NBA

LeBron’s Path To The NBA’s All-Time Scoring Crown, In 2 Charts

By Neil Paine

Feb. 7, 2023, at 10:19 AM

While it has been far from a banner season for the Los Angeles Lakers, one bright spot has been LeBron James’s pursuit of an NBA record that was once considered unbreakable: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s all-time scoring mark of 38,387 career points. After James notched 27 points against the New Orleans Pelicans on Saturday, his lifetime tally of 38,352 sits just 35 points shy of Abdul-Jabbar’s record. 

Since James has scored at least 35 points in 11 of the 43 games he’s played this season (about 26 percent of the time), there is a decent chance he ties or breaks the record Tuesday night against the Oklahoma City Thunder — and he is all but certain to break it by Thursday’s game against the Milwaukee Bucks.¹ Although NBA players are usually measured more on championships and per-game output than raw totals, the scoring record will regardless be one of the shinier items on James’s long list of career accomplishments — one that truly underscores his longevity, durability and continued production, even at age 38 (and counting).

One way we can see this is by comparing James’s career points with Abdul-Jabbar’s over time, through each game of their careers. It may surprise contemporary fans to know that Abdul-Jabbar had more points through each and every game of their respective careers up until Game No. 1,120; the 33 points LeBron scored then, on Feb. 25, 2018, finally allowed him to overtake Abdul-Jabbar’s pace — and he’s never looked back since. While Abdul-Jabbar’s point total followed a gently arcing path during the late stages of his career, reflecting the normal career trajectory that sees a player’s production tail off as he ages, James’s total has steadily increased along roughly the same straight line it always has, perhaps even getting steeper in recent seasons as he approached the record number.

Thanks to his remarkable ability to defy Father Time, James should be able to chase down Abdul-Jabbar’s career scoring mark in about 150 fewer games than it took the great sky-hooking big man to originally compile it.

There is another important explanation for the difference in scoring pace between the two legends, however. By virtue of being able to skip college basketball and leap straight to the pros out of high school in 2003, James also got a sizable head start on Abdul-Jabbar, who played four years at UCLA (three on the varsity team) before being drafted No. 1 by the Milwaukee Bucks in 1969.² By the time James was the age Abdul-Jabbar was on the day of his NBA debut (22 years and 185 days), LeBron already had 8,439 career NBA points.

That’s also why, by the time Abdul-Jabbar got to James’s current total of 1,409 games, he was nearly two and a half years older than James is now, and his production was seriously slowing. But the head start of skipping college wasn’t exactly an automatic record-breaking cheat code for James, either. It’s worth pointing out that other preps-to-pros stars — such as Kobe Bryant, Kevin Garnett, Tracy McGrady and Dwight Howard — ran out of steam well before the age at which LeBron is currently maintaining his greatness. (Bryant was 37 years and 234 days old on the date of his 60-point career finale — about six months younger than James is right now.)

And besides, if his place on the timeline of basketball history gave James an advantage earlier generations lacked, it also gives him an opportunity. LeBron is currently averaging 30.0 points per game this season — well above his career average of 27.2 — and presumably has a number of good years left in the tank, especially if he plays into his 40s the way Abdul-Jabbar did. That will give him a unique chance to push the NBA's all-time scoring record to even greater heights: If Abdul-Jabbar left it in the stratosphere, James might leave it in the mesosphere or even the thermosphere. And that means this time, the record really, truly might be unbreakable for future generations of NBA stars.

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NFL

Which Stars Are Going To Blow Up In Super Bowl LVII?

By Neil Paine and Josh Hermsmeyer and Neil Paine and Josh Hermsmeyer

Feb. 1, 2023, at 6:00 AM

The teams are set for Super Bowl LVII, and now it’s time for the longest two weeks in sports — the wait between the NFL’s conference championships and the Big Game itself. One upside of the layoff, however, is the chance it will give fans to get to know the Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles inside and out. So with that in mind, we wanted to highlight a handful of the key players on each side of this matchup who are certain to play a central role in determining the outcome.

Philadelphia Eagles

QB Jalen Hurts

Any discussion of the Eagles’ Super Bowl flight has to begin with Hurts, Philadelphia’s field general and one of the league’s five MVP finalists. The Eagles are 16-1 in games Hurts has started this season (including playoffs) and they are scoring a league-best 29.5 points per game in those starts.³ But what really has enabled Philadelphia’s rise to the edge of a championship has been Hurts’s individual passing improvement this season, one of the largest year-over-year leaps in performance by any young Super Bowl QB since the merger:

Before this season, Hurts was merely a solid starter, with roughly a league-average passer rating index (according to Pro-Football-Reference.com), and the Eagles went 8-7 in his starts. But in 2022, Hurts improved his index by nearly 25 points, rising to become one of the league’s most efficient passers — and in turn, Philadelphia’s offense, which had been decent but not great last year, ended up ranking second in scoring. (This mirrors the same sudden, championship-caliber improvement we’ve seen from other young Super Bowl signal-callers over the years, most recently with Cincinnati’s Joe Burrow last season.) Add in Hurts’s 760 rushing yards with 13 rushing TDs — easily the most among QBs — and you can see why he made this Philly offense nearly impossible to defend all season long. Without Hurts giving the Eagles such a dramatic upgrade under center, it’s hard to imagine them soaring anywhere near as high as they have this year.

WR A.J. Brown

As impressive as Hurts’s growth has been in leading Philadelphia’s offense, he has hardly done it alone. For one thing, he was supported by a balanced system that featured the league’s second-best run-blocking offensive line (according to ESPN’s win rate statistics) and a multi-pronged rushing attack led by Miles Sanders — one of only five runners with at least 1,200 yards and double-digit TDs this year. Even more importantly, Hurts had an improved group of receivers to target, headlined by the huge addition of A.J. Brown in a trade from the Tennessee Titans. During his first season as an Eagle, all Brown did was tie for third in the league in receiving TDs (11) and rank fourth in yards (1,496), giving Philly its most prolific receiver by yards per game since Mike Quick in 1983. But that’s only scratching the surface of what Brown brought to this offense.

If you look at yards per route run — a great measure of production per opportunity for receivers, since it blends the ability to get downfield, get open and reliably catch the ball — only Miami’s Tyreek Hill ranked ahead of Brown this season. And what sets Brown apart is that he is also one of the best at running after the catch, particularly after adjusting for where he is catching it. According to NFL Next Gen Stats, Brown was fifth-best in the NFL at gaining more yards after the catch than expected per reception. Basically, Brown gave Philadelphia a unique threat that defenses needed to respect before, during and after the ball was thrown — and that opened up chances for his teammates to shine. For instance, fellow wideout DeVonta Smith continued to blossom alongside Brown, notching 1,196 yards while using the extra operating space to post one of the highest catch rates ever for a player with that many yards. And for his part, Hurts went from completing a smaller share of his passes than expected to ranking fourth in completion percentage above expected while throwing to his revamped receiving corps.

DE Haason Reddick

When the Arizona Cardinals drafted Haason Reddick with the 13th pick in 2017, they did so assuming Reddick was too small to rush the quarterback. Instead they envisioned him as an inside linebacker, a position Reddick had never played in college, and one of the least valuable position groups in the NFL. It took Reddick demanding a position change back to edge rusher in his final season in Arizona⁴ for his career to finally flourish. Since 2020 Reddick has registered 39.5 regular-season sacks, third most in the NFL over that span behind only Myles Garrett and T.J. Watt.

When the Eagles signed him as a free agent prior to this season,⁵ making him the 17th-highest-paid edge rusher in the NFL, they certainly expected him to get after the quarterback. But they couldn’t have expected the season Reddick and the rest of the defensive line put together in 2022. 

The Eagles improved from 31st in the league (29) in sacks in 2021 all the way to first (70), the largest year-to-year improvement in NFL history. Four different Eagles finished the regular season with 10 or more sacks — also an NFL record. For his part, Reddick led the league with 18.5 sacks created, was tied for second in sacks (16) and finished the season second in overall pass rush win rate. And despite the prolific totals put up by his teammates, Reddick wasn’t just padding his numbers: He was out there beating double-teams at a near league-leading rate.

CB Darius Slay

The Eagles run a version of Vic Fangio’s defense and rely heavily on Cover 4 — or Quarters — coverage, where four defensive backs split the responsibilities for covering the deep part of the field. In those coverages Slay was typically asked to play man-to-man, or “man match”⁶ on the left side, and he did a good job: Slay ranked 17th in the league in man coverage on 101 snaps, according to Pro Football Focus. 

But where Big Play Slay really shined was when he was asked to play zone and cover a full third of the deep part of the field. In these Cover 3 defensive looks, Slay was the best defender in the NFL, according to PFF.

Slay is dangerous when he can keep his eyes on the quarterback while dropping into coverage, and the Eagles like to run “inverted” coverages where deep defenders switch roles. On these calls, the Eagles turn what looks like a four-deep, three-under coverage pre-snap into a three-deep, four-under coverage post-snap to help take away the short and intermediate routes. With Patrick Mahomes’s ankle injured and the Eagles pass rush elite, Philly may want that extra defender underneath in the Super Bowl to defend against short, quick passes. If they do, they can rely on Slay to do his job and lock down his third of the field.

Kansas City Chiefs

QB Patrick Mahomes

For the next few weeks, the entire focus of the football world will be on one body part: Patrick Mahomes’s right ankle. The 2022 MVP favorite sprained it against the Jacksonville Jaguars during the divisional round, hobbled to the finish of that game, and then gritted his way through the pain in the AFC title contest. But while Mahomes picked up the most important gain of the game with his feet, he was limited to eight rushing yards in the game and it’s a safe bet that his trademark mobility could be hampered against the Eagles as well. But will that matter? One of the many special things about Mahomes is that he can beat you as a pocket passer every bit as well as he can using his improvisational magic. Since his debut as a starter in 2018, Mahomes’s overall wizardry has made him the NFL’s best quarterback by Total QBR — but he actually ranks higher in QBR from within the pocket (No. 2) than outside the pocket (No. 3) over that span, and his raw QBR between the two categories has been essentially identical.

Perhaps that helps explain why the Chiefs’ record when Mahomes isn’t a factor with his legs — an .818 winning percentage when he is their primary QB but has single-digit rushing yards — is actually slightly better than their .776 winning percentage when he cracks double digits on the ground. The best part of having Mahomes at QB is that when a defense (or an injury) limits one aspect of his brilliance, his Plan B is still better than just about anyone else’s Plan A.

C Creed Humphrey (and friends)

Of course, we have seen the limits of Mahomes’s greatness when the protection in front of him completely breaks down. (The highlights from Super Bowl LV can be hard to watch for that reason.) And the Eagles pose a particular risk for a repeat of that performance, given that they recorded the third-most sacks in a season in NFL history. But for a team known for its explosive skill-position talent, one of the Chiefs’ most important weapons is their ability to block would-be pass-rushers in the trenches, starting up the middle.

According to ESPN’s pass block win rate metric, the highest overall success rate for any pass blocker in the entire league this season belonged to center Creed Humphrey, who sustained his block for at least 2.5 seconds in 97.9 percent of encounters with opposing pass-rushers. But Humphrey was merely the strongest link in a very strong chain, as the second-best pass block win rate (96.9 percent) also belonged to a K.C. lineman — guard Joe Thuney. And so did the seventh-best, for that matter, with guard Trey Smith (95.9 percent). The NFL average for tackles is lower than for centers and guards, but both bookends on the Chiefs line — Orlando Brown Jr. and Andrew Wylie — were above average for their position as well.

As a result, the Chiefs’ offensive line had the No. 1 pass block win rate in the league, with the gap between them and the No. 2 Chicago Bears roughly equaling the gap between the Bears and the No. 12 Eagles (of all teams). And with Mahomes hobbled against the fearsome Philadelphia pass rush, the stalwart Kansas City blockers could be the antidote to one of K.C.’s biggest potential trouble spots.

