Week 5 Reflections: Being Adaptable
If this is your first time reflecting, welcome!
I’d recommend starting with the first reflection piece to give you a sense of the goals of the weekly reflection article.
General Notes & Look Ahead:
General notes:
For the first time this year, I thought I didn’t have such a great grasp of the slate and didn’t see much value in the betting markets. In the prediction game, this meant that I mostly stayed close to the market. And the spots not in line with the market were the games I bet on. But this also led to a different approach on how I planned to attack the slate and how I wished to allocate my bankroll. Being adaptable is critical to have success profiting off the different football markets.
When I don’t have a good grasp of most games on the slate, I like to chase spots with upside. Why? because if I don't think I can go above .500 for steady profit, I want to take a shot the at the tails which often requires a different skill of identifying upside. This meant more money allocated to DFS and prop bets relying on hunting for price-based upside. And for betting, I took some shots on alt lines and some underdog ML’s all with a smaller unit size.
Reflection: I was happy with my process. I was right to observe that I wasn’t handicapping the slate well and I was able to pivot and make a profit through prop bets(and what could’ve been a huge DFS week if not for the Barkley and Jones injuries) *insert Raymond Holt PAAAAAAAAAAIIIIN GIF.
Of all the weeks this year, I’m not sure I can say I learned so much new about these teams… I guess this is the nature of week 5 games…but a few quick hitters:
The Cards did not outclass the Niners which leaves me in limbo about them. Crazy deep success and awesome late down defense success is bound to regress. But they keep winning kind of handily. (Oh. Also Kyle Shanahan is not a good coach and the Niners aren’t a good team).
The DAL offense is scary good right now, and the defense continues to force turnovers. The former will stick and the latter I doubt, but nonetheless these Cowboys are going to be in any conversation about the NFC’s best team.
Speaking of turnover variance, tbt to when people thought the Dolphins were good on D last year because they forced turnovers. Man did Brady have his way with them on Sunday.
The Bills are really good, full stop. But I’m not yet ready to sell the Chiefs. I still think they’re the best team to buy in the NFL. That is not to say they are the best team right now, but rather that I am buying their future success more than any team. My takeaway:this Bills Chiefs game--and the Chiefs 3 losses so far-- should serve as a reminder that it’s really really hard to win 12/13+ games in today’s NFL. The message is not, I don’t think, that Chiefs have been dethroned. I bet come playoff time the Chiefs will not be underdogs.
Trends and Look ahead:
After such a painful loss in DFS this week, I feel as though I deserve a victory lap for my Brandon Staley #hottubhottakes from early this season. In week 3 reviewing why I bet the Chargers ML against the Chiefs, I wrote that: "I think the Chargers will never again be TD underdogs in the Herbert/Staley era, and I want to be early on the Chargers emergence." In all seriousness, this LAC team is for real and is a legitimate contender for the Super Bowl
Hebert is 3rd in PFF grade, 5th in EPA/play and is going to be top 10 at least in every QB metric.
Staley’s defense is always good, and shoutout to @tejfbanalytics for his chart showing how much value the Chargers have gained from 4th downs this year.
Somehow though, between the power rankings from PFF, 538, Football Outsiders, and ESPN’s FPI, LAC comes in the top 10 only in 538’s model(#6). I don’t really understand. I already have every chargers future available so I won’t be betting those but vegas price in the Chargers as a team outside the top 10 you better believe I’ll be betting them. I have a feeling this will be next week @ BAL. (🤷♂️)
CIN:
After starting the season in weeks 1-3 by running the ball the most in the league in neutral situations, the Bengals the last 2 weeks have begun to throw more often--7th in the NFL in weeks 4 and 5. The high run rates led me to believe the Bengals would not sustain their "success." Perhaps the run rates were a way to ease Burrow back in, I'm not sure. But considering how well Burrow has played, should this trend of throwing more often continue, I think CIN will be a good spot to bet in a few weeks time.
CAR:
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.
