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And as a reminder, I will be freezing all paid subs, there is no need to unsubscribe and staying subscribed will lock you into your price point (without being charged for the non writing months). Let’s get into the games.

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Podcasts:

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CAR-TB:

As we’ve been writing about for weeks this is TB defense that is extremely vulnerable to the pass, one of the biggest pass funnels in the NFL while being bottom 5 in YPD, not far behind in EPA/Pass and many other pass defense metrics. And even the run defense has been less dominant over the second half of the season below average in Success Rate and Rush EPA over the second half. The result has been the Bucs facing more passing adjusting for situation than any other team in the NFL.

Now I think the main question for this game is how each team chooses to attack.

The Panthers have been a low play volume team with only one game above 10% Pass Above Expected. Should they come out throwing the Bryce Young alts and Panthers builds are intriguing given the matchup. And the Bucs top 10 single coverage, top 5 blitz rate plays nicely into Jalen Coker who leads the team in YPRR against single coverage. But more likely is the same gamplean for the Panthers of trying to play very slow, while having decent success running the ball.

On the flipside, the Bucs have been at the extremes of pass rate over the past few weeks switching off weeks of 10%+ pass over expected. And while the Panthers pass defense has been middle of the pack EPA wise, that has been a large function of a team forcing a huge turnover rate (nearly 20% of opponent drives are ending in turnovers).

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We’ll cover the games for Thursday here in bullet point style, with an emphasis on the tails spots.

As always, the goal is as always to match the research presented without your own thoughts and bets. Apologies for typos, life in the way delaying this a bit and wanted to get this out ASAP!

DAL-WAS:

• The matchup to me with the lowest variance here is the Cowboys offense against the Commanders defense. By any available metric on either side this is a top 5 Cowboys offense going up against a bottom 3 Commanders defense. And with injuries piling up to Washington defense— there is not a single player outside of Bobby Wagner with above a 55 PFF grade. The Cowboys, run and pass, should have success here. The question, I think is can the Commanders keep up.

• On the one hand, the Cowboys defense has been atrocious all season—and especially in pass defense and in recent weeks where they are last in the league since week 11 allowing EPA/Play and 7.6 Yards Per Dropback. And with Quinnen Williams likely back— PFF’s #1 run graded defender— this is a run defense that should play to the top 10 quality as they’ve been in nearly every category with him healthy.

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• And where the DAL D’ has been salvageable is the pass rush which is top 10 in quick pressure, disruption pressure since Williams arrived. And with Laremy Tunsil out with an oblique injury, the team will have Brandon Coleman and his 49.6 PFF Pass Block Grade, leaving a key weak link for a pass blocking unit 6th highest in Perfect Block Rate and with the 7th best O-line grade as a whole. The Cowboys defense has a path towards success here with the pass rush against a banged up offensive line, and of course, with Josh Johnson at QB… there is a reason he’s been a career journeyman.

• I think mostly likely outcome is a Cowboys romp and a game-state where the pass rush can cause problems, but I will also play the dart of Johnson able to mitigate the pass rush and pick apart this Cowboys defense that has been incapable of stopping anyone. The sample with Johnson is old and tiny— but the case for is that his create rate would rank towards the top of the league and his low sack rate and ability to extend plays unlocks the path to beat this Cowboys defense. Still with McLaurin, Samuel, and even Burks downfield for a Kingsbury offense that had Mariota throwing with the deepest ADOT in the NFL and there are paths to some passing upside as well. Priced extremely, negatively correlated my favorite angle is a Johnson passing yards with Cowboys spread/alts.

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As always, we’ll discuss tails angles, matchups the market is I think not properly accounting for and some SGPs. Of course, there are plenty of tails angles within the SGPs and matchups to be played separately, and the goal is as always to match the research presented without your own thoughts. Apologies for typos, life in the way delaying this a bit and wanted to get this out ASAP!

Tails Angles:

Going to go quick hitter style today.

MIN:

• JJM has been dreadful all season but the last 2 weeks have been a revelation for him, with 95%ile PFF grades and averaging 0.46 EPA/Play in each of the last 2 games both elite marks.

