How much more aggressive have the NFL and Bills gotten in end-of-half situations?

The Buffalo Bills have scored two touchdowns in the final two minutes through three games to begin their 2026 season, and of course, for the vast majority of the Josh Allen era, the team has embraced aggression in the final few minutes before halftime.

And in Week 3, we saw the Ravens make a game-winning field goal against the Cowboys in Rio De Janeiro on a drive that began with 0:07 remaining in the contest. That highly entertaining game also featured a Brandon Aubrey field goal with 0:18 left in the first half.

In watching the NFL for over 30 years now, I've noticed what has felt like a drastic change in league-wide philosophy when it's come to the end of the first half scenarios for offenses. It's seemingly had a major impact on overall coring in the NFL. Those last two minutes of the second quarter normally take forever, don't they?

I've wanted to study this paradigm shift for a while now to see if what I'd been feeling observationally was actually true and to what extent the perceived shift has taken place. I used 25 years of nflverse play-by-play data to finally do so.

Here's the foundational table in this investigation, which shows the amount of combined points scored in the final two minutes of games compared to overall scoring changes:

The 4.00 points to 4.77 points finding represents a 19.3% increase in scoring during the final two minutes over the span of the last 25 years. That's nearly triple the percentage increase in overall scoring during that time frame. The jump from 41.94 to 45.02 is only a 7.3% increase.

And this didn't happen purely by chance. To demonstrate how much more aggressive the NFL has gotten over the past quarter century, check the gradual albeit steady growth in dropback rate in these situations in the 25-year sample:

Yes, there was a bit of a dip from the 2016 – 2020 segment compared to the most recent 2021 – 2025 segment, yet a clear increase from the 74.2% at the beginning segment in this study. Only an increase of 6% points? Ehh, not much, right?

Let's dig a little deeper and narrow the scope regarding no-huddle rate, which should serve as a clear indication of play-caller aggression in these late-half scenarios.

When the clock was between 0:31 and 1:00 remaining in the half, the no-huddle rate erupted from 2.9% in the 2001 – 2005 segment to 22.6% in 2021 – 2025.

When zooming out, the same theme is present. Here's NFL-wide dropback rate by time remaining in the first half:

Another indicator of a widespread philosophical change late in the first half. Dropback rate was up nearly 10 percentage points in the final minute of the first half across the board when comparing 2021 – 2025 to 2001 – 2025.

And it the paradigm shift has generated so much more scoring in the time crunch before halftime. This is where the percentages have moved outrageously. Here are percentage of drives that ended in a score of any kind (field goal or touchdown), sorted by time remaining at time of first snap of the possession:

How about this more narrowly focused scenario:

First scrimmage snap with 45–120 seconds remaining

*there were over 490 total possessions in every five-year segment

At this point, these percentage increases shouldn't be surprising. More signs of aggression — first-play dropback rate rose from 59.6% in the first segment to 70.4% in the most recent segment, and it resulted in much more scoring — 25.2% of drives ended in a score in 2001 – 2025 vs. 37.2% ending in a score in 2021 – 2025.

I also wanted to find the sweet spot for NFL teams, when they have started to feel the most comfortable trying to put points on the board near the end of the half compared to how it used to be. And I wanted to sort by field position, score margin, and timeouts remaining because those feel like contributing factors to coach's end-of-half decisions, right?

Here's the data with 45–60 seconds remaining, with the drive starting in a team's own territory, game within one score, and the offense with at least one timeout.

In 2001 – 2025, teams were dropping back to pass on the first play in those scenarios almost exactly one out of every two times, and most recently, it's happening more than three out of every four times. Enormous leap.

If the scenario is tweaked to the team possessing the ball actually having a lead of 1-8 points, the first-play dropback rate went from 52.1% in 2001 – 2005 to 65.5% in 2021 – 2025 , and, more strikingly, percentage of drives ending with a score more than doubled from 22.1% in the earliest time frame to 44.8% from 2021 – 2025.

That's truly game-changing. Across the entire league.

Have these trends continued early in the 2026 NFL season? And how have the Bills attacked the end of the first half?

During the 2021 – 2025 segment, mostly due to the presence of Josh Allen, the Bills unsurprisingly stayed ahead of the NFL averages. In the final two minutes, Buffalo's dropback rate was 82.1% vs. 80.0% league-wide. And its no-huddle rate was 16.5% vs. 15.7% league-wide.

Fascinatingly, the Bills averaged a whopping 3.02 points per game in the final two minutes between 2021 – 2025, while their opponents only averaged 1.57 points in that scenario during that time segment.

The 2026 sample is significantly smaller than the rest of the study, but the league has stayed mostly the same in all the scenarios listed above. Offenses have dropped back to pass in the final two minutes on 79.7% of their plays (vs. 80.0% from 2021 – 2025). When there's between 31 – 60 seconds left, the dropback rate has been 88.6% thus far in 2026. That's up from 85.5% in 2021 – 2025.

League-wide scoring is slightly down (4.54) compared to the 2021 – 2025 segment (4.77) in the final minute of the half, but I expect that to change as the season progresses.

As for the Bills this season, they have 16 qualifying plays in the final two minutes of the half entering Week 4. Their overall dropback rate in those scenarios is 81.3%, and they have a no-huddle rate of 18.8%. The NFL's no-huddle rate through Week 3 was only 13.4%. They've scored an average of 4.67 points in the final two minutes — they have two touchdowns in the final two minutes of the first half in three games.

If you've made it this far, you are officially as nerdy as me when it comes to the NFL.

I have another, to me, equally as captivating part to this study that I'll release in the next few weeks.

But, yes, the NFL has gotten drastically more aggressive — and better at scoring — late in the first half. Compared to 25 years ago, those minutes have become entirely different, which has had a major impact on the entire game itself.