AFC Championship Preview

Another regular season game. That said, unlike the rematches we've already seen before, we have a perfectly predictive sample: it's not a week seventeen game where most of one team was sitting. It's a week sixteen game where the Colts stood up, then laid down. The net: three touchdowns left on the field, Colts still leading when the Curtis Painter Show began.

So, like, let's be frank. If the Colts do precisely what they did last time, and the Jets do precisely what they did last time, then the Colts will win. This is a Fact. Moreover, if we perturb the specifics of what happened last week, the Colts will win by more. A lot of the ticky-tack things where a player uncharacteristically misses his cut by an inch, slips, misjudges the ball or the receiver... those happened to the Colts. Colloquially, they got unlucky. And so if they do the exact same stuff, then we have to expect that they'll be luckier, and win by more.

Still, I'm hesitant to say that this is a done deal:

1. The Colts will have different personnel on the field. With Mathis and Freeney playing all the time, they'll be able to maintain the same amount of pressure on the quarterback with fewer blitzes (or get more pressure with the same amount of blitzes). In the latter case, ceteris paribus Sanchez will just get sacked more. In the former case, he'll have to read a field full of more defenders, and get sacked just about as often (or perhaps more, still, because he'll see no one open and hold on to the ball).
   
   But this isn't a done deal! Pressure generated from linebacker and safety blitzes develops differently from pressure due to defensive line play. Perhaps Sanchez reacts better to the latter. Perhaps he perceives pressure less in the latter case, allowing him to feel more comfortable in the pocket, and read the defense, though denser, better. We don't have enough data to predict how Sanchez will react. It's safe to assume that he'll fail, but, you know, you can't be sure.
   
   
2. A pass-rush-happy defensive line is vulnerable to the run. What would Shonn Greene like more than to run past a pass-mad Dwight Freeney? And, look, the Colts were 29th in Adjusted Line Yards. (That said, they did pretty well in power situations (third or fourth down, two or less to go), so it's possible that once the Jets fall behind and start passing, the running game won't be able to pick up short first downs with good enough regularity.)
   
   
3. About that vaunted Colts pass rush, well, let's be honest: these aren't the 2005 Colts, which won a lot of games with defense and had the second-best adjusted sack rate in the league. That season (and 2004: 7th, 2000: 10th) has defined Freeney and Mathis as great pass rushers; the fact of the matter is that they've been positively middle of the road this year and were worse than that the past two years.
   
   
4. The Jets defense will probably be mostly helpless against Manning, modulo the drops and mistakes that happened last time in spades. They can't consistently make him miss because his blitz identification is second to none; they can take away his number one weapon but he has four or five perfectly good weapons.

This is almost certainly a Colts win. But there's a sliver of hope, mostly featuring the Colts defense folding and Peyton Manning having another bad day. That's football.

NFC Championship Preview

Let's look at the past three years of the NFC.

Going into the playoffs after the 2008 season, the Panthers and Giants were the two teams to beat. The Falcons, with a dominant ground game and a hot rookie quarterback, were a popular sleeper pick. The Panthers went 4-1 in their last five, losing only to the Giants, while the Giants were 2-3, having lost three games by nineteen points total to two playoff teams and the Cowboys. The Panthers, 12-4 on the season, lost to the Vikings by ten, the Falcons by seventeen, and the Bucs by twenty-four, besides that Giants game; those latter three losses had featured three return touchdowns (fumble, punt, blocked punt). The Panthers seemed strong; the top-seeded Giants were wobblier. They lost in the divisional round too: to the Eagles, who topped them by twelve. In the divisional round, the number six seed, which had scored one point more than its opponents and lucked into an NFC West championship in large part due to the utter weakness of that division, beats the Panthers by twenty points. No return touchdowns, no nothin'. It was the worst loss the Panthers had suffered all year. Arizona races ahead of the NFC. Season type one: seeds one and two finish the season weak and strong, and a low seed beats them both.

2007: The Packers and the Cowboys are the class of the NFC. The 'boys beat the Packers, then barely beat Detroit (1) and Carolina (7), losing in the process to Washington and Philadelphia. The Packers lose to the Cowboys, then smash Oakland and St. Louis. Chicago crushes them, then they crush Detroit. The Giants wobble into the playoffs having gone 3-3 in their last six, notably losing to the Vikings (these are the Vikings with neither Favre nor Peterson, mind) 41-17. Then they win the Super Bowl. Season type one as well.

