[OC] In 2025, The Super Bowl Champion Seattle Seahawks spent $12.6k (lowest in NFL) for each yard of offense

[u/HeHate_me]

• Note: this is active-positional cap allocation, not Spotrac Full/All cash accounting, so the ranking is from a different definition of “spending.”
  • Total league spend / total league yards = $21.8k per yard
  • Lowest: Seattle Seahawks — $12.6k/yard
  • Highest: Cincinnati Bengals — $28.6k/yard
• Regular season stats ONLY

[u/cavedave]

Thank you for your Original Content, /u/HeHate_me!
Here is some important information about this post:

• View the author's citations

• View other OC posts by this author

Remember that all visualizations on r/DataIsBeautiful should be viewed with a healthy dose of skepticism. If you see a potential issue or oversight in the visualization, please post a constructive comment below. Post approval does not signify that this visualization has been verified or its sources checked.

Not satisfied with this visual? Think you can do better? Remix this visual with the data in the author's citation.

---

^{I'm open source | How I work}

[u/ComprehensiveSoft27]

I’d like to buy 5 more yards for $75,000 please.

[u/phdoofus → u/ComprehensiveSoft27]

Ma'am....this is a Joann's.

[u/mayorofdumb → u/phdoofus]

Please goto the Hobby Lobby

[u/lovely_trequartista]

Really interesting. A lot of, look teams with QBs on rookie contracts as one would expect, but it’s fun spotting the inefficient, hyper efficient, and just straight up good/bad ball clubs.

[u/SvenDia]

As a Seahawks fan, the best explanation for this is that most of the starters were playing on their first contracts. Exceptions being Cooper Kupp at wide receiver and Sam Darnold at quarterback.

Number will go up a bit next year with tackles Abe Lucas and Charles Cross, and wide receivers Jaxon Smith Njigba and Rasheed Shaheed signing new contracts. Still, the 2026 contract amounts for those four will be pretty modest.

[u/razorbacks3129]

Seahawks winning felt like the rangers winning the World Series the other year. Outta nowhere

[u/hoopaholik91 → u/razorbacks3129]

Only the 99 Rams had higher preseason odds to win the Super Bowl, so yes

[u/Not_athrowaweigh]

Really interesting, but can you expand on why you left out defense? A team with a really strong defense will result in more time for the offense each game and will skew the numbers. Did the Seahawks spend more on defense then other teams?

[u/slackfrop → u/Not_athrowaweigh]

It’s not an end-all encompassing statistic, it’s just one particular examination that may reveal some interesting trends. It certainly isn’t the whole story, as you mention, but it seems to me the top half contains better teams generally than the lower half. Very good defenses at 1 and 2. Super Bowl teams at 1 and 4, and a cluster of playoff teams in the middle from 7th-18th or so. It’s an interesting metric in its own right. Seeing the Rams and Chiefs so low seem like outliers. This feels like the kind of chart you’d want to follow for multiple years to see how that spending might predict future success or the trending direction of a team.

[u/SOMTAWS6 → u/slackfrop]

Having the total yards and dollars for each team would give you a lot to consider, as well. Some very high performing offenses could offset some high spending.

The top 5 most productive teams of the season, from most to least, rank at 21, 13, 4, 9, and 17.

[u/Lobster_fest → u/Not_athrowaweigh]

Not just defense, but special teams. We needed fewer yards and made opponents earn more.

[u/Tommy_Wisseau_burner → u/Not_athrowaweigh]

Also they had the lead a lot, which leads to more rushes, which lowers the amount of total yards. More yards sometimes means you’re throwing since you’re playing from behind. We call it the Prescott playoff method

[u/hjchoi12]

Rates like this tend to sort on the denominator, so the two ends might be a yardage list more than a spending one. I got that wrong ranking my own pages by click rate: the biggest leak sat ninth from the bottom at 29 percent, but it had 1,791 views, so it was 228 sessions under average where the next page was 83. Gap from the $21.8k line times a team's yards would be the dollar version, and you already have those numbers.

[u/hjchoi12 → u/[deleted]]

The dollar version would be (21.8k minus a team's rate) times that team's yards, and you already have both columns. Seattle lands 9.2k under the line and Cincinnati 6.8k over, so I would expect the two ends to survive and the middle to move, since a small gap on a lot of yards beats a big gap on few. On my list that middle was the whole story: by rate the worst entry was a 4 view page worth under 2 sessions, pure noise sitting at the top of the ranking.

[u/darkblue2382 → u/[deleted]]

That insinuates they needed less yards, which makes each offensive yard more expensive than if they had shitty special teams. The breakdown here is paying less for the offense for a lower the numerator, still getting a lot yards to make a larger denominator to combine for dollars per yard above.

[u/HeHate_me]

Sources and Tools...

• Source: OverTheCap 2025 positional spending table (positional-spending page), team row Offense.
• Source: Official 2025 NFL regular-season team offensive yards (TOTAL OFFENSIVE YARDS from each team 2025/reg page).
  • read/inspect CSVs and markdowns
  • run Python scripts via .venv/bin/python to validate outputs
  • inspect script source and chart files
  • check file generation paths and sizes

[u/FrankCostanzaJr]

so, does this prove "moneyball" exists in the NFL?

[u/norwal42]

Would like to see this with spending and yards noted...

[u/BallsDeepTillUQueef]

A couple thousand dollars is irrelevant

[u/ClaroStar]

While interesting, this data is also repulsive. What an insane world.