NFL Says It Is More Competitive Than Ever And The Statistics Seem To Confirm That

NEW YORK -- The NFL winter meeting is a time when league officers report to their 32 clubs where the game is now and where it's going. And the report delivered to owners and team presidents Tuesday painted a rosy picture.

The NFL, for one thing, is more competitive than ever. This per the NFL. This making the NFL kind of happy with itself.

"I'd say the game's in a pretty good place metric-wise," said Rich McKay, the chairman of the league's competition committee. "All the important metrics look good. The most important metric we have in football is competitive balance and right now that's about as good as it's been in a long, long time. We feel pretty good about that."

ORLANDO, FL - MARCH 27: Atlanta Falcons CEO & President and also Chairman of the NFL Competition Committee, Rich McKay during a press conference regarding rule changes at the 2018 NFL Annual Meetings at the Ritz Carlton Orlando, Great Lakes on March 27, 2018 in Orlando, Florida. (Photo by B51/Mark Brown/Getty Images)

NFL Games Have Been Close In 2023

The statistic the NFL loves most?

It wants close games. Fans get excited. They buy tickets and tune in on television.

Close games lead to more money, folks. So, heck yeah, the NFL loves close games.

McKay said the league is averaging 10.3 games per week that are within one score in the fourth quarter. So of the 14-16 games the league is playing every week, a large majority are still being decided late.

"That matters to us," McKay added.

Yeah, can you imagine if the Dolphins hadn't put a 70-burger on the Broncos? That clearly didn't help the close-game stats.

Anyway, McKay said 14 games so far this season have featured last-minute, game-winning drives.

He said the league loves that 22 teams through the first six weeks of the season have at least 3 wins.

"That's a very unusual stat for us," McKay said.

That means 22 teams are at .500 or better. Every team in the AFC North is at .500 or better.

Fans in at least 22 of the league's 30 cities and towns are excited about an NFL club nearby.

MIAMI, FL - NOVEMBER 02: Dan Marino #13 of the Miami Dolphins warms up before a NFL football game against the Houston Oilers on November 2, 1986 at Orange Bowl in Miami, Florida. (Photo by Mitchell Layton/Getty Images)

Mind-Blowing Passer Rating Stat

There's more:

It's been a while since the NFL made the decision to feature the passing game as a way of making the game more exciting. Rules were instituted to protect quarterbacks. Other rules were written or re-written to make things easier for receivers.

And the engineering has worked.

McKay said the average passer rating this year is 88.2. John Elway's career passer rating is 79.9. Dan Marino's career passer rating is 86.4.

Two quarterbacks who dominated a previous NFL generation have passer ratings below the average that we're seeing in 2023.

McKay said completions per game are at 44. And completion percentage is at 65 percent.

"The game has certainly evolved which we like. It's changing," McKay said. " The big metrics we always look at are plays per game, passing yards per game and penalties per game because when you look at those three you can usually put the equal sign and say that leads to points per game. That's kind of what's happened this year."

Penalties per game are "in a traditional spot," per McKay at 15 per game. Passing yards "are up," McKay said that number is at 440 yards per game. It's actually 437.2 passing yards per game, to be exact.

And plays are at 44. Las year the number of plays per game went down, but that 44 number per team is a rise.

So points per game are up to 44 so far, McKay said.

"From a metric standpoint, the game is in a pretty good stead," McKay said. "That's kind of where the game is."

CHARLOTTE, NORTH CAROLINA - NOVEMBER 03: A football with the NFL logo before the game between the Carolina Panthers and the Tennessee Titans at Bank of America Stadium on November 03, 2019 in Charlotte, North Carolina. (Photo by Jacob Kupferman/Getty Images)

Some NFL Preseason Injuries Down

NFL vice president Jeff Miller added that injuries during the preseason this year were "at an eight-year low" for lower extremities.

The reason the NFL shares a lot of data with and among the clubs is because it wants to limit injuries in training camp and the preseason when players are acclimating to the start of practices and games. In the past, injuries during that acclimation period often hit a high for the season.

"We saw a substantial decrease in those sorts of injuries, the lower extremities injuries, last year and saw a decrease even further this year," Miller said. "So it's a healthier league over the first couple of weeks of training camp, which is obviously a nice moment for us to appreciate and something for us to work with in the coming years."

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