The luckiest and unluckiest offenses of 2019
Over the last five years, there have been 889,616 yards of offense and 58,103 points scored. That works out to 15.3 yards per point.
Obviously, it’s not that simple. Some of the points came on special teams, on defense. It’s not a perfect mathematical situation. But for a shorthand, it works.
And when you break it down by team, it’s easy enough to see how lucky or unlucky a team was. If you put up exactly 5,000 yards of offense in a season, that would indicate 326.8 points on the season. If the team instead scored 380 points, it tells you something. Maybe the team was lucky, maybe the team was particularly good at some specific thing, like red-zone scoring or defense scoring. In a vacuum, we don’t know what it tells us, but it tells us something.
Today, I’m looking at the teams that either exceeded or fell short of expectations most dramatically in 2019. Odds are, the points and yards will more closely match up in 2020. Either one will increase or the other will decrease, and that tells you something about the team’s fantasy prospects.
(Friday, I’ll perform the same research on defenses. It’s harder to identify specific actionable fantasy advice from that, but it’s still worth investigating.)
Exceeded expectations
Baltimore Ravens
6,521 yards, 531 points, 104.8 over expectation
In the last five years, the Ravens exceeded expectations by the fifth-most of any team, with Lamar Jackson leading the offense to the fourth-best red-zone offense in the league, a tenth of a percent out of third. We know Lamar Jackson led the league in touchdown percentage, with 9.0% of his pass attempts going for scores, and the team also tied for the second-most rushing scores. The point is, the Ravens were very (very) good in 2019, and we can also expect less efficiency in 2020. Good offense, yes. Exceptional offense, maybe not.
San Francisco 49ers
6,097 yards, 479 points, 80.5 over expectation
The only team with more rushing touchdowns than the Ravens were these 49ers, who made it to the Super Bowl and were second in the league in points scored despite exactly one must-start fantasy player in George Kittle. Sure, if Deebo Samuel makes strides in his second year, if Raheem Mostert can take the starting job and run with it (so to speak), the team will have more offensive weaponry (no matter who the quarterback is, strangely enough). The 49ers were nearly 1,000 yards behind the Ravens on the ground but were still second in the league. That’s a tough act to repeat.
New Orleans Saints
5,982 yards, 458 points, 67.0 over expectation
I’m not going to lie, I’m nervous about the Saints for 2020. Yes, Michael Thomas is the deserving No. 1 wide receiver, and Alvin Kamara and Jared Cook are both starters at their respective positions. But I don’t think this offense has the ceiling it has had in the past, in part because I don’t think it actually had the ceiling we’re used to out of the Saints last year — it was the first time since 2010 the team came in under 6,000 yards of offense, with the relative touchdown success covering for that marginal regression. Expect the big names in New Orleans to be very good again in 2020, but perhaps don’t expect them to be as good.
Fell short of expectations
Oakland Raiders
5,819 yards, 313 points, 67.3 below expectation
For all intents and purposes, the Raiders and Saints put up the same yardage last year (63 apart). And the two were 145 points apart. There were 10 running backs with at least 1,100 rushing yards; only Leonard Fournette and Joe Mixon had fewer rushing scores than Josh Jacobs. There were 29 players with at least 1,000 receiving yards; only Robert Woods and Mike Williams had fewer receiving scores than Darren Waller. Jacobs and Waller could both offer more scoring efficiency in 2020.
Cincinnati Bengals
5,169 yards, 279 points, 58.8 below expectation
Mixon didn’t score his first rushing touchdown until Week 11. Tyler Boyd only had one receiving score to the same point. After years of us saying he only needed health, Tyler Eifert played all 16 games … and scored only three times. A lot of this is going to come down to the quarterback situation and how (probably) Joe Burrow adjusts to the league, but you’ve got to expect this offense to figure things out a little better in 2020.
Jacksonville Jaguars
5,468 yards, 300 points, 57.4 below expectation
The aforementioned Fournette had the fewest rushing touchdowns among the thousand-yard rushers. No other Jaguar scored on the ground all year. Yes, the entire team scored only three rushing touchdowns in 2019. That’s incredible. In the air, Dede Westbrook was held to three touchdowns. The linchpin here is going to be Gardner Minshew’s second season, but assuming he can be a competent quarterback again, Fournette is going to find more touchdown success, and the receivers should as well.