Introduction to Reflections/Week 1
I want to take this space every week to write down my process and reflections for what I call: "Football Profit Process" aka everything I’ve tried to predict and profit from the week prior. But given that I bet futures, spreads, props, and play DFS, I “bet” taking into consideration the prices from all these different markets. And unlike most “reviews” or “reflections” articles that stick to their one aisle, I want to take this space to articulate how my theses and convictions on teams and players manifest in different markets. I hope this will allow me to share my ideas and process so we can all improve our process and better set ourselves up for profit in the long run.
I am still working through the style and I hope this weekly piece both holds me accountable and vastly improves as the season moves along. For now, it is basically a string of my thoughts outlined loosely as follows:
The “General Thoughts section” will be some ideas I’m working through though not yet ready to bet, combined with some reaction to games. The betting section will run through my process and sometimes have some look ahead lines/props I’m thinking about for next week. Lastly, DFS will go through my lineup construction, game theory, and reflections and inevitably some of my tilting.
Some ideas might only be a bullet point or small paragraph, others might develop into full length articles-- we shall see!
General Thoughts:
I have here @LeeSharpeNFL’s wonderful NFL prediction game, which as you can see allows you to predict based on confidence intervals. I think week 1 is an excellent way to test out offseason priors and I want to highlight some of my picks and my reasoning behind them:
I am a big seller of the Titans this year without Arthur Smith. I’ve written before about Derrick Henry as an opportunity cost problem, but it was a problem the Titans teams of the past could overcome with Arthur Smith’s brilliant play action scheme. (Last year, they ran PA 36% of the time and Tannehill's YPA jumped close to 3 yds). But it was predictable, I thought, that the PA scheme would go by the wayside with new coordinator Todd Downing(this was indeed the case as they ran PA on 11% of the snaps in week 1). Added with a bad defense on paper, I was selling and will continue to sell the Titans this year. How are they still -110 to win the AFC South?
I’m not overreacting to this GB vs NO win on either side. On offense for GB, this game almost exactly mirrored the TB game from last year. They are too good on offense and will figure it out. For NO, I wouldn’t expect them to be able to sustain this sort of offense, running as frequently as they did (even before obtaining a big lead--see chart below)
Quick hitters:
KC is nearly unbeatable even against a solid Browns team with a nearly flawless HC.
I have no idea what to make of that ATL vs PHI game. Are the Eagles actually good? Is it just the Falcons doing their Jekyll and Hyde shtick?
The Steelers blitzed on only 3.7% of their plays(NGS). I don’t have access to box data, but I have a feeling the Steelers left the box empty and dared the Bills to run. It will be interesting to see if the Bills remain as pass heavy should another team employ a similar strategy to the Steelers.
Betting Thoughts:
My bets:
Cowboys O21.5 +100
I used this as my risk free-bet and was one of the highest conviction bets I think I’ll have all season. Here’s the logic: We knew the Cowboys would pass, playing the pass-funnel Bucs. And the betting markets knew it too, setting Dak’s attempts prop at 39.5. I’m certainly on team: “good offense beats good defense “especially when we’re talking about offenses led by upper tier QB’s. So I didn’t see a scenario--certainly not one with an above 50% likelihood-- in which the Cowboys would not be able to move the ball and score points. The Cowboys are at their best letting Dak unleash the football to his talented weapons. Add in a high scoring game environment, and it seemed like a shootout was likely and that Dak might just smash his attempt total and the Cowboys their point total.
But this bet was mostly about pricing. The Cowboys implied total was 25th in the NFL, right around the same as the Tyrod-led Texans at 21 points. I could discuss at length aside from the brief points mentioned above--and perhaps this should have been an offseason article-- why I think the Cowboys offense will be top 5-10 this year, but I will save that for another time. I don’t care who the defense is, if a top offense(or projected top offense) is implied to be 25th in the NFL in scoring the pricing is off. No defense should ever bump down a team like the Cowboys 15-20 spots in “offensive rankings.”
My best guess for this price was some fear of Dak’s injury(overreaction to SB?), and this is why we saw late movement towards the Bucs. But as a rule, I always always fade injury narratives. Teams won’t play their guys if they’re not healthy, or better yet, they won’t play them if they think their game will be limited in some way. If they are playing I assume they are a full-go.
Conclusion: The game environment, bad pricing, and narrative all added up to what I thought would be the easiest bet of the season, and I’m quite glad it worked out.
Chargers ML +105
WFT was bad last year, full stop. They went 7-9 on the backs of an easy schedule. I expect them to be in the same range this year.
But I made this bet since I think the gap in QB play between Herbert and Fitz is quite large and I would bet on Staley-led LAC to have a better defense this year and to stifle the WFT offense. At + money, with the QB, defense, and coaching advantage I would take this bet every time.
