NFL Players Move Around Less Than You Thought

We know that football is a violent game, full of huge men slamming into each other at frightening rates of speed. But, so you know, the 60 minutes of football you watch actually features less action than you think it does.

In fact, according to an analysis of the Pittsburgh-San Francisco game yesterday, a game holds only 13 minutes of actual athletic gameplay.

According to the statistics, the Steelers' offense was actually doing something athletic on the field for 5:01 during the entire game. According to these stats, the Steelers ran 53 plays from scrimmage: 20 passes, 33 runs. When he's not passing, Ben is handing off — something your mailman does every day. Unless your mailman is Jim Thorpe, there's nothing athletic about that. We're nice guys, so we'll help Ben with our next step in the analysis and give him 10 extra plays. For ease of math, we'll give the Steelers 60 plays from scrimmage — 30 rush, 30 pass. Dividing the 5:01 from the above graph (rounded to 5:00 for math) by 2 gives us 2:30 for running plays, 2:30 for pass plays. Roethlisberger is being athletic for 2:30 a game. We could be dicks and say that his actual time is 1:15, because half of that 2:30 is spent watching his receivers catch and run with the balls, but whatev. Take that 2:30, multiply it by 16 games, and it gives us 40 minutes of Ben athleticism during the course of a season. (We aren't factoring in when he chases people who intercept him. )

See? Football players are lazy!

(," he said, while sitting down and eating a bowl of cereal at 3 p.m. in the afternoon.)

NFL Gameclock Analysis [The Pens Blog]