Week 9 Reflections: Randomness and Contenders

Welcome to Throw The Dam(n) Ball!

If this is your first time reflecting with us, I'd recommend first reading the inaugural piece of this series to get a sense of what I'm trying to do in this space.  

This week we cover: Macro Thought on Randomness, Cases For & Against AFC Contenders, Bets, and DFS breakdown. Skip to those parts per your hearts desire!

Macro Thoughts:

1. We speak about this all the time, but it is worth repeating: football is a random and variant game. But that should not mean we throw our hands up and say everything is random we can have no handicap. Rather, our job is to recognize patterns of randomness—to best align ourselves on the right side of those patterns of randomness and variance. Allow me to explain with these examples: 

   • The good guys @SportfolioKings(@contextcapper & @deepvaluebettor) for weeks have advanced that underdogs are winning at an unprecedented rate. And indeed, underdogs have won the past few weeks and done so in bunches. This is a pattern to randomness, something not intuitive to grasp.

   • Kevin Cole explored on his podcast a few weeks back this exact phenomenon. If you asked a class of 20 students to manually write a random pattern of heads/tails and had a computer generate a random pattern of heads/tails, the professor is always able to tell which one is random and which is human-generated randomness. Why? Real randomness often has unintuitive patterns such as 7 straight tails and 4 straight heads, followed by switching off between heads and tails for 20 straight draws. 

   • The point is: randomness happens in patterns and, though not always intuitive, it is decipherable. The reason why we reflect is to filter through the randomness and our instincts to find the patterns to the randomness that is football. This will allow us to be successful in the long run. In this case, it meant that in @Lee Sharpe’s prediction game, I did not continue betting heavy favorites even though that was the winning strategy through the 1st 7 weeks. This was all part of the pattern to randomness-- the coin landed on heads 7 straight times. But we have enough data—and thanks to @SportfolioKings for directing us to that data— to recognize patterns. I picked my spots where I thought the pattern to randomness would manifest and the coin would flip to tails. And hey! I jumped up to 163/884 in the contest after this good week. Did that make any sense? I’m not sure, sorry. Let’s move on to some NFL thoughts. 

The NFL is wide-open. Look at how clustered these teams are towards the mean!

AFC Contenders:

At right around the halfway point, let’s do some quick hitters of AFC contenders and some angles for and against each team. (The order of the list is random and does not correspond to my rankings of the teams)

1. BAL

• Angle for: Unlike in past years, the Ravens can win in any game script, not relying on jumping out to a lead in order to win. Arjun Menon did the work for me--posting this fantastic graph of Lamar’s success coming from behind. 

• Angle against: The defense is getting crushed by big plays-- allowing 3rd most explosive attempts, and highest explosive play rate in the NFL. 

2. KC: 

   • Angle for: 2018-2021 Week 6. We’ve seen the high-end play this team is capable of putting together, and all the core pieces remain in place. 

   • Angles against: The defense is regressing towards the mean as predicted, but the offense has been legitimately bad the past few weeks. And as seen above, they have lacked the typical explosive success of Chiefs teams. Since week 5, this team is 20th in the NFL with a -.03 Drive EPA. Small sample for sure, but a worrying sign considering Mahomes basically never had a bad game before this season, and has now had 4 straight bad ones. 

3. TEN:

   • Angle for: I’m honestly having a hard time making a case here-- the defense has been excellent the past few weeks, but do we expect that to continue? I feel the need to include them since they’re 7-2 and currently first in the AFC. 

   • Angle against: This team looks kind of average by EPA standards, and has been outgained by their opponents by 5.6 to their 5.3 yds/play. This team seems like a scam to me and they lost their most valuable weapon: Derrick Henry—aka the guy who defensive coordinators respect enough to load the box and leave the TEN passing game wide open. 

4. BUF:

   • Angle for:  Defense is elite--1st in drive EPA, EXP Play Rate allowed.  And, like the Chiefs, we know the offense has an elite ceiling.  

   • Angle against: Production hasn’t matched potential. Team is 16th in Drive EPA, Josh Allen is PFF’s 15th ranked QB and most statistics point to this offense as just being league average. 