DE Chris Jones

As impressive as Reddick’s 2022 season was, Chris Jones’s might have been better. Why? Well, for one he plays a different position (interior defensive line), which typically doesn’t lend itself to sacks — unless your name is Aaron Donald. Yet Jones notched just a half-sack less (15.5) than Reddick on the season. 

Second, Jones did it without the supporting cast that Reddick enjoyed: Rather than four rushers with 11 or more sacks, the Chiefs trotted out Jones and three other players with six or fewer.⁷. Teams could game plan for Jones in ways they couldn’t against Reddick.

But perhaps most impressively, Jones nearly matched Reddick’s production while being double-teamed over five times more often (251 vs. 48 for Reddick). In fact Jones was double-teamed more than any other player in the league. 

It wasn’t like teams had much of a choice, either. They doubled Jones because they had to — because when they didn’t, he wrecked the game. Jones’s pass rush win rate versus single-teams was the fourth-highest in the league. That kind of production from the middle of the line is rare, and against a Philly offensive line that’s one of the league’s best, the Chiefs will need “the most unstoppable man in football” to show up big.

CB L’Jarius Sneed

Chiefs cornerback L’Jarius Sneed was a key part of an underrated Chiefs defense all season. Typically lining up across the opposing team’s top receiver, Sneed tied for the team lead in interceptions with three, and led all Chiefs in passes defensed with 11. Among NFL cornerbacks, Sneed ranked seventh in PFF WAR, a measure of how many wins a player adds to the team.

What may surprise, particularly given Jones’s exploits in 2022, is that Sneed was the third-most valuable Chief this season according to PFF WAR, trailing only Patrick Mahomes (shocker) and tight end Travis Kelce.

In the AFC championship game, Sneed suffered a concussion while tackling Bengals running back Samaje Perine early in the first quarter, leaving his availability for the Super Bowl in question. If PFF WAR is any indication, losing Sneed is no small thing. If he’s able to play, his skills will surely help the Chiefs game plan to stop A.J. Brown and the rest of the Eagles passing attack. And if he can’t go, Jones and the rest of the Kansas City pass rush is going to have to conjure up a repeat of their performance in the AFC championship game, where they pressured Joe Burrow relentlessly to help cover for the loss of their best defensive back. Only this time they’ll be going against one of the most dangerous mobile quarterbacks in the league, potentially without one of their most valuable players.

Check out our latest NFL predictions.

NFL

The Chiefs And Eagles Made The Super Bowl With Grit, Talent, Heart And (Yes) Luck

A FiveThirtyEight Chat

Jan. 30, 2023, at 4:15 PM

maya (Maya Sweedler, editor): We have our Super Bowl! And just like we all predicted in last week’s chat, it’ll be the Philadelphia Eagles versus the Kansas City Chiefs. (My crow … it’s delicious.) The two teams advanced Sunday in games that, at least in the moment, felt as though they were defined as much by injuries as they were by the play itself.

As Tony Romo discovered while calling the AFC championship game on CBS last night, sometimes the best comparison for a football game in 2023 is an NBA game from the 1990s. So in the spirit of that, I ask: Are we looking at the 1996 NBA Finals, in terms of the inevitability of the two No. 1 seeds advancing?

joshua.hermsmeyer (Josh Hermsmeyer, NFL analyst): Googles the NBA

I guess I would push back on inevitability, just because these games were coin flips in the betting markets heading in.

Salfino (Michael Salfino, FiveThirtyEight contributor):  I feel like the Eagles were more of a true No. 1 seed than the Chiefs, especially given the uncertainty of quarterback Patrick Mahomes, physically.

neil (Neil Paine, acting sports editor): To me, both K.C. and (especially) Philly were extremely lucky to advance. 

Not saying they are not deserving.

But practically any team in the league could have beaten San Francisco and their zero QBs yesterday. And the Chiefs benefited greatly from timely calls by the officials.

Salfino: I think it’s legit to question what, if anything, the Eagles have proved not just this postseason but down the stretch of the regular season, too, given the quality of their opponents/QBs faced.

joshua.hermsmeyer: Neil, that was NOT a 31-point offensive performance. Around 10 expected points added came from net penalty advantage, and 10 EPA came off turnovers, net. That was an 11-point offensive performance by Philly.

neil: I just don’t think we can take anything away from that game whatsoever.

It was basically the same as that Denver Broncos game during the COVID-19 season, when they had to start a WR at QB.

Salfino: Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts seemed to play very tight. That’s what I’m taking away from it. It was one of the worst throwing performances by a winning championship game that I’ve ever seen. Maybe the year Peyton Manning was playing on fumes compares. I can’t remember one good pass by Hurts, though I guess there had to be a couple.

neil: There was one Hurts pass that produced a great “catch”, Mike!

joshua.hermsmeyer: The rushing wasn’t great either, Mike — 3.36 YPA!

maya: Wait, guys, we’re still talking about a 14-3 team that has almost 80 sacks on the season and a quarterback who’s rushed for 15 TDs on the year.

That’s not nothing.

Salfino: Yes, Hurts has been so good so I think that NFC championship performance is more descriptive than predictive.

neil: Oh yeah, I don’t actually think we should doubt the Eagles based on that game. The script of the game very quickly became obvious — gain a lead and don’t turn the ball over, chew clock, and it will be impossible for the Niners to come back because they literally cannot throw.

The stats on either side of a game like that are going to be warped.

Salfino: Right, it was clear that the Eagles just had to avoid beating themselves and maybe it’s harder to play that way. Hurts seemed really tight and maybe that’s just always thinking of not making a mistake instead of just playing. Maybe he was aiming those throws too much.

joshua.hermsmeyer: There was hope, for one fleeting moment, that Christian McCaffrey could put the Niners on his back. But after his long, almost impossible touchdown run, the Niners never sniffed the goal line again. In fact they ran zero (0) plays in the red zone.

neil: That was never going to be sustainable.

Salfino: My thinking after the CMC TD was “Brock Purdy’s probably not even good and Josh Johnson can be just as good as he would have been, maybe.” But then, Johnson got concussed and it was Game Over.

neil: This is why they should have an emergency backup QB in the stadium at all times. You know how they have an emergency backup goalie in hockey? A random goalie off the street who can play for either team if needed? We need that in football, too. Because if a team has no functional QB, the game becomes a sham.

maya: Yeah. But credit where credit is due — the Eagles controlled the pace of the game, coach Nick Sirianni had some smart situational calls (including the hurry-up play after the fourth-and-3 “catch”) and I didn’t see a ton of mistakes in either the box score or the game itself.

Salfino: I’d argue the Eagles made their own QB luck with that pass rush. They legit got two KOs.

joshua.hermsmeyer: I’m not really giving the Eagles credit. They had one of the easier paths to the Super Bowl I can think of. They are a good team, but we still just don’t really know anything about Hurts and his shoulder and what a comeback push out of this team might look like.

Sorry, Eagles.

Salfino: Maya, I do not get Kyle Shanahan not challenging when the offense clearly is telling you they maybe got a good call by hurrying up. Plus that play had the threshold of down and distance to warrant a challenge that early.

maya: I can’t decide what I’m looking forward to less, two weeks of speculation on Hurts’s shoulder, Mahomes’s ankle or being inundated by the Kelce brothers storyline.

Salfino: The last team that had this easy a postseason draw was the 2007 Patriots, who beat David Garrard and then faced Philip Rivers with a torn ACL in the AFC championship game. I forget what happened next.

neil: Nothing historically notable.

maya: LOL

neil: So yeah, that’s a point well taken, Mike, that you do kind of make your own QB injury luck with a ferocious pass rush. But I would have liked to have seen a full game of the 49ers with Purdy against the Eagles. It’s a huge what-if, and we were robbed of what was supposed to be an NFC title game classic.

maya: Yeah, this was a matchup that, on paper, looked so promising. Strengths versus strengths, question marks versus question marks (with the exception of Purdy versus that pass rush, I guess ). But let’s take a step back. I know we’ve been pretty down on the NFC as the weaker conference throughout the season. Should we go as far as to read the Eagles’ overall season as a function of that? Or just their postseason?

joshua.hermsmeyer: The Eagles’ regular season was legit across the board. It wasn’t positive variance all over the place (though the Eagles were one of the least-injured teams). I just think the postseason casts doubt on our ability to know the true strength of this team at the moment.

Salfino: Josh, I’m curious about your view on whether the Eagles are showing that maybe building around pass rush (over pass coverage) is a smart defensive model. I know analytics says the opposite.

joshua.hermsmeyer: Well “analytics” are not a monolith. I’m of the school that pass rush is more important, Eric Eager has done studies when he was at PFF that show pass coverage is more impactful, at least as a unit. The issue is pass rush is more individual and predictable, and pass coverage is a weak-link system where player performance varies wildly each season. So I lean pass rush as the better way to build a team, at least initially.

Salfino: The Eagles are truly great in net yards per attempt for minus allowed, my favorite predictive stat. They are 7.1 for and 4.9 allowed, for a plus-2.2 margin. That’s just massive. Win that stat by any margin since the merger, and you win about 75 percent of games, irrespective of anything else. And the Chiefs were plus-1.9, by the way. So these are two of the strongest teams in history facing off in the Super Bowl. 

It’s rare when both teams are around plus-2.0. This is just the second Super Bowl since the 1973 season with two teams that were at least 1.8 yards better in net YPA than their opponents. (The other was in 2019, Chiefs vs. Niners.) And including this year, only 86 teams have done it in the Super Bowl era.

neil: Yeah, I don’t want us to get to a place where we’re saying these teams are frauds to get to the Super Bowl or something.

They played like Super Bowl teams all year long.

maya: Oh thank goodness. Someone else sticking up for the Eagles. I cannot in good faith defend them any longer.

What am I, the Empire State Building?

joshua.hermsmeyer: LOL

neil: That was the saddest NYC moment in a long time.

joshua.hermsmeyer: Sad when the social media account of a once-great building is hacked.

Salfino: I saw the lights and thought the New York Jets traded for Aaron Rodgers.

maya: Honestly, what bummed me out the most was knowing that the lights were definitely designed for the Jets, but the building has never needed to use them.

Salfino: As a Jets fan, I would have been happier with the Eagles colors last week. I think that whole thing is weird. It’s like the Empire State Building is trying to be a national building instead of a local one with sports, but just look at your own name.

And in terms of the NFC being weaker, it’s so weird when the conferences are this different. But that’s a function of the QB position.

maya: Ooh, say more, Mike.

Here’s my thing: I am fully confident that the mean quarterback in the AFC is better than the mean quarterback in the NFC. But the AFC is so top heavy that if we were to look at the median, I’m not sure we’d see as large a gap.

Salfino: Does the AFC have more terrible QBs? That’s interesting. I haven’t thought about it this way. I’m just thinking the top four in the AFC are all championship-caliber, plus the fifth is Trevor Lawrence probably. And we’re sort of forgetting about Lamar Jackson.

maya: The bottom of the AFC this year, in terms of Total QBR, was Davis Mills, Mac Jones, Russell Wilson and Matt Ryan.

Salfino: Russell Wilson being down there is just mind-blowing, Maya.

joshua.hermsmeyer: Yeah, the NFC got all his best years, I guess?

neil: Matt Ryan’s, too.

But again, if we’re looking at QBR, we’re getting Nos. 1 and 4 in QBR across the whole season, in Mahomes and Hurts. 

(Pay no attention to Josh Allen and Tua Tagovailoa sandwiched in between them.)

So the Super Bowl really is the cream of the crop, even if the conference title games were decided by factors that you can’t always count on.

maya: I’m still kind of impressed that Kansas City had a quarterback with one working ankle and was missing four of its top five wide receivers (though not top five pass-catchers) by game’s end and still managed to move the ball enough to get the win.

