This takes another look at how efficiently teams spent their budget for offensive players. The new metric here is in the first column on the left, which simply divided the average points scored per game this season and divides that by the offensive budget for each team (presented as points scored (per game) per million dollars allocated to offensive personnel.

As shown earlier, the Los Angeles Rams managed to lead the NFL in points scored (nearly 30 points per game) while spending significantly less on offense than the average team ($63.5 million). The Rams led the league in spending efficiency, scoring .47 points per game for every $1 million spent on offensive personnel. The second-most salary-efficient offense was the San Francisco 49ers with a ratio of .44 points scored per game per $1 million spent), who fell below the median points per game barely with 20.69 but spent the least on offense among all NFL teams. Note here that Jimmy Garoppolo was brought in mid-year in the last year of his rookie year and only started a handful of games. While Niner fans like myself are hoping a full season of Jimmy G boosts the team’s scoring substantially, his record deal inked earlier this year means San Francisco will no longer have one of the cheapest offenses in football.

On the opposite side of the spectrum was the Oakland Raiders whose disappointing campaign of under-production resulted in only .2 points scored per game, per million spent on offensive personnel (less than half of the Rams’ .47 ratio).

The proportion of Teams’ Offensive Salary Allocated to each Offensive Position (Last 5 Seasons)

For this visualization, I segmented every team’s last five seasons into quadrants by the number of wins (0–4 wins, 5–8 wins, 9–12 wins, and 13–16 wins). For each quadrant, here is an analysis of the percentage of each team’s offensive budget allocated to each position. When looking at offensive personnel, the most successful teams (13–16 wins) led all quadrants in spending on running backs and tight ends (11.22% and 12.37% of salary allocated to offensive personnel, respectively) while these teams trailed all other quadrants on spending for wide receivers). The worst teams in the last 5 years led all quadrants on salary allocated to offensive linemen and wide receivers (38.2% and 22.7%, respectively) while being the only quadrant to spend under 20% of offensive salary on quarterbacks (17.5%). Teams that won between 5 and 8 games a year spent the most on quarterbacks (22.65% of offensive salary).

% of Total Salary Cap Allocated to Position (5 years)