Seven Days to the Super Bowl and a Seven Yard Metric

This year’s Super Bowl teams have something in common with prior year teams. They have both achieved in the regular season an ANY/A and NY/A of 7.0 plus. In seven of the last ten seasons both Super Bowl teams had a regular season team Net Yards per Pass Attempt (NY/A) and an Adjusted Net Yards per Pass Attempt (ANY/A) of 7.0 plus. Another two seasons had one Super Bowl team with such. In those ten seasons the league averaged only five teams that made both metrics.

Looking at it another way only 20% of the teams that made the Super Bowl in the last ten years did not achieve a 7+ NY/A and ANY/A for the regular season. One hundred and thirty-nine team have accomplished this in a season and one hundred and seventeen of those have made the playoffs or 84%. Thirty six of those have made the Super Bowl or 30% of all Super Bowl contestants have achieved this. Eighteen have won the Super Bowl or 30% of Super Bowl winners. If you look just from 1999, when passing attempts bypassed rush attempts, then 46% of teams that made it to the Super Bowl had this 7+ metric, as had 42% of Super Bowl winners. From 2016, seven of the ten Super Bowl winners had this metric.

Being a Giants fan, I checked and in the Super Bowl era the only Giants team to accomplish that statistic in a season was the 2011 Super Bowl Team. In 2025 the Giants ranked 21st in having three games with that criteria. Each Giant quarterback had one such game. The Giants teams that had the most such games were

2011 Manning 9
2012 Manning 8
2009 Manning 8
2002 Collins 8
1967 Tarkenton 8

The teams that won the Super Bowl with this regular season metric of 7+ ANY/A and NY/A are

You can see the recent run of teams in the last ten years.

In the last ten seasons Dak Prescott was the only rookie quarterback that started at least 8 games and whose team achieved the metric. The above stats were based on team pass yards. Team pass yards subtracts sack yardage out. The following are based on player yards so there is a slight difference in the report. The following chart are the number of games for over the last ten sesaons for rookie quarterbacks that had 7 NY/A and ANY/A.

The number seven in the NFL is the number associated with a touchdown and extra point. It is an interesting number and has many common associations. During a field goal try the ball is typically snapped 7 to 8 yards behind the line of scrimmage for field goal attempts. Other associations with the number seven are

There are seven colours in the rainbow.
The number of horizontal rows of elements in the periodic table.
The seven sacraments of the Catholic church.
The number of completion and fullness (Holy Bible – Genesis 1; 2:1-2 – God is described to have created the Heavens and the Earth in six days, and rested on the seventh).
Seven days in a week.
Seven seas and seven continents.
The Wonders of the World (seven each in different segments of our world, such as cities, nature, underwater, and space)
The seven dwarfs in Walt Disney’s ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’ (1937).
The number 7 is often considered as luck in Western culture.
The seven deadly sins andsevel heavenly virtues.
The phrase “I’m in seventh heaven”.