In Depth look - Dropped Passes around the NFL in 2012

By Dave Brown | dave@nflen.com | Tweet #NFLEN

Eagles receiver Jeremy Maclin drops a pass...

It's a passing league, I keep hearing that. Well, we could look at that the other way too, and it might be the dropped ball league. Some passes will be thrown away, some will be knocked down, some thrown badly, and some are just flat out dropped.

That's what I want to look at, the dropped passes.

The table on the left is just a basic dropped passes table. Maybe you have seen this around the net before, maybe not. It's a basic indicator of dropped passes, but I think we need to look much deeper to get a clear idea of what dropped passes really mean.

There were 945 passes that were dropped by receivers in the NFL in the 2012 regular season, an average of 29.53 drops per team.

The table on the right indicates what percentage of passes thrown were dropped, a better indicator of how often a team is dropping passes. For instance, the Detroit Lions lead the NFL in dropped passes with 45, but threw an astounding 740 passes, a new NFL regular season record. So, for how many times the Lions threw the ball, how bad are those 45 drops?

There were 17,788 passes thrown in the 2012 regular season, and with those 945 drops the average of passes thrown that were dropped 5.313%. One thing should be clear looking at these tables, if the team is above the average, they need to get better. If they are average or below in the tables, they are not dropping many passes.

Dropped Passes% of passes thrown dropped

Rank	Team	Drops
1	Detroit Lions	45
2	New England Patriots	41
3	Jacksonville Jaguars	41
4	New Orleans Saints	39
5	Oakland Raiders	38
6	Denver Broncos	37
7	Green Bay Packers	36
8	Indianapolis Colts	36
9	Dallas Cowboys	33
10	Cleveland Browns	32
11	Tampa Bay Buccaneers	32
12	Washington Redskins	31
13	Tennessee Titans	30
14	New York Giants	30
15	San Francisco 49ers	30
16	Chicago Bears	29
17	Atlanta Falcons	28
18	Buffalo Bills	27
19	Houston Texans	27
20	Kansas City Chiefs	27
21	Miami Dolphins	27
22	Pittsburgh Steelers	27
23	Arizona Cardinals	26
24	St. Louis Rams	25
25	New York Jets	25
26	Philadelphia Eagles	25
27	Cincinnati Bengals	24
28	Seattle Seahawks	23
29	Carolina Panthers	20
30	Minnesota Vikings	19
31	Baltimore Ravens	19
32	San Diego Chargers	16

Rank	Team	Attempts	Completions	% of Attempts Dropped
1	Washington Redskins	442	291	7.013%
2	Jacksonville Jaguars	586	328	6.996%
3	San Francisco 49ers	436	289	6.880%
4	Green Bay Packers	558	374	6.451%
5	New England Patriots	641	402	6.396%
6	Denver Broncos	588	402	6.292%
7	Detroit Lions	740	445	6.081%
8	Oakland Raiders	629	376	6.041%
9	Chicago Bears	485	287	5.979%
10	New Orleans Saints	671	423	5.812%
11	Indianapolis Colts	628	339	5.732%
12	Kansas City Chiefs	475	273	5.684%
13	Seattle Seahawks	405	259	5.679%
14	Cleveland Browns	566	328	5.653%
15	Tampa Bay Buccaneers	566	311	5.653%
16	New York Giants	539	323	5.566%
17	Tennessee Titans	540	318	5.556%
18	Miami Dolphins	504	293	5.357%
19	Buffalo Bills	511	309	5.284%
20	New York Jets	493	272	5.017%
21	Dallas Cowboys	658	434	5.015%
22	Houston Texans	554	354	4.874%
23	Pittsburgh Steelers	574	354	4.704%
24	Atlanta Falcons	615	422	4.552%
25	St. Louis Rams	557	332	4.488%
26	Cincinnati Bengals	540	335	4.444%
27	Arizona Cardinals	608	337	4.276%
28	Carolina Panthers	490	284	4.082%
29	Philadelphia Eagles	618	367	4.045%
30	Minnesota Vikings	483	300	3.934%
31	Baltimore Ravens	560	334	3.393%
32	San Diego Chargers	528	338	3.030%

In my final table, all teams have incomplete passes, and some of those were incomplete because they were dropped. I think we need to look at that percentage to see how many incompletions were dropped passes, as this is an area a team needs to improve. A simple for instance, if a team like the Lions throws those 740 passes and has say, 45 incomplete passes(a pipe dream), and all of those incompletions were drops, they could have done much better in the passing game and would have a dropped incompletion % of 100%.

On average, teams had 13.59% of their passes go incomplete because they were dropped in 2012. Simply, if the percentage is higher, receivers are getting chances that are going incomplete, and they need to catch more of those passes.

% of incompletions that were incomplete because dropped

Rank	Team	Incompletions	% of Incompletions that were drops
1	Washington Redskins	151	20.53%
2	San Francisco 49ers	147	20.40%
3	Denver Broncos	186	19.89%
4	Green Bay Packers	184	19.57%
5	New England Patriots	239	17.15%
6	Jacksonville Jaguars	258	15.89%
7	Seattle Seahawks	146	15.75%
8	New Orleans Saints	248	15.73%
9	Detroit Lions	295	15.25%
10	Oakland Raiders	253	15.02%
11	Dallas Cowboys	224	14.73%
12	Chicago Bears	198	14.65%
13	Atlanta Falcons	193	14.51%
14	New York Giants	216	13.89%
15	Tennessee Titans	222	13.51%
16	Houston Texans	200	13.50%
17	Cleveland Browns	238	13.45%
18	Kansas City Chiefs	202	13.37%
19	Buffalo Bills	202	13.34%
20	Miami Dolphins	211	12.80%
21	Tampa Bay Buccaneers	255	12.55%
22	Indianapolis Colts	289	12.46%
23	Pittsburgh Steelers	220	12.27%
24	Cincinnati Bengals	205	11.71%
25	New York Jets	221	11.31%
26	St. Louis Rams	225	11.11%
27	Minnesota Vikings	183	10.38%
28	Philadelphia Eagles	251	9.96%
29	Carolina Panthers	206	9.71%
30	Arizona Cardinals	271	9.59%
31	San Diego Chargers	190	8.42%
32	Baltimore Ravens	226	8.41%

Again, in all of the above tables, text that looks like this is at or near the NFL average.

On the surface, the 31 drops the Washington Redskins had in 2012 doesn't look that bad. Looking deeper, the Redskins threw only 442 passes and had 151 incompletions. Since 31 of those were incomplete because they were dropped, the Redskins receiving game needs to get better heading into the 2013 season.

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