Have NFL defenses caught up with the offensive explosion?

The NFL is a passing league, in case you haven’t heard. It’s the fantasy football era and league rules are consistently geared toward creating more scoring. Yet, despite all the rule changes and emphases that went into creating more prolific passing totals, something funny happened last year: Scoring actually went down.

That’s curious. There are many reasons for this and the most important contributing variables are hard to pin down, but in a league where it’s damn near impossible to play defense against a wide receiver anymore, is that scoring dip just an anomaly or is it a part of a greater trend?

Well, we won’t know that for a while, will we? For now, what we can look at though is how things are going so far in 2015, as we roll into Week 6.

The answer? Scoring is back up, so far.

So, how are teams moving the ball?

Well, as you might guess, passing yardage (per team, per game) is up, as are passing yards per attempt. The average quarterback rating has increased (88.9) and the average interception rate has decreased. We’re looking at, so far, more efficient and effective quarterbacks, and that’s interesting even with the rash of injuries at the position that have gone around the league -- Ben Roethlisberger, Andrew Luck, Tony Romo, Jay Cutler, and Drew Brees have all missed games -- and efficiency is still up.

Conversely, rushing attempts are down, rushing yards per game are down, as are rushing yards per attempt. This seems to confirm the evolution toward more passing continuing in 2015. That said, there are more rushing touchdowns per game on average than there were in 2014, and the touchdown passes per game number has held steady.

Obviously, it’s a much smaller sample size, and these numbers may change significantly as the season goes on, but it’s always interesting to keep tabs on the evolution of the game. There have been huge increases in passing yards and scoring over the last several years in large part due to the tightening of rules for what cornerbacks can do on receivers, and for what defensive players can do to quarterbacks. The NFL is protecting its offensive superstars while hoping for more yards and points to feed the ever-important fan-maker in fantasy football.

However, we saw a few trends last year that were surprising. While there were increases in passing yards and passing touchdowns in 2014 -- an average of 473.6 passing yards per game, up more than 30 yards per game since just 2010, with an all-time record 807 passing touchdowns -- there was a drop in passing attempts and a drop in scoring.

Have defenses caught up with the offensive explosion? Has the NFL scoring boom plateaued? Does it have to do with the quality of quarterbacks coming out of college -- coaches often complain about teaching young quarterbacks the pro style systems -- or is the effectiveness of defenses increasing? Do all these penalties actually reduce passing and scoring? Are all the new offensive-geared rules emphases having a paradoxical effect?

It’s way too early to answer any of these questions, obviously, but it’s something to watch.

For now, only five weeks of the season have passed. We’ll check back in on these numbers later in the year.