This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/nfl by /u/JPAnalyst on 2025-09-27 15:05:07+00:00.
Five years ago, only 19% of all points came off of field goals. This has increased to 24.2% in the first three weeks of 2025. An important caveat is that a three-week sample size can give a false impression of how the season will end up for any metric. Also, we haven’t hit winter yet, so this may impact the % of points coming from FGs later in the year. In 1974, you can see the impact of the NFL moving the goal posts to the back of the endzone.
Early 2025 is seeing offensive touchdowns making up only 61.6% of all points in a game, down from 66.3% in 2020. Since then, FGs are taking point share from TDs.
Before the 2-point conversion was added, extra points made up over 11% of all scoring. This is down to about 9% now after two rule changes (2 pts, and moving XPA back to the 15-yard line),
After the two-point conversion was added in 1994, everyone got it out of their system and points from 2-pt conversions dropped to only 0.4% of all scoring by 2006. When the NFL made XPAs more difficult, 2-pt scoring started to increase the % mix of scoring. I’m not sure what to attribute this year’s dip to other than small sample size which will likely show mean regression later on.
From 1970 to 2014 defensive touchdowns hovered between 3.5% to 5.5%, but we have seen a decline in defensive TDs % of scoring in the last ten years. I don’t know why.
Special Teams returns as a % of scoring has also ben declining in recent years.
Here is everything in one chart, although I find this one harder to interpret than the single line charts. This includes a few small categories not shown above.
