NFL Analysis
1/3/25
9 min read
Four Ups, Four Downs: Week 18 & 2024 Trends
While it’s a new year on the calendar, we’re ending the 2024 regular season. For a year-end wrap up, this weeks’ Four Ups, Four Downs will be less about the small details and focus a but more on the bigger trends from the year.
Up: Rise in Cover-2 and how to get to it
NFL defenses ran Cover-2 on 12.9 percent of plays in 2024, according to TruMedia, the highest rate over the past five seasons. The re-emergence of Cover-2 lines up with the league’s shift back to two-high coverages.
Even in the peak of the Fangio two-high revolution, that was more about the pre-snap shells and how it allowed the defense to rotate after the snap. Those Fangio teams and the offshoots were among the league-leaders in running Cover-3. The only offense teams were heavily playing two-high coverages against after the snap was the Chiefs.
But now as two-high coverages have risen, teams are back to using Cover-2 and having success with it. Offenses averaged -0.02 EPA per play when facing Cover-2 this season while they held onto the ball longer (2.95 seconds on average) and threw the ball shorter (6.4 average depth of target) than at nay point in the past five seasons.
The two teams leading the way in Cover-2 usage came from the NFC North, the Minnesota Vikings and Green Bay Packers. Minnesota changed up all the ways they could get into Cover-2 with multiple different players dropping into the deep half of the field, often behind their blitzes.
Meanwhile, the Packers have led the league in usage during the back half of the season and they rank second in EPA per play among teams using at least 50 snaps of it since Week 10.
Green Bay, and other teams such as Houston, have used a bunch of inverted Cover-2, which drops a middle of the field defender closer to the line of scrimmage while the corners drop into the deep half. It’s great as a changeup for teams that run a lot of Cover-3 (Packers are 12 in the league since Week 10) since the pre-snap looks can be similar.
— Dan's Clips (@dansfilmclips) January 3, 2025
It’s all about changing the looks on defense and not giving a stright picture. Few defenses are running straight Cover-2 like they might have in the early 2000’s but defenses have found more creative and effective ways to get there this season.
Down: Blitz Rates
Unless teams go all-out in Week 18, this season to going to set a low in overall blitz rate over the past decade.
Earlier in the season, we wrote about the effectiveness of teams blitzing this season and how even though the blitz rate wasn’t as high, the sack rate was up and teams were having more success when sending extra rushers.
That effectiveness slowed down over the second half of the season, as did the rate of blitzes. Through Week 8, defenses blitzed on 26.1 percent of dropbacks and offenses averaged -0.01 EPA per play with an 8.9 percent sack rate. Since Week 9, defenses have blitzed on 24.4 percent of dropbacks while offenses averaged 0.10 EPA per play with a 7.4 percent sack rate.
A lot of this stems from offenses finding explosive plays against the blitz during the second half of the season. Since Week 9, offenses are averaging a 14.8 percent explosive pass rate against blitzes. That was 13.8 percent through Week 8 and 13.2 percent in 2023.
An increase in screens has been big there with those making up 8.3 percent of the explosive plays during the second half of the season. Screens and crossers to the open voids from the blitz have been the biggest increases in efficiency when defenses send extra rushers.
Up: Passing Efficiency
This has been The Year Of The Run Game but it’s been the best in passing efficiency since 2019.
If we include designed quarterback runs, this was the most efficiency season for quarterbacks (0.01 EPA per play) since 2014 (0.02).
It’s not difficult to see to the correlation to how teams have improved on the ground. However, truths like “this is the closest rushing efficiency has been to passing efficiency” that popped up in the beginning of the year no longer hold.
The link is still there, though. This has been the most efficienct year since 2020 with play-action at 0.12 EPA per play. We know a good run game is not necessary for play-action to work or be effective but with so many teams spending more time on the run game and being diverse in the looks on the ground, that’s increased the diversity of what can be done off play-action. That’s sparked the increase in efficiency even though the rate of play-action remains lower than it was at the start of the decade (but increased to 14.9 percent after a low of 14 percent last season).
Offenses are still throwing shorter in general, a trend that has been going for the past decade, but that’s also led to the lowest rate of inaccurate throws by quarterbacks as a group. Teams are also getting better at taking those shorter passes and gaining yards after the catch with them as 52.5 percent of passing yards came after the catch this season.