• Now he gets a NYG defense 4th worst in pass EPA over the second half of the season, while allowing the 3rd highest deep attempt %— where JJM has done most of his damage. In a spot with conflicting long term and short data points—thus leading to a price anchored more to the season long— playing the tail of the short term ones while getting a terrific matchup is an appealing tails spot both for MIN and for JJM builds as well as SGPs of both.

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As always, we’ll discuss tails angles, matchups the market is I think not properly accounting for and some SGPs. Of course, there are plenty of tails angles within the SGPs and matchups to be played separately, and the goal is as always to match the research presented without your own thoughts. Apologies for typos, life in the way delaying this a bit and wanted to get this out ASAP!

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As always, we’ll discuss tails angles, matchups the market is I think not properly accounting for and some SGPs. Of course, there are plenty of tails angles within the SGPs and matchups to be played separately, and the goal is as always to match the research presented without your own thoughts. Apologies for typos, life in the way delaying this a bit and wanted to get this out ASAP!

Tails Angles:

NO:

• Very similar to our angle for the Cardinals last week, this is a TB team that has very different numbers in recent weeks than for the full season. Baker Mayfield has not been the same QB since getting hurt midway through the season, as he has not had a positive EPA/Play game now since Week 6 against the Niners.

• And the defense has been struggling as well, allowing 7.6 Yards Per Dropback over the last 5 weeks, 2nd worst in the NFL and nearly 0.5 yards per play worse than 3rd place team. This is a team on both sides of the ball whose full season numbers has not matched the current iteration of this team, and 8 points separating these teams is far too much in my view when accounting for where each team currently sits.

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A note here about the goal of this series: As many of you know, I started betting as a result of the research I was doing as a football nerd working on some data projects. I developed stats that helped me understand the game better than anything I found publicly available, and then tested my theories through betting based on my research.

That background still shapes how I think about the game and my bets and trades — always looking to understand what the market is pricing in and what information is lacking.

The market is sharp, of course, but it is not without leaks and holes. Football is a complex game with limited data and 22 people interacting simultaneously on the field. Sifting through the noise and studying those interactions appropriately can yield massive rewards. That is, even if everyone has access to the same stats and information, that doesn’t mean everyone will interpret them or manipulate them the same way.

This series will look at some of the data I’ve generated and referenced throughout this newsletter. Because I regularly cite these stats in my analysis, this series will eventually become a glossary worth revisiting to better understand my weekly analyses.

Truth be told, however, that is only a part of the goal here.

What I hope to do in this series is provide a window from 0-1 of how I take football information, fulfill the football-nerd-in-me’s desire to understand the game better, and then apply that to betting in the game theory context of a marketplace.

And like anything we do at Throwthedamball, at a high level, the goal is to provide a process that you can ingest on your own and apply it to how you think and understand (and trade) on the game we all love.

Create Rate:

Create Rate measures the process by which a QB succeeds when facing a disruptive situation.

A disruptive situation here is defined as:

1. plays when pressure comes so quickly that a QB has to abandon his read to avoid pressure

   AND/OR

2. plays in which every coverage defender is guarding their man well (disruption will be its own post).

Most QB stats focus on post-facto results, like TDs or INTs. However, these metrics do not sufficiently filter out the noise that emerges from looking solely at post-facto results. Things like the randomness a QB can’t control, such as a dropped pass leading to an interception. These stats are inefficient ways of measuring a QBs success (or likelihood of future success).

Create Rate instead captures the process by which a QB attacks—and his rate of success—disruption. And like most process metrics, this is a more indicative and repeatable way to predict outcomes in future disruptive situations.

What is the definition?

Create Rate captures how often a QB throws an accurate pass to a receiver/”throws open” a receiver, OR scrambles for positive expectancy (a result they have the most control over) in disruptive situations.

What is perhaps more interesting than the simple predictive value is what create rate teaches us about the nature of a QB's skills and play styles, and the trade-offs and multiple ways that that player can succeed.

Football is a game of trade-offs. Consider obvious examples like a QB holding onto the ball for a long time in the pocket. It is neither good nor bad but rather a trade-off. In this case, high time-to-throw (TTT) increases the likelihood of a sack, while also increasing the likelihood that a receiver gets open with more time to run his route.

