When teams have to play on a Thursday, does that favor the defense? Should fantasy leaguers avoid starting marginal players in those matchups? Ian Allan breaks out the stats from the last seven years to search for the answers.
There was some discussion last week about Thursday games. Are they lower scoring? It seems that was at times. I suggested that the dynamic tended to be much stronger in divisional games – maybe when teams know each other’s scheme and personnel, that favors the defense.
A couple of people floated the idea that with Thursday games, it’s not teams that struggle. It’s the passing game – QBs and WRs down, but running backs the same. I said that would try to look into later.
Well, I’ve taken a couple of hours and done that.
I’ve got nine charts I’ll throw at you. They include all of the Thursday games of the last seven years, showing how the production compares to the other regular-season games. The nine charts are in three blocks of three. First I’ll show scoring (NFL points), with all Thursday games followed by divisional Thursday game followed by non-divisional Thursday games. Then I’ll look at rushing with the same three groupings, then passing with the same three groupings.
In 2010 and 2007 there was only one divisional game, so I left those games out of those charts. Not enough games to meet the requirements for statistical significance.
In this study, there’s the problem of working with a moving target. Teams are scoring more points and throwing more touchdowns today than they did five years ago. Right now, for example, if a quarterback passing for 240 yards, that’s 20 below the league average. If he passed for 240 yards five years ago, it was 20 above the league average. So there’s some sliding scale action. To try to get an idea of what’s going on, I broke the games out into year-by-year groups. In each chart, the percentage number shows how the production compares to the average in the non-Thursday game. (That is, if teams average 95 rushing yards and the average in the non-Thursday games was 100, it would be 95%. If they averaged 105, it would be 105% -- over 100% means better than average, dropped down below 100% and it’s worse than average.
SCORING
I’m not going to spend too much time on this category. I wrote about scoring last week. But note that scoring has been significantly down in divisional games all but one year. Scoring between non-divisional opponents looks pretty typical. One year is 99%, which is essentially a tie. In the other six, it’s higher in three years and lower in three years.
I will stand by my thesis that if you want to find a low-scoring Thursday game, your chances are a lot better if you’ve got a game inside the division. Seattle-Arizona tonight; that should be a lower-scoring game. Bucs-Panthers next week; that should be another yawner.
| Scoring, Thursday (all games) | ||
|---|---|---|
| Year | Points | Pct |
| 2006 | 15.9 | 74% |
| 2007 | 25.5 | 115% |
| 2008 | 26.7 | 118% |
| 2009 | 19.0 | 85% |
| 2010 | 22.2 | 97% |
| 2011 | 18.1 | 78% |
| 2012 | 21.7 | 89% |
| Scoring, Thursday (inside division) | ||
|---|---|---|
| Year | Points | Pct |
| 2006 | 13.7 | 64% |
| 2008 | 24.8 | 109% |
| 2009 | 20.4 | 91% |
| 2011 | 16.9 | 73% |
| 2012 | 19.9 | 81% |
| Scoring, Thursday (outside division) | ||
|---|---|---|
| Year | Points | Pct |
| 2006 | 21.3 | 99% |
| 2007 | 24.5 | 110% |
| 2008 | 28.3 | 125% |
| 2009 | 17.9 | 80% |
| 2010 | 21.2 | 93% |
| 2011 | 19.1 | 82% |
| 2012 | 25.7 | 105% |
RUSHING
Somebody was saying something last week about running backs being good in Thursday night games. But check out these numbers. They suggest the opposite, especially in divisional games (you listening, Marshawn Lynch?).
For divisional games, in none of the five case-study years have teams scored 80 percent as many rushing touchdowns in Thursday games. In only one of those years did they even score 65 percent as many rushing touchdowns. That’s huge. That means that if a team is going to score 12 rushing touchdowns per 16 games in the regular season, it would score only 8 rushing touchdowns if it were playing 16 Thursday night games.
It trends the other way for outside division games. Those teams scored MORE rushing touchdowns on Thursdays. About 10 percent more.
For rushing yards, it’s similar for all Thursday games – about 91-93 percent as many yards on the ground when the game is played on a Thursday. So maybe 10-15 fewer yards than what you would get normally.
