Week 11 Reflections
Aligned on the Right Side of Variance?
Welcome to Throw The Dam(n) Ball!
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.
This week we cover: MVP discussion, team trends & headlines, bets+ discussion of aligning on right side of variance, DFS strategy & my lineup breakdown. Skip to those headers as your hearts desire!
Macro Thoughts & Trends:
There has been a bunch of discourse on football twitter about how wide-open this year’s MVP race has been. Every week the favorite changes and there is anything but certainly as to who will win by seasons end. I find this interesting in that I haven’t seen anyone draw the connection between the MVP conversation and the lack of consensus on which teams are serious contenders and which are noise. (This is of course a point that elite QB play wins NFL games but of course that’s a platitude at this point)
All of this is to say that I think we’ve been a bit spoiled in recent years to come to expect consistently dominant performances each and every game whether on the player or team level. But as we say every week and it bears repeating: football is a random and variant game. Reading too much into one game or games is a recipe for long-term failure. The dominant MVP years are the exception and not the rule. But looking to longer term trends, relying on larger samples and understanding how much randomness is baked in each week, we can begin to find the edges and profit. Speaking of…..
Like week 7, I’m not sure we learnt so much new about teams this week. And rather than try to overreact in an attempt to construct narratives for the sake of content, I will focus in this next section on trends we’ve been identifying for weeks that were reinforced in week 11. Let’s dive in.
Team Trends & Headlines:
TEN: mediocre:
We’ve been saying it for a weeks now, but this TEN team is just mediocre and trending in the wrong direction.
Middle of the pack in EPA as you see above
10th in Early Down Success Rate
32nd in Explosive Play Rate
22nd yds/play
18th in DVOA
GB: Needs to show more.
While the offense had a strong showing vs a bad MIN D, I’m not buying. GB lacks any convincing performances this year, and I think the data bears that out. I guess I preempted this last week and it is still true now. I wrote:
“I think this GB team is closer to the fraudulent 2019 team than the dominant 2020 team. Why? Entering week 10 GB was….
17th in yds/play
11th in Early Down Success Rate
16th Explosive Play rate
9th in OFF Drive EPA
15th in Team DVOA
I’m ready to buy low on LAR @ GB this upcoming week—anyone else ready to join in on the ride?
PHI: emerging
I’ll keep it brief since I go more in depth on PHI in the next section. The offense has entirely changed course—following their week 7 loss to LV—to embrace a true “run and gun style.” Hurts has an 11.0 average depth of target(ADOT) 3rd in the NFL, and the team is -15.61 Pass Rate Over Expected. The result is a team 8th in Yds/Play, 4th in Drive EPA following this philosophical change. And sure, much of the scoring was on the backs of turnovers, but man did they give it to NO putting up a 40 burger. This team is legit good and while they are a tier below the NFC’s “top 5,” they might be the best of the rest.
NE: legit good.
What more need I say? We’ve been onto them since week 7 and this might just be the peak for them climbing up the power rankings in week 11.
Also…take a look above at that Drive EPA graph and tell me you’re not ecstatic about the Bills-NE AFC East race. Exactly. You’re bursting at the seems waiting to watch this race unfold and I can’t blame you. Well, good news is they play each other twice before seasons ends.
BUF is still favored to win DIV which might lead to some interesting betting opportunities to capitalize on the different prices in different markets. Hopefully we can profit on this as we did in week 8.
BUF: offense is inconsistent.
We’ve spoken a bunch recently about how Josh Allen is capable of serious high end play, but he has been inconsistent this year. The trend continued this week. And this inconsistency has been the story of the Bills season. 2 ideas to illustrate:
While doing some research into this inconsistency, I found a really cool metric from Football Outsiders(FO) called “Variance” In FO’s words: ”VARIANCE measures the statistical variance of the team's weekly DVOA performance. Teams are ranked from most consistent (#1, lowest variance) to least consistent (#32, highest variance)”
Well, the Bills are currently breaking the record for the most variant team in NFL history.
The Bills use of Play Action the last 2 weeks has been emblematic of their inconsistent 2021 season.
Betting Recap:
IND ML + Over 49 @ BUF (+578)
I speak probably too much about randomness and aligning yourself “on the right side of variance. ” While this may seem abstract, I think this bet is the perfect example of what I mean. I didn’t think, in a vacuum, it was likely IND would win, but I thought it was more likely than the market gave them credit for. And, if a certain(somewhat random) angle hit, I thought there was a predictable cascade effect, less random than what appears on the surface. Let’s dive in.
I think this game was far more uncertain than the market’s conviction -7(or 74% Bills win). BUF’s strength lies in their strong defensive play that has stopped the run and forced the leagues highest rate of incompletions. But IND has been successful on offense despite the 7th worst Comp %. This mitigates BUF's D edge here.
