Tracking team health throughout the entire NFL by tracking the big plays!
Welcome to the final 2024 Toxic Differential Plus.
Click on the link above to get a more detailed explanation of the stat or roll with the equation below:
Explosive Play Differential + 2(Turnover Differential) + Sack Differential = Toxic Differential Plus
We have both the best and the worst season-long TD+ since at least 2006. We almost had positive scores for all 14 playoff teams, which would have been a first in the 14-team era. Similarly, we didn’t really have a team that was high in the standings that missed the playoffs. In other words, TD+ signs off on this playoff field.
Let’s start with the best season we’ve ever seen, the Buffalo Bills at a TD+ of +88. The 2019 New England Patriots and the 2010 Pittsburgh Steelers both finished at +81, the previous high water mark for the stat. The Steelers lost to the Packers in the Super Bowl to end that season while New England were upset by the Titans in Tom Brady’s final game as a Patriot.
The league leader in TD+ since 2006 has made the Super Bowl eight times with a 2-6 record.
- 2007 Patriots (+76), Loss to New York Giants (-10)
- 2009 Indianapolis Colts (+57), Loss to New Orleans Saints (+50)
- 2010 Pittsburgh Steelers (+81), Loss to Green Bay Packers (+35)
- 2013 Seattle Seahawks (+67), Win over Denver Broncos (+24)
- 2015 Carolina Panthers (+52), Loss to Denver Broncos (+11)
- 2020 Tampa Bay Buccaneers (+68), Win over Kansas City Chiefs (+37)
- 2022 Philadelphia Eagles (+74), Loss to Kansas City Chiefs (+54)
- 2023 San Francisco 49ers (+65), Loss to Kansas City Chiefs (+23)
Unfortunately, leading the lead in TD+ is not a predictor of who will win the Super Bowl. It’s still statistically impressive that eight out of the last eighteen seasons that the league leader would win their conference, but that 2-6 record isn’t exactly pushing me to throw some money down on the Bills.
More concerning for the Bills is their path will likely take see them play the 4th ranked Denver Broncos (+55), the 2nd ranked Baltimore Ravens (+66), before playing the Chiefs (-1), who seem to defy this stat all year, just to get to the big game. It’s truly a top-heavy league and the Bills have their work cut out for them. They’re a really good football team and they’re solid in all phases. It wouldn’t be a surprise if they won it all or knocked out early with this competitive conference.
On the other end of the scale, the Cleveland Browns finish the year at -101. The previous low mark goes back to the 2006 Raiders at -94. Those Raiders were 2-14, earned the top spot in the draft, and took JaMarcus Russell.
Oops.
The Browns have the number two pick in this upcoming draft with an albatross contract on their current signal caller. It can’t get worse than Russell, but some might argue that Cleveland absolutely deserves the same fate that some of the quarterback prospects in this draft have serious question marks.
As for the game-to-game analysis of TD+, simply winning the stat in an individual game led to an 80% win percentage. When you break it down by each score, the W/L generally goes up as the number goes up, which is not surprising, until teams were undefeated at +8 and above. It’s small sample but that should obviously hold if we were to be able to run this for more individual games.
Some of this, of course, is self-fulfilling. As teams hold onto leads, they can pin their ears back to create pressure, leading to sacks and turnovers. Teams with leads sit on the ball and don’t take sacks or turn the ball over as much. Even so, I do think this has been a fun stat to track all year, and I think there’s more to farm in the history and more to learn from the numbers.
Thanks for following along all year!
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