Fantasy Index

Factoid

December 26, 2016

Week 17

Are late-season games lower scoring?

Week 17 will feature plenty of meaningless game. On the AFC side, for example, 10 of the 16 teams have been eliminated from playoff consideration. Many of these teams will hold out players or perhaps make winning less of a priority. But that tend to make those games lower or higher scoring?

Bengals-Ravens, Cardinals-Rams, Jets-Bills and Bucs-Panthers jump out as these kind of games. None of these teams have anything to officially play for. Should that make those games higher scoring (with softer defenses)? Or are the offenses more likely to sleepily bog down?

I pulled out the numbers for the last 10 years. This is 32 teams playing 16 games a year, so 5,120 offenses going into games. In Week 17 every year, there are a number of teams with nothing to play for. So you would figure that if those games were notably better or worse, it would tend to show up.

To standardize the number of games in each slot, I’m not looking at Weeks (1 thru 17) but at Games (1 thru 16). So for some teams, Game 8 will be in NFL Week 8; for others it would be in Week 9.

For Week 17, however, that’s the 16th game for every team. Similarly, teams never have byes in Week 16, so each team plays its 15th game in Week 16.

And the numbers show that those are two of the four lowest-scoring weeks.

There are only five weeks where the average score tends to be under 22 points, and all but one of those weeks can be explained.

That group includes Weeks 1-2. At that time, offenses are behind defenses – it takes them more time to get their timing and chemistry down.

And two of the other low-scoring games occur in Week 16-17 (shown as Games 15-16). I can’t say for certainty that it’s all due to teams mailing it in. Weather could be a factor. But those games also tend to be a little lower scoring.

AVERAGE SCORES (2006-2015)
PointsGame
22.82Game 4
22.81Game 6
22.60Game 8
22.57Game 11
22.43Game 3
22.32Game 9
22.31Game 7
22.18Game 13
22.12Game 14
22.10Game 12
22.10Game 5
21.95Game 2
21.94Game 16
21.75Game 15
21.39Game 10
21.14Game 1

—Ian Allan

4 Reader Comments:

DENNIS LYONS

Elk Grove, CA
2016-12-26T22:51:17Z
Could have made a lot of money this weekend. At least 12 of the 15 games went over the points and 13 teams scored at least 30 points

Richard Loppnow

Ephrata, WA
2016-12-26T23:13:15Z
Thank you as always for the research, Ian. :-)

ROBERT JOHNSON

Pearland, TX
2016-12-27T17:41:05Z
Our two leagues (redrafter and dynasty) both play the championship in week 17. It really is the only negative about the leagues. It makes for a lot of upsets, with dominant players who carried you to the final standing on the sidelines. You can't really draft to avoid it if you want to make it to the finals. Anyway, here is what I have observed over the years about NFL week 17: 1) Games between 2 eliminated teams are the ones most likely to be shootouts; 2) Teams with something on the line tend to play tight and don't always perform up to snuff; 3) You have to figure out which eliminated teams will go into the tank (my leading candidate this year: Jets), versus which eliminated teams are likely to want to go out with a bang (my leading candidate this year: Bills). I have played numerous week 17 championship games in my wonderful fantasy football career, and I am barely over the .500 mark in such games. I play another one Sunday - wish me luck!

MARTIN DONNELLY

Elmhurst, IL
2016-12-28T00:03:38Z
Balderdash.
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