Evaluating that trade-off is tied to an understanding of play style— Patrick Mahomes will have an easier time buying time for himself than Matthew Stafford will. Every QB always needs to optimize the trade-off given the particular situation, whether that be constraints on skill and/or the matchup they face.

This leads us to our chart here on Create Rate and how it helps us understand QB play more broadly.

On the Y axis we have our create stat we defined above. What this chart captures on the X axis “Pocket Extension,” is how long a QB, on average, extends plays once pressure arrives in disruptive situations.

One would assume that this is the easiest path to the ability to create. And they would be right in so far as there is a clear linear relationship between the ability to extend plays and the ability to create.

But simply extending plays is not dispositive of success—a QB still needs to execute a good throw and/or have the scrambling ability to succeed. Perhaps more to the point, this chart reveals the different ways a QB can succeed and create from within the situation.

Case Studies: Dak and Mahomes

Let’s use Dak Prescott and Patrick Mahomes as examples. In the above chart, Prescott stands out in his ability to create, while ranking on the shorter end of Pocket Extensions among NFL QBs. On the other hand, Mahomes extends plays well past league average. Both Create at high levels, but they win in different ways.

Dak’s ability to Create lies in his ability to deliver an accurate ball to a receiver who wasn’t otherwise open, as illustrated in the chart below.

This chart shows how often a QB throws into a tight window and, on those throws, how accurate the passes are. In effect, the accurate ball diminishes the tight window and thereby “throws the receiver open.” Dak is league-best in tight window throws and, therefore, unsurprisingly, attempts them quite often.

Here is an example clip (my video editing skills aren’t great, deal with itttt):

The coverage on this play is tight across the board, and Prescott here creates by engineering a near-perfect throw (despite Pickens not making the play).

Here’s where trade-offs come in: Dak has the skill to make these throws and, therefore, can make the trade-off to not scramble because he has this skill in his bag. If a QB like Justin Fields were to attempt most of these throws, the results would likely be very different. That is why Fields opts for a different approach to creating.

Meanwhile, Mahomes’s ability to create is a much different style. Mahomes is elite at extending plays and subsequently creating open windows by virtue of the play extension.

Consider this example from earlier in the season where Mahomes anticipates the rush and maneuvers the pocket, forcing the linebacker into a conflict and creating an open window for a first down. His creation lies in his manipulation of the pocket and his ability to engineer throws to receivers not previously open.

The football nerd in me finds this interesting on its own in understanding how the game works and how players execute trade-offs to win in particular situations.

The researcher/trader in me also sees this as a spot to understand the interaction: How might a Mahomes-style of creation interact with a particular matchup relative to a Prescott-style of creating?

1. The Prescotts of the world can win against good coverage, mitigating those teams that win on defense via their coverage.

   For Prescott, a matchup, say, with the Eagles defense, who are among the league’s best at preventing separation, is far less daunting. That isn’t to say Prescott would be guaranteed to carve them up, just that the base rate of the Eagles secondary is mitigated slightly in this matchup interaction. We saw this in action in Week 12 when Dak lit up the Eagles D for 354 yards and 2 passing TDs (+ 1 rushing TD). I wrote about it before the game in my weekly gameplan here.

2. For the Mahomeses of the world, this play-style neutralizes pass rush as well as coverage, though the effect on each is less pronounced.

   For Mahomes, a matchup with a team like the Steelers is perhaps the ideal spot for this matchup effect. The Steelers generate so much of their defensive efficiency via the pass tush and generating quick pressure. But Mahomes’ ability to scramble out and Create leaves the rest of the defense exposed for Mahomes to take advantage.

Of course, each is a spectrum, and the style of play also interacts with how good a player is at the Creating skill.

As always, there is more to say and more research to do, which is part of the fun in analytics and interacting in a marketplace. For now, this hopefully gives a taste of the process of data and provides some quantification of a skill we all notice when watching the games.

Questions/Comments/Feedback always appreciated, and we’ll be back in the inbox with more in this series as well as the regular Betting Gameplan.

