Scorecard

Crazy Sundays

The NFL has packed a historic amount of points into its first five weeks

By Josh Elliott

It is fairly deep into the NFL season, and some of us, having failed to rise since Sept. 5, have assumed the shape of our Barcaloungers. A minor problem. Did you catch the Raiders and the Bills trading touchdowns last Sunday? Did you see the Saints and the Steelers matching each other score for score? How about the Bengals, one big play after another, in a futile, but thrilling, chase to catch the Colts? Something odd has happened in the NFL: The Dull Moment has all but disappeared.

Take a look at the numbers. Teams are averaging a combined 45.6 points a game, the highest in 52 years and a figure that's up 5.2 points from a year ago -- the third-biggest jump since 1943. If the Raiders keep up their 40.5-points-a-game pace, they'll have a 648-point year, better than the 1998 Vikings' NFL-record high of 556 points. And this is happening in a season when the Rams, recently thought to be a state-of-the-art offensive machine, have started at 0-5.

The scoring is coming in many forms. We're seeing an unusually high number of kickoff and punt returns for touchdowns (13 through last weekend), defensive scores (28) and long touchdown throws. The Bills' Drew Bledsoe is on pace to pass for 5,638 yards (the NFL record: Dan Marino's 5,084 yards in 1984); Chiefs tailback Priest Holmes is on course to score 32 touchdowns (the NFL record: Marshall Faulk's 26 in 2000); and Seahawks running back Shaun Alexander set a club record in Week 4 when he scored three touchdowns in 1:51.

This year even failure is spectacular, with eight blocked field goals and six blocked punts. The Browns have lost games on a last-second field goal made possible when a Cleveland player illegally tore off his helmet in a premature victory celebration (Week 1); on an overtime field goal kicked after Cleveland blocked its opponent's first try, which had come on second down (Week 4); and on a game-ending interception in the end zone against the Ravens last week, killing a rally in which the Browns had scored 13 points in the final 7:43 and recovered an onside kick. (Not that Cleveland deals only in disaster; three weeks ago, the Browns scored 14 points in the final three minutes against the Titans to tie the game at 28, then won it with -- yawn -- a 33-yard field goal in overtime.)

So, what gives? For one thing, we're seeing the ripple effect of free agency. Because of the league's high turnover, defensive coordinators are forced to employ basic schemes, which leave defenses vulnerable to the recent vogue of flashy spread offenses -- and explains why the Bill Belichick-coached Patriots are averaging 43 passes a game. "You see everything now -- one-back sets, no-back sets, five-wideout packages," says Panthers coach John Fox. "And that forces you to go more vanilla."

The beautiful thing, though, is that everyone is more or less in the same ice-cream dish. Because the league has been managed well, the talent, and the problems, are equitably distributed: this hasn't been a season of blowouts. Half of the games have been decided by eight points or fewer. "Things are so close now that coaches are looking for that extra big play," says Titans coach Jeff Fisher.

They often get to see it too, though the playmaker may not be wearing their favorite jersey. On Monday, Sept. 30, against the Broncos, the Ravens' Chris McAlister returned a short field goal 107 yards, the longest play in NFL history. Last week, Raiders cornerback Philip Buchanon picked off a Bledsoe pass on Oakland's 19-yard line and carried it in for six of the 49 points his team would score. Some day, of course, all this scoring may get terribly boring. Not yet.

Issue date: October 14, 2002

For more Scorecard see this week's issue of Sports Illustrated, on newsstands Wednesday, October 9. Click here to subscribe to SI.

 

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