Where Have All the Shutouts Gone?

With Week 13 of the 2024 NFL season now in the books, we have yet to see a single shutout recorded.

By contrast, through the first 13 weeks of last season, there had already been four shutouts (staring with a 40-0 whitewashing of the Giants by Dallas on the season's very first week), with four more to follow in the last five weeks.

Are NFL offenses that good — or are NFL defenses that bad?

One major change has been the improvement of the running game: In 2023, the average NFL team gained 112.7 rushing yards per game, and 4.2 yards per carry.

Thus far in 2024, those respective averages have been 119.9 and 4.4.

Passing offense, however, has actually gone down — from 218.9 yards per team per game in 2023 to 217.0 (so far) in 2024.

(In 1977 — the year before the "chuck rule" was enacted, the NFL as a whole averaged more rushing yards per team per game — 143.9 — than passing — 141.9.)

And Saquon Barkley could become the Roger Maris of the NFL: leading the league with 1,499 yards rushing in 12 games, Barkley needs 607 yards to break the single-season rushing-yards record of 2,105 established by Eric Dickerson in 1984. But since the NFL played 16 games in 1984 and 17 games now (and will almost certainly bump that up to 18 games any year now), the dreaded "asterisk" is sure to come up if Barkley breaks the mark, but does not do it in 16 games.

While 607 yards in five games is 121.4 yards per game, the first of those five games is against the Panthers, who just happen to rank last in the entire NFL against the run (by the way, Jamal Lewis holds the single-game NFL rushing-yards record with 295 set in 2003); and while Barkley's next opponent after Carolina — Pittsburgh — is fourth against the run (but the Steelers haven't won in Philadelphia since 1965!), after that it's at Washington (27th against the run), Dallas (31st against the run) at home, and the Giants (29th against the run), also at home.

Suffice it to say that everyone who has Barkley on their fantasy team must be licking their proverbial chops.

And ESPN's Mike Greenberg has finally seen enough: he has just proclaimed that the Eagles are the best team in the NFL, despite being only in a three-way tie (with the Bills and Vikings) for the league's third-best record, although Philadelphia's current 8-game winning streak is the league's second-longest (Detroit has won 10 in a row and will end the year at Minnesota on January 5).

Another question is whether Barkley can overcome the inherent bias in favor of quarterbacks and be voted league MVP.

If he breaks the single-season rushing-yards record — "asterisk" or not — he will make a pretty convincing case for receiving the award, in that Patrick Mahomes (ninth in the NFL in passing yards) and Josh Allen (13th) are having "off" years (at least by their lofty standards) and Barkley holds a head-to-head win over Lamar Jackson, Philadelphia's first over "The Modell Franchise" ("Cleveland 1.0" prior to 1996, Baltimore from 1996 to the present) on the road since 1991.

Obviously, the Giants must be really kicking themselves over letting Barkley leave in free agency in favor of keeping Daniel Jones, who is now backing up the lovely and talented Sam Darnold in Minnesota.

It's the stuff that gets people fired — and since John Mara rather obviously isn't going to fire himself...