Trying to stick to a more consistent schedule here of Friday afternoon newsletters with some of the longer form ideas. I didn’t have much time to edit, so apologies for typos (at least you know I don’t write w/ chat GPT). We have a full tails write-up, some matchup angles, and SGPs + Podcast with some more thoughts on bonus SGP. Of course, tails angles to come on Sat night/Sunday.
Leveraging Tails:
Bet: DAL -6.5 +210 on MGM
Let us begin as usual by looking at the team fundamentals to set the stage for our analysis. Here we have a chart from PFF’s Timo Riske, but choose your own measure to capture team effectiveness through 2 weeks and it will likely reveal a similar story.
Here we see a Cowboys offense that has been one of the best in the NFL, while the Bears have been among the worst in the NFL. On defense both units have been almost equally dreadful. Of course, this is two games and we shouldn’t anchor too heavily on what we’ve seen thus far. But it does present some newer more relevant data we can begin to contextualize. The goal, then, is to balance preseason priors with what we’ve seen on the field and to try and parse through how sticky and in what areas the teams play has been so far.
Across the board the passing outcomes for Prescott and the Cowboys have been terrific– and it does not seem like purely a function of easy opponents (The Giants outcomes are so bad in part because they got lit up by the Cowboys). But so far, Prescott is up to 0.18 EPA/Play for the season (-0.04 last year), his raw PFF grade is up from 0.2 to 0.13 (3rd in NFL), accuracy rate from 37.7% to 55%, system play rate from 63% to 68% and his in system EPA is up to 0.34 EPA per Play relative to 0.0 EPA per play last season. No matter how you slice it the outcomes are far far better this year than last. The question is whether or not its sticky?
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