Week 10 - Unbeaten side takes a break

[packoman]

 

 

I'm really bad at predictions but here goes.

 

Washington @ Minnesota

Cincinnati @ Baltimore

Buffalo @ Pittsburgh

St Louis @ Indianapolis

Oakland @ NY Giants

Philadelphia @ Green Bay

Seattle @ Atlanta

Detroit @ Chicago

Jacksonville @ Tennessee

Carolina @ San Francisco

Houston @ Arizona

Denver @ San Diego

Dallas @ New Orleans

Miami @ Tampa Bay

 

5-8 

[kurtsimonw]

Can people keep betting against the Giants. We'll win the Super Bowl again.

[BOF]

Can people keep betting against the Giants. We'll win the Super Bowl again.

I usually back them at home.

[rhyscartwright_avfc]

After timing I know but 8-5 so far. Gone with fins tonight. Need them as well or at least need their D for VT fantasy reasons. 9 pts behind I have them, oppo has Vincent Jackson.

[rhyscartwright_avfc]

For the record. Ones I got wrong. Bengals, 49ers, Packers, Titans, Colts.

[abdomlahor]

9-4 in the Pick'em league. Went for Tampa tonight.

[Milfner]

Need Vincent Jackson to pick up 14 points (140 yards or 80 yards and a TD) to win my match up in fantasy. If I went for Golden Tate like I should've I would've won. Dammit. 

Edited November 11, 2013 by Milfner

[kkr]

Sean Lee really is a quality player, as soon as he went out that Dallas D imploded.

Most pleasing!

[leviramsey]

Now we're waiting on the Chiefs to lose to the Broncos, or for the Chiefs to lose to someone else and someone else to beat either Broncos or Seahawks to construct a circle of life...

[abdomlahor]

9-4 in the Pick'em league. Went for Tampa tonight.

Changed my prediction to Miami at the last minute.   

[leviramsey]

Bengals radio call of the Hail Mary... I haven't heard it, but Dave Lapham is always entertaining...

[BOF]

It surprises me a lot that a player has the power to relinquish his own starting position. Not only that but he has the power to decide who plays instead of him, without telling the DC or the HC (who in this case are the same person). Is that something that has been known to happen a lot in the NFL?

Quentin Jammer gets surprise start, unbeknown to Jack Del Rio

Jack Del Rio, the Broncos' interim head coach, did not start Quentin Jammer at cornerback Sunday against the San Diego Chargers. Del Rio, the Broncos' defensive coordinator, did not start Jammer for the first time this season. And yet, on the first play of the game, there Jammer was, as he had been so many times before at Qualcomm Stadium, starting at cornerback.

"My man right here gave me the start today," Jammer said, nodding to the tall, skinny guy dressing at the next locker over. "It was his call. Dominique gave me the start."

Without notifying Del Rio, or Denver's other 10 defensive starters, Dominique Rodgers- Cromartie, the team's usual No. 1 right cornerback, paid tribute to Jammer by giving away his starting assignment against his former team.

"I grew up watching guys like Jam and Champ Bailey," Rodgers-Cromartie said. "I thought it was only right that he start in a place where he played for such a long time."

Jammer was the Chargers' first-round draft pick in 2002. He played 11 seasons for them and signed with the Broncos as a free agent during the offseason.

"It's not like I assigned him to start the first play," Del Rio said after the Broncos' 28-20 victory, unaware the teammates had pulled a switcheroo. "But he's on alert."

Playing time has been difficult for Jammer to get since he signed with the Broncos, but he found some Sunday against his former team thanks in part to a gracious teammate.

Jammer wound up splitting playing time in the first quarter with Rodgers-Cromartie. In the second quarter, Rodgers-Cromartie returned to his normal spot in the Broncos' base defense.

"I didn't know what was going on," said Chris Harris, who made a start opposite Jammer at left cornerback. "I just knew I had the left. Sometimes I'm wondering what's going on. They had that schemed up."

