Play-action is a quarterback’s best friend. It forces hesitation in the pass rush and influences defenders in coverage, often leading to defined reads and easy completions. Doing it from under center can have an even greater impact on the defense.
This is a crazy thing to me, because this is an area where the data and the film seem to be exactly in line. The film guy and the data guy are saying the same thing. Play action passing is systematically more productive than standard passing, independent of how good your rushing offence is. It's infuriating to hear NFL commentators in 2025 still talk about how running opens up the play action pass, when as you've shown here, it's not running that opens up the play action pass. The play action pass is its own weapon.
Perhaps you can give me some expertise here Nick, because the NFL data world has been kicking and screaming for as long as there's been an NFL data world, yelling at teams to play action pass more. There is the slight hiccup of actual rushing plays being more productive out of the shotgun, and play action passes being more productive under centre, but there would surely be a way to fix this in order to get the single most productive type of play call (which is play action pass) into the game plan more.
Not even 20 percent of all drop backs in the NFL right now are play fakes, and to me it just seems like value being left on the table. Some QBs are not great in play action (I think Justin Fields might just be the worst PA passer in NFL history), but virtually all QBs are better in the context of play action than outside of that context, and a healthy amount of them are dramatically better on a per play basis. Look at Lamar Jackson's numbers on PA drop backs, primarily his three sacks on 115 drop backs (holy cow), and compare them to his numbers with no play fake. It's a fundamentally different (better) player. This begs the question why Lamar only gets the benefit of a play fake on 15 percent of his touches.
This is where I ask for your expertise Nick. Why is there not more play action throwing? Either for the Ravens in specific or the NFL in general. Perhaps your perspective can offer a rational answer on this, because mine consistently comes up dry. As far as I'm concerned, if there's a point of diminishing returns to faking the run, the league hasn't reached it yet, and should keep running more and more play fakes until they do. Instead, the league consistently allows a gap to exist between the EPA/Play on play action passes, and the EPA/Play on standard passes, without mixing more of the productive ones into their game plans, and I just don't understand it.
I think your last paragraph kind of hints at it - the point of diminishing returns. Perhaps there is still a gap that could be closed/taken advantage of more by offenses. But the basic reason is probably that the more you see play-action, the easier it is to respond to it.
I don't know if you follow baseball, but it's the same issue you see with fastball-change-up pitchers. I've seen cases where a pitcher has a 50% swing and miss rate (made up numbers but you get the point) on change ups and just a 10% swing and miss on fastballs, while throwing fastballs 90% of the time and change-ups 10% of the time. So they're told to throw the change-up more often. The problem there is that the change up generally only works because the hitter has to honor the fastball. If you throw a change up all the time or even 50% of the time, a hitter can just sit on the slower pitch. It's a similar story with play-action.
That said, there are other reasons. Down and distance is a factor. 2nd-and-long and 3rd-and-medium/long won't get the same reaction from the defense.
Not to mention, it depends on the QB. Some don't like turning their back to the defense at all. Some quarterbacks are such good processors and their super power is reading the defense, so you don't want to take that away with play-action where there is less reading/decision-making in the QB's hands.
I think that was the case with Joe Burrow. I remember hearing how Taylor wanted to run a play-action heavy system when he first got to Cincy, but Burrow was such a quick processor of the coverage that he didn't want to take that out of Burrow's hands. So he called less of it.
I do agree that teams could use it more. Sometimes, playcallers get away from it for other reasons (e.g. outsmarting themselves).
This is a crazy thing to me, because this is an area where the data and the film seem to be exactly in line. The film guy and the data guy are saying the same thing. Play action passing is systematically more productive than standard passing, independent of how good your rushing offence is. It's infuriating to hear NFL commentators in 2025 still talk about how running opens up the play action pass, when as you've shown here, it's not running that opens up the play action pass. The play action pass is its own weapon.
Perhaps you can give me some expertise here Nick, because the NFL data world has been kicking and screaming for as long as there's been an NFL data world, yelling at teams to play action pass more. There is the slight hiccup of actual rushing plays being more productive out of the shotgun, and play action passes being more productive under centre, but there would surely be a way to fix this in order to get the single most productive type of play call (which is play action pass) into the game plan more.
Not even 20 percent of all drop backs in the NFL right now are play fakes, and to me it just seems like value being left on the table. Some QBs are not great in play action (I think Justin Fields might just be the worst PA passer in NFL history), but virtually all QBs are better in the context of play action than outside of that context, and a healthy amount of them are dramatically better on a per play basis. Look at Lamar Jackson's numbers on PA drop backs, primarily his three sacks on 115 drop backs (holy cow), and compare them to his numbers with no play fake. It's a fundamentally different (better) player. This begs the question why Lamar only gets the benefit of a play fake on 15 percent of his touches.
This is where I ask for your expertise Nick. Why is there not more play action throwing? Either for the Ravens in specific or the NFL in general. Perhaps your perspective can offer a rational answer on this, because mine consistently comes up dry. As far as I'm concerned, if there's a point of diminishing returns to faking the run, the league hasn't reached it yet, and should keep running more and more play fakes until they do. Instead, the league consistently allows a gap to exist between the EPA/Play on play action passes, and the EPA/Play on standard passes, without mixing more of the productive ones into their game plans, and I just don't understand it.
I think your last paragraph kind of hints at it - the point of diminishing returns. Perhaps there is still a gap that could be closed/taken advantage of more by offenses. But the basic reason is probably that the more you see play-action, the easier it is to respond to it.
I don't know if you follow baseball, but it's the same issue you see with fastball-change-up pitchers. I've seen cases where a pitcher has a 50% swing and miss rate (made up numbers but you get the point) on change ups and just a 10% swing and miss on fastballs, while throwing fastballs 90% of the time and change-ups 10% of the time. So they're told to throw the change-up more often. The problem there is that the change up generally only works because the hitter has to honor the fastball. If you throw a change up all the time or even 50% of the time, a hitter can just sit on the slower pitch. It's a similar story with play-action.
That said, there are other reasons. Down and distance is a factor. 2nd-and-long and 3rd-and-medium/long won't get the same reaction from the defense.
Not to mention, it depends on the QB. Some don't like turning their back to the defense at all. Some quarterbacks are such good processors and their super power is reading the defense, so you don't want to take that away with play-action where there is less reading/decision-making in the QB's hands.
I think that was the case with Joe Burrow. I remember hearing how Taylor wanted to run a play-action heavy system when he first got to Cincy, but Burrow was such a quick processor of the coverage that he didn't want to take that out of Burrow's hands. So he called less of it.
I do agree that teams could use it more. Sometimes, playcallers get away from it for other reasons (e.g. outsmarting themselves).