Week 12 Reflections
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: Team trends, my Bets & Lineup Breakdown. Skip to those headers as your hearts desire!
Macro Thought(s):
No big market idea emerged for me this week so I won’t force it because I usually have an idea outlined in this space.
But this week more than most, our favorite Drive EPA graph suggests what I think has been the the story of the NFL so far: parity. Look at how clustered the teams are towards the average!
Team Trends:
AZ:
Despite being alone in their dominance in the right quadrant of this graph, most Power Rankings are holding onto their pre-season priors and don’t have AZ in that elite tier. Somehow, I think AZ is underrated. Here are some power ratings from popular media brands.
ESPN: 3rd
PFF: 6th
538: 8th
Football Outsiders: 4th
GB:
I have been a little bit pessimistic about GB the past few weeks, but I missed in my analysis that Rodgers was uncharacteristically struggling deep early in the season, hurting the team’s overall offensive efficiency. But we have a large sample to know that Rodgers is one of the best deep passers in the NFL, and his struggles were likely noisy.
Deep Stats:
Weeks 1-9: 71.7 PFF grade(29/35), 11.1 YPA, 33% Comp %
Last 2 weeks: 93.1 PFF grade, (1st), 19 YPA, 50% comp %.
The efficiency of the last 2 weeks is more in line with Rodgers career avg, and while deep passing is volatile, Rodgers has been consistently good throughout his career and I would bet on that being signal and the early season struggles being noise. GB is now 4th in Drive EPA, up about 11 spots from a few weeks back.
AFC Contenders:
It’s been about a month, but I don’t think the layout in the AFC has changed much at all. I think this tweet pretty much captures it..
LAC:
The Chargers are voodoo, as you never know which Chargers offense will show up on a given week. But this should not be news. We spoke a few weeks back about how EPA is perhaps not the most stable metric for LAC considering how many high leverage 4th downs spots they find themselves in.
Hot-tub-hot-take: On LAC’s best day, though, they have the upside to win any game. So while this team is not consistent enough to be one of the AFC’s best, come the end of the season and playoff time I wouldn’t be all that shocked to see LAC go on a little run.
MIA:
With Tua, MIA is running Play Action(43%) at by far the highest rate in the NFL. They have moved to a quick PA passing game which fits Tua’s style as a QB better with separators than contested catch receivers. And the results?
Tua is quietly having a solid sophomore season, leaving MIA reasons for optimism in the coming years. Since returning from injury in week 6, Tua is 9th in PFF grade and 6th in EPA/play. Granted it is a small sample and the opponents have been weak, but I will be watching closely to see if this quick offense can catapult Tua and the Dolphins into the “good” offensive tier.
SF
I’m no doubt a Shanahan skeptic, but this offense has been good since the teams bye in week 6. Following the bye, they are:
2nd in Drive EPA
4th in Explosive Play Rate
3rd yds/play
5th in 1st Down rate
I snagged their SB odds at 100:1, but should this play continue over the next few weeks, it might be time to buy another futures ticket
MIN:
MIN has held a lead in every game this season, though they have been absolutely dreadful holding onto leads. And it is not b/c the scheme changes. MIN has same depth of target, same run/pass rates etc.
It is not just this year they’ve had issue holding and it’s not just the success rate that is the signal. It's been the entire Cousins era, and the EPA dips for them too, despite no real scheme change.
MIN Drive EPA 2019 w/ lead: .22, Season EPA: .61
MIN Drive EPA 2020 w/ lead: .06, Season EPA .86
MIN Drive EPA 2021(so far) w/ lead: -.043, Season EPA .05
I have no answers why this is the case—and we’re working with a sample of about 900 plays which is roughly a full seasons worth of plays! Is this randomness? Signal? Something data doesn’t capture? I’m really not sure how to approach this and would love to hear other ideas!!
Bets:
TB vs IND -5.5 +160 3U
If you haven’t already, I would really recommend reading last week’s breakdown of my bet IND bet vs BUF to understand my process of landing on TB here.