Del Rio had planned to play Jammer more against the Chargers because of his physical style in press coverage. But it was Rodgers-Cromartie who gave Jammer the start.

"I thanked him," Jammer said. "I thanked him before the game and I've been thanking him after the game."

Read more: Quentin Jammer gets surprise start, unbeknown to Jack Del Rio - The Denver Post http://www.denverpost.com/broncos/ci_24496527/quentin-jammer-gets-surprise-start-unbeknown-jack-del#ixzz2kR9qmvyt

Read The Denver Post's Terms of Use of its content: http://www.denverpost.com/termsofuse

Follow us: @Denverpost on Twitter | Denverpost on Facebook

[BOF]

Dammit I deserve bonus points for getting the outsiders right. Philly in Green Bay, Detroit in Chicago & especially the 0-8 Bucs.

We need a more complex prediction game

If you correctly pick ...

... the favourite* at home = 1pt

... the favourite on the road = 1.25pts

... the outsider at home = 1.5pts

... the outsider on the road = 2pts

* based on handicap.

[leviramsey]

Why not just pick against the spread?

[BOF]

Because being wrong is zero points.

[leviramsey]

Picking wrong against the spread would be zero points, too.

[BOF]

Nah that's a different game altogether. We're just picking winners. I'm just suggesting kudos for brave predictions that come off :-)

[leviramsey]

If going that route, then why not adjust the handicap used (since the handicap will pretty much bake in a 3 point home advantage)? So you'd have something like

Road dog (home team favored by 3.5 or more): 4pt

Home dog: 3pt

Road pick-em (home team favored by 0 to 3): 3pt

Home pick-em: 2pt

Road favorite: 2pt

Home favorite (by 3.5 or more): 1pt

[leviramsey]

DVOA

The big news in this week's Football Outsiders DVOA ratings is the impact of the Rams' huge blowout upset of the Indianapolis Colts. The Colts, who were third overall in DVOA just a couple weeks ago, drop from fifth all the way down to 14th. That's a huge change at this point in the season; remember, because DVOA considers every single game, team ranks change much less each week compared to subjective "power rankings" which tend to overreact to a single game. Perhaps DVOA is overreacting to a single game as well, but when you add every single play of this game to every other single play the Colts have run this year... well, that's a lot of bad plays. The Rams, in turn, jump ten spots from 26th to 16th based on this one game. This isn't just about rankings changing because teams are bunched close together. Indianapolis' overall DVOA dropped from 20.2% to 3.6%, while St. Louis went from -13.2% to -2.9%.

With opponent adjustments, the Colts' single-game DVOA of -107.1% is the third-lowest of the season, trailing only Jacksonville in their 28-2 loss to Kansas City in Week 1 (-118.9% DVOA) and Oakland in last week's 49-20 loss to Philadelphia (-109.0% DVOA).

Most of the other teams stay in roughly the same places this week. Of course, Football Outsiders already had Carolina ranked third, so their win over San Francisco wasn't a huge surprise (it was our ESPN Upset Watch, after all) and the Panthers' overall DVOA only rises by 2.7%. In the NFC North, Detroit moves up while Green Bay and Chicago move down. In the NFC South, the Saints and Bucs move up while the Falcons move down. And just in case you were looking for more evidence of Football Outsiders' pro-Patriots bias, New England moves from 11th to seventh without even playing a game. In reality, the Patriots just moved up by a few tenths of a percentage point in DVOA because of changes in opponent adjustments; it helps a team's ranking when a few teams above you (Green Bay, Cincinnati, Indianapolis) lose during your bye week.

One split that's interesting to note is the split between the AFC and NFC. Going into this season, it certainly looked like the NFC was the clearly dominant conference. Early results went completely counter to this expectation. The AFC started 11-3 against the NFC in the first three weeks of the season. But a few weeks later, things have evened out. The AFC and NFC are now at 23-23 in interconference games, and the NFC dominance is once again showing itself in the DVOA rankings. Denver may be our top team, but NFC teams currently rank second through sixth. The NFC also has nine of the top 13 teams and 11 of the top 16 teams. The bottom eight teams all represent either the AFC or the NFC East.

