Episode Transcript
The Chargers came into 2022 with lightning hot expectations and the same excuses year after year, injuries and coaching, led to yet another underwhelming season. Topped off with a poetic playoff collapse. Does new OC Kellen Moore and maybe a bit of injury luck unlock a Chiefs killer? We're searching for Alpha in the AFC Best. Let's hit the opening bell.
It's 5:06 PM in New York City. This is Alpha Bets. I am deep value better with throw the damn ball. Judah Fort Gang and our guest this week, Eric Eger, PhD, doctor of Football Analytics and stinging Twitter rebukes and published academic author. Of course formerly of P F F, now with Sumer Sports seeking to bring alpha directly to N F L front offices.
Eric, pumped to have you on the show. You guys are building quite the team over at Sumer,
Brett, Judah. This is always fun. I've really liked you guys' content for a long time.
So I'm incredibly uh, pumped to be here.
Excited to have you. so let's jump right in. Look at 2023 Wind total futures for the A f C West. Starting at the bottom, we got the Raiders at six and a half, juiced heavily to the under Broncos at eight and a half. Chargers nine and a half, slightly juiced to the over, and then with a pretty wide separation, at the top.
The defending champion Kansas City Chiefs at 11 and a half heavily juiced to the over, so Vig adjusted more like 12. Judah. What's your alphabet
And go with Broncos to finish last in the division at plus two 50.
The delta I think between the production of Derek Carr and what Jimmy Garoppolo presents with a much better offensive unit I do not think makes up for the gap that is being priced in. And I don't think Sean Peyton is going to unlock the old Russ.
And I think this is a defense that is prone to regression.
I like riding the thinking ship of Russell Wilson. I'm with you. How about you,
Eric? On my show, the Sumer Sports Show on Friday.
I've wanted to put Denver in the playoffs because I think that that price is two to one. You're looking at a great coach, a quarterback who's been good in the past, and I sort of oscillate between those things.
To bet that way, you'd probably go Denver over nine and a half. But my models do not like Denver as much as my heart does, so I'm actually gonna go straight off the model that I have and it's very similar to what Judah has.
I'm gonna go Vegas over seven and a half wins at almost two to one. Our numbers make it in that 7.6 range, so we make it about fair at seven and a half. And it's, to all the reasons Judah's talking about it, you know, you have a quarterback who has been efficient in the past. I was actually writing the a FFC West preview for summer sports.com, and I was looking, and only five quarterbacks since 2017 have generated more EPA a per play.
So you have a quarterback who I think a lot of people don't believe is very good. But is productive. And that's of course a huge thing in the betting markets to exploit.
Devonte Adams chandler Jones, as well as Max Crosby, are really good at premium positions and as long as they stay healthy. This was a team in 2021, made the playoffs at 10 and seven, despite being fundamentally a seven and 10 team.
Last year there were a six and 11 team that was fundamentally eight and nine. So we all look and say that they got worse last year, when in reality they lost a lot of close games.
And I think the last fork in it is what Ju just said, which is that the Broncos have a high upside with a great coach, but they also have a downside with a bad quarterback. And so the Raiders are the way to bet into that.
Last summer, one of our highest conviction Betts was fading the Raiders who had overly optimistic expectations as you implied.
The Raiders finished 20th in Player Health. Waller missed eight games. Rero missed seven games, and that was part of the thesis of fading the Raiders last season was just them having a super thin roster and overly fragile to any sort of bad injury.
Look. And even despite that they did remain competitive through a lot of the games. Some of the things that we'll get into when we start previewing the Raiders, I would say my alphabet is going to be slightly off. Character of what we usually pitch in this show.
Usually some pretty juicy plus money betts, but KC the under 12 and a half is minus 1 55. All right. At DraftKings. You talking about the Chiefs have to get 13 wins. The Chiefs have had very positive injury, luck the last two years, last three years.
And not necessarily that that has to regress but I think there is maybe getting a little bit too comfortable with the Chiefs around continually shifting those wide receivers.
I don't wanna outright fade this team, like there were so many in the past, those Brady Belichick teams, like it never paid off to fade those teams, even though year after year, after year after year, they put together some questionable talent on the field. Yet nonetheless, always continue to exceed expectations.
So I don't wanna outright fade the chiefs, but if I could say, are the chiefs gonna get less than 13 wins at minus 1 55? Yes. I'll take that. That's my alphabet for the AFC West.
Alright, let's look into team volatility profiles from 2022. Real quick we're looking at this from Our own custom analytics
earn drive points a metric from our drive quality model. Looking at how many points do teams earn on a per drive basis. We're looking at the range of outcomes from these teams. So how consistent or inconsistent were they from an offensive perspective, we see two teams on the diametrically opposite sides there.
Casey and Denver. And then the Chargers and the Raiders, they're both having similar volatility profiles, but also skewed to the upside, actually pretty sneaky.
Good. Anything from you on here, Judah?
Yeah, I was gonna highlight those, those same things that the Broncos were consistently bad here and we actually saw a much wider range of outcomes from Vegas and the Chargers. And yes, Justin Herbert was hurt for a lot of last year, and obviously those wide receiver injuries play a role in it.
But you know, if you look at just where volatility falls and where Vegas was, it's actually a, a better offense by by our numbers. Which I think is kind of surprising, especially given the expectations for each of these teams going into 2023.
I think it's very interesting the overlap between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. The big question is what is Kellen gonna do. Is he gonna widen that distribution? Is he gonna scoot it to the right?