2006: New Orleans, the two seed, finishes 3-2 with a ten point and a six point loss to Carolina and Washington, respectively. (The former game sees Drew Brees not starting.) The Bears, the one seed, finish 4-1. They squeak by the Seahawks, smash the Saints, and take the NFC title. Neither wild card makes a peep. Season type three: two strong finishes by the one and two, and the one takes the conference.

This season doesn't fit the mold. Both the Saints and Vikings looked downright vulnerable towards the end of the season, according to real, quantifiable metrics. Shouldn't it be more likely that an upset would occur? Well, apparently not. Both teams entered the divisional round ready to prove that they deserved their seeds. Here are some factors that will make tomorrow's game a classic:

1. Balance in the Saints' offense. The Vikings have a defense that is utterly impregnable against the run; the Saints rely on variation to mount an effective attack. Either Reggie Bush will really show his mettle by giving the Williamses something they haven't seen before, or Drew Brees will have to pass, pass, pass. Granted, there's more diversity in the Saints' passing offense than any contemporary pro offense. So if any offense could compensate for a shut-down running game, it's the Saints'. But that doesn't mean they wouldn't have to compensate, and I expect the manner in which they do will define the game.
2. Vikings turnovers. The Saints, as we saw last week, are turnover-happy on defense. The Vikings have the potential to be a turnover machine: we have a quarterback who "just has fun out there" and a fumbling halfback. The Saints will try to force as many turnovers as possible in whatever way they can: last week, they didn't stop Arizona from moving the ball, in the final analysis, merely from scoring enough.
3. Saints blitzes. Gregg Williams calls a six-blitz twenty-one percent of the time. This is an absolutely insane statistic, and it's crazy that Philadelphia blitzes more. The essential part is this: Favre does terribly against the blitz. Then again, he did great against the aggressive Dallas defense last week. It'll be interesting to look at who Favre's hot reads are, particularly on third down (principally Harvin and running backs) and whether the veteran has (finally) lost a step.
4. Vikings pass defense versus Saints offense. The Vikings have a pass defense that sees the non-Cedric Griffin side get targeted all the time. The Saints spread the ball more than any team in the league. The Vikings are vulnerable to deep passes; the Saints throw deep more than any team in the league. The Vikings can only hope to get an effective pass rush to limit the Saints to shallower options. That said, they'll almost certainly do just that. And since some of the Saints' diversity in receiver targets is tied to their ability to throw deep, the strongest anti-Vikings aspect of their pass offense might collapse a little.

I won't pick a team for this; as the structure of my writeup shows, the way this game swings is contingent on too many factors we simply can't predict.

NFL Divisional Weekend: Saturday Previews

Last week, we saw one incredibly exciting game (Packers-Cardinals), one end of an era (Eagles-Cowboys; I don't think the Eagles will be thought of as a playoff regular going forward, particularly if continued skepticism of Reid-McNabb leads to losing one of them), one defensive slog (Jets-Bengals), and one defensive whuppin' (Ravens-Patriots). This week looks like it'll be very different: the divisional round has a lot of strength vs. strength matchups, and I wouldn't be surprised if the result is a lot of one-sided games, determined from the outset by whose strength is... stronger. Anyway, on to previews.

ARI @ NO 4:30pm ET

Week 12 was the high-water mark for the Saints. They had come off a 38-17 win against the Patriots. In that game, Tom Brady threw two interceptions and no touchdowns. The Patriots never converted good field position into points (Welker had a forty-one yard punt return; zero points) and their two touchdowns came at the end of eighty and eighty-one yard drives. Drew Brees threw as many incompletions as touchdowns (five). I can't imagine there were many people the following Tuesday who really expected a non-Saints team to represent the NFC in February.

That would have been pretty reasonable, on the whole. The New Orleans story up until that point was an explosive, unpredictable offense based on the zany principles Sean Payton cooked up. That offense was complemented by an unforgiving, turnover-forcing pass defense, led by Darren Sharper's remarkable ability to return interceptions for touchdowns. The challenge for opponents, essentially, had been being content to be run-heavy even while the Saints offense could respond, seemingly automatically, with a touchdown drive where Drew Brees (with the assistance of a two yard run by Pierre Thomas) goes 4/4 for 74 yards.

Then the Washington game happened: a game the Saints could have lost if Washington had had a kicker worth anything. Let's put this in perspective: the Saints never sacked Jason Campbell. Our man JC threw only one interception. Drew Brees was forced to throw the ball forty-nine times. Early on, the Saints tried running on third and short and failed; then they switched to passes that nfl.com lists as "short middle," and Washington figured that out. This was the game that the Saints' weakness was revealed: drop enough men into coverage, and they can't do a thing. (Here's another wrinkle: this game could well have been lopsided in favor of Washington if not for the Brees interception that Meachem stripped to return for a touchdown and if not for a bizarre muffed punt by Washington.)

