Oh, really, YOU'RE ADMITTING IT, ESPN!!!!

Imagine my surprise when I saw this headline on the Worldwide Leader in Snorts tonight on their website:

How the NFL is manipulating games in 2020:  Fewer holding calls, faster games and way more offense

THAT is a direct title quote from the ESPN article by Kevin Seifert Wednesday morning/late Tuesday night.

ESPN is basically ADMITTING TO YOU that the games are being fixed and the offenses are being primed to go off.

The fact that the NFL is rigging the games to massive offense should not shock you.  Especially in a lack of a preseason and all that, usually the offenses come out sluggish and the games just slog.

Instead:

"In its entire 100-year history, the NFL has never opened a season on the kind of scoring tear we've seen in 2020. Teams are averaging 24.7 offensive points per game during the first three weeks, 16% better than 2019 over the same period, and 22% higher than their average during the previous two decades."

47.375 total Week 1.  That's somewhat close.

But the next two weeks:  53.3125 Week 2 (one point from the league record for points in a 16-game week) and 52.1875 Week 3 (20 points short).

And ESPN says that a league directive to call less offensive holding is probably the cause!

Offensive penalty yards per game is HALF what it used to be, according to Seifert.

Walt Anderson, who is retired from refereeing on the field but is now SVP of Referee Training and Development, told NFL.com that the NFL and the fans want the refs to call just the "clear and obvious" fouls, NOT the "ticky-tack stuff".

So does that explain how THIS sequence played out and that it was a deliberate makeup call for the one UrinatingTree follows it with in this clip:

Come on, Goodell.  We know better than this.  You've all but thrown in the towel on the LA Experiment, especially because it very easily could be 2022 before any fans are allowed in that new stadium (and that basically is going to rely on a new President being elected, or there's a good chance your league doesn't survive THIS SEASON!)

Again, it's one thing to say that the games are rigged and you notice offensive holding penalties being reduced.

It's another for no less than the Worldwide Leader in Sports to come out and state it to your faces!

Holding calls are literally down 59% over last year, when offensive holding was a Point of Emphasis.

And even as an average over the five years, offensive holding is down 45% to just about 1 1/2 offensive holding penalties a game -- both ways!

According to Brian Tuohy:  In Week 1, for every five offensive holding penalties called last year, they only called ONE this year.

Here's one the NBC booth ref Terry McAulay called a deliberate looking the other way in Saints-Buccaneers:

Alvin Kamara accelerates for the 12-yard TD! #Saints @A_Kamara6

📺: #TBvsNO on FOX
📱: NFL app // Yahoo Sports app: https://t.co/5o8cWoN1yf pic.twitter.com/sloPKY0H7P

— NFL (@NFL) September 13, 2020

Read Seifert's report.  Seriously.  This is just mind-blowing stuff.

There is a reason that, year over year, scoring is up a TOUCHDOWN A GAME (about 6 1/3 points) to just an insane level.  As of the two-week mark, the NFL had the highest scoring first 32 games by over a point and two-thirds a game.

For three weeks, the only comparison which can be made to this NFL season in the history of professional football (50.96 a game) is the second season of the wide-open American Football League in 1961 (when 53.1 points per game were scored).

Josh Dubow of the Associated Press notes that 443 offensive penalties were called in three weeks last year.  Only 283 (OVER THREE LESS A GAME) this year.

720 total penalties in three games last year.  Only 567 this year, and the entire difference is ON OFFENSE.

The NFL record for points in a season, as this blog has pointed out, was 11,962 points in the season, for an average of 46.727 points per game two seasons ago.

The all-time per-game record was 47.2 in 1948 (Pro Football Reference).

Now, there's almost no chance this run will continue the entire season.

But the league is now on pace to score 13,045 points, a full 1,083 points over the record.

And even the 47.2 average would be exceeded by almost a thousand points.

Wow.  And it's right there in front of you.