Week 6 Reflections: Not Losing Sight of the Long Term
If this is your first time, welcome! I'd recommend reading the first piece of this series to get a sense of what I'm trying to do in this weekly article.
General Thoughts:
As I’ve begun to hone the process of writing this weekly piece, I’ve begun to realize that there is often a theme that defines my betting week and process. Last week was about being adaptable to weird weeks, Week 4 about trying to converge macroviews of the slate and football profit. This week is about not losing sight of the long term vision.
For this week, my strategy was to have very narrow exposure across the board, mostly betting on the Chiefs. I was not letting any short term noise alter my long term view of the Chiefs as the most stable bet in the NFL. (I laid out this argument in full here earlier in the week). I was going to go right back to the well betting, especially as markets lowered priors on the Chiefs following the SNF loss.
I don’t think this process focusing on the long term view applies only to the Chiefs this week. Rather I find it essential to my process--and perhaps you find this true as well--to continually remind myself not to lose sight of long term vision simply because of short term results. This is not to say, hold dearly to a dying narrative because you had conviction in it. Of course not. We all need to adapt to new information as it comes in. We just need to make sure we’re learning something truly new and that something really has changed, and is not just a product of variance or some outlier outcomes. Trends are built over the long haul and in a game of probabilities, chance and randomness, we are best off following long run-trends that are more stable than betting on what happened recently on "any given Sunday." Long rant, sorry about that. Let’s dive into some trends before we revisit the heavy Chiefs exposure.
Some Trends:
MIA and JAX:
I was actually quite really excited to watch this game and it did not disappoint. I leaned Jags, moving them to 61% in the prediction game, but this conviction was not enough to bet them.
Key number: JAX PROE: -2.79.
This is the 8th lowest pass rate in the NFL and is trending downwards(-3.1 in last 3 weeks). And over those last 3 games, Lawrence has posted 2 PFF Grades of 79, and a rough 45 @ Tenn. But his YPA(Yards per attempt) marks of 8.5, 8.3, 7.8 are massive improvements from the 6.5, 3.6, 6.4 of his first 3 weeks. Maybe it is time to fully unleash Trevor as he gets accustomed to the NFL.
On the MIA side, TUA was far more aggressive than Brissett .With how bad MIA has been on the backend, and if these MIA weapons ever get healthy, we could see some sneaky shootouts develop later this season. Good news for the overs and DFS magic.
BAL:
I think the takeaway from this game is that the Ravens can win in multiple ways. We spoke last week about how the Ravens have become a far more aggressive offense, running less and throwing deeper than ever before. But Lamar struggled in this spot with a season worst 69 PFF grade, and 6.2 YPA. It didn’t matter. The ground game got moving and they won a classic Ravens style game. In previous years it seemed that Ravens could hold a lead better than anyone, but struggled to mount comebacks. This year it seems like they’ve got multiple ways of winning on offense. Watch out.
CIN:
I think I can finally victory lap here. All offseason I argued the “Joe Burrow can’t throw deep” narrative was nonsense. It was more about AJ Green than it was Joe Burrow. I even made an ugly graph this summer(I was new to ggplot, be nice!)
It's week 6 and every single week, Burrow and Chase connect on a deep shot. Burrow is 4th in the NFL with 19.9 YPA on Deep(20+) passes, and 8th in PFF deep grade. To nobody’s surprise, Chase is #1 in PFF’s WR deep grade at 99.9. WR play matters most for explosive plays, and Chase is exemplar #1. This offense is actually dynamic when they let Burrow throw(don’t look now but they’re 13th in PROE over the last 3 weeks). And I'm quite happy with this development since I like money and the Bengals were my heaviest bet in the futures market.
ARI & CLE:
I saw this stat on @ClevTA account: “Browns D is #1 in the NFL in success rate allowed, #2 in EPA per play allowed on 1st and 2nd downs. #29 in success rate, #31 in EPA on 3rd and 4th downs. Similar splits last yr too.”
I’m gonna disagree on the drastic splits being signal year-to-year. I think there will be some regression from the Browns and those late down numbers will converge with the early down numbers by season's end. Don’t attack them in DFS even if those matchups come up as “green.”
I don’t know what to say about the Cards at this point. I wouldn’t be shocked if they won the NFC, I wouldn’t be shocked if they barely sneak into the playoffs. I have no handicap on them.
Betting:
Cowboys -6.5 @ NE(2U +160)
Rather than go into a whole in depth breakdown (once again) of why I love DAL, I think @SharpeClarke hit on why this bet was so intriguing to me. He wrote: “DAL/NE is a fascinating matchup. Don’t know the right side but I love what it says about a person’s process. Trends, history, intangibles, “inevitable” regression, coaching, what the line says about who is betting what = NE. On-field play = DAL by a mile.”