So the Saints had a weakness, but the news didn't spread quickly enough. They barely beat Atlanta in a game that saw Brees have a fantastically efficient day (to the tune of 31/40, 3TD). Would this game have gone differently had Atlanta played more like Washington defensively? Maybe. Then the loss to Dallas, and the Saints looked just mortal.

I think this result was prefigured by the Saints-Eagles game in Week 2, which featured Kevin Kolb at quarterback racking up 391 yards. Why this wasn't a cause for concern: the Saints still won by twenty-six. Also, Kolb threw three interceptions, one of which was returned for a touchdown. So were the Saints in this game bad at giving up yardage compared to how good they were at keeping it from it becoming points? Yes, essentially: both touchdowns were due to big plays (DeSean Jackson catch, Ellis Hobbs punt return), though there were two field goal drives of over sixty yards. Forcing turnovers help that.

But this is Kevin Kolb. And, indeed, this defensive hiccup came back later in the season. Over the whole season, the Saints gave up 31.01 yards per drive, good for twenty-second in the league (Kansas City: better. Seattle: better). Their defense was, indeed, buoyed by their ability to produce turnovers (third in turnovers per drive, with 13.9%). (Both of those statistics, by the way, are thanks to http://footballoutsiders.com.) That fell apart in their Dallas loss (no turnovers, and 439 net yards, 43.9 yards/drive) and their Tampa Bay loss (two interceptions for a swing of at least ten points, but 439 net yards, 48.8 yards/drive, and Tampa Bay, everyone: Tampa Bay and a rookic quarterback in one of his first starts). That's what I see here: New Orleans can't force turnovers as once they could, particularly not against playoff teams. And that will come back to bite them against Kurt Warner.

I come to the Cardinals, and I have little to say that hasn't already been said: we saw what they could do against a thought-fantastic pass defense last week, and I shudder to think what they might do against a once-fantastic one. Now, of course, last week was a statistical anomaly: the Cardinals caught their fair share of breaks, in which a defensive back chose to play inside instead of outside technique, or shaded his coverage to the left instead of to the right, or whatever. So I don't think that they'll put up another forty-plus offensive points, even against a defense that I think is worse than Green Bay's. (It certainly doesn't have the linebackers.) The last thing you want to give Kurt Warner is time to throw, and the Saints will have little choice but to do just that. The Cardinals don't operate well when they're just dropping men in coverage, as we saw last week; if Aaron Rodgers can read you, I bet Kurt Warner can too. So it'll be an exciting, high-scoring game, but I'll pick the upset here. Arizona by ten.

BAL @ IND 8:15pm ET

This game happened during the regular season, much like the whole damn wildcard round. That game was all manners of anomaly: Peyton Manning made bad reads and forced throws, the Ravens tried to run Ray Rice out of passing sets, nfl.com tries to get me to click "WATCH HIGHLIGHT" on each of the game's six field goals.

It's tough to draw inferences directly from that game, and it's probably not a great idea. The Ravens offense knows what it is now, and what it is is running Ray Rice. The Colts won't be able to stop him any better than the Patriots did; indeed, they'll do a worse job: the Patriots have about a 0.2 yard edge over the Colts in adjusted line yards, per FO. (Also, Rice's style doesn't match up well against the Colts: they can stop smaller backs much more effectively than larger backs.)

Strangely, the Colts would be predicted to do better defending passes to Rice; they're eleventh, versus the Patriots' twenty-sixth, against passes to running backs, though they give up comparable yardage. This, even though the Pats didn't give up a Rice catch last week. So I guess it's possible that Flacco loses this game, too, by throwing an interception into triple-coverage again.

Flacco's mechanics are not going to be the best this game, due to injuries. The Baltimore offensive line prevented Mathis and Freeney from getting a sack last time; they may well do it again, but giving Flacco time might simply not be worth it: the secret to this game for the Ravens is the ground game.

Let's be honest about what will happen when the Colts have the ball: Peyton Manning will complete passes frequently and drive down the field easily. The Ravens don't have the pass rush they did in the past, despite what happened last week. And the only way for a pass rush to be particularly effective against Manning is when it is very, very fast: the '05 Steelers beat the '05 Colts in the playoffs because Manning didn't have time to get to a hot read with any kind of accuracy (and because that rush could come quickly without sacrificing much in terms of coverage; the Steelers six-blitzed three or four times, but other than that got fast pressure with four man zone blitzes). So Manning will, in all likelihood, have almost as much time as he wants to scan the field. And the Ravens have such a depleted secondary (Frank Walker and Domonique Foxworth are starting) that receivers will be open.

