Week 18 SAT Games
We will dive into some data and thoughts on the Saturday games here. Unclear how the rest of the gameplan will follow given the funkiness of Week 18 and lack of available lines. But as we get more information and more betable lines we will perhaps with some tails. TBD Sat night/Sunday AM. Apologies for any typos, want to get this out before going offline tonight.
CAR-TB:
As we’ve been writing about for weeks this is TB defense that is extremely vulnerable to the pass, one of the biggest pass funnels in the NFL while being bottom 5 in YPD, not far behind in EPA/Pass and many other pass defense metrics. And even the run defense has been less dominant over the second half of the season below average in Success Rate and Rush EPA over the second half. The result has been the Bucs facing more passing adjusting for situation than any other team in the NFL.
Now I think the main question for this game is how each team chooses to attack.
The Panthers have been a low play volume team with only one game above 10% Pass Above Expected. Should they come out throwing the Bryce Young alts and Panthers builds are intriguing given the matchup. And the Bucs top 10 single coverage, top 5 blitz rate plays nicely into Jalen Coker who leads the team in YPRR against single coverage. But more likely is the same gamplean for the Panthers of trying to play very slow, while having decent success running the ball.
On the flipside, the Bucs have been at the extremes of pass rate over the past few weeks switching off weeks of 10%+ pass over expected. And while the Panthers pass defense has been middle of the pack EPA wise, that has been a large function of a team forcing a huge turnover rate (nearly 20% of opponent drives are ending in turnovers).