For all these teams their path to beating the chiefs on, on a random Sunday is to widen their distribution.
The Chargers haven't really done much this off season but I think Kellen Moore can be the person to push that distribution to the right and possibly widen it out.
And that's one of the reasons I think Chargers could potentially dethrone the Chiefs, but the Chargers have always been a thorn in the chief side, especially in the Justin Herbert years.
But we look at the Raiders specifically,
las Vegas a. From an offensive perspective, 2.1 earned points per drive but struggled on defense. 29th, giving up about 2.2 earned points per drive. They started off games, super hot, we're one of the best well-scripted teams out there. Definitely a good early bet. But as we saw in their volatility profile, had a very wide range of outcomes, perhaps most illustrated by the Patriots game in the middle of the season.
And I would just point out here, yes, the defense really struggled last year, but I'm not exactly buying so much stock in that. They certainly have a bunch of players who had even great rookie seasons and really struggl in year two. I'm looking at Nate Hobbs and Trevor Morrick guys who graded out very well.
There's certainly talent on that defense is a elite edge that. If I'm looking to see cases for upside here, you see just how bad their performance was. The delta between the 2022 defense, which was bad, and a 2023 defense. Leaves room for growth as opposed to, room to the downside.
So Nate Hobbs is a pretty good defensive back. Marcus Peters has brought over. If all of those things go right, then they do have a pass for us to be a quality defense if they go wrong, well, we've already seen this team with a terrible defense in an okay offense, you know, get into that six to nine win range.
So when you look at the Broncos on this same graph, it's similar like, look, that defense is amazing. You know, they gave up, I want to say 20 points or more in fewer than three games in their first like 14 last year, to the point where if they would've scored 20 points in any given game, they would have made the playoffs.
And the question is what kind of buttons can they push? Russell Wilson was pressured on 35% of drop backs. He was six per P f F and the number of drop backs that were pressured that were his fault. And so like how much can Sean Peyton cut into that?
Right? So that gets down to 30%. How much better are they? When he was clean, he was a league average passer. When he was in play action, he was a league average passer. They only ran play action 21% of the time. So there might be some meat left on the bone there. But again, Sean Peyton in my opinion, can only do so much.
And I don't know how much more can be done from the creative side to make Wilson better. So if you're bullish on the Broncos, which I kind of want to be given I'm a huge Sean Payton fan. You have to be worried about how many levers he can actually push for this offense.
Denver second from defensive e d p giving about 1.6 points per drive.
So would've been even worse, if the defense wasn't elite.
But as we move into looking at the Raiders 2022 power ranking volatility volatility was the theme that defined their season.
The expectations for this team have dramatically changed from season to season. Pounding Raiders Alt Under was one of our favorite betts last year. They were at priced at eight and a half heavily juiced to the over, so we were betting the under like plus one 20 and then leaning out into the alts, but now they're priced two games lower.
They ended up going six and 11, but eight and nine at s.
Their seven day rolling volatility was plus or minus about three and a half spots. And you can see they're a little bit all over the map over the course of the season.
Yeah. What almost defined this season was a bunch of fourth quarter collapses. That Jaguars game, there's the Monday night football game against the Rams where they lost in that Baker Mayfield last second touchdown.
A loss of the Colts. Also, again, they lost in the fourth quarter, a 1310 loss in the, the Steelers. These were true one score games that a fourth in one that could have gone another way, could really change the Raider season.
Yeah. The week two game against Arizona had Murray in a 16 point comeback.
And then the Kansas City game on Monday night, they had a 17 point lead in that game.
Lost that game by a single point. And you had these games in the middle, when they didn't even cross the 50 against New Orleans. That steadied us all at this idea that they weren't very good.
If you would've cut the season off at like week 15 or 16 the Raiders PYT tag would've probably been that of at least a 500 team or so. They faded down the stretch against some great teams like Kansas City.
But for the most part were playing close games all year.
And even beyond just having those leads, 'cause you could get a lead like first two drives, boom, boom, and then for the rest of the game you suck. And so the Max League could potentially be a little bit misleading, but that's one of the reasons why we bring in the timely average margin a m Again, we're looking at what's the lead or deficit they had multiplied by the time they held that lead.
The t a m in that Cardinals game was double digits. Their time weighted average margin was 11 points. They still lost their time weighted average margin versus the Rams was over a touchdown at 8.7 and they ended up losing their time weighted average margin versus the Steelers was almost a touchdown.
And they ended up losing. So not only just some games that they had to lead, but they had to lead for the majority of the games. And then also, it's really funny too, you called out that, that Saints game that started to potentially shift some betting market expectations around what this team actually is.
A 24 to nothing loss in New Orleans. It was only a one point spread. The Raiders were the third ranked circa pick. So people loved the Raiders that week, get their faces ripped off, but still believed the next week. So the next week they played the jazz and they were the second ranked circa pick and they lose that one and also don't cover it.
Also to your point Eric trying to read between the lines, read between some of the final scores and some of the superficial overall records you mentioned Piag.
One of the metrics that we use is a custom tweaking a piag we call Piag 2.0. Instead of looking at points, four points against, we look at points in excess of betting market expectations for the offense and the defense. And Piag two brings out the Raiders to about eight and a half wins.
So exactly to your point that this team was pretty average and we've done some research and again, we've shown that Piag 2.0 can actually is more predictive than Piag when trying to evaluate team from a more macro perspective the following season. So that could also provide some signal there around potential future performance from the Raiders.
