FanIQ Research
Short, checkable pieces on how NFL football works. Every number here comes from a query against the same play-by-play record the FanIQ app runs on, and every piece shows its work so you can argue with it.
Scheme, personnel, and the tells that show up before the snap.
Stuff a run on first down and the next play is a pass 72% of the time. Let the same run gain five and it drops to 40%.
FanIQ Research · Aug 22, 2026
Stacking eight defenders near the line does stop the run. It also hands the offense the best passing conditions it will see all game.
FanIQ Research · Aug 19, 2026
Throwing out of a run-heavy huddle has been quietly one of the best plays in football for a decade, and the gap is not close.
FanIQ Research · Aug 15, 2026
Tall receivers own the end zone, small receivers own the open field, and the scale decides which running back gets fed. None of it is scouting superstition. All of it is in the record.
FanIQ Research · Aug 12, 2026
Where the runs aim, how often the offense lines up in shotgun, how pass-happy the calls lean, how fast the snaps come. Each habit repeats the following season, and you can rank how loudly.
FanIQ Research · Aug 12, 2026
The fake punt is a better-than-coin-flip call that coaches use about nineteen times a season. The fake field goal costs points and is quietly going extinct. And the most efficient touchdown machine in football is a pass thrown by someone who is not a quarterback.
FanIQ Research · Aug 12, 2026
How many defenders a coordinator stacks in the box is the most repeatable thing about a defense. Sack totals are the least. And the run funnel you spotted in October will probably still be there next season.
FanIQ Research · Aug 12, 2026
When a quarterback tucks the ball and runs, the play works about six times in ten. Nothing an offense calls on purpose comes close, and no offense can call it on purpose.
FanIQ Research · Aug 11, 2026
Deep throws connect about four times in ten and still comfortably out-earn the safe stuff underneath, every year since throw depth was first charted. The bill arrives as interceptions.
FanIQ Research · Aug 11, 2026
From the 1-yard line, the quarterback keep scores two thirds of the time and the handoff barely more than half. The league still hands it off four times as often.
FanIQ Research · Aug 11, 2026
On a first-and-ten with the game still close, the quarterback's feet give away the play call more reliably than almost anything else on the field.
FanIQ Research · Aug 9, 2026
What 25 seasons of play-by-play say about how football actually works.
Passing is a skill that works when the defense has to respect the run, and stops working the moment it doesn't.
FanIQ Research · Aug 19, 2026
When anyone other than the main quarterback leads a team's passing in a week, the win rate drops nearly twenty points. It has been true in every season since 1999, and the third quarterback is where seasons go to die.
FanIQ Research · Aug 12, 2026
One game in seven ends with a margin of exactly three. The most common final score is 23-20. Nobody in this record has played a 0-0 game. And every season still invents a score no one has seen before.
FanIQ Research · Aug 12, 2026
The coin toss still matters, the opening field goal is not the trap you think it is, underdogs get most of their disadvantage erased, and ties are back. Overtime samples are small, so we show the counts.
FanIQ Research · Aug 12, 2026
Four in ten head-coaching hires are gone within two seasons, the interim year is a lost year, and the ten-year tenure you envy is a survivor, not a strategy.
FanIQ Research · Aug 12, 2026
Fourth-and-1 converts two times in three and has beaten a coin flip in every season since 1999. The steepest price on the ladder is the second yard, the worst call on the board is a midfield punt, and one taboo still stands untouched.
FanIQ Research · Aug 12, 2026
The divisional round is a fortress, the wildcard round is the upset window, nobody repeats, the all-road title run is nearly a unicorn, and the Super Bowl forgets the standings. Playoff samples are small, so we print the counts.
FanIQ Research · Aug 12, 2026
The team that scores first wins nearly two thirds of the time, the first team to twenty wins six times in seven, and almost half of all winners never trail at all. The comeback is the highlight reel, not the norm.
FanIQ Research · Aug 12, 2026
The first quarter supplies barely a fifth of football's scoring, one game in nine is still 0-0 after it, one game in five holds a team under ten points, and when a shutout happens, the blanked team is almost always the visitor.
