Is the Spread Offense Leading to More Points in the NFL?

If you’re a football fan, you know that the spread offense, or some form of it, is prevalent at every level of the game. Hundreds of high school teams, college teams, and NFL teams will say that they run the “spread” offense. At the highest level of the game, the NFL, we see spread offense concepts in every game. But, is the spread offense leading to more points in the NFL?

The short answer? No. Here’s why.

 

The “Spread” Offense

When fans talk about the “spread” offense, they use the term freely to describe almost any team that ever lines up in a shotgun formation and uses multiple receivers. There are variations of the spread offense. For example, Army, Navy, and Air Force are technically “spread” offenses because they run the spread option. 

There are high school teams that run the Wing-T but snap the ball in the shotgun. They are now referred to as Spread Wing-T teams. You can go back to the beginnings of football and find the Single Wing. Each play started with a Shotgun snap. Did that make it a “spread” offense?

The idea of the “spread” offense was simply to utilize the entire field. Using multiple formations with a number of receivers will spread out defenses. Offenses can then attack the various weak spots in those defenses. Some spread offenses will spread the field to run the ball. We see this now in the NFL with more teams running variations of the Zone Read.

Other teams spread the field to throw the ball. The Air Raid offense was created by Hal Mumme and his protege, the late Mike Leach. NFL teams aren’t true Air Raid teams, but many utilize a lot of the Air Raid concepts, which are based on spreading the field.

 

The “Spread” in the NFL

NFL teams don’t run true spread offenses, but they rely on many of the concepts used by those offenses. NFL offenses can’t run the “spread” exclusively like college and high school teams do for two reasons. 

One is the hash marks. The hash marks on the college football field are 40 feet wide. In the NFL, they are only 18 feet, 6 inches wide. Many will contend that the closer hash marks open up the passing game, which they do; however, they also make it easier for defenses to disguise coverages and defend the pass. 

The other reason teams don’t run an exclusive spread offense in the NFL is that the defensive players are so fast. Teams can take advantage of certain defenders at the college level. In the NFL, the speed of defenses, combined with the hash marks, makes it very difficult to simply roll out a spread offense and run it all the time in the NFL.

 

Scoring in the NFL in 2023

Through the first six weeks of this NFL season, NFL teams were averaging a combined 43.4 points per game. Since 2018 when teams scored a combined 48.3, NFL scoring is on a downward trend. Take out the COVID year and scoring has gone from 48.3 to 44.7 in 2019, 47.8 in 2021, 43.3 last year, and it’s current 43.4. 

Here’s another interesting statistic. Through six weeks in 2018, there were 328 total touchdowns scored in the NFL. Through six games this year, there were 245. That’s a drop of 25 percent. Teams still pass about 60 percent of the time in the NFL, but they are scoring less. It’s also interesting that teams are winning games by bigger average scoring margins too.

Through the first six weeks this season, the average scoring margin was 12.1 points per game. That marks the highest number in the last decade. What is going on? Part of it is losing teams just don’t score as much. Losing teams this season are averaging right around 16 points per game. Currently, the bottom-5 teams in scoring average 16.2 points a game or less. All five of those teams – Pittsburgh, Carolina, the Jets and Giants, and New England – all run spread offense concepts during games. 

 

Effect on the Total

After seeing record numbers of Unders through the first part of this season, game totals have been creeping downward. This week alone, there are eight games with totals at or below the key number of 41. Thursday night’s Patriots-Steelers debacle closed with a total of just 30.5. Six other games have totals in the 30s. 

This is likely to continue as teams often score fewer points in the final month of the season. Some of that is due to weather in cold climate games. It’s also the result of teams tightening up as they compete for playoff spots. Whatever it is, you will definitely see the spread offense at work in the NFL. You just might not see tons of scoring.

 

Conclusion

Every generation or a two, a team at some level of football will have a lot of success with their take on a “new” offense. Chances are that the offense isn’t new, but that it is a tweak on an existing offense from the past. Remember “Run & Shoot” from the 80’s? That offense was just a shotgun based spread offense. A dozen pro teams used it from that point on in some form but it did not take over football at the time.

Just 8 years ago a question appeared on Reddit asking why don’t NFL teams use the spread offense more to utilize their running QB’s more. One answer said that 7-8 teams do use it. Today, about every team uses it in once form or another.

Once a team establishes a great deal of success with an offense then you can count on every team in every league being a copy-cat.  You an almost bet at some point in your life teams will be all be running pro-set or even power I formations again. This time they will be using them to take advantage of the undersized linebackers which the spread offense helped usher in. Then all the teams will adjust and the new wrinkle will become the old style offense.