Salfino: Barely enough and oddly not really at all on the winning “drive.” But yeah, Mahomes is just amazing. He is probably the GOAT, and what he did on that ankle with the receivers out was off-the-charts greatness. But he did not look healthy to me, at all. And I don’t see this ankle getting better. So if the Eagles win, people will say they were lucky in not facing the “real” Mahomes.

joshua.hermsmeyer: The Chiefs had the only pass-catcher that matters. Our King Kelce. 

Salfino: The mayor of Cincinnati has to pipe down. That dude was way out of his lane. 

But I will say that I don’t think the Cincy trash-talking had any impact on the game. Mahomes is going to be just as motivated regardless. The man is dangerous. He’s a killer.

joshua.hermsmeyer: I think motivation has to matter. It did for Michael Jordan.

neil: We’ve seen the Flu Game. This was the Taped-Up-Shoe Game.

Salfino: When was Jordan not motivated?

joshua.hermsmeyer: Insert “and I took that personally” meme.

maya: I didn’t think Mahomes was the only guy playing out of his mind. Chris Jones looked terrific. He got his first two career postseason sacks, and on his 38 defensive snaps as a pass-rusher, had a pressure rate of 21.1 percent.

Salfino: Chris Jones was the best player on the field. Massive impact on that game.

neil: Yes, Jones and the K.C. pass rush got to Joe Burrow five times after the Bills had only sacked him once. That especially played a big role early, and it made the Bengals adjust their scheme on the fly.

Salfino: They got four sacks while the first beer was still cold. That really mattered. It staggered the Bengals. Took them out of whatever their game plan was.

joshua.hermsmeyer: The Chiefs deserved to win, but the Bengals and their fans have a legit argument that penalties decided the game. K.C. lost 2.3 points to penalties, the Bengals 6.9. That’s more than the difference in the game.

neil: That was, uh, not a crisply officiated game.

Anytime the refs are declaring do-over plays, there might be some problems.

Salfino: My biggest problem with the officiating was the Marquez Valdes-Scantling reach. You don’t get to treat a yard marker like the goal line. He pulled the ball back. You don’t even get a re-spot on a review if you don’t get the first down, either. I just don’t understand that call. 

maya: Zac Taylor kept it together admirably.

joshua.hermsmeyer: Germaine Pratt did not keep it together after the game was over. 

Salfino: That flag on the hit out of bounds has to be called. People are saying, “You can’t decide the game.” But if you don’t call an obvious foul, you’re deciding the game.

neil: Yeah, it was the correct call.

I feel for Joseph Ossai. He was taking it HARD after the game. He literally made a Rookie Mistake.

joshua.hermsmeyer: I think K.C. should honor Ossai. Name a hot sauce after him or something.

Salfino: This is the Bengals version of the Gastineau roughing call against Kosar. Only worse. That play will never be forgotten.

maya: I think this Cincy team is still in the early days of its championship window. There were so many small moments in the game yesterday where I found myself just sitting there, mouth open.

I keep going back to the 35-yard downfield pass to Ja’Marr Chase on fourth-and-6. 

joshua.hermsmeyer: I mean I was agog, but the process seemed not so great to me?

Salfino: I’m not a big fan of “early in the championship window.” It closes fast. I think it’s closed for the Bills, who will never forget those 13 seconds last year. That was their window.

joshua.hermsmeyer: The down and distance, the coverage … 

Salfino: I liked the Chase play, Josh. They were a two-man passing offense with Tyler Boyd hurt. The pass rush didn’t give you a chance to go through progressions. Let your great player make a great play. I like those odds.

joshua.hermsmeyer: These types of plays are hard to reason through when you know the result. To be fair, at least one model liked the call to go for it, though it was of course silent on the actual play design. But I don’t think I want my team attempting that play.

Salfino: A play like that won the Super Bowl for Mahomes when it was to Tyreek Hill.

joshua.hermsmeyer: On the other hand, lots of TDs were scored on drives extended by fourth-down plays this weekend. So, huzzah. 

maya: Sure, there’s definitely an element of ex post facto here. If it had been a turnover on downs, we certainly wouldn’t be talking about it. On the other hand, I thought the late-down play-calling was pretty terrific, generally, in that game yesterday. Only the QB-less Niners had negative EPA on third- and fourth-down plays yesterday.

Neil: They may also have felt like it was necessary to strike right then and there after the Mahomes fumble.

You’re at their 41 and down by a TD. They just gifted you a chance to get back in. And you know neither Burrow nor Chase are afraid of that moment.

I can’t say I am 100 percent sure the better team won. But the heart both teams showed was great to watch.

Salfino: I think Burrow was too aggressive on the pick he threw on the third down deep to Tee Higgins. That was four-down territory. It was only third-and-3.

joshua.hermsmeyer: Oh, you don’t like the play that didn’t work, and you like the play that did work? I mean, we are really resulting now.

neil: Live by Burrow’s swagger, die by Burrow’s swagger.

Salfino: Burrow was outplayed pretty significantly by one-legged Mahomes. That was unexpected. This loss is on Burrow.

maya: There were both some aggressive play calls and some surprisingly non-aggressive ones. What about the K.C. punt with 2:36 left in the game? It was fourth-and-8 on the Cincy 37.

neil: Maya, I was somewhat surprised the Chiefs punted there, for the same reasons.

maya: Felt very un-Andy-Reid-like to me.

neil: This after multiple times trying a hook-and-lateral 20 yards downfield in the ordinary flow of the offense earlier in the game.

Salfino: I don’t think Reid had any confidence in his receivers on that fourth down after the Bengals first accepted and then declined (wisely) the penalty. If they fail to convert there, it’s likely game over given the short distance to get into field goal range. Or at least a lot more likely to lose than by punting.

maya: But speaking of Reid, we have a one-man Reid bowl! The winningest coach of the Eagles will be on the opposite sideline in two weeks. Any matchups you guys are particularly looking forward to?

neil:I don’t have the stat on this, but has a Super Bowl coach ever faced a team that he is the all-time coaching wins leader of?

Reid is Philly’s wins leader and it is not remotely close.

Salfino: Maybe Weeb Ewbank versus the Colts in Super Bowl III, Neil?

neil: Great pull, Mike! 

Salfino: Even if not, this certainly has the same vibe as that game, given that Weeb won two championships for the Colts.

joshua.hermsmeyer: The Chiefs had a 91 percent pass block win rate against the Bengals, according to ESPN. I don’t expect that to continue, but that battle in the trenches is the one I’ll be watching closely. 

maya: Yeah, Chris Jones vs. the world should be a good one. I also am curious to see how the Chiefs defend the Eagles’ two-tight end sets.

joshua.hermsmeyer: I’ll also be keeping tabs on the injury status of K.C.’s best coverage player, L’Jarius Sneed. Hopefully two weeks is enough time to recover from what looked like a concussion when he tried to tackle Samaje Perine in the first quarter.

maya: And I guess the next obvious factor is Mahomes’s ankle and mobility.

neil: Yes. And that matters a lot because, in many ways, this is also a battle of balance (Philly is good on offense and defense) versus one-dimensionality (K.C. is elite offensively and below-average on defense. Plus, K.C.’s special teams have been among the worst by EPA all season; Philly is solid there.)

In fact, you could really just distill down to the team that is good (if not great) at everything — the Eagles — against the team that is really only good at one thing (K.C. passing). But in that one thing, they are far and away the best.

maya: Gasps in Isiah Pacheco.

neil: K.C.’s rushing offense this season was merely average by EPA.

(Sorry, Isiah. And I know that unit’s personnel has morphed over the course of the season. But even after weighting recent games more heavily, they are basically average.)

Salfino: Is the Chiefs defense underrated, Neil? OK, the 33 TD passes they allowed in the regular season are out of control. But their yards allowed and net YPA were very good. TDs are lucky. I put way more stock into average gain including sack yards and sacks as plays.

maya: Also, given we’ve spent approximately 30 seconds discussing special teams this season (basically entirely the light razzing of Dallas’s kicker), how important will that be?

joshua.hermsmeyer: Who can ever say?

Salfino: Special teams may be randomly important.

neil: Special teams is always an afterthought … until it’s not.

Salfino: Harrison Butker is shaky on extra points, seriously. 

maya: I thought that was the biggest factor in why K.C. punted from the 37-yard line. But Butker looked solid on the game winner.

Salfino: That barely cleared from a distance perspective. It was weird.

Mahomes is still going to be very limited. This is not the team you want a stationary QB against. I think the Eagles are going to keep reminding Mahomes he’s hurt, whereas the Bengals didn’t. Hurts’s mobility will give the Chiefs a lot of problems where the Niners are so fast defensively, it wasn’t a factor.

Add in the WR injuries and I see this being a TD win at least by the Eagles. 

maya: OK, Mike on the record for the Eagles!

Salfino: (Only because of Mahomes’s ankle, which is bad.)

neil: I think that’s right, Mike. I think that Philly’s terrifying pass rush will cause particular problems for Mahomes because of the ankle, and I think the Eagles’ offensive balance is going to cause problems for a K.C. team that is weak defending the run in particular.

It seems like a bad matchup for K.C.

Salfino: If the Eagles win, are the Mahomes Chiefs the new 1990s Atlanta Braves? (Complete with the same annoying/inappropriate tomahawk chop.)

maya: Please give in basketball terms, Mike.

neil: LOL.

joshua.hermsmeyer: I like two weeks of rest for Mahomes. They were lucky to avoid overtime and not put more stress on the ankle. He’ll have some of his banged-up receivers back. Couple that with my uncertainty about what the Eagles even are at this moment, I’m going Chiefs.

Salfino: That two weeks isn’t going to mean anything. This is a months-long injury.

maya: We don’t know that!

joshua.hermsmeyer: Dr. Salfino, please enlighten.

Salfino: We hear all the time that high ankle sprains limit a player for a season. It’s not getting better in two weeks, Josh. We’ve seen these injuries a million times. Mahomes looked like a different player out there and that ain’t changing.

neil: I will say, god knows what they injected in it seemed to at least get him through Sunday’s game enough for a solid performance.

joshua.hermsmeyer: He said he took no jabs!

neil: Then I have no idea what they did, but whatever it was, it made him functional!

Salfino: Oh, no, Neil. No “North Dallas Forty” situation here. We were ASSURED that Mahomes didn’t shoot up. (Who cares?)

neil: That’s between the Chiefs trainers and Mahomes’s ankle, none of my business.

Salfino: (I don’t believe it anyway; this is all LEGEND OF MAHOMES stuff.)

joshua.hermsmeyer: Plus Mahomes has his brother and wife cheering for him up in the booth, and posting on TikTok. Chiefs by 21.

neil: The brother is cringe. That knocks at least a TD off.

maya: Does Mahomes need this ring for his legacy?

This is three Super Bowls in five seasons.

Salfino: Yes, Maya. You can’t go to five straight championship games and win one Super Bowl. We heard Tom Brady even get knocked for this for a while.

I mean, that’s going to be the narrative. I’d take one championship game as a Jets fan.

maya: When the Empire State Building is lit green and white for the right reasons …

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NFL

We Are No Longer Disrespecting The Cincinnati Bengals Or Brock Purdy

A FiveThirtyEight Chat

Jan. 23, 2023, at 3:24 PM

maya (Maya Sweedler, editor): After an almost (sorry, New York teams) equally fabulous divisional round, we’re looking ahead to some fabulous football in next week’s conference championships, when the San Francisco 49ers travel to Philadelphia to take on the Eagles and the Cincinnati Bengals head to Kansas City to play the Chiefs. We’re going to discuss all four games in more detail, but let’s get right into it.

