NFL teams weren't running MORE in Week 1, just running better. Here are the stats to prove it.

Week 1 of the 2024 NFL season wasn’t defined by big, flashy passing performances. Across 16 games, only two quarterbacks threw for more than 300 yards. More than half the league failed to crack the 200-yard barrier.

It was the backdrop to a curious development in a pass-heavy league. Seven players ran for at least 100 yards. Thirteen sprang for 80 or more. In an NFL that’s been dominated by aerial attacks, NFL teams threw 977 passes in Week 1 and ran the ball 874 times — a run share of 47.2 percent. That’s not a majority, but it is up from 2023’s season-long average of 43.8 percent.

That doesn’t necessarily mean we’re in for a swing back to ground-heavy offensive attacks.

Heading into MNF, the 186.9 passing yards per team are the fewest for the NFL in Week 1 of season in the 2000s.

The 121.3 rushing yards per team are the most in Week 1 of a season since 2008 and the 2nd-highest in the 2000s.

— Rich Hribar (@LordReebs) September 9, 2024

It’s primarily because this is a stupidly small sample size, but also because we’ve seen this before. In 2023’s opening week, we saw 872 running plays. That was up from 2022 (836) but effectively the same number we saw across the spectrum from the Kansas City Chiefs’ Thursday night win to the San Francisco 49ers’ Monday night victory.

But if there’s any one thing that suggests this trend could stand, it’s the fact teams were better at running the ball in 2024 than they were in 2023 and worse at throwing it than they were at the turn of the previous decade.

NFL running backs are having more success as passing efficiency slides

It may have felt like Week 1 of the 2024 NFL season featured more run plays, but it wasn’t excessively more ground based than 2023. What it *was* however, was a much more efficient attack. Let’s look at the Week 1 numbers over the last three seasons:

From an efficiency standpoint, runners were about as solid on the ground as they were in 2022 and each team ran the ball roughly one more time per game than they did two years earlier. There’s an explosion in rushing touchdowns here, but ultimately things aren’t too different than they were two years ago. We also saw a similar return to 2022 in RB1 types taking the bulk of their team’s carries:

This suggests teams weren’t necessarily ushering in a new trend where a single running back is central to their success, just getting better results from guys who were already there (see: Joe Mixon, Saquon Barkley). Let’s also consider Week 1 this year was fairly chalky — favored teams won 13 of 16 games and, as you’d expect, teams who won tended to run the ball more in an effort to wear out the clock and squash comebacks before they can start.

Let’s look at the particulars a bit more and see if we can see any outliers:

This furthers the idea that coaches saw what worked in 2022 and tried to replicate it in 2023 with limited success. Then they hit that note in 2024 and heard it create a melody their teams could dance to.

So why did teams stick with a heavier run attack even after it struggled league-wide last fall?

NFL passing offenses are seeing diminishing returns early in the season

In 2023, five quarterbacks threw for at least 300 yards in Week 1 (one was Mac Jones, in case you’d assumed this benchmark was reserved for the NFL’s elite). In 2022, it was six. In 2021 10 passers hit that number and in 2020 it was back down to five.

But, as previously mentioned, only two 2024 starters exceeded that limit. Based on how NFL passing offenses have performed recently in season openers, it may have been intentional.

Here’s a chart of the NFL average expected points added (EPA) and success rate — a play that gains at least 40 percent of yards needed for a first down or touchdown on first down, 60 percent of yards needed on second down, and 100 percent on third or fourth down — for dropbacks in Week 1 since 2019.

In 2019, the average Week 1 passing game EPA was 0.174 per play — higher than Tua Tagovailoa and Jordan Love’s 2023 EPA numbers. By 2023 that figure had dropped into the negatives. Success rate took a similar drop, sliding from 2021 to 2023 before a useful bump last weekend. The passing offenses we saw to start this season can’t approach that 2019-2021 turn of the decade, but more efficient run games appear to have had a positive effect in making 2024 look a lot like 2022.

Let’s look at rushing efficiency over that same span.

Welp, all this really tells us is running is volatile, even as passing efficiency wanes. So without a clear trend of handoffs working better, what’s spurred the increase in big, chain-moving runs?

There are a few potential culprits. More NFL teams are content to run five defensive backs as a base package in their defensive schemes, creating crowded secondaries and lighter boxes up front. For example, Jonathan Taylor saw eight-man boxes in 26.8 percent of his carries in his breakthrough 2021 and 14.1 percent in a disappointing, injury-marred 2022. That number is down to 12.5 now, in part because he’s not quite the threat he once was and in part because of the next factor.

The league has also seen a deluge of talented dual threat quarterbacks capable of buoying run games without handoffs. In 2019, only two QBs cracked the top 50 when it came to rushing attempts — Lamar Jackson and Kyler Murray, who barely slid onto the list at No. 49. In 2023 that number doubled to four, with 14 passers among the top 81 rushers.

In Week 1, Jackson, Justin Fields, Jayden Daniels and Jalen Hurts all had at least 13 carries, which placed them among the top 25 most-utilized runners. Seven quarterbacks cracked the top 50 in this incredibly small sample size. A tailback like Taylor isn’t the only one who benefits from fewer defenders near the line of scrimmage, as Anthony Richardson broke from for 56 rushing yards on nine carries and a 100 percent success rate when he tucked the ball and ran.

***

We’re seeing the league evolve in real time. Like any evolution it’s moving slowly. Defenses are beginning to catch up to the laser show passing attacks that have defined the last decade of football. But when those skill points are dedicated to stopping the pass, there’s always going to be room for better running.

That didn’t come to fruition last year, but NFL teams stuck with it and ran to big gains (and, hot damn, 36 rushing touchdowns) to begin the 2024 season. This won’t be the case every week, but as aerial attacks run low on ammunition, the logical pivot will be to churn out yards on the ground until the scales reset and there’s room to throw once more.

We’re not quite back to making RB1 types a commodity, but their value is rising in a league that once forgot about (most of) them.