5. LAC: 

   • Angles for: Justin Hebrert is capable of the high-end play needed to win in today’s NFL-- 5th in PFF grade, and 9th in EPA/play. And of course, I trust Brandon Staley more than any other coach to capitalize on 4th downs and game management giving them a decent boost in win probability each week. 

   • Angles against: Lombardi refuses to allow Herbert to throw deep and has remained extremely conservative on offense. Herbert is 28/35 in Deep Attempts %, despite being 4th in the NFL in PFF’s deep grade. The defense is allowing a league-worst 5.0 Yards per carry. While run defense is one the least important facets in my view, being this bad in Run D means that should opponents jump out to early leads, they can easily extend vs LAC. 

6. NE: 

   • Angle For: Yes, I’m including them in this list. They are Top 10 in: Early Down Success Rate(EDSR), Explosive plays, PFF grade. 2nd most EPA lost from turnovers--mostly from (variant) fumbles early in season. Defense is 4th in Drive EPA, 4th in EDSR allowed. 

   • Angles Against: Mac Jones is still a rookie and has yet to show elite ceiling and consistency. They lack high-end talent and playmakers at WR. Belichick is leaving too many points on the field with 4th down decision-making. 

:

Moving away from contenders…some NFC team notes:

3. LAR:

   • I was asked before this week: “Is there a team (or teams) you expect to consistently win each week?” My initial thought was the Rams and Bucs(though by the numbers AZ should be included). But I think we learned this week that the Rams are not immune to inconsistent performances. Stafford takes too many sacks, really killing drives and stalling this offense. The recipe for slowing this offense down is out. 

4. PHI: 

   • Since openly speaking about running the ball more often a month ago, PHI over the past 4 weeks is the highest run team in the NFL—13% above expectation. The 2nd run heaviest team is at 7%. The days of Jalen Hurts as a fantasy cheat code may be coming to a close should this continue. 

Bets:

Brief writer’s note/reminder: My goal in this space is to write out exactly my process and why I chose to bet in the markets I did. This will be short and far less in-depth than previous weeks but that only reflects the nature and full process of the bet. 

1. ATL -2.5+250

   • This bet was really as simple as: Trevor Siemian is not a starting caliber QB. As a starter from 2017-2018 He finished with PFF grades in the 50’s and a -.03 EPA per play(42nd in NFL). The opening line, before the Winston injury, was 5.5 Pts, and it only moved in the Saints favor, closing at -7. The market, then, did not seem to account for who was playing QB for NO. But I did. Trevor Siemian should never be a TD favorite in the NFL, and while the bet felt disgusting to place, I was not going to let what I viewed as a clear market mis-price slip away. 

   • So why the -2.5 and not the ML? I got greedy. Points between 0-3 don’t really matter since games are not often decided by those numbers, but the game landed on a 2 here. Yikes for me. I guess in low scoring environments points matter more, and was it really worth pushing the line a few extra bucks when they were already such clear underdogs? Not sure to be honest. 

2. LAC/NE ML (+188) 

   1. LAC: 

      • I didn’t think it was as much of a smash as NE, but I saw myself buying LAC at the bottom of the market coming off 2 letdown losses back-to-back with the market had this as basically a pk.

      • You might be asking: You’ve been weighing heavily on EPA and aren’t these teams basically in the same tier of EPA?

      • It’s a fair question. But I think for LAC, EPA might not tell the full story. This team is so aggressive on late downs, and those plays are so high variance in terms of expected points. This means the LAC EPA is going to be constantly moving depending on their late down success which is often fairly variant. For instance, when LAC started the season hot in weeks 1-5, going 9/10 on 4th down they were 5th in EPA. They have been 24th in EPA since then going 2-7 on 4th downs. All of this is to say, I wouldn't put too much stock in LAC's offensive EPA at one point in time since that numbers will be a small sample highly determined by variant and high stakes plays. 

      • So what was this bet about? Chargers have the QB advantage(per EPA/PFF grade), coaching advantage, and defensive advantage. I am bullish on LAC, of course, and if this isn’t the spot they come through, then when will they come through? Bottom line: I was going to buy low on a team I’m bullish on in the short & long term.   