Yes, Belichick has been a wizard of a defensive coach throughout the years, full stop. But this bears out in data. His defense always graded well and slowed offensive production. But that hasn’t been the case this year. They ranked 23rd in PFF defensive grade and 13th in YPA allowed despite facing a remarkably weak schedule of offenses (MIA,NYJ, NO, HOU, TB in the rain). Belichick’s influence bears out in the data, and the Patriots don’t get a boost post facto just because they have a good coach. That’s nonsense, his influence is built in. But that narrative stuck and was driving the price closer to the Pats.
The Cowboys are so much better on offense than the Pats, it is night and day.
EPA/Play: Dal: 1.57, NE: -0.06
Success Rate: DAL 54.4%, NE: 45%
Yds/Play DAL: 6.2, NE: 4.9
I bet the alternative line here thinking this game was so poorly priced. Not to mention, NE rarely goes for 2, and DAL is one the more aggressive teams going for 2 and also remains aggressive late in games, not settling for FG’s but trying to rack up TD's. On the margins these added up, I thought, to put me on the right side of 7 and the alt line.
Reflection: This one is such a mixed bag. I really thought betting the alt line here was good process. DAL is better by a mile and dominated NE (though the score obviously tells a different story.) I think the score, though, was a product of some fluky plays that DAL was mostly on the wrong side of: DAL failed 4th down, 2 endzone turnovers etc. Yes I know the Diggs pick went DAL way, but this game should have been loooong over before that.
I am not happy about landing on 6.5. Yes, key numbers usually go through 3 and 7’s but in the modern NFL with OT and missed XP’s and 2pt more common, I think 6 might just be a key number as well. It is not worth the little bit of extra juice to move the line from 5.5-6.5. Either stick with the 5.5 or go out and get a 9.5 or 13.5 line. I got caught in the middle and that was a mistake.
3 Team Teaser: KC+TB+BUF -0.5
I’m not sure there’s much to gain recapping and reflecting here as I’ve made this so so often and wasn’t going to overthinking it here. These are my big 3 and I will tease them basically whenever I can. Didn’t work out (I think for the first time this year), but I like these teams' chances of winning as TD favorites until we learn something new about the teams.
KC-6.5(2U)
I decided to write a whole article this week on why the Chiefs are my #1 team. -6.5 was not enough against a bad WFT team. Given my exposure to the Chiefs upside in DFS. I did not feel the need to go heavy on the alt line, and was going to be happy to cash here in case the defense really stunk again and the Chiefs found themselves in another 1 score game.
DFS Breakdown:
Lineup Review:
Rule #1 of my football profit process: when the market--ownership for DFS purposes-- is down on the Chiefs I will fully stack them in DFS. The Chiefs will score points each and every week and they have a very narrow distribution of touches. And those touches are of extremely high value coming from the game's best QB to the best TE and an elite WR. If we’re projecting 4-5 TD’s, playing the Mahomes+RB+Kelce+Hill stack is a near guarantee to soak up all the touchdowns and double dip on at least a few of those scores. This is a huge floor and ceiling for a stack. As for the spot, while I think the WFT has struggled on defense in some unsustainable areas-- such as allowing 57% conversion rate on 3rd downs(it was 37% last year)-- this was not the spot to bet on the WFT rebound.
Seals Jones was set to be 2nd or 3rd on the team in targets in a game in a heavy pass script. At 3k he was probably the best value on the slate and a solid bring back.
Hunt was the very obvious chalk on this slate. He saw the lion's share of touches when Chubb was out last year. I expected the Browns to control the game throughout and to press their advantage against the weak Cardinals Run D. Not to mention, he always provides a solid receiving floor. Priced for his timeshare, I was not going to overthink this one.
Following the news that Slayton was out, I thought Shepherd would see a huge target share in a game the NYG would have to throw. We don’t often see 5K receivers with the potential for 10+targets, and I was going to play him in this spot and not think much else about it.
I think Mooney was my thinnest play of this year in DFS and I knew it coming into the game. This was a game with a low projected score, low play volume, and the Bears have barely thrown the ball. But there was still an angle where the Bears would have to finally unleash Fields--especially if the Packers jumped out to a lead--and Mooney was seeing a 26% target share with a downfield role and ADOT of 10.2. If Fields was forced to throw, Mooney would see high value targets against a bad D. It was still a thin play in my view, since there were too many things that needed to go right for Mooney to see good opportunity.
Reflection post-facto: I got bailed out by a late TD, but I did not love the play. But sneak peek: I love love this spot for Mooney against TB next week for all the reasons laid out above. Only this time vs TB the Bears will have to throw. Maybe this is the spot for the Fields+Mooney+Arob stack?
Recap: Solid week turning $1->1.8 in DFS.
Overall I'm happy that I stuck with the Chiefs even when everyone else seemed to downgrade them. It is hard to stick with your guns hearing others much smarter than you telling you otherwise. But I am stubborn with the Chiefs. Nothing too fancy this week, as I was mostly in on the Chiefs and that led to a very profitable week. Happy with the DAL process, annoyed at landing on 6.5 but we will move on, we're in this for the long haul.
That is all for this week! I would really love any and all feedback-- suggestions, criticism, strategy talk, anything. My DM’s @throwthedamball are always open. Thanks for reading and I'll see you back in this space next week.