Have you ever scrolled through NFL stats and thought, “Does anyone really care about these anymore?”
Spoiler alert—aside from keyboard warriors desperate to make an argument, most people don’t…
Because, frankly, many of the stats don’t even matter anymore.
If you flip through any of the NFL Stats Reference guides, you’ll stumble right into the world of obsolete metrics—numbers propped up like relics from a bygone era, paraded around as if they prove something significant.
So, without further ado, how about we dive into 10 NFL stats that no longer move the needle for any analysts worth their weight!
Which NFL stats are often overlooked today?
Punting Average
There may be no more irrelevant stat in the NFL today than the punting average… I mean, it is so pointless, I’d bet punters don’t even have the confidence to brag about it in the locker room.
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What defensive lineman wants to hear their punter yelling, “Look how far I kicked it!”—only to neglect mentioning that the ball bounced into the end zone or got returned 35 yards.
I want to be sensitive to the fact that most punters already get very little shine, but this just isn’t the place to start. Seriously, what is this stat even supposed to tell us? Does your punter have a strong leg? Congratulations—so does every guy in the league.
Take Johnny Hekker in his prime—he wasn’t just booming 60-yarders.
He was pinning guys inside the 10, dropping balls out of bounds at the 2, forcing fair catches with perfect hang time. He weaponized field position in a unique way.
Now compare that to some random big-leg punter who’s just booting the laces off it into the middle of the field and watching returners dance 25 yards back the other way.
Yet for some reason, punting average has spent decades living unbothered in its little section of the box score, quietly misleading casual fans into thinking distance equals dominance. It doesn’t. Field position, hang time, return yardage—that’s the holy trinity for a great punt.
Or better yet, net average, which accounts for return yardage and touchbacks. It tells us not how far the ball traveled through the air, but how much actual value the punt delivered in terms of field position.
It’s still imperfect, but at least it cuts through the most basic nonsense.
Quarterback Super Bowl Wins
This one’ll ruffle some feathers—but we’ve gotta talk about it.
Super Bowl wins, for some reason, have become the final argument in any GOAT debate. If you’ve got multiple rings, you must be elite. If you’ve got none, you’re a fraud. Case closed, right?
Wrong.
Look, nobody’s saying Super Bowl wins don’t matter. They’re literally the point of the sport. But to use them as a quarterback’s entire résumé? That’s where it gets dumb. Fast.
Because if we follow that logic to its end, we’re saying Trent Dilfer is better than Dan Marino, Brad Johnson is better than Philip Rivers. Eli Manning? Better than Aaron Rodgers. You see where this goes?
Super Bowl wins are a team accomplishment. The quarterback is a huge part—but only a part.
He doesn’t play defense. He doesn’t kick. He doesn’t recover onside kicks. Yet somehow, we’ve decided this NFL stat belongs to quarterbacks and quarterbacks alone.
4th Quarter Comebacks
While people love to point toward 4th quarter comebacks… and there ARE a number of elite quarterbacks who have racked up quite a few of these—this is stat is a classic case correlation vs. Causation…
And, frankly, it might be the most misleading stat in the NFL.
I mean, look at it at face value—nothing says “elite quarterback play” like being down late and hoping your defense doesn’t collapse after you finally did your job.
You could be trailing by a point with 12 minutes left in the fourth, run a two-minute drill that stalls, kick a field goal… and then watch your defense hold firm for the next 10 minutes, and that counts as a gold star for the quarterback?
On the other side of that coin, a guy can lead a brilliant game-winning drive, give your team the lead, and watch your defense cough it up with 13 seconds left. Guess what? No comeback credited.
The whole stat is structured like a bad group project—the guy who does all the work, rarely seems to be the one that gets the most credit.
Don’t get me wrong, clutch quarterback play matters. But 4th quarter comebacks don’t separate clutch QBs from guys whose defense bailed them out.
And let’s not forget, this starts with being in a position to need a comeback in the first place, which isn’t exactly the best look.
Passing Yards
There was a time—not all that long ago—when throwing for 4,000 yards in an NFL season meant something. It meant a whole lot, in fact.
The guys that did it were slinging it deep, threading needles, and carrying their offenses.
Now it feels like most of the 4000 yard passers just showed up, threw it 40 times a game, and didn’t get benched.
Modern passing yardage is the most bloated, misleading stat on the planet.
Every broadcast loves to flash it like it’s some stamp of greatness—“He threw for 4,800 yards this season!” Oh, neat. Did they win eight games? Did half of that come while trailing by three scores in the second half? Did 1,300 of those yards come from receivers turning 4-yard slants into 40-yard gains?
Never mind the fact that the rules of the game have been completely warped to enable offenses to throw the ball with more regularity. It is crazy that people still act like this NFL stat means the same thing!
The record books show it clearly—it has become a graveyard of inflated air miles. Drew Brees has five of the top six passing seasons ever. Is that a knock on him? Not at all—he was great. But let’s not pretend it wasn’t also the perfect storm of Sean Payton play-calling, dome games, and an era when defenses got flagged for sneezing near a quarterback.
Total Receptions
There’s a reason this stat has become every running back and slot receiver’s favorite thing to bring up at family dinners.