Really, this reminds me of the Indianapolis-Miami game. Indy moves the ball at will, but only holds it for fifteen minutes. Miami gains about four yards a minute, takes eighteen plays to move fifty yards, whatever. Forty-five minutes of ball control, and a loss because Indianapolis can match Miami's pace. That's the thing with time-of-possession: if your offense is just as skilled as your opponent's, then it usually means diddly to get a high ToP. It doesn't mean diddly if:

1. The reason you have a high time of possession is because you have more possessions, via turnovers. So your equally talented offense turns more possessions into more points.
2. You have the offensive flexibility to stop running the ball all the time and start passing once the defense gets winded
3. Your ball-control offense doesn't get a high time of possession by running a bunch of eleven play drives that end in punts because they go thirty-nine yards. Drive conversion into points is still the name of the game, and if your offense doesn't have a good selection of plays that can work as a guaranteed one or two yards, then it cannot run the ball more than half the time or it will fail to score points on that drive. If you fail to score points and end up behind in the score, then every second you run off is also one you needed to come back.

The Ravens obviously lack the second criterion. They might have the first. I think they have diverse Ray Rice plays to satisfy the third criterion, but the Colts are good against running backs. I really don't see this working out any better than it did for Miami.

I wish the Ravens could win this one, just because a Ravens-Jets AFC Championship would be literally unwatchable by anyone but me (and I like watching football alone or with Hannah or my parents, not with crowds). And I think there's a fine chance that they pull it off. I just think that's only a bigger chance than the no chance at all most people give them. I'll pick Colts by fourteen.

Wild Card Recap

The only result that surprises me here is the Cardinals victory. There were a lot of questionable calls, though, that came against the Packers: there was a missed hold and OPI on the Larry Fitzgerald touchdown; there had been a roughing the passer that shouldn't have been called earlier. (Also, a helmet to helmet hit on the play preceding the fumble that cost the Packers the game, which probably would have been properly called as a tuck rule.)

I guess I can't complain; the Packers benefited from two absolutely inexplicable horsecollar calls (apparently you now cannot touch the back of the pads, ride the ball-carrier for a few yards, and then bring him down primarily with your other arm, even though that had been demonstrated on the NFL Network as precisely the proper way to cope with the rule, back when it was new.)granted

The loss of Atari Bigby was huge; the Packers hadn't been stopping the Cardinals before, but they became really easy to hit up the middle.

So I mostly think that that game should have gone the other way, though I'll admit that with the injuries to their left tackle and safety tonight, the Cardinals will probably play better next week than the Packers would have. But the other games this weekend were Dennis Green "they are who we thought they were" specials. The Ravens can turn takeaways into points better than anyone in the league? Yeah, we thought that. Tom Brady's skittish this year, particularly with no stopgap? Yeah, we thought that. The Jets will suffocate their opponent without playing any kind of exceptional football? Yeah, we thought that too.

Tomorrow we will be back to our usual doses of art and literature; glad to have you for a weekend of leisure.

NFL Wild Card Weekend: Sunday Predictions

BAL @ NE 1:00pm ET

These are not your older brother's Baltimore Ravens. Not only have they lost the majority of their Super Bowl-winning defense, they've lost a lot of the players from the second coming of that defense, the 2004-6 unit that included Adalius Thomas and Bart Scott. Thomas is on the other side of the field today; Scott is on the Jets; their defensive coordinator's gone the same way. They're no longer a defense-first club.

They're also not the B

altimore Ravens of the beginning of the season. Let's see who were listed as inactive last week: Tavares Gooden, Justin Harper, Marcus Paschal, Keith Fitzhugh, Kelly Talavou and John Beck. Ed Reed was a gametime decision, and Mason was out. Of course, this week is more nebulous. Heap, Mason, and Flacco are all "probable" but are expected to play; it's hard to say if Jarret Johnson is in their category or in Gooden's. Look, while I'm not quivering in fear when I hear the Steelers are going to have to face the Ravens with John Beck active, it's still substantial to be short a backup quarterback, and it's certainly something to be short a pair of defensive backs and potentially several safeties.

Looking at all this, it's hard to say whether or not the Ravens are more wracked by injuries than the Patriots, who, curse them, have guaranteed that there will never be an interesting week seventeen game ever again. Clubs in wildcard contention will grab their MCLs in fear and throw their practice squads at each other. Welker is on IR. Brady has a broken finger and apparently some rib trouble, but will play. Center Dan Connolly is questionable. Nick Kaczur is probable, and Randy Moss was spotted looking hobbled at Friday's practice. Having gotten a week's rest, I can't imagine Wilfork and Warren not playing. But playing hobbled, as Moss and Brady will be doing, is still something: expect a couple more errant throws, a couple more bobbles, and so forth.

