2022 Week 1 Reflections
Welcome to Throw The Dam(n) Ball!
Oh how wonderful it is to be back in this space. Football season is upon us, we’re so blessed.
If this is your first time reflecting with us, I'd recommend first reading the inaugural piece of this series to get a sense of what I'm trying to do in this space. One main difference this year is that before each week of games I will be streaming with Sportfoliokings and writing weekly columns for PFF. I will pull from those pieces as those reflect my process, but I will reflect on my process here with the benefit of hindsight. And of course, this piece will serve as a central landing spot for all things in my football profit process and will hit on macro thoughts and team trends as the season rolls along. Let’s dive in!
Macro Thoughts:
Week 1 is almost always my favorite betting week of the year. I’ve had months and months to refine my theses over the offseason. I’m also oftentimes very off market on account which always add some spice and fun sweats.
Very solid Week 1 in @Leesharpes prediction game. 17th place, even after a tough JAX loss.
Something that emerged this week—and a big part of my process—is understanding the importance of distributions and the different ranges outcomes for given teams, especially relative to priors. By this I mean: certain teams are more or less variant from the mean range of outcomes. We can have decent conviction the Chiefs or Bills will be an elite team and will fall within the same range of outcomes most games. But for other teams, the distribution is wide and possible outlier angles abundant. Now this means:
1) when looking at teams its important to think of different possible angles and their corresponding distributions
2) even if there is a slim chance of a particular angle playing out, if that angle does indeed play out and will continue to—roll with it and bet on it! Some examples from my process this week:
ATL: I thought ATL would most likely end up as a bottom feeding team, but with Arthur Smith as a brilliant play designer and Mariota a duel threat perfect for Smith’s offense, I thought there was an angle for offense to surprise. I’m willing to lean in and buy this offense —especially in the short term.
BAL: My prior on the Ravens—accounting for most of the variance on our theoretical distribution—was that they would be a good but not great team. In the Lamar Jackson years, the Ravens had success even without the best offensive supporting cast on paper. This to say the surrounding offensive talent didn’t matter too much. But the offensive talent is so far diminished this year— Bateman is an unproven receiver playing as the de facto #1, Duvernay and Robinson would not be starting on most other teams, and Mike Davis is not anyone’s idea of a starting RB— that I thought perhaps the lack of talent would be a barrier insufficient for the Ravens to play their offense. Unable to really build a lead against the lowly Jets, this week peaked my attention to this angle. I’m not adjusting my prior just yet, but I’m at least on alert.
MIN: My offseason prior was that this would be more or less the same Vikings team as every other year in Cousins era. But if, indeed, O’Connell is a great schemer and he’s creating mismatches with Jefferson on LB’s then look out for Minnesota. This team could make noise in a wide open NFC.
Bets:
BUF -6 +170
This Clip really hits the nail on why I loved the Bills this week. I, on three occasions, said something along the lines of “these teams are in fundamentally different tiers”
Why are they in different tiers? If you look at any advanced stat, BUF was better than LA. Our drive quality metric at Sportfoliokings—which essentially gives credit for all the earned points an offense generated— had Buffalo at #1last season combining defense and offense and LAR at #5 . Buffalo was a better EPA team and had a higher SR. On all fronts BUF was better. And this was with LAR getting ceiling performances from Stafford and Kupp that are unlikely to continue into 2022. While that was a long term thesis, more immediately, the team lost key pieces in WR 2, LT, and Edge all of whom were stars last year. For a team built already as a “stars and scrubs” this roster was left much worse. For BUF, the offense remained roughly the same in projected output, but added Von Miller on defense.
Key Matchup angle: I really thought Von Miller would dominate Joseph Noteboom who did not show well in a metric I developed for PFF called Successful Blocking Over expected(SBOE).
What this charts shows is that going from a 92 SBOE player(Andrew Whitworth’s 2021 in this case) to a 86 SBOE player (Joseph Noteboom) can correspond to a massive drop-off in EPA. I thought Miller would be the player to expose a weak link on Rams offensive line and that turned out to be true.
