Week 9 Stats & Angles

Betting Angles + Chart Of The Week

Oct 30, 2024

Football is a matchup and indisoynrcatic game where teams change their behavior over the course of a season, players improve,and random results and injuries can skew outcomes that don’t necessarily reflect underlying value.

I personally find that so much of my success betting at this point in the season relies on sifting through the data to understand the sample sizes that are the most relevant/predictive going forward. Simply taking averages or medians can get you some of the way to good pricing, but I think it misses the mark and certainly so on the tails.

By taking an intensive look at our data and understanding the context in which it lives we can (hopefully) stay a bit ahead of the market. This column, then —which is an experiment for now, feedback appreciated— will look at some of the stats and angles I’m monitoring as I parse through the data and try to stay ahead of the market. I won’t capture everything and the structure and style is all in flux, but a start nonetheless. Let’s dive in.

Angles to Monitor:

HOU O Floundering?

Now most things here come with the caveat of being in a small sample, but the Texans have changed their offensive areas of attack over the last few weeks. Whereas the team was throwing the Middle of the Field on nearly 45% of throws the first 6 weeks, that number has been 28.1 and 28.5% over the last two weeks. This has led to about a 6% increase in tight window throws which have have a 10x higher rate of INT and far lower offensive efficiency.

But despite facing a bottom 5 Colts pass rush (in virtually every pass rush category such as pressure, quick pressure, pressure disruption) and a Packers pass-rush that is middle of the pack in those same ones, the Texans pressure rates allowed and disruption rates allowed have skyrocketed the last 2 weeks.

The team allowed pressure disruption, or plays that disturb a QB from going through his progression, 40% of the time in Week 7 vs GB he most disruption pressure of any game for any team this season. Against the anemic Colts pass rush, the disruption pressure allowed was 27%, 19th most pressure disruption of any game this season. The stats for pressure and quick pressure follow a similar trajectory.

Now can the Texans turn this around? Certainly. One way to overcome this sort of down-to-down high base rate of disruption is to remain explosive enough such that you don’t need to constantly stay ahead of the chains and where negative plays such as sacks matter less considering the next play can make up all the yardage. But there too the Texans have struggled going from a 10.5% explosive pass rate (20+yards) last year 2nd best in NFL, to 6% this year, 8th worst in the NFL. It seems the team will need to regain their explosive form if they are to return to the success of last season.

This is to say: despite the 6-2 record, I think are some reasons to be concerned with the Texans offense moving forward, especially looking ahead to tomorrow’s game with the Jets In terms of his production, Stroud has been one of the more sensitive QBs in the league to his matchup (see Chart of the Week below). And if the Texans continue to allow massive amounts of pressure and disruption— facing a Jets defense this week top 5 in total and pressure disruption— and this offense is even more likely to continue on its downward trajectory.

Is Washington a good defense?

It’s old news that this offense is good, let’s talk about the defense.

Coming into the season and through the first few weeks it seemed as though this Washington defense was going to be one of the worst in all of football. But over the past month, the defense and especially the pass defense, has been trending in the right direction.

Let’s take a look at the above chart to further break it down.

Starting on the production side with EPA, the pass defense has been terrific in October limiting all but Baltimore to extreme negative games. Now part of that is opponent driven, but in relative terms the picture looks better.

Chicago had their 3rd worst EPA game against Washington and worst since Week 2 (where Caleb Williams has seen some drastic improvement
Carolina, with Dalton, had their worst pass EPA game of the season.
Against Baltimore, where Washington lost 2 pass-rushers mid game, they held Baltimore to their 4th best/worst game.
Cleveland had their second to worst game via Pass EPA and Washington held Arizona to their worst game of season.

It is also worth noting that Washington has also been changing their gameplan week-to-week adjusting to their opponents by varying their blitz rates and man coverage rates (among other stylistic changes).

But where is much of this change in production emanating from? The pressure rates for Washington have increased pretty drastically especially on the quick pressure front. And it is worth noting again that when the pressure rates dip against Baltimore it is certainly a function of the team losing Dorance Armstrong and Jonathan Allen to injury.

Getting back to our central question above, should we believe this change is sticky?

To start with, it is one thing for any team to improve in performance over the course of the season. But it is an entirely different story to believe in their success for a team with a new defensive scheme like Dan Quinn’s—and especially a defense with a strong prior for success like Quinn had with Dallas.

And on the pass rush side, so long as Fowler and Armstrong are healthy this unit looks like it can sustain their success as they have both been in the upper tier of generating both disruption and non-disruption pressures.

In Quinn’s system last year in Dallas both of these guys produced as well. Despite not being household names the production speaks for itself and this could be a legitimately good pass-rush unit.

Washington is a legitimate defense with a sneaky-good pass rush and, combined with the offensive upside, I think this team is a legitimate super bowl contender.

