2014 Final Regular Season Score Report

So we finally end one unholy FUBAR of an NFL season.

Let's go over Week 17 first.

• Per-game average for the week:  41.5.
• Although 12 games were competitive into the 4th quarter (a couple only barely, one by only four seconds)...
• Only ONE game was decided by a score in the final two minutes -- and that was New Orleans giving Tampa Bay the #1 Draft Pick!!!  Touchdown just inside the two minutes, safety a little while after for the three-point win.
• The over was 6-10.
• Home teams were 9-7, including the games sealing the top two NFC seeds and the Sunday nighter.  In fact, the last five games to finish were won by the home team.
• Home teams were called for more penalties in 7 of the 16 games.
• Over another penalty fewer a game this week.  179 in 16 games, just over 11 a game.
• Winning teams only averaged about 5 penalties apiece.  Pittsburgh had one, Denver had one, Seattle (and New Orleans) had two, Green Bay and Indianapolis (and Minnesota) had four.
• Team with more penalties this week was 3-10-3.  Anyone thinking there was some messages in those last two statements?
• Team with more Points of Emphasis accepted fouls was 5-8-3.
• Included in those eight losses for more PoE fouls were the last five games played -- the same last five the home teams all won, including Seattle and Green Bay securing the byes and Pittsburgh winning the AFC North Sunday night.

So here's you're 2014 in Review as far as the score report goes:

• For the first time since I started these charts (I believe this is the fourth year.), the NFL did NOT break their scoring record for points per game.  Last year, they averaged 46.707 per game for the season.  This year's average?  45.1875.  Almost a field-goal lower than last year.

You have to go back three seasons to 2011 to get back that low.

Some other interesting points on the direct scoring:

• Through ten weeks, the average was at 46.68.  The last seven weeks averaged 43.17 points per game.
• In what I believe to be no coincidence, the SeaThugs' last loss was in Week 11.  Their last six games (all wins), they gave up three points twice, six points twice, seven points, and fourteen points in wins over 10-6 Philly, 11-5 Arizona (twice), 8-8 San Francisco (twice) and St. Louis.
• Twice this year, Weeks 11 and 15, the average couldn't even reach 38.

Now we take a look at the final numbers about Cliffhanger and Competitive Games:

• Last year, 56 out of 256 games were decided in the last two minutes and overtime, in that the game-winning score (or, if applicable, no score at all) occurred then.
• This year, only 40 such games occurred, 15.625% of all contests.

One of the biggest stories of this season is going to be the struggle the NFL had with the off-the-field issues, and this is one great example.  The NFL LOVES to glue butts to seats with nailbiting cliffhangers, and they just didn't happen this year.

Although one week had six such encounters, three weeks had none at all.

• The NFL reported last year that 68% of all games were within one score at some point in the fourth quarter (and, in their case, that's seven points or less), with 48% of all games decided by that amount.
• I took the situation to eight points, and found that only 62.89% of all games were eight points or within at some point in the fourth quarter.  That's 161/256.
• And, as for games decided by eight or less, that was only 107/256, or 41.79%.

Another piece of prima facie evidence the league was having more trouble with the off-field stuff than anyone will ever care to admit to you on NFL shill-dom.

If you bet money on the scoring going up this year, you had a very bad year:

• The over was 117-135-2 with 2 middles this year.  If you bet the over on one unit for every game this year and laid off the middles, you'd have lost 28.636 units.

After ten weeks, the over was 76-68-1!  Meaning that, for the last seven weeks of the year, the average week was no better than 6-10 for the over.  Again, telling us something, NFL?

• A statistic I stopped tracking, and shouldn't have.  National games (meaning Thursday night, Sunday night, Monday night, and the three on Thanksgiving and the Saturday before Christmas) totaled fifty games on this year's schedule.
• Only one cliffhanger before week 8 on all of it, the first 22 games.
• Second one in week 8, third in week 12, one more in week 13, and two of the pre-Christmas Saturday ones.
• Meaning only TWELVE PERCENT of the national games (full-nation) were cliffhangers, SIX out of the 50.
• Conversely, HALF of those fifty games were over before the fourth quarter even started.

Home-field advantage worked wonders in the NFL this season.

• With the third week in a row that the home teams went 9-7, the home team went 148-103-1 in the 252 non-neutral games (three in London, one moved to Detroit).   .589 winning percentage at home.

Green Bay was 8-0, Detroit, Seattle, and Arizona all 7-1.
Denver was 8-0, New England 7-1.

• Home teams were called for more penalties in 108 of the 252 games, only a little more than 40% of the time.  There were 24 games in which both teams got called for the same number.

Other penalty numbers:

• 3,385 accepted penalties were called this season.  That's an average of about  13 1/4 penalties a game.
• Winning teams got called for 19 more penalties than losing teams.
• The team with more penalties won 113 games, lost 118, with 24 ending drawn on the penalty count.
• 728 fouls on the noted 2014 Points of Emphasis (penalties designed to increase the passing game) were accepted this year. Many more were declined!  The average was only about 3 a game, but there was a much higher correlation of winning if you got fewer of those penalties called against you than fewer penalties in general.