Week 16 Reflections
Welcome to Throw The Dam(n) Ball!
If this is your first time reflecting, I'd recommend first reading the inaugural piece of this Reflections series to get a sense of what I'm trying to do in this space.
This week we cover: General Thoughts & Trends, recap betting week, and talk some DFS+SGP strategy. Skip to those parts per your hearts desire!
Macro/General Thoughts:
We’ve come full circle this NFL season. After all the ebbs and flow, we are left with KC, GB, BUF, and TB as the 4 SB favorites, just as they were in the preseason. And, of course, these 4 comprised our “juggernaut” cluster of elite offenses last year. Offense wins in the NFL.
This week was also the exemplar 2021 NFL week. We had a massive favorite upset in stunning fashion (LAC), a dominant performance from an “elite“ team in DAL, leaving us wondering why this team has been so inconsistent all year. GB, once again, barely escaped with a win, having us all debate whether x team is worthy of being SB favorites. LAR was doing their Jekyll and Hyde shtick— MIN choked when it mattered most.
Team Trends:
DAL:
Referring to DAL’s offensive struggles, in Week 14 I wrote that I thought DAL’s offense would bounce back:
“we know not to overreact too much to a small sample either way. I think the offensive struggles are more noise than anything else, reflective of the ebb and flow of the NFL season. This team is far too talented and their PFF offensive profile has remained largely the same despite the efficiency downturn. “
Yes this was only one game, but it was only a matter of time before this offense clicked. Everything seems to be coming together at the just the right time for the Cowboys. As the chart above suggests, they have a dominant EPA profile at this point.
KC is back?
Ok, I am back on the KC train, I think. What defined Mahomes pre-2021 was that he never had a bad game is career. He literally had 0 negative regular season EPA games prior to this year as this handy chart below suggests(thanks Bruno!)
And it seems as though Mahomes is back to his old ways, with 2 of his last 3 games being 75% percentile or better games. This is hard to ignore.
But at the same time, the lack of consistency this year does give me the slightest bit of pause. I think the next few weeks will be key to making a final pre-playoff verdict to see if Mahomes’s struggles are indeed a weird outlier or if inconsistency will be his new norm. The market is pricing in certainty—that this is the Mahomes and KC of old— and while they have to be the favorites at this point, I don’t think it is as much of a slam dunk as the past few years.
TEN & IND: With a healthy Henry, IND is a poor man’s TEN
This was initially a few bullet points in this space, but I decided to turn it into a full article, ICYM check it out!
AZ: Don’t discount them just yet
It certainly feels apt to “downgrade” AZ at the moment. But I think our EPA graph consists of a decent sample and range of outcomes. Are they playing like the #1 team right now? No. Does Kliff have a history of 2nd half collapses? Also yes. Causes for concern, but not a death sentence and a relegation to Tier 3 of NFC teams as I have seen basically everywhere in analytics/betting world.
And there are reasons for optimism for AZ:
Bets:
BUF ML @ NE -105
One of the biases and dangers of tracking mean EPA on a season long basis is that a few outlier performances can really move the mean EPA for a team. And I found, researching for this week, that NE’s high EPA marks are products of 2 massive blowout wins vs NYJ and CLE. Can’t take those away, but they do skew the data. In fact, coming into this week they only had positive EPA in 5/15 games. Their median EPA was 15th in the NFL. “Great” offenses aren’t bad in 66% of their games.
BUF in contrast, had 12/15 games positive EPA and was 6th in median EPA. While both teams were occupying the same spot on my favorite Drive EPA graph, a deeper look tells a different story for these 2 teams. BUF is, as we thought, among the leagues best, while NE is perhaps more of a middling team. I certainly missed this in my analysis of NE, but we adapt to new information and change our priors.
No need to further detail: BUF is in a different tier of team, with the better QB.
DEN @ LV -1+100
It isn’t often you get to bet a clearly better QB at + money, which is the basically the full process behind the bet. To be clear, if DEN was clearly better 2-52 this would change the calculus, but I don’t believe that to be the case so QB play figured prominently here.
Drew Lock is really really bad. Since entering the league in 2019:
44/54 in EPA/CPOE Composite (RBSDM)
47/54 in Success Rate
35/42 in 2020 PFF grade.
Meanwhile here is where Derek Carr Ranks during this same timeframe:
12/54 in EPA/CPOE Composite (RBSDM)
13/54 in Success Rate
11th in PFF grade this year.
While I could have bet the DEN under, Locke’s aggressiveness (highest ADOT among full time starters last year) does make him a sneaky candidate for the over in the event he connects on a few deep shots. And in a shootout game script, I still would bet on LV, who are 2nd in the NFL in explosive play rate. The alt spread was the market for this bet.
DFS+SGP Breakdown:
SGP @ +1100
Why bet the CIN O thesis in DFS & SGP markets rather than betting the team over 26? Here’s why:
There was a question as to whether CIN would throw enough to take advantage of this matchup. Each of the last 6 weeks(left column), the Bengals have run below expectation (right column)
So the 26 point total seemed to be a fair median projection for a team likely to play a possession game as they have previous few weeks.
But DFS and SGP are about capitalizing on percentiles, and, especially price considered, nobody had a higher ceiling than CIN. This is because if they threw —turned out to be 15% over expectation— there was just no way BAL could stop them.
Burrow came into this game: 2nd in Yds/attempt, 1st in PFF passing grade against a defense allowing 3rd most yds/attempt, but facing fewest play volume of nay team. And best of all for upside purposes—what we are after in the market with a barbell distribution— Burrow is PFF’s 4th ranked Deep QB, facing a BAL team allowing the highest rate of explosive plays. I should also note: in the CIN offense, Higgins and Chase are the clear 1A & 1B in this offense as they combine for nearly half the target share, and each have downfield roles, making them the preferred targets. Should play volume accumulate—which was a legitimate question—the upside and tails possibility in this spot was enormous.
So much so, that I decided it was not enough to only play DFS, but I should sprinkle in a SGP parlay so I could hit on the tails of the CIN thesis even if the rest of my DFS lineup didn’t pan out. Luckily for me, this turned out to be a shrewd move, as James Robinson tore his Achilles on the 1st drive.
Rest of DFS lineup was extremely chalky(who cares if you have non chalky pieces!) and for good reason:
Kupp: What more needs to be said? Huge target share+red zone role, putting up a historic statistical season. Facing MIN? 10/10
Brown: Priced at 4.9K for a guy who hasn’t played in 2 months, not the clear # 1 in a Tom Brady offense.
Robinson: 5.9K for a workhorse back, the lone bright spot for JAX this year, against the absolute worst run defense in the NFL? Not going to overthink it.
Jackson: Stepping into the Ekeler role at min price? Wasn’t going to overthink it and neither was the field.
Kmet: Has been the clear #2 target for CHI but somehow has yet to find the end zone this year which is suppressing his price. Had most secure role of any TE if not paying up for Andrews and was only 3.3K.
Recap:
Up to 48/928 in the prediction game, which is always good for the bragging rights and for learning about your betting skills(stay tuned for next week’s breakdown—thanks @sportfoliokings!)
Another very good betting day: up to 28U on the year now
DFS: Couldn’t escape injuries once again, but a very solid day 5x ing(and 11x in the SGP)
That’s all!
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