BAL:
This is not the same BAL team we’ve become accustomed to. I’m not sure if its a #runningbackstomatter or that Lamar has taken the next step as a passer. But either way, this team is throwing more and launching the ball deep. Jackson leads the league in ADOT by nearly a full yard. The team is 15th in Early Down passing frequency and is trending to passing more. This is a far cry from the bottom 3 pass rates we’re accustomed to seeing from the Ravens. And the results?
Well, they’ve been by far the most explosive offense in the league this year leading the league in explosive plays by a decent margin (luckily I sprinkled a bit on Lamar Jackson 25:1 MVP heading into this week). I will be looking to see if the Props market has adjusted to this new Ravens offense and will be strongly considering them in DFS and on the team totals market.
Betting:
LAR -2@ SEA
Classic case of a buy-low situation coming off a loss. After LAR beat TB in week 4, it seemed that LAR was being crowned as the top team in the NFC, or at least second fiddle to TB. But after a loss in AZ, their stock fell in most power rankings in football media. Not to mention, bettors collectively lost the 3rd most money on LAR in week 4, per @deepvaluebettor and his graph below.
Add it all up and we have recency bias driving down the price at basically a pick’em(points between 0-3 don't matter too much) even though LAR is the better team. I don’t feel the need to take a deep dive into that, and quite honestly, I made this bet because I thought the price was reflecting too much recency bias.
GB:-6.5 @ CIN
If CIN starts the season 1-3 what's the game line? 6.5-7.5? I think so. Well, CIN barely escaped with wins at home against MIN and JAX and I want to put more stock in the performance of those games, rather than the variance that dictated by the W-L result. In other words, I buy how well a team plays(which often--but not always-- aligns with W/L) not their strict W/L record. And as noted in the trends section, CIN was running the ball far too much and I thought this would continue against a GB team that struggled in run defense. While I thought this game would be more interesting if CIN attacked downfield, I thought Taylor would insist on running the ball. (spoiler: I was wrong on this). This Bengals team was priced for potential and the W/L record, not by the way they had been playing and attacking through 4 weeks.
And on the GB side, last week I wrote: “I’ve been betting GB since their week 1 loss and am still bullish on them until the markets adjust. Rodgers is still amazing, Lefleur calls an excellent offense, enough said. “ Well, here we were once again. What has changed on offense for the Packers from last year? I don’t think very much. It’s not as if Rodgers is slowing down. And for the alt spread, in all 13 of GB’s regular season wins last year, they won by 7 or more points. This was a spot to buy in the betting markets.
Underdog ML’s: SF@ARI ML/ARI -13.5/& NYJ vs ATL ML & /CHI@ LV ML
I bet on all 3 of these games as a block. In a week of uncertainty, I was going to take some shots on underdog teams that had upside and better odds at hitting that upside than the market's pricing. And I really only needed to go 1 for 3 to make my money back, and if a second one hit I was in for a very solid profit.
Upside angles: SF always has the ability to run all over a team, especially when Kittle is healthy(this bet was placed before hearing the news Kittle would be out). And with Trey Lance at QB, this added an entire new dimension to the run game that I’m not sure AZ ,PFF’s 31st ranked run defense, was prepared to stop. That is all to say, I thought there was a legitimate angle to this game where SF jumped out to an early lead and ran the ball at will to sustain drives against a bad run defense. And as a hedge, I sprinkled I bit of AZ -13.5 with the logic going that AZ really could be elite and would outclass SF in this matchup and win by 2 or more scores.
This was also a spot for me to bet on and avoid playing in DFS because I saw far too many ranges of outcomes and a serious possibility of a low scoring, low play volume running attack from SF.
NYJ: We finally saw Zach Wilson have success in a tasty matchup vs TEN. Well this was another great spot for Wilson. We have documented on this blog that Wilson has actually been excellent at throwing deep, and I thought this was another spot for Wilson and the deep passing game to take over. And the cherry on top: the Jets defense has been and should continue to play well, and ATL was down their top 2 WR’s. (but hey, good for Kyle Pitts getting going in this spot)
CHI: Justin Fields finally looked like an NFL QB throwing for 12 YPA against DET. And, more importantly, he took only one sack and seemed to be better at escaping and diagnosing pressure. Against a Raiders defense whose bad coverage has been hidden by a surprisingly dominant pass rush, if Fields was able to neutralize the pass-rush--as I thought he would--he had a chance to really have his way with this Raiders defense.