Ray Rice has had a fantastic season, and I think the Ravens have realized that he's a more reliable weapon than the downfield passing offense they were prepared to rely on at the beginning of the season. I think that that transformation will lead to a more effective attack against the Patriots; their earlier game was decided by six points and saw twenty Flacco incompletions and only eleven Ray Rice rushes. That won't happen again, and the Ravens will be able to move the ball with some consistency.

Football Outsiders observes that with Welker out of the game, the Ravens will be able to send Chris Carr on corner blitzes more frequently (since they won't be double-covering Edelman). I'm also skeptical of Sammy Morris's ability to run the ball effectively against the Ravens (the first game saw three running backs have five, six, and seven rushes and twenty-two, twenty-one, and twenty-five yards: none particularly effective, and Morris would have been five for nine if not for a lucky missed tackle). Without a running game, Brady is going to have to be flawless, since there's much less margin for error.

When Brady had no one to throw to in 2006, he made Jabar Gaffney and company far better than they'd have been otherwise, but he didn't look like a he was a miracle worker. When he had Moss and Welker and Stallworth the next year, he looked untouchable (barring an exceptional defensive line, like the Giants). He's still not the same as he was in 2007; his mobility is still recovering from his knee injury. But most notable is his confidence, which isn't at all the same, and will take a further hit when he has to maintain an almost impossible level of consistency without his safety valve, Welker. The Patriots won't sustain any long drives today: they'll score, certainly, but in quick five or six play drives.

I'll take Baltimore in a close one; let's say 27-21.

GB @ ARI 4:40pm ET

In my elaborate fantasyland (some might say I have a rich inner life), the outcome of this game could well make Arizona more likely to select Tim Tebow. After all, Arizona has the most religious quarterback in the league, an old, repeatedly concussed quarterback, and a quarterback with a really fast release: quite the three-for-one deal, that Kurt Warner. Assuming that Matt Leinart really isn't the quarterback of the future (and while it's true that some of his poor performances have come off the bench, where second-string quarterbacks are always weaker due to a lack of reps with the first team the previous week, several have come as a starter), the Cardinals could really use Tebow.

They have no running game to speak of (in particular, no short game); they have no tight end to speak of (they brought in Anthony Becht from St. Louis this year, and subsequently threw to him seven times this year, for good reason; his backup, Stephen Spach, has played more recently and has another four catches); they have no quarterback if Kurt ever takes too hard a hit. Why not draft Tebow as an H-back today and a quarterback tomorrow, once Kurt Warner of the quick release works with him a bit? I know, a man can dream.

In any event, the whole "Kurt Warner is totally valuable to the Cardinals" point plays into the biggest argument for discounting the result of the regular season game between these teams: Warner threw six passes, and former Steelers third stringer Brian St. Pierre threw the only touchdown as Leinart went 13/21 for ninety-six yards and two picks. Green Bay stacked the run, they managed forty-eight yards on fourteen attempts (cut the two long runs, and they have twenty on twelve), and the result is a Green Bay landslide.

I would suggest that Leinart's performance is an indication of the strength of the Green Bay defense rather than Leinart's inadequacy, but that Green Bay unit has been struggling of late. In a game against Baltimore, it committed more pass interference than it made tough plays. In a game against Pittsburgh, it surrendered 503 yards through the air (none of them in garbage time).

The story of last year's playoffs for Arizona is how they got a pass defense to complement its already relatively stout run defense, and then went on a tear. Through the regular season, both its units have been generically below average (in yards, twenty-third against the pass, seventeenth against the run; advanced stats roughly agree). Similar improvement, in order to compete with playoff teams, is needed and probably won't be forthcoming.

The story of this year's playoffs may well be how Anquan Boldin being likely unable to play against the Packers left Kurt Warner without a possession receiver to rely on (no tight end, again; teaching Steve Breaston how to run a crossing route, extend for the ball, and then get plowed by Atari Bigby is more reminiscent of Three Men and a Baby than Mulan). That could well be his doom; Beanie Wells is a pretty efficient receiver out of the backfield, but that's when there's Boldin as a distraction: Warner's checkdowns will become predictable quickly, and flat routes are easy to jump. What happened in his six-turnover game against Carolina? The story of the day was this: Fitz motions across the formation to the strong side of an offset-I, the ball is snapped, Warner sees nothing and checks down to Wells running a flat route, Julius Peppers returns an interception for a score.