Josh McDaniels is in his second year here that they're playing to win.
There's no giving up on the season in the same way that we, we have for a bunch of these other last place teams. Say what you will about his success as a head coach, I think has been a great offensive coordinator. Like his offenses have performed probably better than the talent on the field. and I think Ralo was almost the perfect quarterback for that. This is a guy who I think given good surroundings can produce at a fine level.
And I think when you look at Jacobi Myers, who's a guy who, I think is one of the more underrated receivers in the N F L, if you look at.
And after the catch, his ability to earn targets a separation, all of them really pop. I don't think we think of him as like a top 20, top 25 receiver, but by all, by all means, metrics would suggest that yes, Darren Waller gone. He didn't really play last year, hunter Renfrow obviously one of the best route runners in the league and, and dynamic in the Red Zone and like Devante Adams is still an alpha number one receiver.
I see this as a fine offense. I don't think that Jimmy Garlow is going to elevate them to, to new heights, but it also has a really, really high floor.
When we look at the Raiders 2023 schedule, again, priced at six and a half, they adjusted actually closer to six due to the juice.
The 2.0 model likes betting, the over strength of schedule ostensibly ranked a second. Not a really good indicator of realized strength of schedule
But that is something notable. That is certainly being priced into some of the bearish expectations hey, the Raiders are gonna play a super tough schedule, and no doubt about it, they play in a very tough division. But again, that can all of change over the course of the season.
Let's move into the Broncos. One chart I didn't wanna flag that I put together was just to demonstrate how bad Russell Wilson played last year.
I wanted to overlay his performance from an e p a perspective versus how Tim Tebow played over the 20 10, 20 11 season. And Tim Tebow quite decisively outperformed Russell Wilson. As we know, Tim Tebow pretty much never got a meaningful shot at playing quarterback again. And yet there is still optimism around how Russell Wilson could potentially resurrect his career.
I was just trying to think about anecdotally. Have we ever seen okay a top five quarterback, which I would say Russell Wilson could certainly have been over the first decade of his career certainly earned a contract that would suggest that is the case fall so flat on his face, not just one year.
'cause one of the things we were talking about in last off seasons previews was like there has been more than enough signs that Russell Wilson's Prime is well in his past and that there's been a ton of apologists based on, oh well this injury and this and that,
and now there's similar apologists this off season for why he performed so bad last season. Have we ever seen a a top five quarterback plays so bad for over a season, two years, in my opinion, three years, and make a considerable bouts to even flirt with that top five status again. Anything come to mind for you guys?
Not really. This is way back, but like Jim Everett led the N F L in touchdown passes in 88 and 89. Made a Pro Bowl in 1990, and then in 1991 and 92, played so poorly to lose his job.
And then when he went to New Orleans, he actually was pretty good again. But usually when a quarterback loses his fastball, I mean, Andrew Luck had won 2015. He was really bad in the PFF system, 2016 and 2018. He was really good. And that was injury based.
But for the most part, no.
What worries me about Russell Wilson rejuvenating his career, is that they're not at all stylistically similar to the quarterbacks that played in New Orleans specifically Drew Brees.
I'm looking at like the quick game, which is an area in which Drewes really, really excelled. He was number one in the N F L.
Also with the, the saints offense, which is based on quick throws, but also throws in the middle of the field where the receivers can kind of generate yards after the catch. It relies upon accurate quarterbacks. And Russell Wilson has not been an accurate quarterback over the middle of the field.
Again, looking at Drew Rees's number, he was the top five pass or inaccuracy, especially over the middle field. Every single year. Russell Wilson has been towards the low twenties. And the Broncos receiving weapons, while good are not exactly system fits, at least in the way that Sean Peyton was skimming his offense in New Orleans.
None of these guys are particularly good after the catch. Maybe Jerry Judy's fine by my numbers. He's maybe a little bit above average. Courtland side is way below average. Who knows that what his health is like. They've already lost Patrick. I just don't see it as a system fit.
And while I love Sean Peyton, I just, I don't see how you can kind of, it seems more like you're putting a square.
The one way that this Broncos team can make a run for it this year to me is if they just pivot to running the football. And I know that like, that's like sacrilegious, but they get Mike McGlinchy to go play Right Tackle.
Their wide receivers aren't exactly quick game wide receivers. They're kind of a blast from the past. When you think about how teams basically used to go run, run, pass, right in, in the, in the sequencing. Their wide receivers are very much a, oh, it's third and seven 'cause we ran twice and only gave three yard.
It's funny. And then you throw a back shoulder fade to one of them and that's how you get a first down and then you go back to being grounded pound. So the problem with that thinking is Denver's schedule for my numbers is a half a point harder per game.
Than the average team on a neutral. So if they want to be a run first team, the issue is that the game scripts that they're gonna be underneath are not conducive to that on average. It's just like they're behind the eight ball in that respect.
And even with that, again, elite defense last year still ended up going five and 12. Seven and 10 A T Ss. I mean, I thought this was a bug in my code. I mean, I knew Bronco's expectations were sky high last year, but 10 and a half.
They were priced at 10 and a half wins last year, so, fell well under those expectations. We look at their powering volatility, just like thinking ship. Started off as a top 10 team
but ended the season as a bottom three team rolling volatility. And you would expect this when a team gets so violently repriced over the course of the season, rolling volatility plus minus sticks and a half spots. So how the markets had to continually adjust to actually how bad this team was.