This was not a spot to get cute in DFS. This Bears team has still not really allowed Fields to throw often, and like the SF spot, I thought this game was headed for a low play volume, run dominant affair.
DFS:
As I didn’t have such a good grasp on the spreads and gameflow, I wanted to spend most of my weekly bankroll on DFS+props, embracing uncertainty and hunting for upside. If you’ve been following the blog, you know that I love to look for condensed offenses in DFS. If not a condensed offense, I prefer to attack teams who should have explosive success or games where play volume should accumulate.
For this week, I wanted to attack 2 game environments that were bound to have plenty of explosive success and points scored. I was going to be on both offenses from the TEN/JAX game, and on the Giants offense playing an overrated DAL defense that has been burned via explosive plays early this year. As you can see all 3 defenses are 1) attacked via the pass more often than not, 2) attacked downfield, and 3) have given up success downfield(and allowing big runs too).
And I was able to combine these 2 stacks with 3-4 guys in Mike Gesicki, Davante Adams, Alexander Mattison and Damien WIlliams with big expected roles at cheap price points. Because these guys really needed to beat their prices I thought they presented the most certainty of anything football for the week.
Adams was priced for not having a big game yet, and for only scoring 1 TD. With his massive target share and big redzone role his eruption was a matter of time. With Cook ruled out Mattison was….well 3k underpriced in my view. Is there really a difference between Cook and Mattison? I don’t think so. Williams I thought would take on the lion's share of RB opportunities in a sneaky good spot against the Raiders. 3 down backs in good matchups at 5.6K are always intriguing. And for Gesicki, the team was down Parker and Fuller in a spot we knew they’d have to throw almost exclusively. 10+ targets did not seem like a stretch for a guy with a downfield and red zone role. At 4.2K? Sign me up!
I thought this gave my lineups a solid floor and immense upside if the stacks hit. So assuming big price-considered games from my most certain plays, with these lineups, I was narrowing most of my weekly money to basically 3 bets of each of those teams having explosive success. If 1 or 2 hit, really hit, I thought I was in for a massive massive payday.
Let’s dive into the lineups:
Giants/DAL Lineup:
With the entire Giants WR room down the team was going to be left throwing to Golladay, Toney, and Barkley. Toney had a huge role in NO the week prior and at 4K with his skillset I loved that price and his chances to break a big play. Barkley and Jones each had at least a decent rushing floor and obvious TD upside. I thought I was capturing most of the TD’s and betting on Toney to easily surpass his price-considered upside. And sure I could have gone with Golladay in this spot, but the lineup tells the story that the Giants would keep up scoring, and this would at least force the Cowboys to throw more. WIth Cooper clearly hobbling and playing through injury last week, Lamb was going to be the target to buy in this offense. I loved him to bounce back and have a big day.
TEN @ JAX:
We went through this game environment already, and we know the Titans offense flows through these 3 guys. Last year these 3 combined for 80+ points 5 times, and that was with Corey Davis. For the Jags, with Chark down, Laviska stepped into a more expansive route tree with a downfield role. I expected Lawrence to have to play catchup and have success throwing to these 2 guys. Unfortunately for me, the Jags did not have a condensed share and speical teamer Jamal Agnew led the team in targets. To quote the great Ian Haaritz: "sheesh."
DFS Reflection: The most important risk parameter is making a lot of money when you’re right and losing very little when you’re wrong. That’s the whole game. With the floor of these mispriced guys, and the upside of the stacks, I really thought I was embodying my own risk calculation. If not for the Giants injuries this was likely going to be my most profitable weekend. It's too bad those Giants got hurt. But the process was certainly there, I think, so I can take a small moral victory there.
DFS results: $1->0
Betting+ prop results: 2.5U.
That's all for this week! Thanks for reading and I look forward to being back in this space next week!
As always you can find my football profit ideas on the TL: @throwthedamball