I had someone from the Washington Post contact me to ask about Washington's playoff chances this year compared to last year when they were also 3-6 through nine games. The similarity between the two years is actually quite remarkable. Last year, we gave Washington a 4.5 percent chance to make the playoffs after Week 10. This year it's about half that, 2.1 percent, despite the fact that Washington is one game closer to first place in the division compared to a year ago. The difference is in total DVOA; Washington is 30th overall right now, compared to 21st overall last year at this time. But if we look at the rankings in each category, the differences aren't really that big. Last year at this time, Washington was 14th in offense, 23rd in defense, and 28th in special teams. This year, Washington is 15th in offense, 24th in defense, and 32nd in special teams. The difference between the two teams is almost entirely Washington's historically awful special teams performance -- which also is the unit most likely to improve in the second half of the season, since special teams performance is so much less consistent than offense or defense. As for schedule, a year ago we ranked Washington's remaining schedule 19th. This year, we rank Washington's remaining schedule... 19th.

Although Denver's overall DVOA rating is still number one, it's fallen quite a bit over the past few weeks. There are two reasons for that. First, with more information about how good teams are in 2013, it has become clear that the Broncos (along with the Chiefs and Chargers) have played a ridiculously easy schedule this season. Second, the Broncos have not matched their dominating victories of September in October and November. Their big Week 8 victory over Washington has a single-game DVOA of 69.8%, but they are below 10% in Weeks 5, 6, and 7, and just at 22.1% for this week's win over San Diego. The Broncos have now dropped off our list of the best total DVOA teams ever, which means we've dropped that table from our "Best and Worst Ever Watch." For those wondering, the Broncos are the 20th best team through Week 10 since 1989. The Broncos remain on the list for the best offensive DVOA ever. In addition, the Jaguars are still coming close to the worst DVOA ever despite their victory over Tennessee. One of the teams below them has a bit of an asterisk, as 1993 was the year with two bye weeks; the 1993 Buccaneers had only played eight games and were 2-6 after Week 10.

Meanwhile, we continue to see some of the worst special teams of all time from Washington, Houston, and the New York Giants. Mike Tanier wrote about that over at Sports on Earth a couple days ago.

From the comments:

I honestly cannot imagine what the 2 teams with worse Special Teams ratings than the Giants look like. The Giants cannot cover kicks or punts, their punter is playing horribly, and the kicker's two misses were extremely costly (especially in KC game). Add in that they got a punt blocked last week and they can't do a single thing well.

Oh, the Redskins are worse.

They had a fake punt call last week where the guy who was supposed to catch the pass missed the call and just flew downfield. Pass went futilely in his direction while he never looked back.

Of course, that was called back for a false start. They then made a 40-something yard punt with huge return combined with another penalty, all of which ended up netting the defense 5 or so yards in field position from the original 4th down line of scrimmage.

The talk in DC this week has been to bring in Marv Levy to take over the special teams' coaching. Yes, 88-year old Marv Levy. I honestly thought he was dead.

In fairness he probably doesn't have to be alive to help the Redskins Special Teams.

[BOF]

If going that route, then why not adjust the handicap used (since the handicap will pretty much bake in a 3 point home advantage)? So you'd have something like

Road dog (home team favored by 3.5 or more): 4pt

Home dog: 3pt

Road pick-em (home team favored by 0 to 3): 3pt

Home pick-em: 2pt

Road favorite: 2pt

Home favorite (by 3.5 or more): 1pt

Because we also want to avoid the pre-requisite of a masters degree in maths I'm exaggerating but you know what I mean. It still needs to be easy to follow. I'll add handicap to the week 11 thread.