This fascinating tweet came to my attention this morning, and I seriously spent a good ten minutes mesmerized by the numbers on the chart, and their corresponding scheme.
The chart breaks down NFL teams and their yards before contact sorted by each run concept. Take a look for yourself.
As a coach, it's great to be able to look at this chart and see that, if you want to be an inside zone team, Tennessee and Buffalo are great teams to be studying because they're both averaging over 3 yards before contact, while the same can be said of New Orleans and Washington with the power scheme.
The coach in me wanted to take things a step further and figure out what SCHEME (out of the four provided) was the most successful in the NFL last season across the board on average?
Here's what I found:
So across all 32 NFL teams, the inside zone scheme is king, with power not far behind with both hanging just a bit under 2 yards before contact. Bringing up the rear is outside zone with just over a yard before contact.