None of them have been great. Some of the best players in the NFL, like Josh Allen, Patrick Mahomes and Jalen Hurts, all have eight interceptions, tied for second in the league behind Jimmy Garoppolo. They've been good but not great. No quarterback is having a transcendent season, though Tua Tagovailoa might disagree.
Scoring is far down this season, in part because quarterbacks aren't at a high level. In the betting world, unders are hitting at a 60.5 percent clip (69-45 to the under, according to Covers.com). A few high-scoring games in Week 8 brought the season average up to 21.8 points per game by team, but that's still the second-lowest mark since 2009. Each team is scoring 2.35 touchdowns per game, the lowest mark since 2006. In Week 6, the NFL had its lowest-scoring week (18.4 points per team) since Week 15 in 2014.
In a league that skews all the rules to stimulate scoring, NFL teams are having a hard time getting in the end zone. Defenses have caught up a bit, limiting deep plays. Quarterback injuries have been a problem for a few teams. And with the weather starting to turn bad, it's hard to believe we'll see a big scoring spike in the second half.
Dolphins are the outlier
With everyone struggling to score, the Miami Dolphins have a shot at being one of the highest-scoring teams ever.
The Dolphins are averaging 453.3 yards per game, not far off the 2011 Saints record of 467.1. If the Dolphins maintain 453.3 per game, that would be third all time. If they continue to score 33.9 points per game they'll finish with 576 points, which would be third all time behind the 2013 Broncos and 2007 Patriots. And they're doing all of this while scoring elsewhere around the NFL is down. Miami has 271 points and nobody else is above 224.
There's a reason Tua Tagovailoa is an MVP favorite, and Tyreek Hill is on pace to break Calvin Johnson's record for receiving yards in a season (and why Hill should get plenty of MVP consideration too). The Dolphins still have to show they can beat elite teams, but they're doing something nobody else in the NFL is doing, and that's scoring a bunch of points. That makes them a team worth watching.
NFC postseason is practically set
We can predict almost all of the NFC playoff teams right now. The Philadelphia Eagles and Dallas Cowboys are both making it. The Detroit Lions will win the NFC North. The San Francisco 49ers and Seattle Seahawks will also both make it. Someone will win the NFC South.
And that seventh team? Good luck.
The Minnesota Vikings were angling for that spot after getting back to 4-4. Then they lost Kirk Cousins for the season. The only other NFC wild-card contender at .500 is the New Orleans Saints, who are behind the Atlanta Falcons for first place in the NFC South due to a tiebreaker. The Saints and Falcons aren't great but one will probably get the final NFC spot because both teams have soft schedules. There's a definitive tier break between the handful of good teams in the NFC and everyone else.
Caleb Williams sweepstakes
There's a misconception that teams have been tanking or will tank for the top 2024 draft pick and Caleb Williams. There's no evidence of any team intentionally losing. There are, however, some seriously bad teams that will be right in the mix for the first pick and a franchise-changing quarterback prospect.
There are six teams with two or fewer wins: the Cardinals, Panthers, Bears, Giants, Patriots, and Packers. Nine other teams have three victories. Some three-win teams like the Las Vegas Raiders, who just fired their coach Josh McDaniels, and Washington Commanders, who were major sellers at the trade deadline, look much worse than a three-win team. Usually there are a couple teams in the mix for the top pick by the end of the season. There will probably be a handful or more this season.
Perhaps late in the season we'll see some odd decisions by teams who aren't too interested in winning. But there hasn't been any tanking yet. There are just a lot of bad teams.
No great teams
After a Week 5 blowout of the Cowboys, we thought the 49ers might be a historically great team. They haven't won a game since.
That's the 2023 NFL season. Not only is nothing permanent, nothing seems to last more than a week or two. By the end of October, there were no undefeated teams and only one team had fewer than two losses. And even the 7-1 Philadelphia Eagles aren't as great as they were last season. Everyone has flaws. It's a strange situation in which there is a very small group of teams you'd call Super Bowl contenders, but there aren't any teams that are clearly ahead of the pack.
We just saw a wacky MLB playoffs, many of the top teams being knocked off early and unlikely teams making runs, and that might repeat in the NFL postseason.