Arizona will certainly score more than it did in week seventeen, with Warner able to do more with his wide receiver corps minus Boldin than Leinart can do with the whole package. But there'll be more turnovers, too: Green Bay has been waiting for this.

I'm much more bullish on Rodgers than I am on Ryan Grant at this point. Green Bay will be able to move the ball through the air pretty easily, while the ground game will be somewhat more of a struggle for them. It won't be a particularly interesting struggle, though, since if the ground game dries up, they can abandon it, or use it sparingly, without fear. If the Arizona corners have strengths, it's playing man to man against the deep ball. If there's a team in the league content to throw at most the occasional deep ball (probably to Greg Jennings) and mostly throw short timing routes to Donald Driver, it's Green Bay. (Given his recent play, Matt Hasselbeck's only qualm about throwing to Donald Driver is that he's not A.J. Hawk.)

I'll pick Green Bay by a decent margin: let's say 31-21.

NFL Wild Card Weekend: Saturday Predictions

I promise this won't become a sports blog! That just is a lot of what's on my mind at the moment, and you don't get the luxury of choosing what I write on.

All four wildcard games already happened this season, and this is the first of three that happened last week. (Sunday's AFC game happened much earlier, and while everyone talks about Wes Welker's injury being a potential difference-maker this weekend, he was injured for the first BAL-NE matchup this year, too.)

In any event, it's pretty tempting to make predictions about a playoff game based on the regular season matchup. I'm reluctant to do that too much not because "playoff football" is fundamentally different (apparently, it's all about defense and pounding the rock, which has comically little to do with how the playoffs actually have worked for the last ten years or so) but:

1. Because judging off a single regular season game (even if it's with the same opponent) is working with a hilariously small sample size; if the game was decided by a single score, then the difference literally could have been a receiver being a half-step slow in making his cut, and I'm uncomfortable suggesting that that's enough for me. Better to judge off a season of work (adjusted for garbage time possessions that aren't representative of a team's play) or off the five games against opponents most like the relevant opponent, or something.
2. Because even if a single regular season game were a large enough sample size to make claims about the outcome of a playoff game, it's difficult to parse out which observations about that regular season game have predictive power and which are noise.

So I'll refer to a regular season matchup when it seems to provide good context or particularly bad context. Season-long, cumulative analysis I'll leave to the experts (or perhaps I'll do some of it myself when it gets down to the conference championships).

NYJ @ CIN, 4:30pm ET

Things to ignore from the regular season matchup:

1. CIN lining up in a really ineffective 46. Football Outsiders' take on this wrinkle is that it was intended to give NYJ something extra to think about, and won't be used much this week; there are all kinds of levels on which this could operate (including "let's run ineffective plays out of this formation this week so that NYJ thinks it's just meant to distract them in gameplanning for next week") but the upshot is that the few 46 plays we saw won't be a big part of this week's game, whether they're suddenly effective or still ineffective. (Even if CIN decides to try it, the first person I'd pick to make on-the-fly adjustments against a 46 is noted son of Buddy Ryan Rex Ryan.)
2. Carson Palmer's disappearing act. Ever since his injury in the wild card round of the 2005 season playoffs against Pittsburgh, Carson Palmer hasn't had a consistently successful season. Last season, he played four mediocre games (all against playoff teams, but still); the season before, he would bracket 95+ quarterback rating games against great pass defenses between 60- games against terrible pass defenses. Carson Palmer, everybody. Palmer looked genuinely bewildered last weekend, and his stat line showed it. But with another week to scout the Jets, look for Palmer to regress to the mean this week. If he can stand to spread the ball around, then the Jets are vulnerable, particularly when they bring pressure.
3. Chad Ochocinco dropping passes. Chad's going to be Carson Palmer's first target (because what's his alternative, Laveranues Coles? Jerome Simpson?). And Chad isn't going to have a hundred yard day, or a two touchdown day, or a reason to look particularly cocky at the end of the day, because Revis really does blanket him effectively. But I think the two passes that bounced off his fingers were an artifact of small sample size, not a sign that he's going downhill.

