Hogs Haven
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I got very used to watching the Commanders use a “horizontal” passing attack under Kliff Kingsbury in 2024, by which I mean passes at or behind the line of scrimmage. These comprised screen passes, checkdowns to running backs and other play designs.
Today, I’ve spent a lot of time interacting with Gemini (Google’s AI-powered search engine) to harvest data about the frequency with which such passes were used in the NFL and by certain teams over the past two seasons. In some cases, I have been unable to independently verify these numbers, but there was enough consistency in the results I got for me to feel that they are probably reliable.
Gemini tells me that the league-wide average for passes at or behind the line of scrimmage typically hovers between 15% and 17% of all pass attempts.
Moreover, Gemini tells me the following about Kliff Kingsbury’s offense in 2024 & 2025:
Looking at the receiving skills and historical usage of players like Rachaad White, Chig Okonkwo, Jerome Ford and Dyami Brown, I’ve been wondering if I should anticipate a resurgence of the screen/checkdown passing game in 2026 under new offensive coordinator David Blough.
Given that Dan Quinn has hired two first-time NFL coordinators — meaning that no one really knows exactly what the offensive or defensive schemes will look like — Commanders fans and analysts have pretty much defaulted to looking at the Brian Flores defense as a proxy for Washington’s 2026 defense, and Ben Johnson’s offense as a proxy for the Commanders’ 2026 offense. We probably won’t know until some time in September or October how legitimate these proxies are, but I’m going to follow suit here.
I did a bit of research on the 2025 Bears offense under 1st-year head coach Ben Johnson and found this article that was published after the Bears had played 11 games. The passing chart in the article says that the 2025 Bears attempted 15.9% of throws in those 11 games at or behind the line of scrimmage.
Based on these details for those first 11 games (327 pass attempts) for the ’25 Bears, I extrapolated the following numbers...
