NFL

Since entering the NFL in 2020, no QB has thrown more 4th quarter interceptions than Justin Herbert (16).

Source

Extend the plane, I hate the inside the pylon/where did the ball go oob.

Not really the same rule but I also prefer the NFL, ball can go into the inzone and not be a touch back as long as it doesn’t touch the ground. Makes for fun diving saves.

My friend and I had a discussion on which hits were worse.

NFL - bigger stronger players with greater power NHL - faster impact on hits (also pretty big guys)

Curious to see the consensus out there on which hits would be worse.

Used pro-football-reference stats to take a deep dive, Bill Barnwell style, into all 32 offenses and assign them 1st trimester grades through 6 weeks. Quite a long article so for the TLDR crowd here it is in one chart. If you would like to read the entire article and get the in depth stats and metrics, you can do so here NFL 2023 Offense Grades Through Week 6. Later this week will be grades for all 32 defenses and a final article on grades for each team as a whole.

This chart show each team's offense based on Points/Drive & Expected Points.

edit: Here are more stats/metrics to debate and fight over. Color coded Red(bad) to Green(good). League averages at the bottom. Note some teams have played only 5 games so they will have Point For totals affected(and in theory turnovers). This is taken into account in the Grades but not in the conditional formatting of this chart. The easy fix is just do points/game & turnovers/game in lieu of cumulative stats.

I was feeling old when I learned that Kirk Cousins was only 34, so I made this:

It's a graph of the oldest active NFL players per year. Take your birth year and trace the dashed line. When the dashed line is above the colored dots... Congratulations! You're older than every active NFL player!

Examples:

• If you were born in 1980, 2023 is the first year you are older than every NFL player thanks to Tom Brady's retirement.

• If you were born in 1965, you were older than every NFL player as of the 2009 season when John Carney retired.

The graph did mostly what I expected; when an old guy retires, the next-oldest guy is younger than that guy was. That new oldest guy is always getting older because time is cruel. The graph zig-zags up and down mostly as expected, but there were two neat pieces of NFL Old Man History that show up here that I wanted to share:

Steve DeBerg

If you were born in 1955, you were older than every NFL player starting in the 1996 season after Vince Evans retired. Generally, once you're older than every player, it's like that forever. And that makes sense, right? Like, what's a team going to do? Hire an even older guy? Of course not! That would be crazy!

... But that's exactly what happened in 1998. Steve DeBerg retired in 1993 when he was, at the time, the oldest NFL player. He then un-retired in 1998 for a brief stint with the Falcons and became the oldest player even on a Super Bowl roster. So he was the oldest player, retired, then returned to continue to be the oldest player. Pretty neat!

(Interestingly, his Wikipedia page says he got divorced in 1996 before un-retiring. It made me think of Brady's un-retirement after splitting with Giselle. I hope Adam Vinatieri's marriage is doing well, but if not there's a chance he returns in 2024.)

Morten Andersen

If you were born in 1960/1961 you were older than every NFL player as of the 2005 season when Gary Anderson retired...

... Until Morten Andersen came back in 2006! And he used that un-retirement to overtake Gary Anderson on the all time scoring leaderboard. They would both eventually be overtaken by Adam Vinatieri, but Morten Andersen was the all-time NFL scoring leader for about 10 years in there.

[Data details: I got the roster data from NFLFastR. There's a little wonkiness with how the data decided who was active vs who was on practice rosters. Player's age was calculated as of September 1. I don't know when your birthday is, so there's some wiggle room here.]

Why does only EA get the rights to make an NFL game? How does exclusivity help make the NFL more money?

I would think that having multiple devs obviously = multiple income sources. And you know that people who like EA/MUT will continue to pay loads of money for that product. But the people who can't be bothered to play EA titles would happily go to a competing developer's title.

And then there would be some NFL super fans and gaming enthusiasts who buy BOTH titles. I don't see any way how having multiple devs doesn't financially help the NFL.

And the competition would lead to not one mediocre product but hopefully MULTIPLE GOOD products, and better products = more sales.

Why is this not the reality?