While on the surface these matchups for IND vs BUF & TB seem similar, they were anything but. IND would not be able to run all over TB and establish drive dominance as they did vs BUF. BUF has had a good statistical run defense this year, but Henry dominated BUF, and IND presented a similar matchup to TEN in their ability to beat BUF’s run D. TB, on the other hand, has been dominant in run D for years now and they’ve shut down the run game no matter the opponent. They force teams to pass 10% more than expected and I didn’t think this spot would be any different. And even in that outlier scenario where they could run the ball, Brady does not have Allen’s turnover issues, as Brady could match this IND team drive for drive.
But I was working under the assumption that we would have both teams passing at an extremely high rate(TB always passes at 10% PROE). And without IND ability to run these are simply not the same caliber passing teams. Here is where these teams stack up in these facets.
TB Pass O: 1st DVOA, 1st yds/pass, IND: 18th DVOA, 22nd yds/pass
PFF Grades: Brady: 1, Wentz: 24. Offense: TB: 1, IND: 19
EPA/Play: Brady: 0.229(6th), Wentz 0.143(16th)
These are not the same tier of teams in this game script. Not to mention, in a passing and high scoring environment, the points matter less making me far more willing to go to 5.5 and capture the extra juice between 3-6.
But to make matters better and—what made this my biggest unit play of the season at 3U— was that a pricing inefficiency. To bet TB -5.5, as I intended, would be +140. But parlaying Bucs -2.5 & Bucs -5.5 somehow moved the price to +160, though, of course, to win by 6+ you need to also win by 3+. It made no sense but I was ready to soak up that extra profit. (As a frame of reference, +160 was also the price for TB -7.5)
CAR @ MIA -105
This bet was mostly about how this CAR team was priced for their full season output, but CMC fundamentally changes how their offensive efficiency, and without CMC, CAR’s numbers really tanked. This is something I wrote about in Week 5 and the sentiment in that piece is what drove this bet so I will quote it at length.
“CAR is not the type of team who has enjoyed much explosive success but has done a great job on early downs(as the chart below shows). The Panthers scheme relies heavily on third down conversions and marching down the field. CAR only went 5/15 against PHI, no wonder they lost and scored only 18 points. While I certainly am closer aligned to the “running backs don’t matter camp.” CMC is so critical to this scheme built on early success and converting short 3rd downs(where CMC excels as a receiver). If CMC is back, look for the CAR offense to bounce back.”
With such a strong success rate, I expected CAR to control this game—and without much pushback from MIA D. Not to mention, Tua has yet to play well against a good defense— CAR ranks 3rd in SR allowed, and 4th in Drive EPA—and I didn’t see this as the spot for him to emerge. Add it up and we had the game script for CAR to control the pace and game.
DFS Breakdown:
I was doubling down in DFS with this Bucs passing game, and the path of least resistance vs IND is the middle of the field making Gronk and Godwin attractive options. Pascal, I thought, would be a sneaky bring back. He has run the same number of routes as Pittman and is second on the team in targets. While of course I would have preferred Pittman, Pascal has shown flashes of upside and I knew he would be minimally owned despite the possibility for 8+ targets at 3.5K. And those savings allowed me to get up to CMC.
CMC: When not getting hurt, he has a stupid high floor and ceiling and as discussed, I was a fan of this spot for CAR. His floor was the perfect way to balance the high-risk low floor Pascal play.
Henderson is in a 3-down role attached to one of the leagues best offenses. He has yet to score multiple TD’s in a game keeping his price low, but I would not be so surprised to see some TD regression moving forward and I wanted to be early.
Laviska: Laviska had some success in the slot early in the season and with Agnew out for the year I though we would see Laviska back in the slot. He was set up for a high target game and maybe even the downfield role he saw vs CIN. He also has yet to score a TD this year further driving his price down.
Williams was a late swap and while I didn’t love the spot against a tough Den D, he was my best shot at a 40 burger at his price point which is what I needed to get to the cash line.
Reflection: Don’t hate the lineup at all, but injuries and outlier outcomes ie; the Bucs rushing in Td’s leads to a losing week. It happens, but this is the nature of DFS and why you play the long game and don’t go all in on one week but strive to win over time.
Overall Recap:
Not my best DFS results, but onto better days!
Up 3 spots to 122/904 in the @LeeSharpe prediction game
Bets were a hit again this week, and we are now up 25.5U on the year. Woah! what a wild and fun ride!
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