The other point is that BUF had played only one game against a solid run offense this season. In that game vs TEN, BUF’s run D was exposed. IND presented another opportunity for that same game script to once again unfold. My thesis was that I expected IND to be able to run the ball efficiently and for chunk gains and continue to build on their drive success(6th in Drive EPA entering this game).This leads me to my bet and why I have the ML and over parlayed.
If this angle did not hit, IND was going to lose. In other words, I did not see how IND wins a more defensive battle. But if this angle did hit, the over seemed like it would follow as a result. I thought it was a fair base that BUF would score 20 points(as they’ve done in all but 2 games) vs an unimposing Colts D in a “points scoring” game environment. And if IND was winning in the run game, they would have no issue piling up points on by sustaining drives. 4 Td’s seemed like a reasonable median in this assumed game script and environment.
What’s more, games oftentimes have predictable cascade effects. We know that, when down, Josh Allen more than any other QB, forces balls into tight windows which leads to many turnovers—according to PFF, Allen has a league most 18 Turnover-Worthy-Plays. This, of course, is a recipe for hitting the over as it adds short fields and expected points for IND to stretch out their lead. The short field, run-oriented approach plays precisely into this angle and is exactly IND’s ideal game script. BUF, with Allen and his TWP’s, more than any other team plays into that short-field game script.
Sometimes you align yourself on the right side of variance, games break your way and you get to profit as a result. Betting football is so beautiful sometimes.
NO ML @ PHI (+150)
This game pulled me in a multitude of directions and was a clash of a bunch of trends. I was high on PHI offense and low on the NO defense, but the way the game set up had me with a strong lean to NO. It was a clash of season-long vs strong game lean.
Here is how I saw this game going: PHI continues trying to establish the run, but the NO #1 ranked run defense slows them down. NO jumps out to an early lead as a result. Down in the game, Hurts starts to push the ball downfield an area that is a real mixed bag for him. He has some big throws but also turns it over a few times. And those turnovers allow for more possessions for NO and they hang onto their early lead and win.
Regardless of how the game actually played out, the data underlying that narrative above —and why I was comfortable making this bet— was that I thought PHI would struggle to sustain drives, with a low success rate resulting from some poor running efficiency. This was NO’s biggest advantage and would lead them to a win. That, of course, did not happen and PHI hammered NO.
Honestly, not sure if this was good or bad process playing the game-script rather than my season-long trends. Anyone have any insight? I certainly don’t know!
CIN -2.5 @ LV(+100)
We talked last week about the wheels coming off for LV and how they might be adopting a scheme change in the absence of Henry Ruggs. This is a team moving in the wrong direction with no shortage of distractions off the field. I don’t love buying into those sorts of narratives but you can just see the collapse before your very eyes.
And while I was (and am) selling LV until the market re-adjusts their prior, I also liked this spot for Burrow to get right. It is well documented that nobody has run more Cover-3 than the Raiders this season, and Burrow has been great facing Cover-3. As Ian Hartitz wrote in his column this week:
“Overall, their[LV’s] 335 snaps dwarf the second-place Seahawks (267). They’ve largely been average out of this look, ranking 17th in EPA per play (-0.009) through 10 weeks of action, which is problematic considering Joe Burrow has absolutely lit up Cover-3 this season, ranking third in PFF passing grade (83.9), 12th in big-time throw rate (4.7%) and fourth in yards per attempt (9.1) while not having a single turnover-worthy play against the look.”
I had the better team in a good matchup, and I moved the spread a point which got me to + money while staying below a FG. Sign me up!
Market note: Considering I was both selling LV as a team, and that I thought CIN would outclass LV in any game script, the spread market—which bakes everything in—was the best way to capitalize on the theses I outlined above.
MIA -5.5(.75U)+ MIA -13.5 (.25U) @ NYJ
The Jets are disastrously bad on defense, as this chart below indicates. And there is no reason to think this will stop—they are last in every defensive metric, with their play only getting worse and with injuries piling up.
Simply put, this line was just not enough in my view. MIA is a competent enough offense to take advantage of the Jets defense and point spreads matter less when your defense is giving up close to 30 points no matter the opponent. And while MIA is no juggernaut, they are competent on offense in terms of most efficiency stats. Was Joe Flacco going to keep up and keep the Jets in this game? Seems like a long-shot
In my view, what’s more interesting process-wise is how I bet the game. It is very rare I think a line is really off, but this was one of those cases. I thought this line should have been closer to 7. Betting 75% at + money on what I thought was a short line was going to book me a profit. And with a defense almost transcendently bad, points matter less. The Dolphins had a real shot at blowing them out considering how many points this Jets defense is allowing consistently.