We talked about from an earn drive perspective, was second giving up only 1.6 points per drive. Are they gonna be able to keep that together? Yes, they have Sean Peyton, but I don't know, is that gonna, and I know we've seen some other head coaching ranks where Sean Peyton is like, worth a whole game or something along those lines.
But there's just so little to work with here. And I think Russell Wilson's such a ghost of his former past that there's really limit very little to potentially put back together there. And Eric, as you talked about, maybe this is a team that has to lean into the run which means your demon's gonna have to be super elevated again to outperform even this year's expectations.
It's an upward climb for them defensively. They lose a Giro Eero, which I think is a much bigger blow. He was fantastic a season ago. I think when a lot of people handicap these teams, they say, well, Sean Peyton comes in and he adds a win. I don't necessarily disagree with that.
But, you had the nuts defensively last year and you still couldn't win. That doesn't mean you get to carry over those cards to the next year.
Yeah,
I think defensive coordinators are really, truly important. This is research that we did last summer, kind talking about how secondary plays almost as much about the position a cornerback is placed in, or safety is placed in as much as is the talent. And I think, you know, if we're looking just from a macro view, where might be.
Where there might still be like serious edges. And I think it's really evaluating kind of coordinators and the value they can bring on the field. And I think the Broncos are a prime example of a team that on defense is gonna get worse just by virtue of losing the defensive coordinator.
And when we look at the active points perspective, Bronco's negative 62 active points last season. Again, active points looking at how do they outperform betting and market expectations.
Betting and market expectations are adjusting. Week to week. And as we saw, were getting downgraded week after week after week after week. So even as expectations were coming down, the team still struggled to meet even downgraded expectations last year.
So when we look at 2023, priced at eight and a half, so repriced, two and a half, two games lower than they were last year.
Strength of schedule, ostensibly 10th net rests minus five days. Ty 2.0 model does like the Broncos over, and they did have leads in 13 games. They got a lead of 10 or double digits in six games. But they could barely score anything over 20 points, and it's gonna be very difficult to kind of replicate that defensive performance next season. Anything from you guys on the schedule?
What I do like for the Broncos, and again, this is, you know, you can test this empirically.
When you play early season games in Denver, it is just hotter and the The altitude does give a home field advantage that is different than most. But if you are looking at the bull case for the Broncos, you're looking at, you know, three games that are very winnable at home in the first four weeks of the season.
Something we've been working on is a, a dynamic kind of home field advantage model. But just to say that the home field advantage of one team, early in the season might be very different than later in the season.
Some of that sort, and I think that the data certainly has pointed us to exactly what you're outlining. And, Denver teams across all sports have a, have a massive home field advantage. And I think the kind of home of away splits matter, maybe a little more for the Broncos than they do other teams.
And again, I've been oscillating back and forth between liking the Broncos and not every single day, this off season.
The other one is when you think about a team like the Jets who they have in their first five at home. That's a team that is better later in the season than in the beginning acclimating new, new QB and, and some young players.
And, and Kansas City, getting them both in the first half of the season. They're basically playing the chiefs during what has historically been kind of their downtime. They generally, the chiefs will start out the season very hot Mahomes, week one is like. The best quarterback to ever play.
And then they finish the season hot. And the Broncos get them in like October or November-ish this year, which is probably gonna be beneficial to them relative to others.
So the schedule the way it's structured actually benefits the Broncos.
that's actually a really good point. You get these quarterbacks in transition into new systems right off the bat. And then also with the Jets.
So three out the first five games you get the bills coming out of the buy at least. And a good observation about the chiefs is usually this is their bottoming process where they're underperforming expectations the most and then propel into the end of the season.
You're getting the chiefs twice in that, so potentially at their weakest.
Yep. And notice there are no big negative spreads for them in the second half of the season after the Buffalo game.
So, we'll probably know by those first few chiefs games whether they're good or not, but much like Detroit last year, even if they start out slow, the thing, the thing closes out well. So if they're fundamentally a good football team, like they'll be able to pick up some wins against some poor teams down the stretch.
Much like Detroit did who is in a similar situation a as Denver was kind of trying to look ahead at being a slightly better than 500 to beat all the Bess.
Yeah. This team is a perfect team to be live. I think for exactly the reasons Eric mentioned, that I also kinda wanna look at the scheme and see what they're trying to do especially given that the schedule might lead to some noise.
Is this a team that's kind of going run heavy or are they going you know, play action, tossing it deep playing to Russell Wilson and the strings. So they're trying to run a New Orleans offense. There are a lot of question marks. I think the schedule is particularly conducive to making in season futures better around week four, week five, week
six.
Let's move on to the Chargers. Looking at their offensive defensive e d P. Had one of the better offenses, but struggled on defense, but there's just so many asterisk for the Chargers, given the same story kind of year in and year out is that they've been banged up with cluster injuries.
Offensive line wide receiver, across the defense. And then Marge by a lot of question marks around in-game decisions and how they're leveraging the talent on the field and specifically Herbert T, which you know, to many people's evaluators are, is a top five, if not top three quarterback being severely underused.
Now, again, lacking some of the potential personnel to really exploit that talent, but nonetheless, still a lot of criticisms around not being able to throw deep downfield, 6.4 air yards per attempt last year. Lowest of all quarterbacks who played any sort of meaningful time through only 11 passes, over 30 yards, downfield through, at or behind the line of scrimmage at the fourth highest rate dumped off to running backs, especially when the wide receivers were banged up anywhere from 30 to 40% of the time.
