Going into Week 10 · weeks 1–9, 6,815 passes measured
How open each offense gets its receivers at the moment of the throw, from our tracking, measured where it counts: at the line to gain. An open receiver short of the sticks on third down succeeds no more often than a covered one, so the page counts the dropbacks with an open receiver at or past the line to gain, the throws that went past it, and the separation of the receiver who was thrown to.
Updated · Data: our player tracking of NFL broadcast film, 2026 weeks 1-9 · 6,815 passes measured · Updated weekly · How we measure protection
League numbers on this season's measured passes. At the sticks: the target 0 to 3 yards past the line to gain on third and fourth down (393 throws, against 555 thrown 5 or more yards short). The open sticks route: a receiver with 3 or more yards of space at or past the line to gain, there on 2,871 dropbacks; on third and fourth down the play succeeded 61% of the time the quarterback threw to one and 38% when he threw elsewhere. Time to throw is a median over the passes we could measure. Extended plays, where the quarterback leaves the pocket, are the hardest to measure and many are missing or cut short, so our times run about 0.2 to 0.3 seconds below the averages league tracking reports. Compare teams with each other, not with those figures.
Success rate by where the targeted receiver stood when the ball left the hand, relative to the line to gain. On first and second down the best throw is a little short of the sticks (62% success with the target 0 to 2 yards short), because a few yards is a win there. On third and fourth down the same throw is a loss: success peaks at 55% with the target 0 to 2 yards past the line to gain, and the most open targets, the checkdowns 5 or more yards short, succeed 27% of the time. Openness is only worth something at the sticks, so that is where the offense statistics below measure it.
6,745 measured passes with a resolved target this season; 1,122 thrown more than 12 yards from the line to gain either way are outside the chart. Bins of 2 yards; the thinnest bins hold about 34 throws, so read the shape, not any one point.
On each measured pass, every route runner's depth and space at the throw are set against nflverse's yards to go. A receiver is open with 3 or more yards to the nearest defender; an offense is 'open at the sticks' on a dropback when at least one receiver past the line of scrimmage is open at or past the line to gain, whoever was thrown to. 'Threw past the sticks' is the share of throws whose target was at or past the line to gain when the ball left the hand. Success is nflverse's: expected points added above zero. Depth is the receiver's at the release, not where the catch is made.
The offense table used to show the share of all routes open at the throw. It came off because it does not repeat: across this season's teams, the rate in weeks 1–4 correlates 0.09 with the rate in weeks 5–8, so it was telling you about the last four games, not the team (median target separation: 0.32). Open at the sticks repeats at 0.67, twice as reliably as success rate itself, and is the route-design trait the table now ranks on. Threw past the sticks repeats at 0.33.
The late-down facts in the tiles stay league numbers. Per team, open at the sticks on third and fourth down only repeats at 0.10 and the quarterback's take rate at 0.04: about 50 dropbacks per team is too few, so no team or quarterback is ranked on them until the sample is about twice this size. For defenses, the share of routes left open repeats at 0.52 and open at the sticks allowed at 0.29, so the defense table keeps routes open as its openness column and shows the sticks version beside it. Split-half correlation of the team rates, 2026 weeks 1-4 against weeks 5-8 (1 = stable trait, 0 = noise).
Separation is to the nearest defender, whoever he is, not to an assigned man. Depth is the receiver's when the ball leaves the hand, not where the catch is made, so a receiver a yard short and running away from his defender counts as short. A throw frame off by a tenth of a second moves one play's separation by about half a yard, so read the team rates, not any single play. Nothing is adjusted for the opponents faced. 70 measured passes have no per-route read and are left out of the sticks shares.
How often every offense gets an open receiver at or past the line to gain, how often it throws past it, and how much separation its targets have at the throw, measured on this season's passes.