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DET D Reeling Without Hutchinson?

There were some massive question surrounding the Lions defense following Aidan Hutchinson’s season ending injury 2 weeks ago. And despite wins over the Vikings and a special teams led- thrashing of the Titans, there are some worrying signs on the Lions defensive side of the ball.
The team has allowed 6.7 and 6.8 Yards Per Attempt the last 2 weeks, the worst two marks of the season to go along with allowing 0.05 EPA/Play when excluding turnovers. On the pass rush side, the team had 2 of its 3 lowest quick pressure rates over the last 2 games, and allowed a 11.6% and 11% explosive pass rate allowed. The previous season high this season was only 7% explosive pass rate before the Hutchinson injury.
Considering the Lions are one of the man-heaviest units right now, they are going to be extremely vulnerable against teams and WRs where opponents have the matchup advantage. In man coverage relative to zone coverage, the better talent tends to win out where good WRs beat lesser CBs and vice versa. Without Hutchinson to generate an absurd 30% pressure rate, the coverage weakness will likely be magnified especially against these man beating opponents. I will be looking to attack this angle whether via teams or props with man beating WRs over the next few weeks.

LAC PROE Continuing To Increase

We mentioned this each of the last two weeks that the Chargers have operated an entirely different offense post bye. After going -7% to -10% pass above expectation in the first 4 weeks of the season, coming off the bye, the Chargers passed 2% above expectation in Week 6, 3.5% Week 7, and 5.3% Week 8. Let’s see where markets open, but if using a season median to look at production, Herbert prop pricing will likely be using a less relevant sample and the offense is an entirely different unit from a volume and efficiency perspective projecting them as a pass-heavy and not run-heavy unit.

MIA O Back To Regular With Tua?

The Dolphins may not have gotten the win, but the offense did not miss a beat from their 2022/2023 ways. Tua threw the ball in an absurd 2.3 seconds with a 0.20 EPA/Pass—this Time To Throw would be by far the lowest rate in the NFL over course of the season. As a result, the team was throwing from clean pockets 75% of the time with a next to nothing pressure rate allowed whereas the team had been throwing from a clean pocket only 50% of the time in the non- Tua games. That is of course going to be a massive difference in the base rate of success.
Regardless of what you want to say about how good Tua is or his replacement level value, the reality is that the Dolphins offense in the McDaniel eta operates best with these quick reads and Tua has been the only one able to get the ball out quick to operate this offense over the last few years. The Dolphins, then, are especially valuable against teams that generate much of their defensive value from quick pressures as the Dolphins can have success while virtually mitigating any pass rush. Nobody will be able to generate a winning pass-rush consistently in 2.5 seconds. It helps to have Hill and Waddle who can win their routes so early. Either way, the Dolphins can hide a poor O-line and mitigate opposing pass-rushers by getting rid of the ball so quick.

KC Run D Best In The NFL?

After years of being a betable run defense, the Chiefs have the best run defense in all of football. Excluding the Lamar Jackson rushes in Week 1, which are obviously distinct from typical runs, the Chiefs have the best success rate and EPA/rush allowed by a wide margin. All of a sudden the Chiefs have become a big pass funnell with the 4th biggest difference in EPA between pass and run (easier to pass on).

Here we have a look at QB EPA broken up by whether the play was disrupted by either/or perfect coverage or pressure that prevents a QB from going through their progression.

One frame for how to view this chart is to break down how good a QB has produced when the play breaks down (X axis) and where the Y axis suggests how well a QB produces when things remain in structure and scheme. This has matchup ramifications, of course, especially for outlier QBs.

I’m eyeing this chart for this week considering where a few of QBs land here relative to the opponents they face.

We already talked about Stroud and how sensitive he is to surroundings. So far this season Stroud has lost nearly 0.9 points for every play that is disturbed relative to undisturbed— he now faces a Jets defense that, as we said, is top 5 in disruption rate.

Jared Goff has also been very sensitive to disruption and now gets a Packers D that has the 4th highest disruption rate. Can he and the Lions overcome it? Of course, but something to monitor this week.

Kirk Cousins, meanwhile, faces a Cowboys team dead last in disruption rate against non Deshaun Watson led offenses. Cousins has been one of the best QBs in the league undisturbed but has struggled facing disruption. Especially if Parsons misses which he appears to be on the wrong side of questionable and Cousins should be set up well in this matchup.

We’re going on long here and it’s already 4:30 ET so we will end here. Again, this piece will be a work in progress so please let me know if you have some feedback and how I can make this better/change format etc.

I already think going to start at the top of next week’s with some charts on fundamentals and some macro thoughts across the league as well as some reflections on the previous betting weeks. But again, please send any and all feedback.

As always, appreciate the support and spread the good word about throwthedamball! Will be back in the inbox soon as we get some more games!