Steering Into the Stats
Dropped passes, blown blocks, and other secrets lurking in the Week 1 database. Plus an unhinged rant about a fake tight end.
Week 1 stats are misleading in fun and interesting ways. The sample sizes are small and situationally-skewed: one opponent, one gameplan, perhaps a half or three quarters playing from behind or with a big lead, and so forth.
So why pay any attention to Week 1 stats? Well, they’re the only 2025 stats we have. And examining them gets us (me) back in the routine of examining the numbers, interrogating them against film and injury reports, drawing a conclusion or two and formulating further hypotheses. The data may provide few answers right now, but it can at least help us ask better questions, as well as skewer some of the prevailing storylines entering Week 2.
Dropped Passes and Interceptions
A few dropped passes can go a long way toward shaping our perceptions of a team and its offense in Week 1. Here are the teams with the highest dropped pass totals according to FTN Fantasy. The Sports Info Solutions totals are in parentheses; drops are often in the eye of the beholder/data collector.
Titans: 5 dropped passes (5)
Commanders: 5 dropped passes (4)
Cowboys: 4 dropped passes (4)
Browns: 3 dropped passes (4)
Jaguars: 3 dropped passes (3)
Calvin Ridley dropped three passes in the loss to the Broncos. The drops may have cost the Titans the game. Ridley is talented enough to be an All Pro but unreliable in a variety of ways, making him a poor-but-common choice to be the WR1 on a rebuilding team.
CeeDee Lamb was charged with four drops by both FTN and SIS. I would not charge him with a drop on that diving fourth-and-3 ball, but that desperate pass would not have been necessary if not for an earlier drop.
Lamb dropped 10 passes in 2024, per SIS. He’s targeted a lot and will sometimes turn upfield before securing the ball — let’s call that a Playmaker Drop — though that’s not really what happened last Thursday.
Deebo Samuel had his hands on two catchable downfield passes for the Commanders. Zach Ertz also had an old-guy drop on third down over the middle. The fourth drop was either on a pass behind rookie receiver Jaylin Lane or on a wobbly dumpoff by Jayden Daniels to rookie running back Jacory Croskey-Merritt (I hereby dub him the new “Law Firm,” inheriting the nickname from BenJarvis Green-Ellis).
Daniels’ ball placement was a little off against the Giants, perhaps due to a wrist injury, plus a great deal of defensive pressure. Deebo, like Lamb, is vulnerable to Playmaker Drops. He dropped six of 81 targets in 2024 and 11 passes in 2021.
David Njoku dropped a catchable crosser from Joe Flacco in the Browns loss to the Bengals. Cedric Tillman couldn’t haul in a low pass that he still got both hands around. Jerry Jeudy dropped what should have been a low-difficulty fourth-down conversion late in the game.
Flacco threw a lot of sliders in Sunday’s loss to the Bengals. His two interceptions came on passes that Jeudy and Tillman helpfully scooped into the air for defenders to fetch. I am not sure which bad plays by Browns’ receivers counted as drops and which did not, and I don’t feel like sifting through the databases to find out. The issue here is that Njoku, Jeudy and Tillman are the Browns best veteran receivers. After them, it’s down to rookies like Harold Fannin and Isaiah Bond.
FTN lists eight teams with zero drops, most notably the Packers (who had hands like patio bricks in 2024) and 49ers (last offensive player out of the medical center, please switch off the MRI machine).
As for dropped interceptions:
Ravens: 2 dropped interceptions.
Cardinals: 2 dropped interceptions.
Jets: 2 dropped interceptions.
Nine Teams: 1 dropped interception.
Here we find two teams that lost storyline-heavy barnburners and one which narrowly escaped a stunning upset.
You may remember one of the Ravens’ dropped interceptions: Chidi Awuzie was initially awarded with a turnover, but his diving almost-catch was easily overturned. The play occurred in the fourth quarter, with the Ravens leading 40-25.
The Ravens suffered 12 dropped interceptions in 2024; the Texans led the NFL with 13. The Ravens suffered two drops in last year’s 33-31 Week 10 loss to the Browns, which was one of their “OMG how do they keep losing these games” games. If Awuzie gets a better scoop on that ball on Sunday … well, the Choose Your Own Adventure certainly branches to a different page.
Perhaps the Ravens take too many chances by acquiring defenders with bad hands. Perhaps they don’t practice catching interceptions properly or diligently enough.
Or – and this may sound crazy – maybe a team that’s consistently excellent over multiple years gets so many opportunities to intercept passes that they inevitably drop a few! Maybe they drop more interceptions than other successful teams due to tiny sample sizes and normal distribution! And because that team is expected to win every week and is often on national television, their losses are over-analyzed and form-fit into oversimplified narratives.
No, no that cannot be it. The answer must be: Harbaugh bad.