2022 Week 9 Reflections
Welcome (back) to Throwthedamball!
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.
Marco View:
We have here our Consensus Market Power Rankings which captures and weights how analytical companies and the betting markets are rating NFL teams. A few notes to highlight:
I’ve been pounding on the table allllll season, but the market is still slow to downgrade the top NFC teams from last year.
The Bucs are a near unanimous top team still, despite our Drive Quality suggesting they are closer to a below average unit.
The Rams are still viewed as league average despite predictably getting worse and ranking 31st in EPA through 8 games(not a small sample size!)
The market has finally downgraded the Packers 6 spots this week— but is that enough? Our Drive Quality has them at 28, and this team just got murdered with injury news to 4 key players.
The teams with the most disagreement according to our different market inputs (St. Dev column) are the Seahawks and Jaguars two teams who have produced extremely well in analytical metrics but have struggled in years part. In the Seahawks case I think it is time to jump on the Geno Smith train, but I think Trevor Lawrence’s tumultuous play does lend credence to the volatility and disagreement in the Jaguars power rank.
Last February, Ben Brown and I wrote about explosive plays are absolutely essential to the success of an NFL drive. And I think this idea is worth re-visiting at the midway point of the season.
Whichever way the causality runs, NFL success still heavily relies on being able to generate (and stop) explosive plays. I have 2 main takeaways: The offenses I trust(KC, BUF, SF, MIA, PHI) are almost all the ones who are most explosive. But the dispersion of teams in the graph comes to further suggest the parity in this year’s NFL. Aside from the dominant teams int he top right, this noisy rest of the graph is among, I think, the many reasons why there have been many shocking upsets and unexpected results.
My Bets:
MIN -5.5 & Justin Jefferson 75 Yards Receiving + 275
In a sea of uncertainty in the NFL this year— the Vikings represent a bit more clarity. Why? They’re the same team they are every year with Kirk who is as average as it gets. The team will allow teams to come back into games and will find a way to claw back into any game. They’re ok—good, but not great and certainly not a bad team.
And being average in this NFL environment might be enough to make them worthy of being a “top 10” team. But more directly to this bet, they are certainly in a tier above Washington(pick your metric) and the Vikings stability had me confident they would show up and beat an inferior opponent.
But better yet, I planned on hedging this bet if MIN got out to a big lead and was going to try to create a middle betting WFT on the comeback. It didn’t come to it, but we bet the Vikes ML +320 live so that’s alllll good.
Why Jefferson? Well it gave me an extra +140 of juice, and if the Vikings were to succeed I thought the production would have to flow through him.
WFT LB Cole Holcomb and Safety Kamren Curl have had terrific years for the Commanders, in mine and Arjun Menon’s Successful Coverage Over Expected metric(SCOE). And their terrific seasons have led to great play against tight ends, allowing the 3rd-fewest targets and 2nd-fewest yards to them.
Washington also allows the 5th-fewest targets and the 3rd-fewest yards to running backs.
All of this is to say: the targets would flow to Justin Jefferson as the unquestioned WR1 in this offense. And as you can see above, all of the Commanders' corners are negative SCOE — not that it really matters facing Jefferson.
I liked the process here and especially liked leaning into Jefferson with confidence the offense would flow through him. Combining prop markets and spreads is something that offers great odds and I’m beginning to dabble in this market.
Jags -5.5 + TLaw 200+ Yds Passing +370
Will start with the passing yards: This boosted these odds from 200→+370 and there’s almost no chance the Jags cover this line without 200 yards from Lawrence. Vegas also allows teams to pass for an average of 255 yards per game again.
By our Drive Quality metric below, the Jags had the much better defense and were about the same offensively.
The team had only struggled in recent weeks as Lawrence struggled, but if there were ever a time for him to get back on track, a date with the Raiders would do the trick.
Market: But while that was all compelling evidence, the main thesis was really about markets, and you can hear my process in real time as I leaned into my view of the Jaguars bottoming. The same process that had me bet them live, is the same that had me bet them at the start. (And enjoy my little tilt :) )
NO -5.5 + O 23.5 Passing +300
Featured piece at PFF’s “Leveraging Tails” column and I recommend you read the full process there. But here’s the gist of it:
The market is not yet buying into Dalton, despite his elite play in the stable metrics. A below-average Ravens defense is unlikely to generate enough pressure to disrupt Dalton. If Dalton’s improved production is not a fluke — and this is the tails we chase in this spot — the Saints should fly past 23.5 points. And with their defense prepared to stop what Baltimore does best, the Saints are a good bet to score often and cover the 5.5-point alt spread.
Oof, that one fell flat, as Dalton was under pressure all night and Ravens romped them. But, if you were following along, as least you might have bet the Ravens live seeing Lamar take over.
Despite a disastrous performance from the Saints, I think the process is sound—we hit on the left side of a distribution curve, but I don’t think that means the right one didn’t(and doesn’t) exist. I’ll still be buying the Saints for a year more weeks until we see this offense consistently sputter.
That’s it for this week. As always, thanks for reading and we will be back in this space next week! For graphs and articles on my process before Sunday, be sure to give me a follow on twitter @throwthedamball. We will also be starting to use this substack as a listserve where you can read/watch/listen to all Throwthedamball content.
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