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For the sake of argument, let’s say you go to sleep one night and wake up the next morning in 1977. It doesn’t take very long to figure out that you’ve tumbled through some kind of rift in the space-time continuum; for one thing, Gramma sure seems to be alive, and she’s knitting a sweater with Rocky Bleier’s face on it. The kids on the school bus are all twiddling away at their handheld Mattel Electronic Football games and the Health-Ed teacher spends much of the period before lunch inveighing against the dangers of Quaaludes. Folly is in the air, except for on the gridiron, where the NFL is grinding out a bone-bruising 287.8 rushing yards per game.
And then the alarm on your iPhone wakes you up, because time travel isn’t real. But as you hunker down in front of the Chargers-Steelers game, you find yourself thinking that you may have inadvertently brought some of the dream world back with you to 2024. This is 3-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust, gutbucket football, and as you flip between the regional feeds it becomes apparent that the pass-happy offensive schemes that have ruled the NFL for the last two decades have fallen out of favor.
In their first three games under Jim Harbaugh, Justin Herbert and the Chargers have all but let the air out of the ball. LA is currently averaging just 125.7 aerial yards per game, which marks a whopping 59% decline compared to the year-ago 308.7. While caveats abound—Harbaugh is a fiend for the running game, and Herbert’s been gimpy since suffering a high-ankle sprain in Week 2—the whiplash change of tactics is still pretty remarkable. Last season at this time, the Chargers could lay claim to the NFL’s third most prolific passing attack, while this year’s Bolts are now at the opposite end of the spectrum at No. 31.
And it’s not just a Harbaugh/Herbert thing. At 201.2 passing yards per game, the league has amassed the least frequent flier miles since 2003 (200.4), as aerial gains are down 9% compared to the…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/nfl-offenses-sag-qb-play-095500243.html
Author : Sportico
Publish date : 2024-09-27 09:55:00
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