Are these the four best teams in football right now?

neil (Neil Paine, acting sports editor): I don’t see how you could say they aren’t. They are four of the top five teams in our full-strength Elo ratings and four of the top six in points-per-game margin across the entire season. And the only interlopers in those categories are the Buffalo Bills and Dallas Cowboys, who just lost head-to-head (and not in particularly fluky fashion). In a top-heavy season, these are the cream of the crop by far.

ty (Ty Schalter, FiveThirtyEight contributor): The easy answer is “yes” — not just because they’re the last four teams in the tournament, but because the tournament seeding captured team strength well, and the results have been rather chalky. The only upset this weekend, the Bengals’ 27-10 road win over the Bills, looked definitive. But even including playoffs, the Bills (No. 3, 155.03) and Cowboys (No. 4, 137.22) bump the Bengals (No. 6, 125.44) and Kansas City Chiefs (No. 5, 131.16) out of the top four in total expected points added, per ESPN’s Stats & Information Group. Going by straight scoring margin gives us the exact same 1-6 ranking, by the way. DVOA still loves Buffalo so much that even recency-weighted DVOA has Buffalo at No. 2 overall.

joshua.hermsmeyer (Josh Hermsmeyer, NFL analyst): Agreed, Neil and Ty. In point margin this year through the playoffs, the only real outlier was the Giants, way down at No. 23 with negative-30 points. So the only real question is: What does that say about the strength of the Eagles relative to the rest of the playoff teams that had to face real tests this weekend?

neil: For me, the Eagles’ big question was about Jalen Hurts’s health, given how he looked in the regular-season finale and those reports about him not being 100 percent on Saturday morning. But let’s just say he dismissed those concerns.

The Giants are a bad defensive team, but that would have been a clinic against anybody.

joshua.hermsmeyer: I guess I would have liked to see Hurts be a bit more prolific with his arm, as 6.4 YPA and 154 passing yards isn’t incredible.

neil: There was no need Josh, given how the Eagles got off to literally the best start possible.

maya: Right, he didn’t have to be more prolific! The Eagles had 44 called runs in a game where they dominated time of possession by more than 11 minutes.

joshua.hermsmeyer: It was the week of one-handed tight end catches. Dallas Goedert’s first-quarter touchdown started the Eagles rolling on Saturday against the Giants, and George Kittle’s one-handed double-bobble reception against Dallas sparked the 49ers’ lone touchdown drive.

maya: I think if you had given me these semifinalists a month ago, I would’ve said no way are these the best four teams. But here is where I owe the city of Cincinnati a serious apology. I wrote this team off way too early and didn’t pay that much attention to the offensive resurgence they’ve had over the past few months. Cincy put up 51 combined points against two top-3 scoring defenses in back-to-back weeks.

ty: I’m with you on Cincy, Maya. Last year I rang the bell on the Bengals early and often — but when they started the season 4-4, I slept on them not losing a single game after that.

joshua.hermsmeyer: Joe Mixon looked like he was running on a different surface than the Bills defenders. It was wild.

neil: Talk about clinics. I understood the Eagles getting off to that start against the Giants (even though I picked the G-Men for vibe reasons, LOL), but what I did not expect at all was for Cincinnati to get out to a pretty similar start against the mighty Bills, in Buffalo.

Buffalo had ranked second in fewest PPG allowed during the regular season. Joe Burrow and company made them look like, IDK, the Texans.

joshua.hermsmeyer: The Bills needed Allen to put the team on his back like Mahomes does with such regularity. They have a very good team, but they need Allen playing his best ball to win Super Bowls, and he didn’t do that this postseason.

neil: What’s crazy, though, is that he had zero turnovers until that garbage-time pick late.

If you’d told me the Bengals went into Buffalo and won like that, I would have said for SURE that Allen turned it over four times or something.

joshua.hermsmeyer: He looked lost quite a bit though. His average time to throw was 3.2 seconds, higher even than Daniel Jones against the Eagles.

maya: I felt like Allen was spending a bit too much time looking downfield and not enough time looking for situational gains. I don’t want to call it hero ball, because that’s not really what it was, but he played more aggressively than I would’ve expected. As a result, he had the second-biggest gap between his air yards per attempt and actual yards per dropback this week, behind only Jones.

maya: Burrow should be first in that category, right? The Bengals had the most yards after the catch this week with 140.

Not bad for a team that came in with just one receiver in the top 40 in terms of regular-season YAC (Ja’Marr Chase, who tied for third on the weekend with 42 yards after the catch).

neil: One of the problems was that Cincy put them in a two-TD hole with just a little under 4 minutes left in the first quarter. Buffalo was battling back from that all game, and it seemed to send Allen into that aggressive mode early.

But the Bengals defense also shut down the Bills’ patented explosive offense, for the most part. They were fourth in explosive plays per game (7.1) during the regular season, but only got three of those Sunday (none of which went for scores).

joshua.hermsmeyer: Josh definitely chucked it up there, but he was off the mark in ways Buffalo fans aren’t accustomed to. Seeing Diggs yelling at him with his arms in the air on the sideline was a scene.

maya: His off-target rate of 15 percent this weekend was only off his regular-season average by three-tenths of a percentage point, though. Say more about how he was off the mark, Josh?

joshua.hermsmeyer: I’m thinking specifically of a sideline throw to Diggs that was overthrown, and the interception intended for Beasley. On passes over 10 air yards, ESPN charting has his off-target rate in the game at 26.7 percent, off his season average of 21.8 percent.

maya: Let’s move to the other team remaining in the AFC: The Kansas City Chiefs, who had a flawless first drive and then appeared to have a one-legged quarterback for most of the rest of the game. How much does a high ankle sprain for Patrick Mahomes cap the Chiefs’ ceiling?

neil: It seems like a significant problem for K.C. Mahomes ranked second in passing yards outside the pocket this regular season, so his ability to make those magic plays with his mobility is a key component of this Chiefs offense.

And with apologies to Jacksonville, the Bengals aren’t the Jaguars.

maya: Yeah, the out-of-pocket passing seems to be an issue. Per ESPN Stats & Info, Mahomes’s numbers were similar before and after the injury (he still managed a ridiculous QBR rating of 97.9 against man coverage on the game, the weekend’s best) — but he did not throw a single pass from outside the pocket after getting hurt.

ty: For what it’s worth, Mahomes has been No. 1 in raw QBR from inside the pocket all year.

joshua.hermsmeyer: If anyone not named Kyle Shanahan can design a game plan around a backup QB, it’s Andy Reid. But that’s probably small consolation to the Chiefs.

neil: Maybe this version of the Chiefs can survive a hobbling Mahomes more than, say, the 2020 version could. Their pass protection is much better this season, and they’ve relied on quick passing much more than in the past.

(If Mahomes plays, that is.)

maya: Mahomes has never beat the Burrow-led Bengals — Cincinnati is 3-0 against Kansas City since Burrow got there. Just sayin’!

joshua.hermsmeyer: Is this where we are supposed to mention the Chiefs’ improved run game?

neil: Give us the Isiah Pacheco love, Josh!

joshua.hermsmeyer: The seventh-rounder learned everything he knows from the first-round pick. You can’t spell Pacheco without C-E-H!

maya: Let’s return to the NFC, and the matchup we’ve got coming down the pike there. What’s the biggest wild card for the Eagles and the Niners?

joshua.hermsmeyer: I think the Eagles will need to continue to win on the ground, and I’m not sure how much success they’ll have if they try to do it the way they did against the G-Men. But most of their success — 11 of 16.6 EPA on runs — came outside the tackles. With the Niners’ rangy linebackers (that Fred Warner pass breakup on CeeDee Lamb was bananas), they will probably have to switch things up.

neil: Yes, the Niners defense is simply on another level compared with the Giants.

ty: The Eagles will need to cover the middle of the field. Per NFL NextGen Stats, the 49ers have targeted in-breaking routes at the highest rate in the league each of the last five seasons — and we saw Brock Purdy working those areas effectively against the Cowboys.

maya: How could it not be effective when you’re throwing to guys who need only one hand and one face to catch a ball?

neil: For San Francisco, I think one big wild card is that now they aren’t facing an opponent who will find ways to botch the end of a game in increasingly comical ways like the Cowboys did (and always do).

I don’t think the Eagles will be trotting out … whatever that last play call was by Dallas.

joshua.hermsmeyer:

maya: The Eagles also don’t need to game plan around keeping their kicker off the field for as long as possible.

neil: Hah, yes, although Brett Maher made a few in the end! (After yet another botched extra point.)

Who would have guessed Maher would be so low on the blame list for Dallas losing?

ty: In theory, Neil, I like lining up skill-position players as ineligible “linemen” if you’re doing a planned many-laterals play. But whatever practice time was dedicated to installing that (a) clearly wasn’t enough, and (b) should have been spent on getting the punt team ready to line up faster at the end of the previous series.

neil: Let’s just say that play had a lot of “Colts punt vs. the Patriots” energy.

joshua.hermsmeyer: As someone who revels in the pain of Cowboys fans, it was the perfect ending.

ty: As I said on Twitter, that second-to-last possession was really where the Cowboys lost the game. Dak had time to execute a full, normal game-winning drive, and he immediately threw what should have been a pick, severely underthrew an open receiver on what would have been a chunk play, and took a bad sack.

neil: Oh yeah, for sure. Mistakes had already been made long ago.

In fact, their win probability slide began with that decision to take an intentional delay of game at the Niners’ 40 and then punt.

That was literally the last time they were above 50 percent to win.

ty: Yeah, that tight end Dalton Schultz made an absolute hash of nearly all those endgame boundary passes wasn’t the difference here.

neil: (Although that didn’t help! LOL.)

maya: That was tough to watch. There were just mistakes across the board. The Cowboys had the second-highest drop rate on the weekend, and while I don’t want to fully blame Prescott for some bad decisions, we’ve known his turnovers have been a problem for a while now …

joshua.hermsmeyer: Instead of blaming Dak, I’m giving credit to Purdy. He once again did the unthinkable for the last pick of the draft, and led all passers in the divisional round with 7.38 YPA.

ty: Iiiiii’m still blaming Dak. After he was so superlative against Tampa, I hoped we’d see him at at least close to his best again this week — instead, his performance was in his personal bottom-four games played this year per raw QBR, completion percentage over expected, adjusted net yards per attempt, and passing EPA.

maya: This game convinced me that Purdy is Good. He was so cool under pressure, zipping balls all over the field for his bajillion weapons. This was his seventh start. His SEVENTH!

joshua.hermsmeyer: Niners are Super Bowl bound, baby.

neil: On the one hand, this was Purdy’s second-lowest QBR in a start (53.1), a far cry from the 89.4 he had against Seattle in the wild card.

On the other hand, if the floor is a 53.1 QBR, that’s not bad! Only 17 QBs were above that for the entire season, and big names like Tom Brady were not among them.

joshua.hermsmeyer: He should be expected to struggle! But as Maya mentioned, he is always looking to make plays, and his scrambles are mostly smart, not panicked. He’s a game manager in the very best sense.

maya: I think the difference for Purdy was a bit more pressure this week. He faced almost twice as many blitzes this week than last, and had a contact rate almost 5 percentage points higher against Dallas than against Seattle.

But even against pressure, he wasn’t that bad! Purdy took pressure on a career-high 14 dropbacks, going 3-of-10, but he didn’t turn the ball over. Plus, he completed a career-high 84 percent of his passes when not pressured, per ESPN Stats & Info.

joshua.hermsmeyer: He also completed more passes than expected — a knock against him in the Shanahan system, where for most of the year he’s had a negative CPOE.

neil: Now let’s see what he does against the defense that had 15 more sacks than any other team this season …

maya: Given how talented the skill players are in San Francisco, I’m particularly interested to see how the Eagles generate pressure.

joshua.hermsmeyer: I actually think that Dallas D-line was a great test for what he’s about to face in Philly. I remain all-in!

neil: Well, the Cowboys have one Micah Parsons. The Eagles have four of them. (Or at least, four guys with at least 11 sacks, which is insane.)

maya: It felt like every quarter featured a different Niners receiver popping free. Brandon Aiyuk! Kittle! Deebo Samuel! Christian McCaffrey! And Elijah Mitchell just scampering through every gap whenever the team needed to wind down the clock.

joshua.hermsmeyer: CMC even took large portions of two quarters off.