As always, we’ll discuss tails angles, matchups the market is I think not properly accounting for and some SGPs. Of course, there are plenty of tails angles within the SGPs and matchups to be played separately, and the goal is as always to match the research presented without your own thoughts. Apologies for typos wanted to get this out ASAP!

Tails Angles:

TEN:

• As we’ve talked about for years, it takes time for QBs to develop and even within season rookie QBs tend to improve as they become more comfortable.

• And this has been the case for Cam Ward who has posted positive EPA games in 3 of his last 4, including the last two against the dominant Seattle and Houston defenses. There is good evidence to suggest Ward is improving and a much easier matchup could yield some serious dividends. And in terms of volume, following a very run heavy start, the Titans have been passing over expectation each of the last 3 weeks.

• We’ve been selling this Jaguars defense now for a number of weeks, and they are likely to be without Travon Walker in this one, for a defense that has generated most of its value from a 45% pressure rate that is 5th in the NFL. And this a classic pass funnell defense in Jacksonville with the biggest gap in Success Rate between running and passing and teams have passed against Jacksonville relative to expectation more than any team in the NFL. There is a clear path to volume and efficiency for Ward with the market, I think, not properly indexing on his last few games which carry far more signal in my view than the earlier season games, given his point in his career and what we know about QB development.

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DET-GB:

• The Lions offense has changed in their offensive identity with Dan Campbell now calling the plays the last 3 weeks, moving from a ~-6 pass rate over expected team to one that has been passing more than expectation each of the last 3 weeks.

• The Packers defense has been a bottom 10 man team all season that has not blitzed much at all.

• Goff this year has been better against these zones than he has been in man, but has struggled to defeat perfect coverage which the Packers have generated at the highest rate in the NFL over the last 6 weeks.

• And the Packers have played a huge amount of two high coverage this season, where the injury to Sam Laporta looms large as he was leading the team in YPRR and 2nd in targets per route at 23%, (behind ASRB at 32%). And no other Lions receiver now has come close to that target rate against two-high with Jamo and Tesla last on the team with a 12% and 2% target rate against the coverages respectively. The team will likely need Gibbs and ASRB to carry the load if they want to have some passing success.

• Relative to base rates of a Packers defense that is 6th best in Yards Per Dropback, 9th in EPA/Play over the last 6 weeks, and a Lions offense that has dominated weaker opponents but struggled against some of the formidable ones.

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Tails Angles:

NYJ:

• Different QB but this is still a spot where I’m seeing some value on the tails. Baltimore has been one of the highest single coverage defenses in the NFL where the Jets very sneakily have 3 85th percentile or better separators in John Metchie, AD Mitchell, and Isaiah WIlliams.

• And this is a Ravens defense that is without any CBs above average in separation prevented.

• As for Tyrod Taylor, courtesy of this graph from , we see that Tyrod Taylor has been one of the most aggressive QBs throwing downfield and has done so at a decent rate of accuracy—something Fields was not capable of delivering. With a couple of deep shots to some WRs who should be open, there is a decent chance for some passing volume and yardage for Taylor and the Jets.

• And on the Ravens side, since coming back from Injury Lamar Jackson’s scramble rate is down from 27% to only 17% and his sack rate has ballooned to 10% this season. And while we should of course have a strong prior on Jackson being a terrific QB, the market is pricing him as fully his best self when the data simply does not back that up. For the season Jackson is 16th in EPA, 31st in PFF Grade, while taking sacks at the highest rate in the NFL. His accuracy is the lowest it has been in his career, and has set career lows in virtually all categories.

• While the Ravens are of course likely to still win, put these 2 together and I think there is some value on the Jets alts especially if the Ravens offensive struggles continue even in a good matchup— 13.5 is a lot of points and pricing in a Baltimore team that has not played to the billing so far this season.

