So many teams are 3-3. What’s behind the rise of .500 football?

The best NFL games are extreme. Rival playmakers do magnificent things as defenses go all-out to thwart them. Crowd noise peaks for critical snaps that cause fans to rejoice or reel.

Mediocrity is what's extreme this season. One team, the 6-0 Philadelphia Eagles, is unbeaten through six weeks. One team, the 1-5 Carolina Panthers, canned its coach and scrapes the bottom of the league standings. The middle of the spectrum has rarely been this crowded.

Almost two-thirds of the NFL - 20 teams - has either two or three wins entering Week 7. Ten teams are 3-3, which matches the number with winning records. Multiple .500 clubs are tied for the division lead in the AFC North, NFC South, and NFC West, including both of last season's Super Bowl finalists and several more championship contenders that have undershot expectations.

Going back to 2002, when the league expanded to 32 teams, only one other year has featured such parity at this point in the schedule.

What's driving the trend toward .500 football? Why is the race to the playoffs tight yet tepid?

For one thing, scoring has fallen to its lowest average since 2017 (21.8 points per team), while blown leads and close finishes are on the rise.

Of the 94 games played through Week 6, 74 were within one score in the fourth quarter, an NFL record. Per the league, 32 games have featured successful fourth-quarter comebacks. Teams that trailed by double digits have rallied to win 18 games, or three per week.

If a score is close, heavyweights risk defeat. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers have failed to convert multiple two-point attempts that would have tied games they lost.

The Cincinnati Bengals' three losses came by eight total points. The Baltimore Ravens rank second in the NFL in Simple Rating System - the Pro Football Reference metric that blends point differential and schedule strength - but have lost three times by a combined 11 points. The Las Vegas Raiders could probably have three wins but are 1-4 despite being outscored by just five points this season.

Collapses tarnished Baltimore's record. Blanked in the second half when the Buffalo Bills stormed back to beat them, the Ravens blew fourth-quarter leads to the Miami Dolphins (21 points) and New York Giants (10 points). Relatedly, the Atlanta Falcons could be 4-2 right now, but they squandered a 16-point edge in crunch time to the New Orleans Saints.

The aspiring title contenders that are stuck at .500 have stumbled offensively.

The Buccaneers ran for 3 yards when the Kansas City Chiefs beat them and were 30th in rushing DVOA through Week 6, according to Football Outsiders. No Green Bay Packers wideout ranks in the top 32 league-wide in catches or yardage, suggesting Aaron Rodgers misses Davante Adams. Matthew Stafford threw more interceptions (eight) than touchdowns (six) as the Los Angeles Rams plummeted to 25th in scoring.

The reigning conference champions field porous O-lines. Both the Rams and Bengals have surrendered 22 sacks, one shy of the NFL high, even though Cincinnati devoted its offseason to shoring up the position. Marquee signing La'el Collins ranks toward the bottom of the league in PFF's player grades; so do fellow Bengals starters Cordell Volson and Jonah Williams and Rams linemen Bobby Evans, Jeremiah Kolone, and Coleman Shelton.

Other 3-3 teams have this in common:

• Soft competition: The Falcons, San Francisco 49ers, and Seattle Seahawks have played three of the NFC's four weakest schedules to date, according to Pro Football Reference.

• Quarterbacks leveling up: Tua Tagovailoa, Jimmy Garoppolo, and Geno Smith all rank in the top five in expected points added per play, per Ben Baldwin's database. Miami hasn't lost when Tua's been healthy. Smith's accuracy (plus-8.3 completion percentage over expected) has counterbalanced Seattle's defensive issues (30th in points allowed through Week 6).

• Standout units: San Francisco is third in defensive DVOA and the New England Patriots have risen to seventh, the defense's reward for allowing a mere 15 points over the past two weeks as quarterback Bailey Zappe acclimatized to starting. The Falcons' offense is first in rushing DVOA despite Cordarrelle Patterson's injury absence and has eclipsed 150 yards on the ground five times.

Twelve teams would own 3-3 records if last Monday night's matchup shook out differently. Instead of denying the Los Angeles Chargers a fourth win, the Denver Broncos fell short in overtime while continuing to bore national TV audiences.

Denver has already played four prime-time games and neither team reached 20 points in any of them. Denied a touchdown in two of those contests, the Broncos won one snoozer 11-10 when Garoppolo backpedaled out of San Francisco's end zone. Denver's defense rocks, but the offense has helped stoke the epidemic of "bad football" that Tom Brady bemoaned earlier in October.

Brady's position is part of the problem. Quarterback proficiency - whether it's measured by completion rate, passing yardage, average net yards per attempt, or passer rating - has dipped across the NFL this year.

Twelve QBs are contributing upward of 0.1 EPA/play, Baldwin's database shows. That's down from 19 through six weeks last season and 24 at this juncture in 2020. League-wide, offenses are posting negative EPA against the increasingly popular two-high coverage scheme, FiveThirtyEight's Josh Hermsmeyer pointed out this week, though he noted that could be a small-sample anomaly.

Some degree of parity should be expected in a hard-capped league with significant roster turnover and top draft picks who shine immediately. The cliche that most teams have 8-8 talent still resonates even in the 17-game era.

Who is primed to pull away from the pack? Football Outsiders' playoff odds calculator favors the Ravens in the AFC and the Bucs and 49ers in the NFC; those clubs have weak remaining schedules. The Jacksonville Jaguars are fourth in the AFC in point differential but have the 10th-best playoff odds, the drawback of falling to 2-4 already.

They're staring up at a logjam. If the logjam persists, the pressure on every team involved will mount weekly, raising the potential for extreme drama.

Nick Faris is a features writer at theScore.