How games are won
Establish the run is backwards
Announcers love to say a team won because it ran the ball a lot. Really it is the other way around: teams that are already winning get to run the ball a lot, because running is what you do when you are ahead and just want to end the game.
What the record says
Each bar is one season. Green bars point the same way as the overall result, pink bars point against it. 1 of the 27 seasons came out exactly even and count for neither side. Recent seasons count for more in the typical size, which is measured on the scale of the check behind this rule, so compare it across the seasons here rather than across different rules.
How we know
There is no mechanism by which piling up early-down rush attempts, by itself, makes a team better. Rushing volume is mostly a symptom of game state (see The lead decides the run-pass mix): teams that are ahead choose to run more to burn clock and protect the football, and teams that are ahead got there mostly through other factors like passing efficiency, turnovers, and defense.
We check this the same way every time: run the claim against every season from 1999 to 2025 in the play-by-play record, one season at a time, and grade it on how often the seasons agree. This one came back against the claim in 18 of 26 seasons.
The claim, stated precisely
A team that establishes the run (accumulates a high early-down rush share season-to-date) sets itself up to win games.
Related laws
- Builds onPassing efficiency decides seasonsHolds up
- Explains this awayThe lead decides the run-pass mixHolds up
- Agrees with thisLate runs with the lead are rightHolds up
Read the essay
- The Running Game Doesn't Win Games. Winning Games Creates the Running Game.Fourth-quarter run rate swings fifty points from blowout leader to blowout loser. Almost everything people believe about establishing the run is this chart, read backwards.
FanIQ carries this rule into the app, where it lands on the actual players, teams, and games you are looking at.
Get FanIQ freeOpen in FanIQSources
- Football Outsiders
- Ben Baldwin (rbsdm.com)
- Checked by FanIQ against 25 seasons of play-by-play, game, roster, and box-score records.