(I know because I bet the under on total carries for him, and was sweating it all game.)

maya: LOL. Hope you took the under on the point total, too.

joshua.hermsmeyer: Anyone think the NFC champ wins the Super Bowl? Or are the AFC teams the toast of the league?

I’m torn, hopefully NOT like Mahomes’ ankle.

maya: I think if the Chiefs win but Mahomes isn’t 100 percent, it’s going to be like that 2021 Buccaneers-Chiefs Super Bowl. I would take either the Niners or the Eagles in that case.

neil: So much of it depends on the Mahomes injury. But conditional on K.C. winning the AFC, you’d think that would mean he was healthier than we might think right now.

joshua.hermsmeyer: The Bengals disrespect remains. Still, they almost lost to a Lamar-less Ravens team.

neil: No Bengals disrespect here! This final four is all pretty evenly matched now. 

So I don’t think there’s any huge lopsided conference imbalance in a potential Super Bowl matchup, and the conference title games are also fairly close to 50-50.

The football should be really good next weekend.

maya: OK folks, I think it’s time to get everyone on the record. Let’s have your conference championship picks with some scorelines. I want circulate-on-Twitter-with-the-caption-freezing-cold-takes level stuff.

neil: I tried that last week, Maya.

(RIP Danny Dimes.)

maya:

joshua.hermsmeyer: Niners 27, Eagles 10

Bengals 35, Kansas City 28

maya: Bengals 28, Chiefs 24

Niners 12, Eagles 7

ty: I’ve been saying for the past couple of weeks that the experience of lucking into a Super Bowl appearance last year might have given them the experience they need to go head-to-head with the AFC’s best and win decisively. Zac Taylor is coaching his brains out, and the patched-together offensive line has handled as strong a test they’ll face. I’ll take the Bengals in a barnburner, 37-34.

On the other side, I think Purdy’s magic toe shoes run out of magic. Eagles 27, Niners 17.

neil: Eagles 24, Niners 21

Bengals 27, Chiefs 24

maya: Did we overcorrect on the Bengals disrespect? I can’t believe all of us are picking against Mahomes!

joshua.hermsmeyer: I have a bad feeling about this …

neil: The entire NFL season revolves around his ankle!

(Also, Cincy literally beat K.C. in December, 27-24, LOL.)

joshua.hermsmeyer: That’s cheating, Neil.

ty: And of course, this is literally a rematch of last year’s AFC championship game, which the Bengals also won … 27-24.

neil: Also Maya, 12-7? Why not just pick a Scoragami and get it over with.

joshua.hermsmeyer: Fire.

maya: Ooh, I should’ve done that. How low-scoring can I go without making it too weird?

Regardless, these games should be terrific. I’m looking forward to them almost as much as I’m looking forward to never seeing those Verizon commercials with Paul Giamatti as Albert Einstein again.

neil: That’s something we can ALL agree on.

joshua.hermsmeyer: One more crypto ad, for the memories. All I ask.

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NBA

NBA Stars Are Stuffing Stat Sheets Like Never Before. But Why?

By Santul Nerkar

Jan. 20, 2023, at 6:00 AM

It’s usually a special occasion when LeBron James has one of his patented statistical eruptions. In Monday’s victory over the Houston Rockets, James notched a hyper-efficient 48 points, to go with eight rebounds, nine assists and zero turnovers. It was an eye-popping output to help carry his short-handed Los Angeles Lakers — even from the player who keeps defying Father Time. 

But in this NBA season — and the modern NBA more generally — LeBron’s explosion was just another piece in the league’s big-game puzzle. Several weeks earlier, Luka Dončić posted the NBA’s second 60-point triple double ever, and then followed that up with a 51-6-9 stat line four days later. Two nights after that, Cleveland Cavaliers guard Donovan Mitchell poured in 71(!) points against Michael Jordan’s former team — more than MJ himself ever mustered in a game — to go with eight rebounds and 11 assists. And one day after that, Milwaukee Bucks forward Giannis Antetokounmpo went for a comparatively tame 55 points, 10 rebounds and seven assists.

These are just a few of the gaudy performances that have seemingly come a dime a dozen in the NBA this season … and it’s not clear when they’ll stop. In fact, we can demonstrate this visually. Using Basketball-Reference.com’s Game Score metric (which measures single-game statistical output using all of a player’s box score numbers), you can see that the average team leader⁸ in game-by-game performance per 100 possessions has never been stuffing the stat sheet better in modern NBA history:

Critically, at this point in the season (more than halfway in), this overall mark implies that it’s not just one-off herculean performances like those of James, Dončić and Mitchell clouding our perception that individual player outputs are getting bigger and bigger. And it’s not just scoring, either: Though points hold the biggest weight in Game Score’s calculation,⁹ it accounts for a number of other statistics as well, including rebounds, assists, steals, turnovers and more. 

So what might explain all of these individual statistical explosions sweeping across the league? And is it sustainable?

The easiest and most obvious answer to this recent uptick in top players’ raw output is that NBA offenses, as a whole, have never been better. The league’s collective offensive efficiency of 114.0 is the highest it’s been since at least the merger, as teams have moved to trim the fat out of their scoring diets, focusing on the choicest shots both inside and outside the 3-point arc. Outside of the occasional rule-breakers, NBA teams have found that winning basketball lies not just beyond the 3-point arc … but deep inside it, too.

According to Cleaning the Glass, teams are taking just 30.8 percent of their shots from the midrange, including just 9.4 percent from the long midrange, the latter of which is the lowest figure since at least the 2003-04 season. But it doesn’t appear as if the most recent uptick in offensive efficiency has been due to teams shooting more threes. Overall 3-point attempt rates have stabilized in 2023, but teams are taking a higher share of their attempts at the rim — and making more — than they did last season. 

What that may mean for the NBA’s stars, then, is that they have had more room to operate and are using it to great effect. As The Athletic’s Mike Prada noted recently, the effect of the 3-point revolution hasn’t just been on threes, but on all the other shots that have gotten easier with defenses needing to focus on the arc. Stars are still getting the same shots they got in past seasons, but they’ve never been better optimized to convert them so efficiently.

From the lens of player usage, too, it seems apparent that teams are asking their stars to burn brighter than ever — a not-so-surprising development in the heliocentric age of basketball that we live in — to the tune of three of the 10 highest Game Scores since the merger coming during the first half of the 2022-23 season alone. Not coincidentally, Antetokounmpo, Dončić and Joel Embiid are on pace this season to own three of the 10 highest usage rates in modern NBA history, too.

Playing time may also help explain why someone like Dončić has excelled — he’s No. 2 in minutes per game played this season — but even he’s not playing absurdly high minutes by historical standards, as his mark of 37.4 wouldn’t crack the top 200 of minutes per game played this century. It’s more about what Dončić and players of his ilk are being asked to do within those minutes, and how many eye-popping numbers they continue to put up on a night-by-night basis.

Of course, it’s not at all clear that this surge of individual box score power correlates to helping a team win. One notable holdout to the age of heliocentrism, perennial MVP candidate Nikola Jokić, hasn’t quite caught the attention of the traditional stat-stuffing metrics this season. Despite leading the league in FiveThirtyEight’s RAPTOR wins above replacement, Jokić’s average Game Score comes in just a hair below 26.0 per game, well below the average for an NBA star this season. And the track record of teams built around high-usage superstars isn’t a great one. Michael Jordan, who posted a 34.7 percent usage rate (good for 43rd all time) during his 1992-93 season with the Chicago Bulls, is the highest-usage player to win a championship since the merger. So with three of the game’s preeminent stars posting otherworldly usage rates — Dončić and Antetokounmpo at 38.2 and Embiid at 38.0 — we’re about to get a real test of whether modern basketball’s extreme heliocentric model can finally win in 2023.

But on a certain level, perhaps none of that matters. As the saying goes, big box scores do not lie, and the NBA’s biggest stars have irrefutably treated us to the best collective leading performances in the league’s history so far this year. When a 48-point barrage at age 38 by arguably the greatest player of all time is treated as an afterthought, you know the bar for individual excellence has been raised. 

Neil Paine contributed research.

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NFL

Patrick Mahomes And The Chiefs Are Still Improving On Excellence

By Neil Paine

Jan. 19, 2023, at 6:00 AM

The Patrick Mahomes-led Kansas City Chiefs have crossed over into that rarest territory of sports dominance — teams so consistently good that it’s easy to take them for granted if you’re not careful. With a 14-3 record this year, K.C. just wrapped up its fifth consecutive regular season winning at least 70 percent of its games, joining an exclusive club:

Now the team will face the Jacksonville Jaguars in a home playoff game this weekend, with an 84 percent chance of victory according to the FiveThirtyEight forecast — putting Mahomes and the Chiefs one win away from their fifth consecutive conference championship game appearance as well. (That would place K.C. in an even more exclusive club: one with only three other members in pro football history.)¹⁰ 

Again, it’s all a very familiar sight for Kansas City, but it would be a mistake to view the Chiefs’ ongoing success as inevitable. The parity-obsessed NFL is designed to keep teams from staying at the top for long, and in some ways K.C. was facing more of those headwinds — talent departing, defenses specifically evolving to limit their best plays — than many would-be dynasties. Against factors that might have caused a lesser team to regress, however, Kansas City’s greatness lies in the fact that it instead continues to improve.

For one thing, the Chiefs were down a substantial amount of talent heading into 2022. The headline loss was speedy receiver Tyreek Hill, who’d piled up 1,239 yards and nine receiving touchdowns for Kansas City in 2021 before being shipped to the Miami Dolphins in March. But according to Pro-Football-Reference.com’s approximate value (AV) metric, the Chiefs lost 32.6 percent of their roster’s production over the offseason, in terms of value produced by players in the 2021 season who did not return to the team in 2022. That ranked 15th in the league, in the same neighborhood as famously unstable franchises like the Browns and New York Jets.

And that 2021 Chiefs squad wasn’t without its moments of uncertainty, anyway. At one point in the middle of the season, the team was 3-4 and facing major concerns about whether opposing defenses had found a formula to slow down its vaunted passing attack. Kansas City was saved by an abrupt defensive turnaround while Mahomes and head coach Andy Reid counter-adjusted their offense on the fly, but Mahomes’s first career slump still represented a crack in the armor — one that seemingly widened when K.C. blew a 21-3 lead at home in the AFC championship game against the Cincinnati Bengals, with Mahomes rendered totally ineffective in the game’s second half.

Facing personnel losses and a growing playbook on how to hinder their greatest strength, plus a division that looked stacked on paper, the Chiefs were far from a sure bet to extend their run of dominance this season. Based in part on the history of similar teams from throughout NFL history,¹¹ our preseason forecast model called for Kansas City to finish 10-7, with just a 66 percent chance of making it back to the playoffs. 

So naturally, all the Chiefs did was fix many of the issues that were plaguing them, and post their best regular season in years.

In fact, according to our classic Elo ratings, Kansas City finished the regular season with a rating of 1729 — not only its highest season-ending rating of the Mahomes era, but also the best mark in franchise history.

Unlike last season, when K.C. hit its midseason lull, the 2022 Chiefs never once had a losing streak — their losses were such isolated incidents that they all came in separate months. Along the way, K.C. improved its offense relative to league average, ranking No. 1 in points per game (29.2) for the first time since 2018, Mahomes’s first season as starter. Mahomes himself bounced back from a “down” 2021, going from fifth in Total QBR¹² to leading the league once again. Even more importantly, he dramatically improved his relative standing in QBR in multiple areas where he had ranked surprisingly midpack last season when defenses forced him to adjust:

It wasn’t just Mahomes, of course. Tight end Travis Kelce became more of a focal point for the K.C. offense, ranking second in the league in receiving TDs (12), third in catches (110) and eighth in receiving yardage (1,338). He was by far the most productive tight end in the league this year, and finished with the second-most fantasy points by a TE ever in a single season (behind Rob Gronkowski’s 2011 campaign). And led by center Creed Humphrey, guard Joe Thuney and tackle Orlando Brown Jr., the Chiefs’ offensive line easily led the league in ESPN’s pass block win rate statistic, prevailing in 74.7 percent of their battles in the trenches. Mahomes, Kelce, Humphrey, Thuney and Brown were among the seven Chiefs named to the Pro Bowl, tying the Dallas Cowboys for the second-most all-star nods of any team in the league this season. 