Things to pay a lot of attention to:

1. Brad Smith running option plays out of the pistol. It's clear by now that Brad Smith is much more than a good punt returner; he has downfield vision beyond his years. Given that the passing game just isn't a major option today (the CIN corners are too good and Sanchez too green and in too cold an environment), Brad Smith is their big-play threat.
2. Thomas Jones isn't the same; he wasn't too effective last weekend. Well, maybe he is the same, and the stats just don't show it: Jones has put up some gaudy YPC this year (4.2 overall, but buoyed by a lot of long runs; Football Outsiders only gives him a 44% success rate, which is good for thirty-eighth in the league) but was stopped by CIN last week (27 carries netted only 78 yards). Jones didn't manage a long run all game, and it didn't look like he was too close to it. It looks like the loss of Ray Maualuga hasn't stopped CIN on run defense; it also looked like their secondary was helping out on the run very effectively.
3. CIN needs to start running the ball effectively. With some injuries on defense, it can't stand to get tired, particularly when the NYJ attack doesn't play to their remaining strength (their cornerbacks). An offense that can run the ball fifty-eight times is not their friend (nor is their own offense, which, discounting two rushes, one by Johnson and one by Scott, for twenty-two yards apiece, managed sixteen carries for twenty-eight yards). Granted, let's just count first-half carries for the Jets: that's still thirty-four carries. Uh. CIN is going to need to run the ball effectively if Carson Palmer's going to have one of his good games; they're also going to need to run the ball effectively if NYJ is ever going to get off the field.

If you couldn't tell, I'm picking the Jets today, though I hardly expect the 37-0 lashing of last weekend. I'd pick something more conservative like 21-10. (No reason to expect the same number of Brad Smith home runs or Ochocinco drops.)

PHI @ DAL, 8:00pm ET

This game is inherently a bit harder for me, in no small part because I don't watch the NFC as frequently and because I hate the Cowboys.

Things to ignore from the regular season matchups:

1. DeSean Jackson is going to play. One element that helped the Cowboys win last Sunday was the absence of DeSean Jackson, the Eagles' deep threat. One element that helped them win in their first matchup was his lackluster performance in Week 9. That likely won't happen again; over the course of this season the Eagles have come to realize that their passing game is DeSean Jackson, Brent Celek, and a bunch of screens.
2. Tony Romo. This season has dedicated a lot of time to Tony Romo and what a gosh-darned disappointment he's been. I don't really know why this is; I guess he's a gosh-darned disappointment to someone. But here's the problem: he wasn't as bad as people were making him out to be early in the season, and he's not as new and improved as people are making him out to be now. He's still a distinctly second-tier passer whose strength is fast, short plays and hot reads. Get him in third and long, and he falls apart. This is the Tony Romo we've always known, and that's okay. Whatever inferences we try to draw about his quarterback play from any regular season games are going to be colored too much by biases one way or another (is he reborn? is he a joke?) to reach a productive conclusion.

Things to pay a lot of attention to:

1. Celek isn't going to be too effective. Ball and Sensabaugh have done a fair job of limiting him over the top in the past two games; his production has come against Ken Hamlin, a third-stringer who probably will get less playing time today. And they haven't done it via big plays; they've done it with tight, consistent coverage.
2. The Eagles' offensive line. The talk of the town around draft day this past year was the Eagles' new line: they were all under thirty and signed through 2014, 2013, 2013, 2015, 2014. It was going to be a bright new year, with McNabb able to stay in the pocket, no longer having to extend the play with his ever-older legs. This is decreasingly true: Jamaal Jackson is short an ACL, and Stacy Andrews isn't recovering from his own any too quickly. The line is full of holes, and the Cowboys managed four sacks in both matchups. The difference is that in the second game, the Cowboys got three of those sacks from defensive linemen. If they can do that again this game, if they can get pressure without having to bring men on a blitz, then they'll be able to sit back against McNabb and wait until he makes mistakes. I'm no McNabb detractor; in fact, I think he's a pretty smart quarterback: and for that reason, he's doubly hurt when the defense can get pressure on him without making itself vulnerable.

I wish I didn't have to say it, but I'll take the Cowboys, albeit in a close one: let's say 24-21.

A method for making strength-of-schedule adjustments

So let's say that we have the basic end products of a season of some sport: quizbowl, baseball, football, whatever: first, a win-loss record (and a record of each team's schedule to whom those wins and losses took place) and a few cumulative stats (perhaps points for and against, yards for and against, runs for and against, strikeouts for and against, whatever).

When determining which of two teams is stronger, pundits often attempt to appear effete by moving past the low-hanging fruit of win-loss record, and they instead latch on to net statistics like net points. Generally, a team that outscores its opponents by an average of twenty points per game is better than one that outscores its opponents by an average of five. But is that any better or worse than saying that the former team is better because it went 14-2, not 10-6?

I say not really. I say not really in large part because strength of schedule is unaccounted for. One team playing a much weaker schedule can inflate net points even more than it might inflate record, and vice-versa. So we need to construct a baseline.