Eckler led the team in targets at 127. Of course, we know Herbert had that rib injury, had the shoulder injury but he still powered through it. And this was a team that ended up being one in five versus teams with winning records and as we know, really had that epic collapse in the playoffs versus, versus the Jags.
But if you're reading a story about the chargers, this lines up right down the middle.
Yeah, for sure. This is a team that has forever done this right.
If you look at like the coaches that added the most expected win probability from fourth down decisions.
Brandon Staley's 2021 season was top five in the N F L fast star era. Last year he was still a top coach in terms of all decisions, but the fourth down one he specifically reneged on, and you can imagine in large part because of some high profile losses the year before won in Los Angeles to achieves on Thursday night and one to the Raiders on that final Sunday night where they lost a playoff birth.
So that went away last year. Then there was, you know, obviously Herbert was injured in that. That was a legitimate injury. Then he got back to being a little bit healthier down the stretch and was fine.
But they struggle, for example, in the Brandon Sta era with the too high stuff, their second worst in E p A allowed per rum play in the N F L the last two years, they're tied for worst in terms of success rate allowed. So defensively they wanna play the woke two high shell stuff, but they don't have the, the big guys up front to actually make it work.
And some teams have been exploiting them as well. So it's one of those teams where they're always a day late and a dollar short, I think. And hopefully Kel and Moore can help them you know alleviate that. But the same old charges is both bad luck, but also leaving yourself a lack of outs when you do have the bad luck.
Maybe this is a complete galaxy brain take, but it's almost like the Chargers have been listening to the media a season behind where it's like, oh, there's they're going for down conservative.
That's 2021 going into 2022. 2022. It's like Joe Lombardi's, too conservative. We need to let Herbert Unleash. They go to Kellen Moore, and this is the all or nothing season. They're going to unleash it on the field. We know that Brandon Stanley knows he's fighting for his job. I imagine he's going to be more aggressive.
But at the end of the day, Justin Herbert is an elite quarterback. I think Quentin Johnson should maybe help a little bit, at least certainly to the receivers they had last year. And if you've got a top three quarterback in the league, anything's possible. And I think that if everything crystallizes with the Chargers and Kellen Moore's elevated Dak Press gun in the past I think he's one of the coordinators who can certainly do that
for Justin Herbert. And at the end of the day that's, that's the bullish case for the Chargers.
And Eric, I think you make some good callouts around the 2021 Staley and some of the betts that he made during that season that maybe didn't pay off. High profile games.
And that added some undue pressure that then therefore changed his paradigm of decision making in 2022. 'cause the risk reward trade off has now changed, and I think that's his own fault. The one that comes to mind for me is early in 2021 verse the Ravens when they went for a fourth down early in the game on their own like 23 yard line, very tongue in cheek and it didn't work out and things spiraled out of control from there.
And they ended up getting their faces ripped off by the ravens in that game. And it's those types of decisions that they're just way too high leverage, not just for the game, but for your career. It's those types of decisions that therefore has shaken his confidence. And we know so many things in sports are definitely confidence games.
And if he doesn't have the confidence to make those decisions or otherwise put himself in a position to get, again, undue influence from other, throughout the organization to say, you know, got a little bit of a wrist slap and say, you know, don't do that anymore. He made those betts at very poorly timed points in the season when it wasn't worth it to really do that.
And now I think he's paying the penalty for that.
Well, I think that
that's the problem with not having a model, right? I think like you guys are very quantitative. I've gotten to work with Judah before. I know how sharp he is.
And obviously Brett, you know, there's no doubt that you are as well, but like, it's the, it's the thing about. There are people who are sharp that have good intuition. And like I don't think Brandon Staley's like listening to the win probability, right?
Him and like Dan Campbell and guys like that, they're, rule of thumb is to be aggressive, right? And, to your point Brett, about that Ravens game, it was like two or three fourth downs that really got them in a bad place and they lose by a margin. And there's a little bit of research that I'm doing with a former colleague of mine where we're looking just at that. Are there fourth down decisions that are career optimizing but not win probability optimizing? I like that. That's a key thing. Like when you look at I was sitting with an N F L team two or three years ago, and we were talking about fourth down decisions. Like we were watching a game together.
He is like, well, what would you do here? I'm like, well, you have to go for it. And he is like, well, we didn't go for it because we didn't wanna lose by 17. We wanted to lose by 10. Mm-hmm. And it's like, mm-hmm. It's that. It's what? It's what you're saying. And like all these coaches.
There still isn't that analytics coach yet. Maybe Siri, but even Siri punted on that fourth down, that caius, Tony ran back for almost a touchdown. For all these guys. When you're just still going, by rules of thumb, what can turn you sharp, can also turn you dull in the same way, right. Whereas if he was actually going through and be like, oh, there's a 2% edge on going for it here, we're just gonna go for it.
Then I think like guys like us are like, oh, he's cheating on the math, but he is not actually cheating on the math. He didn't know the math in the first place. He knew that for the most part, being aggressive was the right thing to do. And then somebody else told him the right thing to do was to keep his job and to go for fewer of them.
And that's what he's doing. So that's where I get worried about anointing any coaching staff or anything. And you guys have talked about this on your show for years now. It gets to a really tricky part about betting what should happen versus betting what a team really will do. And, I'm interested to see what that ends up being for the charges this year.
What should they do? They should go for a lot of fourth down. What will they do? I'm not exactly sure yet.