3. Teaser: Buf-.5+ SF-1+LAR-1(+160)
PIT@Buf:
I came into the year a huge seller of the Steelers, thinking Big Ben is no longer good(32nd in PFF grade last year), the offensive line is brutal, and the defense will regress. The Bills were in the same tier of offenses as the Bucs, Chiefs and Packers last year and with little change to the coaching staff and personnel I thought the Bills would keep rolling here to start off 2021.
SF @ Det:
I don’t think this needs so much elaboration: The Lions are quite bad and their head coach seems more interested in biting off kneecaps and drinking coffee(honestly the coffee part is real sharp) than winning football games. Their odds of the #1 pick seems higher than winning this game.
Chi @ LAR
For as long as Justin Fields is on the bench the Bears might be one of the worst teams in the NFL. Their defense is quite bad, but they still seem to be coasting off the capital of the Fangio-led 2018 team. Make no mistake, the defense has been getting progressively worse(see chart) and I expect that trend to continue throughout this year and this game.
I also was also unsure how the Bears would move the ball, given that I expected Ramsey to shut down Alan Robinson, and Dalton throwing to Darnell Mooney and Cole Kmet isn’t exactly inspiring confidence.
On the Rams side, the moves to trade for Stafford and sign Desean Jackson signaled to me that the Rams are going to start slinging downfield, a recipe for success in my view. Will it be enough to overcome the inevitable defensive regression? That’s a separate question for another time. But for this week 1 matchup, I expected the Rams to come out launching the ball against a defense and secondary that really would be unprepared to stop them.
DFS thoughts
I’m employing a new strategy playing DFS this year. As Cash lines for Double ups continue to increase, and people (rightly)play unique lineups tournaments to try and take down first place, I think cash lines for tournaments and cash lines for double ups will continue their convergence(it was about a 5 pt difference in 2019). This means that a 2x min cash GPP(such as the slant) can actually function as a double up with upside. Cashing in the slant still gets back the 2x money of a double up, but you can pay those 5 pts for the ability to scale upwards and gain upside as you move up tiers.
Without further ado, let’s break down the lineups:
I was all in on the Bengals from the moment salaries were released. I am extremely high on the Bengals offense coming into this year and thought this matchup with the Vikings was a perfect way to gain exposure to them early in the season. Rather than bet ML, or a -3 spread when I don’t know what to make of the defensive side of the ball, I thought the best exposure was a bet on the Bengals and their offensive concentration in DFS.
This Bengals block was about 21.4k of the salary allotted and they needed about 85.6 points(4x salary) to keep me on a 200 or so point pace. I thought the Bengals would generate about 350-450 yds of offense with about 3-4 Td’s against a defense that was quietly terrible last year. With a concentrated attack, I thought the offense would flow through these guys and should my projection on points and yards be accurate, this block would exceed 4x salary with upside for more. (They did).
CMC's floor and upside is so enormous, he’s nearly a lock for nearly 30 every time he plays.
Corey Davis, Najee Harris, and Kyle Pitts had what I thought would be big roles and were underpriced. I bet their mean salaries for the year will all exceed what they were in week 1. I’ll take that value.
Result:
The new cash game strategy worked wonders here, turning $1->2.7 for each entry.
I was not planning on playing this lineup, riding solely with the Burrow lineup. But I thought the Jets WR block made too much sense. At 12.9k I thought Davis and Moore might command 15-20 targets with upside for more. Wilson likes to sling it, and I wanted to (and still want to) be early on his explosive games. With the savings in salary I was able to get all of CMC, Adams, and Kamara, whom I thought were very solid bets for ceiling games.
I took Waddle here as a pivot off of Callaway. I had a feeling the Saints would lean extremely run heavy, and they always like to spread the ball around leading me off Callaway. I think the Dolphins(and Pats for that matter) will be more aggressive and pass happy this year, and Waddle was a #1 or 2 options that I thought had a good shot at generating some high value targets at a cheap price.
Reuslt:
This lineup came ohhhh so close to cashing, losing out on the $ by .2 pts. Crushing.
DFS lessons:
I think “bring back” correlations in DFS lineups are overrated. Here, I played Adams because I really liked the run-heavy spot with Kamara, and I thought, I might as well “bring back my lineup” with Adams as I’ve been trained to do so. But I should have more strongly considered Hill/Kelce in this spot, not because they ended up having a huge day, but because we all knew the Chiefs were going to score points and it would flow through Hill and Kelce. In a 1-1 here between Adams and Hill let's say, why should Alvin Kamara being on my roster matter for making this 1-1 choice? Is Kamara’s normal range of outcomes really directly influencing Adam’s outcomes?And besides, if I played Kamara and faded Callaway because I thought the Saints would run heavy, how high was Adam’s upside in the first place? I digress. But to make a broader point, if we think, as I did, that points will be scored in both games, why should it matter where the points come from-- the same game or a different game? If both teams are going to score 28+ points you’re not buying certainty by playing Adams here, you’re only making a bet on Adams>Hill.
Phew! That was much longer than I expected. But that is all for this week. I would really love any and all feedback-- suggestions, criticism, strategy talk, anything. My DM’s @throwthedamball are always open. Thanks for reading!