Suppose there are six teams in two divisions. Each team plays its two division opponents twice each and the teams in the other division once each, for a seven game season. We have teams A, B, C and teams D, E, F. I propose we construct

rat_A = net_stat_A +(1/7)(2*rat_B + 2*rat_C + rat_D + rat_E + rat_F)
rat_B = net_stat_B +(1/7)(2*rat_A + 2*rat_C + rat_D + rat_E + rat_F)
rat_C = net_stat_C +(1/7)(2*rat_B + 2*rat_A + rat_D + rat_E + rat_F)
rat_D = net_stat_D +(1/7)(2*rat_E + 2*rat_F + rat_A + rat_B + rat_C)
rat_E = net_stat_E +(1/7)(2*rat_F + 2*rat_D + rat_A + rat_B + rat_C)
rat_F = net_stat_F +(1/7)(2*rat_D + 2*rat_E + rat_A + rat_B + rat_C)

What does this mean? This will produce team ratings where zero is a perfectly average team (having played an average schedule and put up a total of zero net points up against it, or having played a schedule of teams a total of seven points above average and put up negative seven net points against it, et cetera). Moreover, these ratings can be solved pretty quickly with a little linear algebra, or with an iterative method: let's suppose that we initialize all the ratings to the net statistics. Let's say A is +40 on the year, B is +5, C is -20, D is +30, E is -10, F is -45. So we write

new_rat_A = 40 +(1/7)(10 - 40 + 30 - 10 - 45) = 40 - 55/7 = 32.14
new_rat_B = 5 +(1/7)(80 - 40 + 30 - 10 - 45) = 5 + 15/7 = 7.14
new_rat_C = -20 +(1/7)(10 + 80 + 30 - 10 - 45) = -20 + 65/7 = -10.71
new_rat_D = 30 +(1/7)(-20 - 90 + 40 + 5 - 20) = 30 - 85/7 = 17.85
new_rat_E = -10 +(1/7)(60 - 90 + 40 + 5 - 20) = -10 - 5/7 = -10.71
new_rat_F = -45 +(1/7)(60 - 20 + 40 + 5 - 20) = -45 + 65/7 = -35.71

and so forth. Of course, the linear algebra method is much more attractive, particularly with 100+ game schedules and 30+ teams.

This type of rating doesn't have to be based off of net points: it can be net yards, for example, or a net measure of some type of advanced stat. It's also general: it doesn't rely on the specifics of any given sport.

Football Outsiders

I of course have to link to the site that inspired my interest in sabermetrics.

(Like every red-blooded American, that love was really spawned by reading Bill James; my dad taught me arithmetic back when the Pirates were good (believe me, I can't remember it) and at that point, why not compute some sabermetrics and create a game called "Spinner Baseball" that relied on a spinner for randomness and a lot of pie charts. But the problem there is the next dozen years were enough to convince me that any passion about baseball was far more likely to bring me sorrow than joy. So I took refuge in the Steelers.)

So if you haven't already read Football Outsiders, please do. The central element of their sabermetrics is a statistic called DVOA, a stat generated by comparing a team's perfomance, say, converting third and six on its own twenty to the league's performance in that same situation, then normalizing for the defense it faced (and analogous comparisons for offense). This is a good system for giving you an idea of how strong a team is in an abstract sense; this system can further be used to predict game outcomes by prioritizing certain phases of the game: perhaps red zone offense and third downs, perhaps fourth quarter performance (since old defenses can get tired and really go belly-up in the fourth quarter, as I learned painfully this year).

It predicts game winners pretty well in its raw form; throwing a couple of coefficients and varying them to maximize correspondence to known wins and losses can only improve it, right?

Anyway, this is a pretty great system on this level. One of the problems is that it attempts to produce individual statistics even though the system is so inherently dependent on the team as a whole. Was that Shaun Alexander (2005 edition) twenty-seven yard run on third and three so much better than the expected league performance because Shaun Alexander (2005 edition) is such a god of a running back, or is it because he has the best offensive line in the game? To a certain extent they tease out offensive line statistics and create metrics that estimate how much of a run owes to line work. But I don't know to what extent, if any, they're applied to individual running back DVOA. (And certainly the degree to which the defense was playing the pass because Peyton Manning was in the building isn't incorporated.)

So I'd really like to see them do more to de-couple offense and defense and different parts of the offense and defense (if they're going to try to produce ratings for players and for different aspects of the offense and defense, they'd better). At the moment, though, they're certainly the highest-quality football sabermetrics available.