   2. NE: 

      • If you’ve been following these reflection pieces, this was another spot where our trends culminated perfectly. For weeks, we’ve been beating NE’s drum and suggesting their play will only improve. We’ve also highlighted how CAR has been absolutely atrocious on Offense since CMC went down, and he would play only limited snaps this week. Who says past week’s reflections don’t lead to future profit? 

      • I digress: I think the 3 point spread might be accounting too much for season-long averages and not enough for where the teams are now and where, as we’ve been highlighting recently, the teams are trending. 

   AZ -2.5 +180

   1. Sometimes it is better to be lucky than good. I placed this bet right after AZ moved to +3.5 with the news still uncertain whether Murray and Hopkins would play. There were 2 angles I was playing here. 

      1. Kyler plays and we get AZ seriously underpriced. Without priors, they are a clear #1 in terms of their play this year-- just look at the gap in Drive EPA between them and every other team.  

      2. Even without Kyler, I wasn’t so sure how SF was going to score points. AZ and BUF have been in their own tier defensively dominating opposing offenses. Both Deebo Samuel and George Kittle would be limited and Brandon Aiyuk has been largely ignored in this offense. I wasn’t sure who was going to be the engine of SF’s offense against the elite AZ defense. This made it more like a 50-50 slugfest type of game, not a heavy lean towards SF. 

      3. Combine these 2 angles and I liked the +180 odds.  

DFS Breakdown:

Let’s start with the game environment I was stacking:

MIN and BAL both filter explosive targets from opposing offenses— top 5 in explosive attempts against (#2 and #5). As we’ve been noting all year, BAL has struggled on the back end, and is playing a different style offense than years past, having Jackson throw often and downfield(leads the NFL with his 10.9 Average Depth of Target). This culminated in a spot where both teams, I thought, would be more efficient with the added boost of more explosive plays than usual. Points and yards would pile up. 

• If points would pile up on the Ravens side, they would flow through Lamar Jackson. Not much needs to be said about his upside as a rusher and this spot presented an opportunity to post a better-than-usual passing game against a team filtering targets deep. For 2 reasons, DFS was the perfect spot to capture the upside of the Ravens offense. 1) we don’t need to pay extra for Lamar’s passing and rushing yards and the DK bonus allows us to capture upside no other market can offer. Second, BAL is pretty quietly a concentrated offense which is gold for DFS….

• With Watkins out, targets would go mostly to Browns, Andrew and Bateman. Brown has been the clear #1 in terms of target share and efficiency. Bateman was only 4K and he would run 2nd most routes and presented similar upside to Brown with his downfield role. Jefferson was the perfect bring back given that he was most likely on MIN to connect on a deep shot, and even if he did not hit deep, Jefferson is an elite WR against a team struggling in coverage. That’s never a bad bet to make. 

• DAL vs DEN: I thought the Cowboys would jump out to an early lead and ride Zeke to a comfortable win. I liked his chances more than any other RB to reach the bonus and he had obvious touchdown upside attached to one of the NFL’s best offenses. Big Al was a salary saver and has earned a high route to target ratio. In a spot I thought DEN would have to pass more than season average, he would soak up targets. Jeudy was a bet on talent play. I don’t often bet on talent>role but I think Jeudy is going to finish the season priced closer to 7k and I want to be early on his breakout. Jeudy is electric with the ball in his hands, and is one of the game's premier route runners. In a spot DEN would have to pass--or so I thought-- this was the time to bet on Jeudy. 

• The argument for Ekler is basically the same each week: huge receiving and touchdown role which gives him one of the higher floors in the NFL. PHI has struggled against the run and with this game is projected to be close, he had increased chances for hitting a ceiling game.

Results:

• My BAL/ MIN thesis was pretty much right, and that means another week doubling our money. Ok Ok we had some help from Denzel Ward taking it to the houseeeeee.

• An almost perfect week betting—though ATL did “falcons”—yes this is a verb— blowing a huge lead late in the game. We’re up 25 units on the year: wow.

That’s all for this week!

Thanks for reading my adventurous thoughts and I look forward to being back in this space next week! We’re so blessed to be able to watch and talk about football, aren’t we?

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