It's funny because I think in 2021 the perception was that Staley was the next analytics wiz kid coming to the league to revolutionize analytical decision making.
Not just kind of gut like, oh, I think we should be aggressive and so therefore I guess we should just be aggressive. But that has kind of been fleshed out kind of over time.
I think the belief was that he was a, a very, like a very smart defensive coach.
And, they went to Kansas City in week three and now there was a lot of wind and stuff, And there was a fourth down that he went for that the math didn't like. I think the game winning touchdown was on a fourth down fade to Mike Williams where a field goal would've won the game. And I'm like, oh. So he just is aggressive and that's cool. 'cause being aggressive is great. But even if you look at, like Dan Campbell, like Dan Campbell does a pretty good job, but if you look at how he handles the clock, he very clearly doesn't have a complete and full analytical understanding of the game.
He's very good at some things, and he pushes those buttons. But, there are other parts of the game where he's still, you know, coaching like a caveman.
The thing that I keep coming back to with the Chargers here is when I prepare for live betting, let's say I have a bunch of things in my head.
I wanna see something that happens and I'll be like, I'm gonna quit because, you know, this team is. You know, I thought one thing was gonna happen and another thing's happening. Like I'm not gonna keep live betting and you still do have cases for the offline.
And that's kind of how I'm doing the charge this off season. I wanna have a proper frame. I'm not betting it because there's too much conjecture. Like we from the outside can't possibly know how he's gonna react. But I wanna kind outline of like, how am I going to attack the chargers given what actually does happen? How does their offense live with, like we could project that it's going to be a bunch of deeper throws, but like maybe Justin Herbert actually just checks down a lot, and that's fundamental to his style.
Like those are kind of questions that are not really answered yet, and I don't want to coach my bet in that way without actually seeing it happen on the field.
Yeah, that's really well put because I think a lot of the football people that I respect, a lot of them are wrong about a lot of stuff, right?
I mean, that's why they're not professional betters. But the one thing about Herbert, they all say is he's such a quick processor. And well, I think that that's part of why he checks the ball down though, right? He's. He's the good kid in class. He gets all the A's and stuff, but he is not creative.
And I don't necessarily know if I believe that, but I am open to the idea that he is part of the problem. And most of the ball knowers on Twitter will tell you like, no, it's literally never his fault. But when you're a quarterback in the N F L, you're management, like failures are partially your fault. And I worry with Herbert because we're on year four now and he really hasn't had any success to speak of. And we do make a lot of excuses 'cause he is uber talented. But I'm open to the idea that maybe he's part of the problem.
That's definitely true. And also Eric, I'm very excited to see what comes about of this research that you're doing this in-game decision making, how it crosses with career optimization. 'cause I don't know if you were thinking about it from a live betting perspective, but you know, kind of anything that Judah and I digest is filtered through that kind of prism.
Mm-hmm. And this is exactly what you need to predict what's gonna actually happen in the game. Because there's so much criticism and kinda Monday morning quarterbacking around how decisions are made on the field from a very academic perspective, as if it's happening in isolation in a silo.
And that's not the real world. That's not a practical application. And this is the difference between, you know, in traditional finance, like the difference between an economist and an investor, and a trader. Economists their decision making frameworks oftentimes, and a super majority of times, are not applicable to real world decision making and the way the real world works, it's totally theoretical.
All things else equal. And if this, and if that, and all these baked in assumptions that is not, reflective of how to actually make money the way things actually operate in the world. So I think exactly the type of research you're talking about is the types of things that I think could be super plus ev unlock a lot of true alpha that we talk about on this show.
Excited to see what comes about of that.
Yeah, I just have thought about it numerous times and that's always the answer that people have given me. Judah, there was the same thing when you were doing research with me at P F F.
Like I've had a lot of ideas just by talking to people and thinking about how they think.
And I agree with you. The one big thing about win probability models, Ben has just done a, a fantastic job with his, but there's no error bars either. And so how many times are these decisions? 1% decisions where the error bars overlap? And what can you glean from that?
Because I think that a lot of coaches would tell you that the error bars intersect a lot and they're just making the conservative choice. But it is very interesting to your point about, you know, making this an academic exercise versus one of risk.
And I think any better would also empathize with that. You make five losing betts in a row even for some of the best bets, that sixth bet is not an an individual isolated bet. Those five losses prior to it. Have an effect and an influence on the sizing of that bet, even for a sharp bet, like it should affect your sizing.
Your risk appetite should potentially change to continue to intelligently you know, risk manage your bankroll. And so you need to look at all of those decisions relative to the other decisions and relative to the broader context of sustainability.
Sustainability of a coach's career or sustainability of, you know, for a better, you know, your own bank role.
All right, let's move on to the, to the chiefs chiefs. I don't think there's anything we need to say about the chiefs. The chiefs are really good chiefs, have a great offense. You know, we're not you know, blowing any minds here, but from an earned drive perspective, of course chiefs are number one, 2.8
earned points per drive. So almost every drive they're earning at least a field goal. So, and we can see that on the chart. A far separation for pretty much any other team except for the lions here. Yeah. Definitely flirted with the chiefs from an offensive perspective, but the defense still left some to be desired on average.
Gave up around 2.1 earned drive points, and that was 26th for their defense. One of the other things I wanted to show. This is a chart I put together last year around the Super Bowl just to demonstrate how often the chief's team is always kind of flirting with disaster. And what this chart shows is each one of these dots is a play in the game.