It is also worth nothing that the Dolphins defense has begun playing well of late. And as a buyer of coaches and scheme and with the talent on the Dolphins defense, I would not be shocked to see them more as an avg defense than the bottom tier defense they’ve been so far. Facing Joe Flacco, shutting him down was yet another angle and possibility for the Dolphins to cover this spread .
DFS Breakdown:
I don’t think the reason I was targeting the DAL vs KC game environment needs much explaining. These are elite NFL’s offenses going up against one another.
DFS strategy note:
One of my first rules in DFS--dating back a few years now-- is that when the Mahomes+Hill+Kelce are going to be under owned they are going to be at the top-of-my-week list. I won’t always play them but I promised myself to always take a close look. But I won’t lie, I had my concerns this week. I think the Chiefs box score from last week was a bit misleading and was hoping to see a bit more before fully embracing the stack. But wasn’t that exactly what everyone else would be thinking? And I think this leads us to an important difference between DFS and other markets.
DFS is a game of trying to outscore your opponents. It is not beating a single party(book). My goal then, is to understand how my opponents are attacking the slate and because scoring is dynamic the “more right I am” the more I profit. If you have an over 24 on a team and they go for 42 you don’t gain any benefit for going over by 18. But in DFS, being “more right” is how you end up in 1st place with life changing money. Why bet them in other markets when I’m trying to capture top percentile outcomes. Because we’re talking about small percentage chances, I love this stack because the ceilings of Mahomes+Hill+Kelce are so so high and we’ve seen them reach it more often than any other pairing. If people are going to be underweight on these guys thinking they needed one more week to see if the Chiefs are for real, I wanted to be early. This positions me to “be more right” given my being overweight on the stack is the edge just as much as the sack hitting. And there is no pairing I would rather be early and overweight on then the Chiefs and their elite and concentrated offense. I was ready, once again, to roll with our favorite Chiefs stack.
Dillon was set to have a big role with Aaron Jones hurt and well A.J Dillon is #good. Volume+efficiency is king in DFS.(I will likely jump back on the wagon next week)
Wilson was set to be the lead back for Kyle Shannhan in a spot where SF would be controlling. And unlike Mitchell, when Wilson has playe, he has excelled as a receiver giving him a higher floor/ceiling than Mitchell has had at any point this season. At 5.1K, Wilson was underpriced.
Higgins: When healthy, Higgins was leading the Bengals in targets and, as you know, I liked the Bengals in this spot. I thought there would be a good chance those points would flow through Higgins.
Reflection note: This was an extremely weak play, and I think Higgins was being talked up around the industry giving me a false sense of confidence in the play. The Raiders are easier to attack on the ground and we know the Bengals are not afraid to run the ball. And while I thought CIN would be efficient throwing against Cover 3, who is to say it would flow through Higgins? This isn’t a concentrated attack at all! This should have given me pause. I generally try and not let outside noise direct my play, but alas I got sucked in this week. This is why we reflect and learn.
Bateman/Kmet:
I made this lineup, at first, assuming Lamar Jackson was paying and Marquise Brown was out. Bateman, I thought, was going to take on the Brown role at 4.5K. And there was no reason to think Bateman would be less efficient than Brown considering Bateman has done nothing but ball since coming back into the lineup. I loved the spot against a beatable CHI D.
Without Alan Robinson, Kmet was a perfect bring-back at 3.4K against a Ravens team that filters targets to TE’s. Kmet has earned a full time role, and emerged as one Justin Fields favorite targets averaging about 7 targets over his last 3 games. This number should only have increased with Robinson out of the lineup. Not only that, but Kmet was being used downfield giving him yardage upside and he has yet to score a TD which is driving his price down.
I didn’t pivot off these guys following the Lamar news. In week 8, I explicated why I hate pivoting off late injury news and I didn’t want to make the same mistake I did then. It came down to this: Would I have played Bateman with Lamar and Brown? very likely. Marquise Brown injury>Lamar injury for Bateman’s stock. Besides, is there any reason to suggest the Ravens would change their game-plan and attack differently? I’m not so sure. (editors note: they did, and went from highest ADOT team to lowest this week, basically eliminating the “Brown” role. )
I like the process here, hate the result.
Overall Recap:
Not my best DFS week, but we will break out of our little slump.
Up to 125/904 in the @LeeSharpe prediction game which I guess is cool for bragging rights and signal in my general market convictions.
Bets were a huge hit this week, and we are now up 22.5U on the year. Woah, what a wild and fun ride.
Thanks for reading my adventurous thoughts and I look forward to being back in this space next week!
Don’t want to miss a reflection or any other article? Subscribe right below and get these straight into your inbox!
And you can follow and support my work by sharing this substack and giving me a follow on Twitter @throwthedamball.
As always, my DM’s are open and I really love all kinds of suggestions, comments, criticism!