This Chiefs team isn’t perfect. It was in the middle of the league in points per game allowed (21.7, 16th-fewest), which was its lowest ranking on defense since placing 24th in 2018. Its special teams this season was the worst of the Mahomes era, finishing 30th in expected points added per game. But the depth of Kansas City’s core, along with the coaching of Reid and the brilliance of Mahomes to counter the adjustments of opposing defenses, has allowed the Chiefs to keep rolling without missing a beat. And by virtue of having the AFC’s top seed, they will get the most lopsided matchup of the divisional round against Jacksonville, setting them up well to advance to yet another AFC title game — or beyond. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Check out our latest NFL predictions.

NHL

Are The Defending Stanley Cup Champs Going To Drift Out Of The Playoffs?

By Neil Paine

Jan. 18, 2023, at 6:00 AM

Last year, the Colorado Avalanche made history as one of the most dominant Stanley Cup champions to ever take the ice. This year’s Avs are threatening to make history, too — but not the good kind.

Since 1971, only three defending Cup champs have failed to follow their title run with a return trip to the playoffs the next season: the 1995-96 New Jersey Devils, the 2006-07 Carolina Hurricanes and the 2014-15 Los Angeles Kings. If the 2022-23 regular season ended today, Colorado would join that group, despite back-to-back impressive wins over the Ottawa Senators and Detroit Red Wings over the weekend. With 40 games to go, the Avalanche currently sit fourth in the Central division and third in the West’s wild-card race, with four points still separating them from the conference’s final playoff spot.

So things don’t exactly look great for the Avs’ championship defense at the moment. But we probably shouldn’t count Colorado out quite yet. The Avalanche still rank third in our NHL Elo ratings, and there are a few reasons why this team may be able to turn its season around, even though the clock is ticking.

Better health ahead?

For one thing, the Avalanche have been among the most banged-up teams in the league, ranking third in standings points lost to injury earlier this season, according to ManGamesLost.com. Among the players Colorado has placed on injured reserve this season were three of the team’s top eight performers last season according to goals above replacement¹³ — Nathan MacKinnon, Gabriel Landeskog and Valeri Nichushkin — plus numerous other important role players. As a result, no NHL team has employed a greater number of different players this year than Colorado, who has seen a league-high 38 total players don its sweater.

But the Avs should spend the next month or so piecing back together at least some of their broken roster, which got a big boost Monday when Nichushkin returned to game action for the first time since Dec. 23. And any amount of extra production from healthy bodies in the lineup would help a team that has only four skaters — Mikko Rantanen, Cale Makar, MacKinnon and Devon Toews — tracking for 10.0 or more adjusted GAR this season, down from eight (which was tied for third-best in the NHL) last year.

Goaltending and defense can keep them in the hunt

Sometimes when a hockey team collapses, it can be because the pucks just won’t stay out of the net. (Just ask the Vancouver Canucks, who went from allowing the seventh-fewest goals per game in the NHL last season to suddenly tying for the 11th-most goals allowed per game of any NHL team in a season in the past 30 years.)¹⁴ But the Avalanche have stayed roughly steady when it comes to preventing goals — they’re No. 11 this year after ranking ninth a year ago — despite replacing Stanley Cup-winning goalie Darcy Kuemper with former New York Rangers backup Alexandar Georgiev, who has turned into one of the league’s more dependable netminders.

Instead, Colorado’s huge problem in the first half has been on the other side of the puck, where an offense that we called the “Greatest Show On Ice” last season has regressed badly. The Avs went from fourth in goals scored per game in 2021-22 to a shocking 22nd so far this season, with 13 of the top 20 current roster members (by 2021-22 adjusted points) tracking for a lower total this season.¹⁵ Some of that goes back to the aforementioned laundry list of injuries, which have slowed MacKinnon (the team’s most talented forward), robbed Nichushkin of a potential career-best season, generally hollowed out a forward group that has gone from fifth in points to 27th, and even taken a bite out of the NHL’s highest-scoring blueline corps from a year ago. (Makar coming back down to earth a teensy bit hasn’t helped there, either.)

But when a team is struggling to put the puck in the net, it’s nice to be able to fall back on puck possession and good, old-fashioned defensive hockey. By multiple measures — whether you look at Corsi percentage (seventh), Fenwick percentage (12th) or the share of expected goals (14th) and scoring chances (seventh) generated by a team in its games — the Avalanche have remained among the top half of the league at controlling the flow of play, even if hasn’t led to the same rate of goals as in the past. That should bode well for Colorado going forward, if not for its flagging offense then at least in terms of its ability to limit opponents at the other end. And with the big caveat that Georgiev still doesn’t have a huge sample of elite play (he’s already three starts away from setting a new single-season career high), a team’s goal-prevention tends to be “stickier” between halves of a season than its scoring anyway.¹⁶

The schedule is friendly

When all else fails, some weak competition might be the best medicine for a slumping team. And the Avalanche will certainly get a chance to feast on the league’s weakest squads during the second half of the season: According to the average Elo rating of its future opponents (adjusted for home-ice advantage), Colorado has the eighth-easiest remaining schedule in the NHL, trailing only the Arizona Coyotes, Canucks, Calgary Flames, Dallas Stars, St. Louis Blues, Seattle Kraken and Edmonton Oilers. This is part of a gift from the scheduling gods that has seen the defending champs already face the seventh-easiest slate in the league to date; an easy set of opponents stays roughly as easy from here.

The Avalanche must do a better job of capitalizing on the soft schedule, of course. After cleaning up against opponents whose Elo ratings fell beneath the league average last year — winning 75.0 percent of the time, good for fifth-best in the league — Colorado has beaten below-average teams only 57.9 percent of the time this season, which ranks just 13th. (They’re also winning just 50 percent of the time as favorites, which places an abysmal 24th in the league.) We saw an example of those letdowns last Thursday night, when the Avs went into Chicago as a 66 percent favorite against the dreadful Blackhawks, only to lose 3-2 after never holding a lead all game. But in theory, this team ought to be taking care of business more often against weaker foes — like it did over the weekend against Ottawa and Detroit — and Colorado will get plenty of chances against those kinds of opponents down the stretch.

All of these factors help explain why, despite the hole they’ve dug for themselves in the standings, the Avalanche still have a 75 percent chance of getting back to the playoffs according to our forecast model. (And why their Stanley Cup odds conditional on making the playoffs are roughly the same as those of the Tampa Bay Lightning and Carolina Hurricanes, two teams with much better records.) The NHL season is long, and a lot of things can happen in even a relatively short stretch of games.¹⁷ On paper, the Avalanche should be better than they have been, particularly once they cobble together a healthier version of themselves. But defending Stanley Cup champions shouldn’t miss the playoffs, either. With a half-season left to reverse course, it’s now up to Colorado to avoid adding themselves to that ignoble list.

Check out our latest NHL predictions.

NFL

After A Surprisingly Tense Wild-Card Weekend, Are Blowouts Looming In The Divisional Round?

A FiveThirtyEight Chat

Jan. 17, 2023, at 3:16 PM

maya (Maya Sweedler, editor): The 2022 NFL playoffs started off with some exciting games that produced unexciting results, with only the New York Giants and Dallas Cowboys knocking off a higher-seeded team (though the Cowboys, who had a better record, entered the game favored by 2.5 points). But the chalkiness of the results belies how close some of these games were. 

One major throughline of Super Wild-Card Weekend was many games were a tale of two halves. Whether it was Jacksonville coming back from a 27-point deficit against Los Angeles or both Seattle and Baltimore up by 1 point over San Francisco and Cincinnati, respectively, at the half, we saw some pretty significant differences in play between the first two quarters and final two. What stood out to you about these halftime adjustments?

joshua.hermsmeyer (Josh Hermsmeyer, NFL analyst): In the Jaguars-Chargers game, the second-half adjustment was that the Jags were somehow able to shake off a half where they experienced pretty much all the adversity the game of football can throw at a team.

I’m not much of a believer in the hot hand in football, but I do think negative momentum is real. Meltdowns are real. And the Jags were having one. And that’s why it’s so impressive that Trevor Lawrence was able to bounce back. That really was the adjustment — just play the kind of ball he played all season. Because the Chargers really didn’t play great football in the first half, with almost all their points coming off turnovers. 

neil (Neil Paine, acting sports editor): My predictable nerd-take is that most of what we call halftime adjustments is just regression to the mean, and the Niners-Seahawks game seems like a classic case of that, with Geno Smith just not being able to sustain a high-level performance against the S.F. defense for an entire game. The clock struck midnight for one of our favorite Cinderellas at halftime of that game.

But the other games didn’t really subscribe to that regression-is-everything theory. No amount of positive regression alone can pull you out of a 27-0 hole, and in other cases (like the Bills and Dolphins), there was barely any regression to speak of in favor of the favorite. 

Salfino (Michael Salfino, FiveThirtyEight contributor):  Peyton Manning agrees with Neil:

neil: Although, for Lawrence, I guess not throwing a pick every sixth pass is a form of good regression! 

joshua.hermsmeyer: The Lawrence interceptions were interesting. One was an opportunistic defensive play, which came on a tipped pass by Joey Bosa. Then the second interception came on a fourth-and-7 play that seemed like it could have been called for interference. After that Lawrence appeared to be in shock. He got tunnel vision on a few passes, either staring down receivers or missing defenders, like on his third interception to Asante Samuel Jr.

maya: Yeah, Lawrence struck me as a little nervous at the outset of the game (understandable, it’s his playoff debut!). He had a fairly clean pocket most of the game — his contact rate of 9.1 percent was third-lowest of any game this season. But he was getting rid of the ball somewhat quicker than usual in the first half, below his regular-season average of 2.58 seconds.

Salfino: The Jags actually scored a TD at the end of the first half that I think is really underrated in their comeback.

joshua.hermsmeyer: Yes, Mike! And the defensive stand after the muffed punt near the end of the half. 

Salfino: Right, and then forcing that Justin Herbert fumble on third-and-1 the next drive was huge. They go in 27-0, it’s a different game.

neil: That end-of-half TD really sparked a basketball-style “run” that you don’t often see in football (at least not to that degree/extreme). Including that drive, the Jags scored on all five of their remaining drives, including four TDs.

Salfino: My take on Lawrence is that it’s the rare player who bounces back from disaster within the same game to the level that Lawrence did. That’s a greatness trait. Especially to do it in your first postseason game. Very, very impressive.

neil: And you scoffed at my Peyton comparison for him a few weeks ago!

Really, that game was a microcosm of his first two NFL seasons in 60 minutes.

joshua.hermsmeyer: If only every young QB could play the Chargers in their first playoff game.

Salfino: Now, it is the Chargers, so anything is possible. The Jaguars did adjust on the TD drive at the end of the half in going more downfield since the Chargers defense was squeezing the shallow routes. But a big problem for the Chargers is they are not built to hold a lead. They have no reliable running game. Austin Ekeler is not a move-the-chains back as a runner. His success rate was well below average all year plus the Jaguars are a decent run defense. So the criticism of them running, when they can’t really run, is unfair, IMO.

neil: Don’t you know that the real reason they lost is because Brandon Staley is disrespectful to the game?

joshua.hermsmeyer: They certainly couldn’t run in that game. As a team, the Chargers rushed for just 2.9 yards per attempt. But Herbert passing for almost a full yard per attempt through the air under his seasonal average — which was already low — was not smart football. 