And each one of these dots is demonstrating, what was their lead in that game. And we can see that they were losing, in almost every single game and some by a quite significant margin. But at the same time, we see them also leading a lot of these games. And this is one of the reasons why if you're betting pre-game on the chiefs you know, end up in the poor house because the Chiefs are 14 and three straight up last year, five 11 and one a t s.
So there was no money to be made betting on the Chief's pre-game. There's such a huge chief's premium, but unless you're like, Judah and I leaned heavily into live vetting and we mopped up vetting the chiefs last year over and over again as these types of opportunities presented themselves. Oh, they go down and then they come back.
Oh, they go down, then they come back down, come back down, come back. And every time they go down, you know, the markets don't properly adjust for the chiefs to come back over and over again. But also to your point, as you mentioned earlier, around playing Eric playing the Chiefs around like the right cadence in the season.
This one's shocking. I, I remember I had to go back and actually double check this, but the chiefs week six at home. Verse the bills as a feel goal, underdog. And you take a step back from the distance of where we sit today and look back and be like, no way. No way. That, that can't be. And that just goes to demonstrate how cold the market gets on the Chiefs.
And that wasn't just a last year thing and that happened the year prior as well. All the bears start coming out loud on the Chiefs in mass, especially around that point in time of the season. I think we made a bunch of money last year Juda, specifically in this Bucks game and specifically in this Niners game when the market opened up with chiefs as favorite, and then over the course of the week continue to drift heavily in the favor of the other team to ultimately end up flipping the other side.
And as we know, in both those games, the chiefs decisively demonstrated that they were far superior than both those teams.
There's a lot to unpack here. I think it's important to outline what the expectation was last year, right? It was a retooling team, like they had Mahomes and Reed.
But if there were any year where the chiefs missed the playoffs. And I'm looking back from the kind of off season, it was like, okay, this might be the year. And I think it reminds everyone of just how good and, and just where the expectations should be.
For Mahomes and Rita, this is the number one team. We should assume that unless someone else is gonna kind of come along and dethroned them. And I think that kind of reminded people of the, the Chief's dominance and I think that's going to maintain throughout this season. But it wasn't that way last off season.
And as we said about the live bending, I mean the, the markets can't catch up enough, especially leaning into those alt lines live because the chiefs can put up points just so quickly that they can actually run up scores that most other offenses can't.
They've been Judah, well below 500 against the spread all the way back going to the pandemic season of 2020.
And for a few reasons, like there's a lot of backdoor covers against the chiefs. So for example, that Chargers game, they were up 10 late got backdoored in that game. Even that Buffalo game, they lost and they, they were dogs and then lost and didn't cover.
They were leading that game for the majority. As your numbers say, not by much, but they were leading that game for a decent amount of time. They got backdoored in the playoff game against Jacksonville. So they struggle at times with, with covering the spread.
And, and the reason is, You know, they're getting a premium, so they're not a team that you really want to bet on you know pre flop. And Judah knows this because of how much, you know props he does. Like, it's the Mahomes touchdown prop that you have to bet. It's the end game stuff that you have to bet.
It's the unders on every chief's wide receiver and then you just win all of them, but won the one guy that blows up that day. It's all that kind of stuff. When you bet the chiefs, it's not betting them A T Ss pre-flop.
Yep. The chiefs we're losing by a touchdown or more in nine games. And not a lot of games where they come out and just smoke you right off the bat.
In fact, it is funny, we look at the circa ranks, when we see that the betting market did think that they found an exploitable opportunity in week three versus the cols. The chiefs were a top five pick and then in week 13 versus the Bengals, they were a top five pick. The only time that they were a top five pick all season.
And the rest you can see is mostly just red. And in both those games they don't cover and they go oh and two.
When it comes to offseason changes, we talked about, another refresh of the wide receivers, another refresh of some of the offensive linemen. Do we think that this is something that the chiefs continually deal with year over year, over year.
Oh, if you, new faces on offensive line, oh, I'm thrown to a new set of wide receivers, I need to develop chemistry with and they keep sneaking by with that. But can they keep doing it? Yeah,
I mean this is some research I'm working on, the point is with Patrick Mahome is basically none of it really matters, which is like his, because of his ability to create, and Eric, you've talked about this a hundred times, but his ability to engineer throws, especially when he is scrambling and his ability to anticipate pressure and kind of just great for himself lends itself to like the offensive line doesn't matter so much 'cause he's going to anticipate pressure spin out of it.
He. Scrambled. And went out of structure on 131 plays last year and got sacked zero times. That is like unfathomable. Most guys are like at a two to one ratio. And Mahomes is 130 to one. And when you're creating for yourself and you're taking four or five seconds to throw, it doesn't really matter who your wide receivers are.
They're going to be open just by virtue of being, you know, n f L receivers on a field for four seconds. Coverage is difficult. I don't really think it matters because Mahomes just elevates everyone around him to a degree we haven't seen in a long, long time. And like he still has Kelsey at the end of the day.
So long as Mahomes is so dynamic in the pocket I don't think the secondary weapons or the offensive line departments matter that much.
Yeah, I think Kelsey being there really helps. They do have to eventually think about his replacement. But, since the 2020 Super Bowl, I mean, Brett Beach went up to Patrick Mahomes in the elevator on the ride down and said, this will never happen again.
And they were very desperate when they went and got Orlando Brown. But they were very good with how they worked with Orlando Brown. They did not give 'em the extension. They go and get a left tackle for less than $10 million this year. Who's probably better than Orlando Brown is.
