The passing boom isn’t slowing down. In Week 1, NFL teams completed 67% of their passes and compiled a passer rating of 100.2 — both of those numbers, if they persisted over the course of the season, would be new records.

The opening-week passing numbers were boosted by a handful of teams — namely the Ravens, Chiefs and Cowboys — that took a similar approach on Sunday, and that approach was calling a whole lotta play-action passes. Per Pro Football Focus, Baltimore, Kansas City and Dallas were the only teams with a play-action rate over 45% in Week 1, which is nearly double the league-average rate in 2018. And, those teams just so happened to finished first, second and third, respectively, in EPA per pass attempt during the opening week.

That’s not a coincidence.

Play-action passing is a cheat code. It’s like turning the Madden difficulty setting down to “Rookie” for a quarterback, and the splits between play-action and non-play-action passes show how dramatic the effect can be.

Essentially, a league-average quarterback turns into Matt Ryan on play-action passes. Those fakes provide benefits across the board: Offenses are completing passes at a higher rate, helping offenses to stay ahead of the chains while also getting completions further downfield and creating more space for receivers to run after the catch. Pretty much everything a coach is looking to accomplish when drawing up a pass play.

The higher depth of target partially explains the boost provided by play-action. We already know that throwing past the first-down marker, wherever it is, leads to more efficient passing (even on straight drop-back passes the efficiency goes up on third down, when teams are more inclined to throw to or past the sticks). Because play-action passes are typically designed to attack the area behind the linebackers, they naturally provide a higher average depth of target.

Teams seem to be coming around to the idea of running more play fakes. Play-action usage has been on the rise over the last few seasons. Per Football Outsiders, the rate of play-action jumped from 18% in 2016 to 22% in 2017 and then up to 24% in 2018.

The NFL still isn’t using play-action nearly enough

The stat nerds have harped on the fact that running plays are inefficient and teams should dial back on their usage. But what about standard dropback passes? Sure, they are more efficient than running plays, but they have produced a negative EPA since 2015, according to Sports Info Solutions. Without play fakes, passes aren’t very effective either. That’s why a zero-run strategy isn’t an optimal one — or one the nerds have ever suggested, contrary to the strawman arguments REAL FOOTBALL GUYS love to make. The run game does, in fact, provide value: Its very existence forces defenses to react to a play fake.

That doesn’t mean teams should be running more in order to set up the play-action passing game. Running volume has no bearing on play-action efficiency. The same is true for running efficiency, as Ben Baldwin wrote in 2018 for Football Outsiders. The Seahawks’ play-action pass game will produce whether or not Brian Schottenheimer has Established the Run™. The Cowboys play-action passing game is as effective with Ezekiel Elliott on the sideline as it is with him in the backfield.

Forget about running to set up the play-action pass. NFL teams should be taking the opposite approach: Calling more play-action to slow linebackers down from getting to their run fits. Bill Walsh, the greatest offensive mind in the history of the sport, agrees:

Via Smart Football:

“I truly believe it is the single best tool available to take advantage of a disciplined defense. By using the play-pass as an integral pant of your offense you are trying to take advantage of a defensive team that is very anxious, very intense and very fired-up to play football. The play-pass is one of the best ways to cool all of that emotion and intensity down because the object of the play-pass is to get the defensive team to commit to a fake run and then throw behind them. Once you get the defensive team distracted and disoriented, they begin to think about options and, therefore, are susceptible to the running game.”

So why aren’t NFL teams running more play-action?

Some may say it’s to protect the quarterback. A play fake requires a quarterback to hold the ball longer in order to carry out the fake, which gives the pass rush more time to get home. That theory makes sense, but the numbers suggest there isn’t a whole lot to it. Since 2015, play-action passes have actually produced a lower sack rate (5.4%) than standard dropbacks (6.5%) have, according to Sports Info Solutions.

Why aren’t defenses registering more sacks if play-action passes take longer to develop? Some possible explanations: Play-action passes typically feature only one or two reads for the quarterback, so he isn’t really sitting back there going through multiple progressions. And play-action passes tend to do a better job of freeing up a receiver, so the quarterback isn’t holding onto the ball waiting for a receiver to get open. Less thinking leads to getting the ball out faster.

Another argument is that using a lot of play-action will lead to a decrease in its efficiency; that is, the more an offense runs them, the less a defense reacts to them. The defense, in other words, realizes the offense is bluffing. But there is no evidence backing that theory, either. From 2015 to 2018, the correlation between play-action usage and EPA on those plays was (1) not significant and (2) a positive one, meaning using more play-action actually led to an increase in play-action efficiency.

Play-action passes are safer, they’re more efficient, they lead to bigger plays, they lead to more yards after the catch, and there’s no apparent penalty for using more of them. On top of all that, a great running game — or quarterback, even — isn’t required to run them effectively. It’s an inexpensive boost to the offense that most teams just aren’t taking advantage of.

The teams that figure this out sooner will have an advantage over their opponents. After their Week 1 performances, it appears the Chiefs, Ravens and Cowboys are already there. Who will be next?

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