The Fantasy Football Historian: Evolution of the NFL – The Fantasy Footballers

So far in the Fantasy Historian series weve focused on epic performances, both from individual players and entire lineups. In this article, we studyhow the game has changed.This discussion will center around the evolution of the NFL with, as always, the resulting fantasy implications.

Data, unless otherwise specified, comes from nflfastR.

Lets start with some Kirk Goldsberry-esque cartography charts to visualize the current state of NFL aerial attacks. The coordinate data is thanks to Ethan Douglas and Sarah Mallepalle et al.(you can find the data here). Base code for the charts is from Thomas Mock.

The below visuals show the distribution of hot spots for NFL incompletions and non-TD completions in 2020. The redder the area, the more passes in that spot. The line of scrimmage is shown in blue at the zero-yard line, and all passes are relative to that location. Of course, in real life, these passes occurred at lines of scrimmage all over the field.

Note that completions did occur further than 20 yards from the line of scrimmage, there just wasnt enough density to show up on this chart (less than 5% of completions).

Lets take a look:

Overall, to complement these charts, its important to remember that teams have been getting much better at passing. Glancing at the annual passing stats from Pro Football Reference shows how basically every major statistic (Att, Cmp, Cmp %, Yds, TD, INT) has improved over the past few years.

Indeed, possibly because passing has gotten better, teams are deciding to do it more often. Pass probability (% of plays that are pass plays) has slowly but steadily increased, paced by the total number of plays per game. These two factors combined mean, simply put, more passing plays overall! All told, this data implies that pass-catching RBs are more valuable than ever.

A perhaps surprising trend is the percentage of passes out of the shotgun formation. This has risen sharply since the early 2000s, and is now sitting above 80%. Just two decades ago, the probability was flipped: there was just about a 20% chance of shotgun formation on a passing play.

The dream of every fantasy manager is to roster a bell-cow back: the type of RB that dominates his teams backfield. Of course, NFL head coaches and offensive coordinators arent playing fantasy football, and the backfield by committee is a common rushing approach.

In this set-up, teams spread out their carries and targets to multiple running backs; often, one back will specialize on first downs, another on third downs, another as a change of pace RB, etc. To put it simply, this can make fantasy football difficult. More mouths to feed means that production is more opaque and generally harder to predict (and diluted across different players).

Unfortunately, committees areon the rise! Check out this chart, as well as some discussion points, below:

Given the physical nature of the sport, one of the best ways to track the trends of football is to analyze the physical traits of the players themselves.

In this section, we visualize player height and weight, measured at the weekly level and aggregated to a season-long average, among players who scored 3 fantasy points or more (standard scoring). Lets start with height:

The moves have been more significant and aligned in weights:

Lets now consider actual fantasy scoring (Half PPR) since 1999.

I know what you and Kyle are thinking: where is all of the kicking analysis? Fear not!

Like passing, NFL teams have gotten much better at kicking. Teams have been sending it more often and from further out: 3 yards deeper on average over the past two decades. Kickers have stepped up to the plate, delivering more accurate performances and being blocked far less.

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Any other trends youd like me to investigate? See anything that looks off? Message me on Twitter.

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The Fantasy Football Historian: Evolution of the NFL - The Fantasy Footballers