“I had 107 catches last year!” Yeah, and 86 of them went for less than 10 yards. Congrats on being really good at jogging five yards and turning around.
Total receptions have officially entered the realm of participation trophy stats—high volume, low impact. It feels like the only reason it keeps hanging around is PPR leagues in fantasy football and lazy narratives.
Maybe some average fans still see a guy rack up triple-digit receptions and think, “Must be unstoppable,” but that stat omits the context of how toothless those receptions actually are.
But, alas, we are living in the checkdown era. Quick outs, bubble screens, pre-snap RPOs—it’s all about throwing it fast and letting someone else do the work.
It’s not that the players racking up receptions aren’t talented. Some of them are damn good. But catching the ball a lot doesn’t mean you’re dominating. Sometimes it just means you’re always the “safe option” when nothing else is open. You’re the emergency exit, not the main attraction.
And, thus, we have yet another meaningless NFL stat that was made pointless by the broader changes of the game.
Total Rushing Yards
This one’s tricky. On paper, total rushing yards feels like a legacy NFL stat that should still mean something. It looks tough. It looks gritty. It looks like a metric that rewards durability and production.
But peel back the layers, and you’ll find it’s been hollowed out by modern offenses and committee backfields.
In fact, more often than not, we see the best running backs in the league nowhere near the top of the rushing leaderboard because of how their teams use them…
And a lot of the 1000-yard rushers, which used to be the benchmark for greatness, are more like mules, just pounding away 3.2-yard carries.
Total rushing yards also rewards volume, not value.
A back can rack up 1,200 yards by waltzing through soft boxes in losing efforts. Another back might have just 850 yards, but every one of them felt like a dagger.
That’s why we see the top analysts today looking at metrics like yards per carry, obviously—but with qualifiers. Success rate on early downs. Explosive run rate. EPA per rush.
Stats that tell you whether your back is creating real offense, not just keeping the clock moving.
Total rushing yards still sound cool in a contract year. But in 2025, it’s a dinosaur stat.
Quarterback Wins
If you’ve spent any time around NFL bar arguments, you’ve likely heard about how this quarterback just finds a way to win.
“He’s 61–33 as a starter!” Umm… yeah—but is he the cause or benefactor?
It sounds definitive and is an easy way to point to quarterback performance in an easy to digest way, but, honestly, it’s a house of mirrors.
It’s the NFL equivalent of judging a chef based on the rest of the restaurant’s performance—valet service and the bathroom cleanliness included!
And yet, some people still cling to it like it’s gospel, as if a guy who’s been carried by elite defenses and running games is somehow a better “winner” than a QB constantly dragging a bottom-10 roster into relevance.
Quarterback wins look great on paper. But as an actual metric for individual greatness, they’re only slightly more useful than judging a wide receiver by how many team field goals were made during his games.
Tackles
At times, tackles can be the stat equivalent of cleaning up your own mess—or at least your teammates’ mess.
Because here’s the problem, not all tackles are created equal—most of them are just damage control.
And yet, fans and some media outlets still pump tackle totals like they tell the whole story. “He led the league in tackles!”
Okay… but where were those tackles? Behind the line? Or chasing guys after getting burned?
If you want to measure true impact, don’t look at total tackles. Look at tackles for loss, run stop percentage, and average depth of tackle.
Look at plays where a guy actually won his rep, not just survived it.
That is where you will find the best defenders in the game today… It isn’t 1975 anymore, nobody cares—or nobody should care about how many tackles you backed into.
Catch Rate
On its surface, catch rate seems like one of the more logical stats in the NFL. If a receiver is targeted a lot and catches a high percentage of those balls, that should mean he’s reliable. Productive. A technician, of sorts.
But the problem with catch rate is the problem with a lot of these legacy stats, it ignores context entirely.
Let’s say a receiver has a 53% catch rate. Sounds like a red flag, like the guy is a drop machine… Orrr maybe his quarterback is sailing balls past him—or he only runs extremely low percentage deep routes.
Catch rate doesn’t account for depth of target, quarterback accuracy, defensive coverage, or play design. It’s a blunt instrument measuring a technical skill that demands nuance.
There is a reason that an 80% catch rate doesn’t automatically get you a $100 million contract!
If you want to understand receiver value, look at yards per route run, targets per route, and first downs generated; that is where you will find the best pass catchers in the game.
Penalties
Obviously, no team wants to commit penalties—it’s giving away free yardage on defense and a complication on offense.
And it is not untrue that bad teams commit a lot of penalties… and, yes, it’s free yardage for the other team that can kill drives, and fuels coaching meltdowns on national TV…
But penalties might be the most misunderstood stat in the NFL, not because the number itself is unclear, but because we treat it like it means the same thing across every snap, player, and situation.
There’s this assumption that bad teams commit more penalties because they’re sloppy, undisciplined, and poorly coached. And yes—sometimes that’s true. If you’ve got offensive linemen false-starting three times a quarter and defensive backs grabbing at ghosts, you’ve got real problems.
But the fact of the matter is, it isn’t uncommon to see the top playoff teams among the top transgressors because of the aggressive systems they deploy on gameday.
They may accrue a higher number of penalties than others, but by walking that fine line between physical and illegal play, they are able to secure a massive advantage over their opponents.