Down: Tackling
FTN tracks avoided tackles, which combines missed tackles and non-contact avoided tackles. They have this data going back to 2021. There were eight teams this season with an avoided tackle rate of at least 20 percent on defense. That’s easily the highest of the past four seasons. There were just three such teams in 2023.
It’s been easy to see if watching defenses, especially out in space when making defensive backs try to tackle. That’s been part of the rise in both rushing efficiency and yards after the catch this season — offenses are getting better at forcing defenders to tackle and that hasn’t worked out for defenses.
On runs to the outside this season, there are 19 defenses with an avoided tackle rate above 20 percent. Last season that number was nine. This isn’t just on bad defenses. The Texans and Broncos show up in the 20 percent club both overall and runs to the outside, something to watch for the regular season finale for Denver and the playoffs for Houston.
Up: An NFC North Championship Game
This is a very cool thing and one of the few that matters in Week 18: the Detroit Lions vs the Minnesota Vikings for the NFC North title and the No. 1 seed in the NFC. Occasionally we’ll get divisional title games in the final week of the season but rarely do we get ones where the stakes are this high. More often it would be the equivalent if we got this year’s Buccaneers and Falcons playing for the NFC South.
Now we get two of the league’s best teams — second and seventh by DVOA — playing for a bye with the loser dropping down to the fifth seed and a road game.
A Vikings-Lions regular season finale is likely to be better than most of what we’ll see in the opening round of the playoffs. Let’s look at two aspects quickly.
Will Goff continue to beat the blitz?
When these two teams last met, the Vikings blitzed Goff on 55.2 percent of his dropbackcs and Goff went 14-of-15 for 156 yards and a touchdown for 0.56 EPA per play against it. The Lions had a plan against these blitzes — Goff got the ball out in 2.29 seconds against the blitz.
Despite the heavy blitz rate, Minnesota only blitzed one time on third down, leaving the rest on early downs. The Lions can control early downs with runs, which make third downs more manageable and leave the Vikings less likely to blitz in obvious passing situations on third-and-long.
Is this set up for a big Sam Darnold game?
Darnold is coming off a game in which he threw for a career-high 377 yards last week. In the previous meeting against the Lions, Darnold threw for 259 yards with a touchdown and an interception for 0.13 EPA per play. It was a fine performance, but not the top end of what we’ve seen this Minnesota offense produce at its peak.
He completed 81 percent of his passes against the Lions, but 45.5 percent of his completions failed to produce a positive play for the offense. That was a season-high rate for Darnold.
That was also the highest rate of man coverage Darnold saw in a game this season at 51 percent. Darnold was fourth in EPA per play against man coverage and given the Lions still like to lean into that aggressive style of play even with the injuries in the secondary, that could be a place where the Vikings take a clear advantage.
Down: How We Talk About The MVP Debate
I typically enjoy having discussions around awards because those usually give us a glimpse into how we’re talking about the game at that time. Just think back to the last time we had a 2,000-yard rusher. He was the clear MVP back when voters were only given one vote per award. Now we have so much information and a 2,000-yard rusher is probably going to come in around fourth on most ballots.
That’s not to knock the running game or the value of a 2,000-yard season but we’ve collectively been able to have opinions that don’t have to be pinned to round or milestone numbers. We can, in theory, have smarter discussions about it.
But, as many online conversations tend to do, the MVP discussions now — or any award for that matter — tend to focus on knocking a player or players instead of having any actual informative back-and-forth.
Both Lamar Jackson and Josh Allen had incredible seasons. Having this season last year would have made either one the runaway MVP in a year that didn’t have a great quarterback season. We have multiple this year. That’s fun! Celebrate it! Don’t knock one season in an attempt to lift up another.
Up: Celebrating good players
With that said, celebrating good seasons is quite fun so here is where my hypothetical All-Pro ballot would land for the 2024 season.
Down: A lack of Week 18 suspense
With all but two playoff spots locked in and so many bad teams — there are nine with four or fewer wins entering the final week — we’re getting a mostly meaningless slate of Week 18 games. On top of that, the quarterbacking is going to be not great.
