We hear it all the time. The NFL is a passing league. You have to pass the ball and defend the pass well to win in this league. Running backs don’t matter. Stopping the run is less important than stopping the pass. That’s the conventional wisdom these days, but is it true?
As it happens, the league has quietly undergone an extraordinary transformation over the last decade or so. In 2015 the league set an all time record of 244 passing yards per game. Passing offenses seemed unstoppable. 13 NFL teams surpassed 4000 passing yards that year. Even the Jets got in on the fun, passing for 4057 yards. Everybody was trying to figure out how to slow down all the high powered passing offenses. Gradually, over the next 10 years, they largely succeeded.
Ten years later in 2025, NFL teams averaged just 210 passing yards per game, the lowest total since 2006. That represented an enormous drop of 34 passing yards per game from the peak of 2015. There has never been another ten year stretch with that level decrease in passing yards in post-merger NFL history.
Just six teams surpassed 4000 passing yards in 2025, down more than 50% from a decade earlier. The average team attempted just 32.1 passes per game in 2025, the lowest total since 2006. The last time the NFL had a substantial stretch of years where teams averaged lower than 32.1 passes per game was more than 40 years ago, in the late 1970s through the early 1980s. Back then nobody was calling the NFL a passing league. In fact, there was such a dearth in passing and scoring back then the NFL started a series of rule changes to encourage passing and scoring.
Passing efficiency has also been going through a significant decline lately. In 2025 the NFL averaged 6.09 net yards per passing attempt, down .32 net yards per attempt from the all time high of 6.41 set 10 years earlier. That level of decline in a decade has only been surpassed once in post-merger NFL history, from 1989 through 1997.
At the same time rushing yards have been increasing. Rushing yards per game hit a 16 year low in 2015 at 108.9 yards per game. There have only been four seasons in all of NFL history with less rushing yards per game. By 2024 that number had risen to 119.8 rushing yards per game, the highest number since 1988.
Rushing efficiency has also been on the rise. In 2005 teams averaged 4.0 yards per rushing attempt. By 2025 that number was up to 4.4 yards per attempt, the second highest number in NFL history, just 0.1 yards less than the record of 4.5 set in 2022.
All of this suggests that the NFL may not be as much of a passing league as common wisdom suggests. In fact, in an everything old is new again moment, the old fashioned approach of emphasizing stopping the run seems to be back in style. It’s just one week, and cause and effect are a bit tricky here, as losing teams tend to pass more and run less, but for at least one week, the teams that stopped the run excelled this season. The top ten teams in fewest rushing yards allowed have a combined record of 8-2 this season. The 1-0 Jets are one of those teams, ranking fourth in the NFL with just 68 rushing yards allowed.
We’ll see what the rest of the 2026 season has in store, but maybe Aaron Glenn and Darren Mougey were on to something in the offseason. The Jets brought in a bunch of guys who excel at stopping the run on defense. They also brought in a number of sure tacklers. Maybe we’re going back to the future. Maybe the NFL is not such a passing league after all. Maybe the Jets are in the process of building the right kind of defense for modern NFL offenses, which increasingly seem determined to run the ball. We’ll find out over the next few months, but maybe this Jets defense is about to surprise a lot of people.
