NFL

The NFL Preseason Is Not Predictive — But It Can Often Seem That Way

By Ty Schalter

Aug. 24, 2022, at 6:00 AM

This time last year, Cincinnati Bengals wideout Ja’Marr Chase was being labeled a ‘bust’. With just one catch — on an unremarkable bubble screen — and plenty of drops, Chase’s first preseason didn’t seem to bode well for his professional reunion with college quarterback Joe Burrow. All Chase went on to do was break rookie receiving records, be named the AP Offensive Rookie of the Year and help the Bengals make the Super Bowl. Meanwhile, Chicago Bears rookie quarterback Justin Fields’s preseason debut had fans and analysts alike calling for him to start Week 1. But after putting up a 90.2 preseason passer rating — seventh among qualified QBs — he finished the regular season rated 30th out of 33 qualifiers.

NFL preseason contests have the reputation of not telling us much about how players will perform in games that count, particularly when we consider how teams approach them. But that doesn’t stop fans or analysts from jumping to conclusions.

We should know better by now: There’s no correlation between preseason and regular-season passer rating,¹ rushing yards per attempt² or receiving yards per game.³ And it’s no wonder, with so many different combinations of players and circumstances being thrown together in games that don’t actually count.

Preseason stats are quite limited to begin with, and offensive skill-position players are the easiest for people to assess (and build narratives around). Since 2000, here are some of the most extreme examples of good and bad preseasons that heralded — or didn’t — the same caliber of regular season, starting with quarterbacks:

Kerry Collins is our poster boy for a great-but-meaningless preseason. Having been replaced in New York by No. 1 overall pick Eli Manning, Collins arrived in Oakland in 2004 to replace 38-year-old Rich Gannon. Collins put up monster exhibition numbers, going 14-of-25 for 344 yards, four touchdowns and no interceptions, but he went on to lead the league in picks and oversaw a 3-10 record for the Raiders in games he started.

Quarterbacks who put up good preseason stats are often good enough to start Week 1, but you don’t really know if your team has a Sam Darnold or a Dak Prescott until the real games begin. A rough preseason can certainly bode ill for new starters — Jimmy Clausen could not cash the large reputational check ESPN draft analyst Mel Kiper wrote on his behalf — but they can also precede a coming-out party. And then we have cases like Michael Vick in 2010. By the end of his second preseason since returning from prison, he had given no indication he’d ever throw the ball at a high level ever again; Vick went on to have his best year as a passer.

Though it’s become common wisdom that tailbacks are as plug-and-play as any position in football, plenty of ball-carriers run wild against the scrubs before getting shut out against starters. 2010 first-round pick Jahvid Best had 129 yards on just 15 rushes in his first preseason; he gained only 426 more regular-season yards that year despite getting 156 more carries. By contrast, Best’s eventual replacement, free-agent veteran Reggie Bush, struggled mightily in preseason before becoming the last Lion to gain over 1,000 yards on the ground.

But sometimes, a big-deal preseason really is a big deal. Matt Forte was a solid back over his first two years in the league, but everyone, including the Madden video game franchise, underrated his speed. His 89-yard preseason touchdown run against the Raiders heralded a breakout third season; his yards-per-carry jumped from 3.8 over his first two years to 4.5.

When it comes to wide receivers, the talent jumps off the page. Randy Moss put up three of the five best preseasons in our sample, and the other two belonged to Julio Jones and Antonio Brown. That trio combined for 20 Pro Bowl appearances and 10 All-Pro selections. But it’s possible for a wideout to show out in preseason and flame out in the regular season; Greg Jennings flashed in his rookie exhibitions, but a 43.3 percent catch rate severely limited his production that year. And even the most physically talented receivers can go missing in preseason: Brown gained just 30 yards over five preseason games in 2015 before racking up career-high 1,834 yards that regular season.

What does it all mean? Well, we can’t say much more than preseason performance doesn’t mean anything — except when it does. So as this NFL preseason comes to a close, don’t dismiss storylines like rookie Kenny Pickett impressing for the Pittsburgh Steelers as much as he did at the University of Pittsburgh, or undrafted Rams rookie Lance McCutcheon leading the league in preseason receiving. But don’t trade the moon and the stars to get leading preseason rusher Brittain Brown of the Las Vegas Raiders on your fantasy team, either, and don’t worry too much if Tom Brady looks a little rusty when he finally rejoins the Bucs. There surely are clues about the regular season hiding in the preseason, but they’ll be surrounded by red herrings — and we won’t be able to tell which from which until we have real games to analyze.