Week 11 Stats+Angles

Is Russ Back? Time to worry about KC D? AZ on the rise?

Intro note:

Football is a matchup and indisoynrcatic game where teams change their behavior over the course of a season, players improve,and random results and injuries can skew outcomes that don’t necessarily reflect underlying value.

I personally find that so much of my success betting at this point in the season relies on sifting through the data to understand the sample sizes that are the most relevant/predictive going forward. Simply taking averages or medians can get you some of the way to good pricing, but I think it misses the mark and certainly so on the tails.

By taking an intensive look at our data and understanding the context in which it lives we can (hopefully) stay a bit ahead of the market. This column, then —which is an experiment for now, feedback appreciated— will look at some of the stats and angles I’m monitoring as I parse through the data and try to stay ahead of the market. I won’t capture everything and the structure and style is all in flux, but a start nonetheless. Let’s dive in.

Again, this piece will be a work in progress so please let me know if you have some feedback and how I can make this better/change format etc.

Is Russ Back?

Can Russell Wilson sustain this level of play- 4th best in the NFL EPA so far?

Let’s take a look at Wilson’s profile relative to previous seasons.

Wilson’s EPA is the best it has been since 2019. But there hasn’t been an overwhelming change in much of the underlying data.

Wilson’s PFF grade is slightly up from last season as is his average ADOT and Deep Attempt %. Meanwhile, his scramble rate is about the same as previous season, and his sack rate and pressure to sack rate remain largely the same as previous seasons (and bad relative to league average). Wilson’s Success Rate facing disruption is roughly in line with his averages.

So what has changed?

1) Wilson is running far less when scrambling which has led to a pretty sizeable decrease in his efficiency scrambling overall.

2) And most important, Wilson is generating an absurd 1.4 EPA/Pass on deep balls which is nearly 0.2 points better than the 2nd best season in the database and much better than peak Wilson in SEA. Even if Wilson is a solid deep thrower—peep the years in SEA— this number is extremely unlikely to sustain itself even if it is directionally relevant.

And how effective has Wilson been without the deep balls? He has generated a total of 0 EPA on non deep balls meaning that effectively all of his production has come via the deep pass. Given his career averages and general league average throwing deep this deep EPA number that is responsible for his production is likely to regress and the Steelers offense will likely regress as a result. And given how limited Wilson is now scrambling it seems unlikely he can make up for the lost production via other parts of the game, as he was able to earlier in his career.

Wilson is going to live and die by the deep ball and I will play this volatility in markets while also assuming some regression will set in over the course of the season.

KC Pass D’

By most metrics the Chiefs defense has been terrific so far this season, but the last few weeks have left some concerns, especially with regard to the efficiency of their pass defense.

The team lost Jaylen Watson to injury in Week 7 against the 49ers in the midst of his dominant season where he was atop NFL in play before and after catchpoint. And his replacement, Nazeeh Johnson, has been perhaps the games worst CB so far this season. Considering how much secondary is a weak link system, this has bigly influenced the Chiefs passing outcomes.

Since Watson went down, the Chiefs have allowed:

• LV to have their best pass EPA game (0.12)

• TB to have 0.17 Passing EPA/Play, best in non-Evans Godwin games (and obviously big number not even relatively speaking).

• DEN’s 2nd best pass EPA game (0.13)

The team has been stout against the run, but the pass D’ has been bad even with facing some sub-par opponents and is a unit I’ll be looking to attack in SGP market in coming week (s) and this funnell set up is what we dream of for the tails angles.

Jets D

The Jets defense has pushed everything downfield with opponents having an average ADOT of 10 yards. The Jets did not have an opponent throw below 8 yards on average. On Sunday, the Cardinals ADOT was 5 yds and the Jets tackling was a disaster, allowing an average of 8 Yards After Catch en route to the worst EPA/YPA game of their season.

I will be curious to see how teams will attack them going forward, though I am not selling on the Jets defense just yet, given the uniqueness of how Arizona attacked them relative to their other opponents.

AZ:

Speaking of AZ… through 10 weeks, Kyler Murray is having the best season of his career so far with his highest EPA/Play and PFF grade of any season. Where is the area where Murray has been best? He is setting a career high (by far) in his EPA scrambling and his ability to create when facing disruption where he has been 4th best EPA vs disruption in the NFL this season.

Murray career average on scrambles was -0.15 EPA entering this season, but fully healthy off the ACL tear that number is up to a whopping 0.35 EPA/play. Murray’s sack rate when scrambling this season is 4%, whereas his career average entering this season was 11.7%. And Murray has been running 40% of the time on his scrambles, up from 31% on his career average while also having by far his most efficient run scrambling season adding 0.86 points every scramble run,

I have certainly been slow to update to the Cardinals— and they, I think, have certainly been on right side of variance in terms of their W/L record— but this is an offense at the top of the league in most efficiency and production metrics backed up by Kyler Murray’s stellar play. An interesting team to monitor going forward with some sneaky offensive ceiling.

Short on time this week so going to spot here. ICYMI I also wrote yesterday about the big DFS win with some thoughts on how I approach DFS relative to other tails angles and the broader (s)portfolio.

As always, appreciate the support and spread the good word about Throwthedamball!

Will be back in the inbox tomorrow with some thoughts on Washington vs Philly.