FanIQ Research · Aug 12, 2026
Miss from 50-plus and the other team takes over right where the kick was snapped, near midfield. Counted properly, that miss costs about two full points versus simply punting.
FanIQ Research · Aug 11, 2026
The final two minutes of each half hold about one of every six scores in a football game, on one fifteenth of the clock. It is structural, and you can set your snack schedule by it.
FanIQ Research · Aug 11, 2026
Kickers tripled their long-range workload, the midfield punt is going extinct, quarterbacks run again, and every game hands out three fewer possessions than it did in 1999.
FanIQ Research · Aug 11, 2026
Fourth-quarter run rate swings fifty points from blowout leader to blowout loser. Almost everything people believe about establishing the run is this chart, read backwards.
FanIQ Research · Aug 9, 2026
Which numbers repeat, which ones were luck wearing a disguise.
Cold games look dramatic and play close to normal. Wind above 15 mph quietly removes the deep third of the field.
FanIQ Research · Aug 22, 2026
Of the 112 skill players since 1999 who jumped 40% or more in yards per game, fewer than one in four held that level the following season.
FanIQ Research · Aug 15, 2026
Point differential and win percentage are the same fact in different clothes. When they disagree, the points are telling the truth, and next season usually collects the debt, at a rate of about 37 points per win.
FanIQ Research · Aug 12, 2026
Worst-to-first happens almost every year, the five-year rebuild is the minority outcome, twelve-win seasons melt, and the most stationary teams in football are the ones stuck at .500.
FanIQ Research · Aug 12, 2026
Questionable usually means playing. Knees haunt a season more than hamstrings do. And a concussion listing is the one tag where the decision is out of the coach's hands.
FanIQ Research · Aug 12, 2026
Teams embarrassed by a rival do not win the rematch more often than other first-meeting losers. They win it less, because teams that get blown out are usually just worse.
FanIQ Research · Aug 11, 2026
The same roster that goes 6-1 in one-score games routinely goes 3-4 in them a year later. If you want to know who a team really is, look at its blowouts.
FanIQ Research · Aug 11, 2026
Play for play, a lost fumble costs more win probability than an interception. We expected the opposite going in, and the data reversed us in every season since 1999.
FanIQ Research · Aug 11, 2026
We assumed the scheme manufactures yards after the catch and the player just collects them. The data reversed us: the after-catch profile follows the player, twice as reliably as it follows the team.
FanIQ Research · Aug 11, 2026
For running backs, yards per game repeats from year to year at r = 0.598. Touchdown rate repeats at 0.187. One of those is a skill and one is mostly weather.
FanIQ Research · Aug 9, 2026
Draft strategy, value, and the shape of a good roster.
Adding a point per reception makes weekly scores 17% steadier. That changes which players are valuable far more than it changes how many points they score.
FanIQ Research · Aug 26, 2026
The 300-touch running back spent two decades going extinct. The last four seasons reversed it. The do-it-all back, though, is still genuinely rare, and your draft plan should know the difference.
FanIQ Research · Aug 12, 2026
December brings the cold, the backup quarterbacks, and a quiet one-point fade from your stars. The scoring environment survives. The people in it are the problem.
FanIQ Research · Aug 12, 2026
When a quarterback has a big day, his top receiver almost always has one too. The tight end comes along half the time, the running back barely notices, and the fear of the opposing ground game is a myth.
FanIQ Research · Aug 12, 2026
A prospect's birthday is draft capital nobody prices, ten college programs supply up to half the first round, old prospects slide to day three, and the last pick in the draft has paid off exactly once.
FanIQ Research · Aug 12, 2026
The most repeated rule in fantasy football is true, decisively, at exactly one position. At receiver it points the other way, and almost nobody says so.
FanIQ Research · Aug 9, 2026
Every piece here argues a handful of FanIQ laws: single football claims, graded season by season. Browse all of them, or start with the myths.
A single rule from the library with the seasons behind it. Nothing else.