Salfino: Herbert also did not have a good game. He left a couple of touchdowns on the field to Keenan Allen, specifically.

maya: I mean, it was certainly a weird time for Staley to get conservative.

The other Saturday game saw the 49ers turn what was a close first half into a blowout. A lot of us were riding high on the Niners in these playoffs — did any of you see anything on Saturday that changed that?

neil: Not really. Brock Purdy had an 89.5 Total QBR. As long as he keeps playing well, they are scary.

Salfino: Seattle’s defense is hot garbage, but you have to be impressed with Purdy. The Niners have so many weapons that there are big plays to be made on just about every play, but Purdy, to his credit, made them.

maya: To be fair, he wasn’t asked to do too much. He attempted only 30 passes, which was the second-lowest figure on the weekend (behind Tyler Huntley). 

joshua.hermsmeyer: Purdy started the game like you would expect for a rookie seventh-round pick, and he made passes in the second half that you would not expect from a rookie seventh-round pick. I don’t think they win it all with him. But I hope they do. And their defense gives them a solid shot.

Salfino: Purdy has to have the best setup of any rookie QB ever. A good defense so he can play in hitter’s counts with the lead. Three elite weapons in Christian McCaffrey, Deebo Samuel and George Kittle and a very good one in Brandon Aiyuk. And a master playcaller.

My takeaway from the Seattle-S.F. game is that the Niners pass defense is vulnerable. You wish they were as good against the pass as they are against the run. Or that it was flipped. Having the best run defense in football is pretty meaningless.

neil: And yet, even there, they clamped down when they needed to. Geno’s QBR dropped from 84.9 in the first half to 26.9 in the second.

maya: Miami’s Skylar Thompson, the other seventh-round pick to make his playoff debut this weekend, also has some pretty elite weapons in Tyreek Hill and Jaylen Waddle, and a playcaller from the Shanahan coaching tree. Why weren’t the Dolphins able to replicate the Niners’ success against an admittedly stronger opponent?

neil: They almost did!

That game was supposed to be a laugher, and the Dolphins were in it to the bitter end. If Miami had won, it would have been hands-down one of the most improbable upsets in playoff history.

joshua.hermsmeyer: Thompson was 18-for-45 for 4.9 YPA. He wasn’t anything approaching good. But the Bills defense looked porous, and that was my takeaway from the game. They need to be able to stop teams from scoring — like on that 11-play, 75 yard drive they gave up in the third quarter — even when they are given short fields due to Josh Allen miscues. 

neil: (Also they need to not have Josh Allen miscues.)

Salfino: Well, the Bills are a real defense. Miami’s offense was mostly turnover driven. They had less than 250 total yards. They also have no real running threat and problems on the offensive line. Plus seventh-round picks should be expected to be terrible and in that regard Thompson does not disappoint. He’s not competent. He couldn’t even get plays called as they flirted with delays on almost every snap. McDaniels has to take a lot of blame here, too, especially on the last drive when he turned fourth-and-1 into fourth-and-6 — that was a brutal penalty.

maya: Both Thompson and Allen seemed to struggle against press coverage. When both outside corners played press (which Miami and Buffalo did at the weekend’s highest rates), the two QBs saw their completion rates drop quite a bit.

But it was a real killer for Thompson. Both his interceptions came against this coverage. He had a completion rate of just 36 percent against press in the second half. In the first half he made almost 50 percent.

Salfino: Thompson had no downfield game, either: He went 4-for-17 on passes of 10-plus air yards.

neil: The fact that Allen barely out-QBR-ed Thompson (26.1 to 22.6) at home in a playoff game is concerning.

Salfino: Allen has all the tools but sometimes no tool box. He’s very Brett Favre-like. It’s going to be very hard for him to ever navigate the full playoff slate with this playing style.

maya: The Bills get the Bengals next week, who amassed 234 yards of offense Sunday — second-fewest of the season. Does this bode well or poorly for Allen getting back into rhythm?

neil: Speaking of teams that should have lost if not for miscues by a backup thrust into starting a playoff game …

joshua.hermsmeyer: The Ravens always play the Bengals tight, and DC Mike Macdonald had the Ravens defense well prepared. I think that was probably the worst the Bengals offense will look all postseason, win or lose. 

Salfino: The Bills almost beat themselves, but the Bengals were actually badly outplayed, IMO. Plus their offensive line, with the Jonah Williams knee injury, has gone from passable to non-passable.

neil: Bengals were lucky. That end-to-end fumble return TD off of Huntley’s sneak might end up being the highest-leverage play in these playoffs in terms of EPA and/or WPA swing. 

maya: Burrow was sacked four times against the Ravens, his most during the team’s nine-game win streak, despite averaging 2.38 seconds on his throws, tied for second-quickest in his career.

Salfino: The Bills are going to make Burrow’s life miserable on Sunday with relentless pressure.

joshua.hermsmeyer: Speaking of that Huntley play — Lawrence did the same thing and got away with it. 

neil: I hate that play. It’s such a gamble if you don’t actually break the plane.

maya: I see outstretched arms and I get so nervous.

Salfino: That’s the dumbest play in football but they were lined up to just push him in, which would have been the play of course. You sneak there by going low, not high.

neil: Totally agree.

Or maybe just give it to J.K. Dobbins …

Salfino: I like the sneak there. But Dobbins would be fine too.

joshua.hermsmeyer: Yes, Neil. Greg Roman is completely lost in the red zone.

Salfino: Why don’t teams just snap the ball to RB? Can’t you practice it? How do you stop a RB or say Mark Andrews on a direct snap there? Impossible. 

joshua.hermsmeyer: Well, Roman tried a handoff to Andrews earlier in the game. It didn’t end well. 

Salfino: No handoff. Just put him under center.

Of course, it needs to be practiced. But why have the QB sneak when there is no surprise on these plays, typically? 

maya: Especially when you compare it to some of the imaginative offensive plays teams like the Jaguars pulled out (T formation, anyone?), the Ravens’ play-calling definitely felt a little staid.

Salfino: Love that Jaguars play. Doug Pederson is such a good coach.

joshua.hermsmeyer: That was Travis Etienne’s longest run of the game — 25 of his 109 yards. In the game’s biggest moment. Incredible play call. 

maya: Pederson is one of three Super Bowl-winning coaches left in the playoffs, alongside Andy Reid and Mike McCarthy. And only one will advance out of the divisional round in the AFC, as the Jags travel to Kansas City next weekend.

neil: Reid and Pederson, both ex-Eagles coaches, LOL. (You’re good too, Nick Sirianni!) 

maya: And those Philadelphia Eagles will be coming off their bye to face a very familiar team in the New York Giants. The Giants lost both regular-season matchups, but after dispatching the Minnesota Vikings on Sunday in the only significant upset (again, sorry to Tampa Bay), what are you liking about this team?

neil: Obviously you have to love the Daniel Jones-led offense, the peak of their breakout improvement under Brian Daboll so far.

It was hilarious to hear the cherry-picked “first time a QB threw for 300-plus yards with two or more TDs and ran for 75-plus yards in a playoff game” stat, but at the same time … that IS impressive.

joshua.hermsmeyer: All season Daboll and Mike Kafka have put Jones into good situations with great play sequencing. I think that is their secret weapon heading into the next game — that and a fully weaponized Saquon Barkley. 

Salfino: The Giants compensate for their ham-and-egg receivers with Jones’s proactive running. He had the perfect balance of run/pass versus the Vikings, who of course are the worst 13-win team ever and can’t play defense to save their lives. Still, Jones made it look easier than anyone expected.

neil: Yes, to be fair, the Vikings were well-established frauds. And Kirk Cousins did exactly what you would expect of Kirk Cousins, throwing way short of the sticks on fourth-and-8 to end Minnesota’s season.

But I still think the G-Men were impressive. 

maya: Jones just seemed totally oblivious to pressure. I thought his quickness was most evident when he got outside of the pocket. But he was effective both inside and out! When Jones ran outside the left or right tackle, he averaged 8.2 yards a rush, including three first downs (that’s where he gained 41 of his 81 yards). When he ran toward the guards or up the middle, he averaged 5 yards a carry — but also rushed for four first downs.

Salfino: I’m reminded with Jones, who looked like he was going to be out of the league this time last year, of what Bill Parcells told me once for an article on draft busts — almost all are coaching/organization failures, not player failures. Jones has optimal coaching now and this offense isn’t even complete given the deficiencies at WR. Ironically, Jones is set up to be the 2023 Jalen Hurts now. What a difference a year makes.

maya: OK, but let’s get real — can these Giants match up against the Eagles?

joshua.hermsmeyer: No. On the other hand…

Salfino: Yes. The Eagles are very turnover dependent and the Giants avoid turnovers. Jones has the lowest interception rate in football. Their defense just shut down Vikings receiver Justin Jefferson. The Eagles passing game is of course more diversified but if you take A.J. Brown out of the game, you have a chance.

joshua.hermsmeyer: If you take Brown out of the game, you’re probably getting gashed by Hurts on the ground.

neil: We sort of have two conflicting data points on this. On the one hand, the Eagles handed the Giants a 48-22 thrashing on Dec. 11 that might have been their most dominant victory in what was a banner season. On the other hand, in a game they needed to win for seeding, with Hurts at QB, they barely beat the Giants’ backups on Jan. 8.

Salfino: Yes, the Giants just played the Eagles tough with their backups.

joshua.hermsmeyer: In terms of matching up on paper, this isn’t close. Now, variance is a thing. But come on. 

Salfino: I agree, Josh. Probably. But is Hurts healthy enough to take on that kind of rushing workload? I would find out if I were the Giants. 

neil: Right. The Eagles’ fate depends on how right Hurts is coming back from that injury. Last time we saw him, he was not quite his MVP-caliber self. But he’s had an extra week of rest since!

However, let’s just say this: Would I be surprised if the Giants were hanging with the Eagles throughout the game? Not at all. This is not the Bills versus the Dolphins and their third-string rookie QB, where I was stunned it was a ballgame late. 

Salfino: Jones has a better chance to advance than Dak Prescott, IMO. 

joshua.hermsmeyer: I hope it’s close. I can’t remember a better week of football … if you remove the Bucs game Monday night.

maya: Speaking of, we haven’t really touched on the Cowboys-Buccaneers matchup. Does anyone have thoughts, or should we just send thoughts for Brett Maher this morning and move on?

Salfino:

neil: Only time Tom Brady and the opponent’s melting-down kicker can relate to each other.

joshua.hermsmeyer: Never thought I would see four interceptions and four missed extra points in the same wild-card weekend.

maya: Both came from winning teams!

neil: But in all seriousness, that was the game the Cowboys needed to make a case that this is actually, finally the year for them.

Salfino: NARRATOR: This was not the year for them.

My thought is that Brady is done. He just can’t make downfield throws anymore — 4-for-14 on 10-plus air yards. Only Thompson was worse. And that interception in the red zone was UNCONSCIONABLE.

neil: Oh yeah, he clearly needs to retire.

He stayed one year too long. 

Salfino: I don’t think Brady retires, Neil.

neil: I am not sure either, I just know he should.

joshua.hermsmeyer: Maya, I recall in a chat earlier this year you said: Imagine blowing up your family just to lose in the wild card. Prescient.

maya: Brady was bad. But I also very much blame Todd Bowles for this loss. The Buccaneers already ran by design on an NFL-low 32 percent of plays in the regular season, but they ran by design on only 12 of their 80 plays Monday, the third-lowest designed rush percentage in the last 15 postseasons.

Salfino: Bowles is the worst coach and this is the worst staff in football.

maya: Sigh. I liked Bowles in New York and thought he should’ve been given one more year. But I wasn’t super impressed by him this year.

neil: Yeah but Maya, they had the worst YPC in football this year. I don’t blame him for abandoning the run. I think the Buccaneers would have preferred to establish the run all season to keep pressure off Brady. But it never worked well enough to be remotely viable.