And then they get a right tackle in Juwan Taylor, who's much better than the guy that they let go, Andrew Wiley. Interior, they're best in the league. So I think that they got that nailed. It's probably overkill, to be quite honest, even as a Chiefs fan. Like I think that the offensive line, they're probably going overboard with that.
And there might be a puke point where their wide receivers aren't good enough. But I think as long as Kelsey remains good, and Mahomes and Reed are still who they are, gonna be hard for them to be bad offensively. But they're, I think the wide receiver is every single year a decent concern because Brett, as you said earlier, they've had really good injury.
Luck the last two years, they've had some injuries, but they have not been to Cornerstone key players. You know, the last two seasons, and that's covered up a lot in 2021. They weren't a very good football team relative to standards, but the rest of the a f C was banged up and that's how they got to host the title game last year.
They took a step back ized trading Tyreek Hill, but because they were healthy, they kind of, they kind of la the a f c if they have any sort of like median injury left this year it'll be interesting to see whether or not they're good enough. Because that's gonna be something that they haven't had to deal with for two years now.
Puke point threshold, I think is a great point around when is that threshold breached for the chiefs. You know it makes me think back to, for anyone who's watched the Chiefs a lot. You'll know that the Chiefs are not just always, awe inspiring.
The offense isn't just constantly clicking. In fact, I think Judy know we've talked about in those kind of very tactical moments when those injuries did catch up to them, in game, at least short term. Sometimes you're watching the chiefs and you're like, they can't do anything. You know, and then you kind of get that like one little spurt from Mahomes because he's so great and he just makes it work and they kind of continue to squeak it out.
But how many times do you wanna put yourself in that type of position? And then if you do breach puke threshold that Eric talks about this season at some point in time, does that elongate for more than just an in-game series. And I mean, Kelsey, 150 targets 110 catches last year, if he goes down, that's a lot to replace.
And he's that gronk to Brady. When Gronk is gone and Brady was like nothing worked. You know, sometimes and you know, that's like just a huge vulnerability was, he talked about the injury. Luck. If that starts to revert, just to, as Eric mentioned, just even to median terms, you know, that could offer some potentially sneaky downside in this team.
The receivers, I'm thinking the a s U championship game, I'm like, so many guys went down to like, M V s was the only healthy receiver and like he's throwing the practice squad guys. I'm not even sure who the wide receivers were. We were getting so deep into the depth chart, but like that's, that's when we started to see the chiefs slow down.
And yes, they're, they're not necessarily so consistent week to week, but the base rate of expectation with Mahomes, it's like, so long as you have N F L caliber receivers, I don't think it really matters.
And I think they'll be able to kind of sustain this no man's lands of wide receivers and still produce, even if went down. I still don't think it matters. Mahomes can really just elevate so much more than any other quarterback in the league.
Yeah, I do think that there are breaking points and I just don't think the chiefs are that close to them this year.
Anywhere but on defense, right? Like without Chris Jones, like, we haven't talked about that yet, but like True, true. I, I think that the issue with the Chiefs, with Chris Jones is always going to be two-pronged is like, what if he doesn't show? But the other one is like, what if he just simply plays like he did in 2016 through 2021, which is a very, very good defensive tackle, but not the league's best defensive tackle.
How does that work? Right now I think they're doing the sharp thing, which is to pay him what he is being paid now and like have him come in and be kind of like, what he was in 2021 and then move on because he is older, but it still leaves a hole in their defense until they have that result.
Yeah. And even looking at that defense, you've got a bunch of, I think, solid players, but he's really the, the superstar of that unit, especially on the defensive line. I mean, George Carlis obviously has, has potential. Didn't really show it last year. I'm not really sure where they'll be unless there's sch and pressure.
Jones really, I think is, is the clear number one pass rusher. And that would be a gaping just because.
Who do we think is gonna be that Juju Smith Schuster spot. Tony, such a question mark around how many games he'll play.
And then the rest are very young. Sky Moore, there's some highlights with, you know, Justin Ross you know, they have the rookie, you know where Juju Smith Schuster, you know, was at least a veteran, you know, who knew how to step in.
Whereas that's not the same with the types of guys that you're potentially replacing him with.
Yeah, I think Sky Moore is probably the leader in the clubhouse. Like they really liked him during the draft process. When Juju missed the game against Los Angeles.
He was pretty good in his stead. So I think it's him. I think Velvet Gambling's never gonna be that guy. He's gonna be one where if you look at the prop markets and you see a team that plays a lot of cover one you're gonna want bet Deval the gambling, if they play a lot of cover two, he's probably gonna no show statistically like he did in the Super Bowl.
That was always the benefit of bringing him in, was that he was a guy who could have a lot of variance because of who he was.
So I do think it's gonna be the Sky Moore, who's the consistent juju week to week player. Even though Smith Schuster down the stretch last year, his average performance for the last like five, six games a season was like 30 something yards.
So even he faded down the stretch last year in a time where the Chiefs basically won all those games. He wasn't really instrumental in any of them. So it is an interesting talking point, but I think the Chiefs kind of even got over it a little bit at the end of the season last year.
Is it Justin Ross hype for real?
I think he's gonna make the team. I think it's gonna be a classic fourth, fifth guy plays some special teams, does some red zone stuff, but I don't think he's gonna be a starter.
All right. That wraps it up. We just got done previewing the best division in football. Thanks everyone for listening. Thanks Eric for joining. It was great to have you on. And that's the closing bell.
