Is Running the Ball in the NFL Overvalued??
In the past we’ve seen a large amount of success with elite rushing teams pounding their way to wins, controlling the time of possession, and maximizing their impact on the ground. But that was the past. In the modern NFL, is this the best strategy to win? No, it isn’t. In the current state of the NFL running the ball is overrated and overvalued, and in a large part has little to no impact on the success of a team. The only type of rushing offense that actually works in the modern NFL is a scrambling quarterback, in the likes of Lamar Jackson and Kyler Murray.
First off let’s take a look at how much running the ball actually impacts a team's ability to score points. The league average EPA/play of a rushing play is about -0.06, which is insanely inefficient. An average rushing team is literally taking points off the board every time they hand the ball off to their running back. The top 10 offenses in terms of efficiency last season happened to be the top 10 most efficient passing attacks in the league as well. As we can see here on the first graph to the bottom(Figure 1) the correlation between EPA/play and Rush EPA/play is incredibly low, showing that how well you run the ball barely contributes to how good your offense is. Now if we look at the graph below(Figure 2) we can see that there is a direct correlation between how good a team is at passing the ball and how good your offense actually is. So what exactly does this mean? It shows that teams with a better passing offense will have a much better overall offense while rushing barely contributes any part to the success of your offense. But can we even rely on EPA as a stat? According to ESPN, “EPA is the granular, play-by-play version of what wins games.” In other terms, EPA is a metric to measure a team’s success. That being said, we have seen that a team's success in running the ball has no correlation to the success of an offense.
Well, rushing has no impact on an offense's success, but does rushing volume have an effect?
Not at all. Out of the top 5 offenses in the league based on points scored and EPA only 1 of those teams was in the top 10 for rushing volume and 3 of them were in the bottom half. This shows that the more rushes you take do not make your offense better, in fact, the fewer rushes you take, the better your offense is.
Looking at the graph below(Figure 3) we can see how a lot of the top passing offenses are relatively close to the mean rushing efficiency. These top 10 pass offenses are also the top 10 offenses in the league, which clearly shows that passing has a lot more impact on rushing. Also, it is seen here that pass EPA variance is a lot higher than rush EPA meaning that the better your passing game is the more it sets you apart from the rest of the offenses.
But doesn’t a better rushing offense mean more men in the box?
No, it actually doesn’t. If you look at the bottom graph(Figure 4 and 5) you can see that there is literally no correlation between how good a team is at running the ball compared to how many men are in the box. This means, contrary to popular opinion, running the ball does not open up the passing game.
What about play action?
Again, it is a common misconception that a good rushing game or a high volume rushing game contributes to a successful play action passing game. If you look at the figures below(Figure 6) it perfectly displays that there is no correlation whatsoever between how good a rushing game is and the success of a play-action pass. Nor is there a connection between the volume of rushes and the success of a play-action pass.
To further the point of how unvaluable running the football is we can take a look at how much rush defense correlates to success. As we can see in this graph(Figure 7) here stopping the run has no correlation whatsoever to winning games. This again shows how unimportant running the ball is, because if it was actually important teams with good rush defenses would be able to lock down an offense and win games. In other words, if offenses aren’t able to run the ball, it doesn’t harm them.
Of course, there is one crazy outlier, which is the Ravens. They led the league in rushing % and ended up being one of the best, most efficient offenses in the league. This is because a large percentage of their carries went to the quarterback, Lamar Jackson. Statistics show that the EPA/play of a quarterback run is much more valuable than a regular rushing play, hence why the Raven's offense is so effective. The Ravens, just like the other top 10 offenses are also very good in passing efficiency, but are miles ahead of the next best team in rushing efficiency, due to a quarterback-centered rushing scheme.
So what’s the point of all this?
The point is that running the football is completely useless in the modern NFL and to be completely honest, teams may be better off without it. Passing the ball is much, much more efficient, and if you want to be a successful team you NEED to be elite at passing the ball. Running the ball is the most overrated aspect of football and is the most unimportant part of the game.