Reflection: This was about as good process as I think I’ll ever have. I’ll take it while I can, as I have no idea if I’ll be as lucky with projecting a game as I was with this one.
NYG -5.5 +484
This was the most extensive process article I wrote all week so I’d recommend checking it out in full.
But TLDR: I am extremely bearish on Tennessee in 2022, and I think Week 1 presented a great opportunity to capitalize while they were still priced in as a playoff contender. The Giants are going to struggle against teams with pass protection and solid WR’s but TEN has neither of those. I also thought Kadarius Toney would eat against the Titans secondary
HOU -5 +521
I’m selling the Colts this year. The team’s issues in 2021 went(z) far beyond Carson Wentz.
The O-line quietly struggled in 2021 as you can see above. The defense gained the second most EPA in the NFL off turnovers (which is bound to regress) and lost key personnel along with their defensive coordinator.
Matchup angle: IND was ill equipped to take advantage where HOU D is weakest: the secondary. HOU could load the box and if they stopped Taylor I saw the Colts struggling to move the ball consistently on offense.
Live betting angle: most of all, I liked this bet because I saw this game as being a back and forth affair where I’d be able to grab the Colts at + money betting it live. Having a unit at +521 allowed me a huge position to gain leverage and that’s what we did—grabbing Colts at + money for a net cash despite the alt line not hitting.
Reflection: On our live stream I toed the fine line between patience and indecisiveness when to buy the Colts live. I didn’t maximize and that’s an important learning step to continue to improve. But I’m happy with the initial process, even if the result came oh so close to giving us a biiiiig cash.
LAC -5.5+140
The Raiders were my biggest sell this off-season.
TLDR of above article: The team was fundamentally a 7 win team last year, the AFC got way better, and they are incredibly weak in the weak-link systems of O-line and secondary.
I think the Chargers are one of the best teams in the NFL. Readers of Throwthedamball know I’ve been a Staley stan since day 1, and I think Herbert is a top 3 QB in football. The defense is loaded and I’m buying into Staley’s defensive mind especially after plugging the run defense and bringing in Khalil Mack and J.C Jackson.
My process generally pulls from 3 larger buckets: 1) fundamental team evaluation(think point spread rating, power ranking etc), 2) Matchup/game script 3) Market angles.
This spot was on LAC for all 3. Ultimately I think LAC is 11 win team and LV is a 7 win team. At home only -3.5 on spread? I was buying and moving the line in a game with a high total and when the points between 3-6 matter less. The matchup? Bosa and Mack presented a huge problem for Carr and the OL. The market loves LV and their futures moved from -110 U 8.5 in June to +120 U 8.5 by season start. The LV love is real and I was fading it.
DFS Breakdown:
I didn’t see how a depleted AZ defense was going to stop the best week 1 QB to ever do it. We knew Mahomes would be throwing early and often and the targets would flow through Kelce and Smith-Schuster.
With Rondale Moore out, Marquise Brown represented a clear #1 receiver in a game I expected AZ to trail. I thought Isabella would see plenty of snaps with Moore out, and he’s flashed serious YAC potential. At minimal ownership, I saw him as a way to really differentiate AZ-KC game stacks.
Barkley was stepping into the maybe the biggest role of any RB on the slate. The Giants made clear they were planning on featuring Barkley, so the volume was on going to be on his side. For an ACL recovery, RB’s generally take 2 years to get back to their previous selves, yet Barkley was still being priced for his 2021 season. Elite role and fantastic talent at a discount? Sign me up
CMC: not much needs to be said. The best PPR player when healthy with an absolutely enormous floor/ceiling combo
Toney: He’s been redacted now. By the Giants coaching staff and…me I think Kadarius Toney is one of the most talented WR’s in NFL and I was stoked to see him enter into a WR1 role at only 4.1K. The Giants had other plans. Yikes.
MIA D: I wanted some exposure selling the Pats offense and felt like trying to capitalize off turnovers with MIA defense was way to do it. Got lucky with the TD but rest of play was sound process.
Result: For every $1→$2.3. Not bad first week.