CFL offence dropped by 62.3 points per team this year, thanks to passing offences' decline

The CFL's decreasing offensive points and yards  has been a notable topic of conversation this season, and one we discussed on last week's inaugural 55-Yard Line Podcast. Earlier this year, I ran an analysis showing that offence had declined by 5.4 points and 56.4 yards per team per game through 12 weeks of play, and that those falling totals were largely thanks to the struggles of passing offences. Now that the regular season's over, I've repeated that analysis, looking at each team's points, points per game, yards per game and passing yards per game this season and comparing them to the full-year totals from 2012 and 2013, plus comparing team-by-team changes from after week 12 each year (hereafter, midseason). The full sheet can be seen here (each category is sorted by 2013-14 change for the full-season data), but here are some of the key parts of it. First, the final calculation of each team's points and points per game over the last three years, sorted by 2013-14 change:

From that, we can see that the Edmonton Eskimos and Winnipeg Blue Bombers were the only two teams to improve in points per game this year, with the Saskatchewan Roughriders and B.C. Lions particularly declining. Winnipeg was still only slightly above the league average, though. Ottawa's addition this year also really helped kill the CFL's point totals, as the Redblacks managed a measly 15,4 points per game this season, by far the worst in the league. Meanwhile, the Calgary Stampeders have by far the best three-year average offensive performance, with the Hamilton Tiger-Cats and Toronto Argonauts close behind. Still, on the whole, things got slightly better than they were earlier this year, with the average offence dropping by 5.2 points per team per game as compared to the 5.4 it was down at midseason. Here's a graph showing how things changed this year for each team.

Scoring offence isn't everything, though. What about yards per game, and in particular the passing yards per game that seemed to be such a big factor in this decline at midseason? Here's how they looked at the end of the year:

This is similar to the first chart in that Edmonton and Winnipeg are the only teams to improve from 2013 to 2014 in overall yardage. It's interesting that the Lions fare much better in offensive yardage and passing yardage than they do in points, though; that speaks to their red-zone struggles this season. Meanwhile, the Eskimos' passing yards per game declined substantially, but their overall offensive yardage improved thanks to a boosted ground game. Passing yards per game is one area where Ottawa  wound up being respectable, even if it didn't lead to points. This chart also really illustrates just how much the passing games in Saskatchewan and Montreal dropped off this season. Overall, yards of offence and passing yards per team per game were slightly improved from when we looked at this at midseason (290.9 to 292.6 and 213.1 to 213.7, respectively), but didn't rise significantly. Here's a look at passing yards per game over the last three seasons in graph form:

How did things change compared to when we looked at this at midseason? Well, Montreal and Hamilton got substantially better from a scoring perspective, with the Alouettes improving dramatically in yards per game and passing yards per game as well (but the Ticats actually declining there, boosting the theory that their turnaround was about their defence, which did much of Hamilton's scoring down the stretch ). Edmonton improved marginally in points, significantly in yards and even more notably in passing yards. Toronto found a rushing game in the second half of the season, which was important given that their passing offence actually declined. You can see all the changes (and how those compare to midseason to final changes from the previous two seasons) at the right of the sheet here.

What does all this mean in the end? It's clear that the decline in passing yards led to a lot of the offensive decline (offence dropped 56.4 yards per team per game this year on average, while passing offence dropped 54.0 yards per team per game), but is that a reflection of declining talent, or rather injuries and improving defences? From this corner, it's the latter. Most teams that struggled in the passing game this year had substantial quarterback injuries. Moreover, Montreal improved dramatically once they settled on Jonathon Crompton at quarterback, so there's hope that they'll be even better next year and bring the offensive totals up. The Ottawa Redblacks should improve this offseason as well, which would go a long way to helping boost the point totals in particular. The drop-offs this year in points, yards and passing attacks are certainly notable, but they don't necessarily mean the CFL's in crisis, and they may be about improved defensive schemes and personnel as well. We'll see how things go in the postseason and next year.