Is the NRL actually broken in 2026?: The alarming numbers behind blowouts and shootouts

Fast forward to 2026, and the first 16 games of the year have seen a staggering 242 extra points scored across them.

The difference between the first two rounds of 2020 and the first two rounds of 2026 works out to be just a tick under 15 points per game.

Points per game over the opening two rounds of the season have, with the exception of 2025, often been an indicator of the minimum we are going to see throughout the season.

Last year, there was actually a steep increase in points per game over the first two rounds, but it went backwards by the time the end of the year rolled around.

That hasn't been the normal though, over the last eight seasons dating back to 2018, with the season average climbing from the opening rounds in all but 2025.

That's not exactly a surprise either - attack is normally clunky early in the campaign.

Interestingly, the climb of points per game since the introduction of the six-again era hasn't been linear, but the trend is certainly on the march.

The other somewhat concerning trend over the first two weekends of the season is the fact that they are the worst two opening rounds of the competition, dating back to 2018, when it comes to competitiveness.

Round 1 saw margins of 48, 24, 26 and 40 included, while Round 2 saw margins of 34, 28, 26, 20 and 20 again included.

All up, the average spread has been 19.25 points per game over the first two rounds of the competition.

Comparing apples to apples, the least competitive round in the prior eight seasons was Round 1 in 2021, where 143 was the total difference between teams. Round 2 this year saw 148 points between teams, and Round 1 160.

There is no secret that the NRL, under the control of CEO Andrew Abdo and Australian Rugby League Commission chairman Peter V'Landys have done everything in their power to speed the game up, add excitement and increase scoring since the coronavirus pandemic.

That's not a mystery.

Every rule change has been geared that way. But the balance may have finally gone too far in the other direction.

There is no way that, if you take the blue shirt trainer out of the picture in particular for a lot of clubs, scores should still be going up. But they are.

The latest iteration of the six again rule, as well as the inconsistency of referees policing the ruck in many games over the first two rounds, has created a clunky product where momentum is essentially impossible to reverse.

And it shouldn't be easy to simply stop a good rugby league team from scoring, but it has become borderline impossible. The number of times teams have had to defend 12 tackles on the bounce in the opening rounds leading to points is alarming.

Not to say some of the six-agains haven't been deserved, but the way in which the ruck is being policed, the fact six agains are being given further up the field than ever before under the new rules, and all the other changes in recent times, has the game looking more like basketball, as my colleague and excellent rugby league coach Lee Addison has already pointed out on The Loose Carry Podcast this year.

The fact that points per game and average margins are up is even more of a concern given the season actually started with two belters over in Las Vegas, where the Knights beat the Cowboys 28 points to 18, and the Canterbury Bulldogs beat the St George Illawarra Dragons 15 points to 14.

In the 14 games played in Australia, a team has scored 40 or more points in eight of them, with another seeing 36 put up.The game is so fast, there is simply no war of attrition like there used to be - and in fact, like the best games of rugby league will see.

It's instead a shootout from the opening minutes, or one-way traffic in long stretches.

The Broncos fell to the Eels by eight-points in a 72-point car crash on Thursday night in an example of the first, while the Storm piled on five tries in 17 minutes against the Dragons in an example of the second.

Addison, on last week's episode of our podcast, actually suggested it was time to tinker with the size of the field, make it narrower and easier to defend.

The best two games of the year so far, unless you like more tries than tackles, were in Las Vegas, where the field was narrower. So just maybe, rugby league isn't broken, but maybe it's time to tinker with other changes to make the current rules set in stone.

If clubs were worried the kick-off rule changes that were floated during the pre-season were going to change the fabric of the game, well, I have news for them. We have already done that.

Rugby league was never supposed to see 60, 70 or more points scored in a game.

Games like that were supposed to become a novelty. It's fast becoming the normal, and if the trends don't get themselves under control, there are going to be more, as they say in basketball, "garbage time minutes" this season than ever before.