Numbers suggest that if you have a running back playing on a Thursday in a division game, he’ll be less productive than usual – slight decline in yards but a big decline in touchdowns. (This isn’t every running back, of course – Frank Gore had a huge game at St. Louis a few weeks back).
If you have a running back on a Thursday facing an opponent from another division, his production should be similar – slightly fewer yards but slightly more touchdowns.
| Rushing, Thursday (all games) | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Year | Yards | Pct | TD | Pct |
| 2006 | 116 | 96% | .43 | 50% |
| 2007 | 107 | 94% | .79 | 101% |
| 2008 | 109 | 90% | 1.00 | 104% |
| 2009 | 129 | 107% | .78 | 89% |
| 2010 | 100 | 84% | .94 | 117% |
| 2011 | 113 | 93% | .50 | 61% |
| 2012 | 107 | 86% | .81 | 97% |
| Rushing, Thursday (inside division) | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Year | Yards | Pct | TD | Pct |
| 2006 | 118 | 98% | .50 | 58% |
| 2008 | 97 | 81% | .75 | 78% |
| 2009 | 121 | 101% | .38 | 43% |
| 2011 | 121 | 99% | .50 | 61% |
| 2012 | 104 | 83% | .55 | 65% |
| Rushing, Thursday (outside division) | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Year | Yards | Pct | TD | Pct |
| 2006 | 111 | 92% | .25 | 29% |
| 2007 | 106 | 93% | .75 | 97% |
| 2008 | 118 | 98% | 1.20 | 125% |
| 2009 | 135 | 112% | 1.10 | 126% |
| 2010 | 99 | 83% | .93 | 116% |
| 2011 | 107 | 88% | .50 | 61% |
| 2012 | 114 | 92% | 1.40 | 167% |
PASSING
The idea that was suggested was that passing numbers aren’t as good on Thursdays. Maybe offenses have to go with more vanilla game plans or whatever. But that’s not strongly supported by the numbers.
The last two years, teams have thrown under 80 percent as many touchdowns in Thursday games. That is, if they were throwing 30 TD passes per season on Sundays, they’d be throwing about 22-23 TD passes. But if you look at three of the four previous seasons, teams threw MORE touchdowns in Thursday night games. And it looks like just a slight dropoff in yards. In three of seven years, yards is a little less than 90 percent (so you’re 300 yard game becomes a 270). But in three of the years, the teams are right at the average, and in one there’s actually a 10 percent increase. I don’t see a big prep-time drop.
Note that for games outside the division, in three of the seven years, teams threw way more touchdown passes. Yards for those games look pretty similar.
For games inside the division, the passing yards are a lot more similar than what we saw in the rushing production.
| Passing, Thursday (all games) | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Year | Pass | Pct | TD | Pct |
| 2006 | 201 | 89% | 1.21 | 93% |
| 2007 | 238 | 101% | 1.86 | 130% |
| 2008 | 258 | 111% | 1.78 | 138% |
| 2009 | 209 | 86% | 1.11 | 77% |
| 2010 | 240 | 98% | 1.63 | 108% |
| 2011 | 224 | 88% | 1.11 | 73% |
| 2012 | 259 | 98% | 1.19 | 74% |
| Passing, Thursday (inside division) | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Year | Pass | Pct | TD | Pct |
| 2006 | 199 | 88% | .80 | 61% |
| 2008 | 263 | 114% | 1.75 | 136% |
| 2009 | 200 | 83% | 1.50 | 103% |
| 2011 | 254 | 100% | 1.25 | 82% |
| 2012 | 248 | 95% | 1.18 | 74% |
| Passing, Thursday (outside division) | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Year | Pass | Pct | TD | Pct |
| 2006 | 204 | 90% | 2.25 | 173% |
| 2007 | 229 | 98% | 1.83 | 128% |
| 2008 | 254 | 110% | 1.80 | 140% |
| 2009 | 216 | 89% | .80 | 55% |
| 2010 | 234 | 96% | 1.50 | 99% |
| 2011 | 199 | 78% | 1.00 | 66% |
| 2012 | 281 | 107% | 1.20 | 75% |
One other conclusion I’ll toss out. For defenses and special teams. In the last seven years (65 games) road teams have scored 14 touchdowns on returns of kicks and takeaways. Home teams have scored only 10. Apparently you don’t get much of a home-field advantage there.