How Do I Calculate Football Averages?

Like most other sports, football has a large number of statistics and numbers. Many of these numbers are averages and can assess a player’s past performance and predict potential future performance. Calculating averages is simply summing the total data points and dividing by the total number of data points. The most commonly used offensive averages in football are a running back’s yards per carry, a quarterback’s average pass completion percentage and a kicker’s average field goal distance.

Things You'll Need

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Instructions

    • 1

      Determine a running back’s average yards per carry. For instance, assume a running back ran in eight football games. The total yards per carry in the eight games were 4.3, 2.1, 6.5, 4.0, 7.2, 4.5, 8.2 and 2.3. The average yards per carry for this running back were the sum of the game’s totals divided by 8. This would be 39.1 divided by 8, which is an average of 4.9 yards per carry.

    • 2

      Determine a quarterback’s average pass completion percentage over eight games. Pass completion percentage is the number of pass completions divided by the number of pass attempts multiplied by 100. For instance, assume a quarterback’s eight pass completion percentages for the games were 45%, 65%, 53%, 71%, 51%, 29%, 38% and 54%. The average pass completion percentage for this quarterback is 406 divided by 8, which is approximately 51%.

    • 3

      Determine a kicker’s field goal distance average through his first eight kicks. For example, assume a kicker made field goals of 45, 34, 15, 24, 44, 50, 29 and 38 yards. His average made field goal distance is 279 divided by 8, which is approximately 35 yards.