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Tails Angles:

Going to really try and make this quick hitter, stream-of-conscious thoughts here. There is a ton of wind across the league which is not ideal for most tails as it creates lower scoring, run heavy environments— but some spots to look for:

MIA:

• Spoke about this on the PFF NFL Betting Show, but this is a Dolphins defense that started the season a bottom 3 unit in the NFL but over the last 5 weeks (where the secondary has gotten healthier and Fitzpatrick moved to slot CB) has been basically league average in both production metrics like EPA as well as in quick pressure, pressure disruption, perfect coverage, etc. The defense, while priced like one of the worst in the NFL, I think is likely closer to below league average accounting for more updated and relevant information.

• On the offensive side of the ball for the Dolphins, a matchup with Washington is about as good as they can ask for. Washington is bottom 3 in nearly every passing category and only worse as you shorten the sample to games closer. YPA, YPD, EPA, you name the metric and Washington has been terrible. And they will now be without their best CB in Trey Amos and best interior in Da’ron Payne

• And Tua should get the benefit of a high single and man coverage Washington defense (6th most in each category last 4 weeks) without the personnel to defend. And Tua’s EPA is nearly 0.5 points higher against man than zone, giving him a nice path to success here. And with a Washington defense dead last in pressure disruption rate, Tua should even have some time to launch the deep balls (I don’t hate a Nick Westbrook Ikinhe SGP as a result).

LAC Passing

• The Chargers offensive line worries me without Alt as the team has struggled and even last week the offense was slow against the Steelers. But a Steelers pass rush is a different beast than the Jaguars, (PIT #1 in pressure disruption rate) and we highlighted in our tails matchup last week, how poor this Jaguars pass defense has been of late. And this is a Chargers team passing at such a high rate over expected that volume numbers can start to really pile up in this one.

• While the O-line play concerns me here, there is still plenty of mass on Hebert’s ability to work around the pass rush and pick apart this Jaguars secondary.

  

• Part of this is Herbert’s ability to scramble which should somewhat mitigate the effects of the pass rush. But this is also a Jaguars team playing a huge amount of single coverage where the Chargers have a huge advantage with 4 plus separators including Gasden at TE where Jacksonville has been allowing the 2nd most targets and yards to opposing TE’’s.

SF

• With Brock Purdy and Ricky Pearsall back, I think this is an entirely different SF offense far closer to the one that seemed poised for another top 10 season entering the year. And they will have the benefit of a matchup with the Cardinals down their best corner in Will Johnson. And where the Cardinals pass rush is quietly emerging, 6th in disruption pressure rate over the last 5 games, Purdy has been one of the best QBs handling disruption pressure (where Mac Jones is 2nd worst in the NFL).

• We’ve been picking on the the 49ers defense seemingly every week but I’m not sold on Brisett’s ability to overcome this matchup.

• Brissett is throwing into a massive number of tight windows (which have a base rate of INTs 10x higher than non tight windows) and where offensive success is far far less likely on the whole. And with MHJ out, the ability for the Cardinals to earn separation and open windows will only be furthered diminished. Of course, so much of the 49ers struggles come from their inability to cover given the teams injuries and this should be mitigated here by Arizona with their lack of weaponry

• And it is no coincidence seeing the number of tight windows how many plays Brissett is “destroying,” or plays where there is no disrupting event and a QB either 1) takes a sack 2) makes a throw to a non open WR 3) runs for negative expatency. On these plays, Brissett is nuking 57% where, as we’ll discuss, only JJM is worse.

• Add it up and we have a spot where I think SF should have their way moving the ball and a 49ers defense quietly in a good spot to force some quick stops and generate turnovers which is quite the nice recipe for the tails.

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Tails Angles:

Going to really try and make this quick hitter, stream-of-conscious thoughts here.

BAL:

• The Ravens offense is fully healthy for the first time virtually all season, going up against the blitz happy Vikings defense that is struggling to defend over the last month, 2nd worst YPA ,YPD EPA/DropBack etc.

• Jackson historically and for this season has destroyed the blitz, giving him a favorable matchup against the VIkings and their 62% blitz rate since Week 5.

• Add on that there are some questions with Jackson ability to run and that there is plenty of mass of distribution of JJM struggling to move the ball with many stalled drives and incompletions and I see this as a spot where passing and play volume as well can accumulate for Jackson and the Ravens passing offense.

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