And I agree with Marcus Spears: Brady just can’t win games for you and elevate a bad team anymore.

Salfino: Brady can’t elevate good teams anymore.

joshua.hermsmeyer: That punt in the second quarter was a fireable offense for Bowles.

Salfino: I’m not giving the Cowboys props for beating this downright bad Tampa Bay team. First road playoff win since 1992, BTW, which produced the famous, “How ‘bout them Cowboys!” Jimmy Johnson locker room clip.

maya: My impression of this Super Wild-Card Weekend is it successfully weeded out the weaker teams and has left us with four good to great divisional-round matchups. Does anyone want to make a case for an eliminated team?

neil: No. They all deserved what they got. Some just hung tougher than others.

Salfino: I feel badly for Chargers fans, all five of them.

maya: Low-hanging fruit, Mike.

joshua.hermsmeyer: The Ravens with Lamar Jackson would have been dangerous. It’s unfortunate that we didn’t get to see Lamar in the tournament. And I wonder if we’ll see him on the Ravens again.

Salfino: I think we could have four blowouts this weekend. If Josh is right about the Eagles.

maya: I’m not actually sure who wins in a blowout in the Bills-Bengals game — who’d you have in mind, Mike? 

Salfino: Bills are going to smash the Bengals given that offensive line sliding into “problem” territory.

Lamar is not taking $133 million guaranteed if Deshaun Watson got $230 million. So that’s at an impasse.

joshua.hermsmeyer: This game is dangerous. If any athletes deserve guaranteed money it’s football players. Skip me with the crying about guaranteed money by management. 

Salfino: Totally agree. But the owner in Baltimore is dead set against fully guaranteed money. (Reportedly.)

maya: OK, so I was going to end by asking for everyone’s conference championship predictions. Mike, safe to say yours are Bills vs. Chiefs and Eagles vs. Niners?

Salfino: Yes, Bills-Chiefs on a neutral field indoors will be like a Super Bowl game. And Eagles-Niners, too. The Niners are the most complete team right now but do have a rookie QB so there is no obvious leader of the pack, for me. Plus that Niners pass defense like I said is just OK.

maya: Honestly, I think my picks are the same. But I would love the chaos of Giants vs. Niners.

joshua.hermsmeyer: I will eat the chalk again along with Mike. Chiefs-Niners Super Bowl, with the Chiefs the champs.

Salfino: The Bengals to be clear are down three offensive linemen now. I can’t see Burrow overcoming this.

But the Chiefs have exactly one dynamic skill player. And he’s a tight end. I’m far from sold on them. Their defense is meh, too.

Mahomes is maybe the GOAT though, so … ?

neil: I wanna pick some upsets, but it’s hard to. Niners are a tough draw for the Cowboys, whom I want to pick to just be contrarian.

Salfino: If you try to imagine tomorrow’s headlines, a rookie QB spitting the bit is not exactly surprising.

neil: But San Francisco just seems like such a complete team; I can’t in good conscience pull the trigger on Dallas beating them. So I’ll go K.C. vs Buffalo in the AFC and, what the heck, Giants (!) vs. Niners in the NFC.

Feels like one of those Giants seasons where they seem very mid in the regular season but go on a postseason run — see 2007 and 2011.

joshua.hermsmeyer: Lawds. 

Salfino: Calm down, Neil.

neil: LOL. I’ve been burned by Giants devil-magic too much in the past.

maya: I would love a road-warriors Giants run. Those are FUN. 

neil: Although there are no Patriots or Packers for them to beat this postseason …

So maybe I need to re-think this.

Check out our latest NFL predictions.

NFL

Will Wild-Card Weekend Give Us The Upsets We Crave?

A FiveThirtyEight Chat

Jan. 9, 2023, at 3:20 PM

maya (Maya Sweedler, editor):  After 18 weeks of football — of thrilling comebacks, electric plays, baffling coaching decisions and disappointing quarterbacking (and all this just from the Minnesota Vikings!) — the 2022 NFL regular season has come to an end, and we’re staring ahead at three days of wild-card play next weekend.

The playoff matchups are set, and we’re pretty excited about a lot of them. But let’s take a beat to talk about Week 18 and how we got here before we turn to the playoffs and the season as a whole.

There were three spots up for grabs entering Week 18, the AFC South title and the final wild-card spots in both conferences. So firstly, congrats to the Jacksonville Jaguars, Seattle Seahawks and Miami Dolphins for making it at least one more week into January. Jacksonville was 3-7 going into its bye, but finished the season 6-1. Other than Trevor Lawrence’s sophomore leap and, uh, ditching the guy from Ohio State, what explains this team’s jump?

joshua.hermsmeyer (Josh Hermsmeyer, NFL analyst): I think the Jags just played great team football this season. They ended the year with an underrated defense — above league average by expected points added. That and the steadying influence of first-year head coach Doug Pederson stand out to me.

neil (Neil Paine, acting sports editor): Yeah Josh, they improved from 28th in points allowed to 12th.

The offensive improvement under Lawrence in his second year (32nd to 10th) was more dramatic, but the defense should get credit for the turnaround, too.

dre.waters (Andres Waters, FiveThirtyEight contributor): Pederson’s impact on the team has been huge; like Maya said, they started slow but once they got into rhythm they really did look like the best team in their division.

neil: And it helped that the Titans slid into oblivion in the second half of the season.

dre.waters: I think it’s also really impressive that with the same core from last season, the Jags also look like a team that could get even better on offense going forward. The addition of Calvin Ridley around the trade deadline could really elevate the offense next season.

neil: And I know we always have to temper our enthusiasm about RBs, but Travis Etienne’s delayed debut in the NFL was exciting — he had over 1,400 yards from scrimmage. Loved seeing that Clemson connection with him and Lawrence carry over in the pros.

joshua.hermsmeyer: I will say I was disappointed in Lawrence’s play in his biggest game yet as a pro, though; 212 yards and a 43.5 Total QBR won’t get it done in the playoffs.

neil: That’s true. Just when hope was fading, the Jags offense was bailed out by Josh Allen on that not-an-incomplete-pass-at-all fumble return TD. But I’m not sure you can count on that kind of thing to save you again.

dre.waters: Don’t they say you need a little bit of luck as well?

joshua.hermsmeyer: That or a guy named Josh Allen.

neil: Any Josh Allen will do!

joshua.hermsmeyer: Anyone taking the Bolts over the Jags? DraftKings Sportsbook had the Los Angeles Chargers as 1.5-point favorites (they are now 1-point favorites). I think that’s preposterous.

neil: So Josh, I take it you think the Jags should be favored? FWIW, our model has that as the closest of the wild-card games, at 59-41 for Jax.

maya: I’m a big believer in momentum, and the Jags got it!

neil: They also have home field.

dre.waters: And they’re not cursed.

joshua.hermsmeyer: Yep, I don’t think the Chargers are ~3 points better than the Jags. Chargers coach Brandon Staley played his starters in a meaningless game and wide receiver Mike Williams injured his back so severely he needed to be helped onto the team bus after the 31-28 loss to the Denver Broncos yesterday. Seems like a bit of a clown show to me.

neil: (Anytime the phrase “loss to the Denver Broncos” is used in 2022, that qualifies as a clown show.)

maya: No, in all seriousness, I think this a pretty good matchup. I’m willing to throw out the Jags’ 28-point win earlier this season, as it came around the high point of the Chargers’ injury woes, but even so, I would take this Jacksonville offense against the admittedly impressive Los Angeles defense. I think Etienne is juuuuust enough of a threat on the ground to make the Jaguars unpredictable.

neil: In a world where both of the other AFC wild-card games will very possibly feature backup QBs, I’m also excited for the Lawrence-Herbert matchup. Herbert’s numbers were down a bit from a year ago, but it’s still a battle of two stellar young passers, each under age 25.

maya: Both have great potential! Only one can win! Neither can rent a car!

joshua.hermsmeyer: Lamar will start, Neil! (I hope.)

neil: I’ll believe it when I see it.

dre.waters: Ughhhhhhhhhhhhh. I don’t even want to begin to think about Lamar not starting this playoff game.

maya: Speaking of clown shows, let’s talk about the NFC North. With Seattle’s win, there were two notable teams left on the outside looking in. Despite their valiant efforts (the Lions to pull the season together, the Packers to maybe tank theirs), Detroit and Green Bay will not be in the playoffs. Is this the last we’ve seen of Aaron Rodgers in green and yellow?

neil: Sure seemed that way when Rodgers and Randall Cobb walked off the field together at Lambeau last night.

joshua.hermsmeyer: I’m not sure about him returning to Green Bay, but I think there’s almost no chance Rodgers retires. You’re telling me the quarterback with the lowest interception rate in NFL history‘s last NFL play was an interception? Skip me with that. Rodgers cares too much about his stats and his legacy.

maya: He’s tried to force a trade out of Green Bay before — what’s to stop him attempting it again?

I can think of a few down-on-their luck teams with quarterback drama who might want to trade for Rodgers to get fans in the seats. (Cough, Vegas, cough.)

joshua.hermsmeyer: Or Houston. Or Detroit.

neil: Detroit? Goff was the best QB on the field last night.

(Sort of kidding, sort of not … Who knows anymore with either of those guys.) 

dre.waters: Now Houston officially has the second overall pick to put on the table in any offer as well. 

maya: There were a couple of truly funny moments this season, but I gotta say, the Texans converting multiple fourth-and-10-plus plays to win a game they needed to lose in order to snag the first overall pick is up there for me.

Wish it didn’t cost Lovie Smith his job, but here’s hoping he lands on his feet with a less snakebitten franchise.

joshua.hermsmeyer: Houston fired the wrong guy, first of all. GM Nick Caserio deserves more of the blame here than Lovie. And second, God bless Smith for winning that last game on his way out the door. Absolute legend.

maya: Lovie Smith has been a legend since ’06. Anyone who takes Rex Grossman to the Super Bowl is an absolute champion in my book.

neil: There needs to be a better way than setting up a situation where a fan base gets (rightly?) outraged at the team — and the coach gets fired — for winning a game and therefore losing draft position. I know many have pondered the problem of tanking, with few (if any) solutions. But something like yesterday really makes the whole process stand out as absurd.

If it’s any consolation to the Texans — given how much of a crapshoot highly touted QBs are — it’s anybody’s guess whether Bryce Young will actually be worth that pick they lost anyway.

joshua.hermsmeyer: Agreed 100 percent about our inability to project QB play, Neil. And given the way they treated Smith, I kind of hope the Texans lose their QB bet this year.

dre.waters: Agreed, Josh. It really felt like when they hired Lovie there wasn’t much intention to keep him long term, given all the reports about their interest in Josh McCown.

maya: But to bring it back to Detroit — is this team one that can win with Jared Goff, or should they start looking for a new signal-caller?

Honestly, given how young this roster is and how solid Goff has looked, I’m inclined to give him another year or two. The problem with this team was its defense, but based on the play of its rookies, I think the Lions have some real talent in the pipeline.

joshua.hermsmeyer: The Lions’ future is so hard to forecast.  I think the answer comes down to the Lions defense. Detroit was second to last in defensive EPA this year, while its offense ranked third. It’s a good bet the offense takes a step back next season — it’s hard to maintain that level of play without an elite QB. And while Goff is underrated, he’s not in Mahomes-and-Allen territory, so the defense will have to make up the difference. That’s a tough ask. It’s hard to rely on defense in general, and from Week 10 on the Lions didn’t improve much (28th-ranked defense by EPA).

neil: But really, it wasn’t Goff’s fault they missed the playoffs. Their offense ranked fifth in scoring!

Goff was fifth in QBR!

Maybe he is actually an elite QB? 

maya: LOL OK Neil.

dre.waters: Elite is a stretch LOL.

neil: What even is an elite QB, after this season?

Goff, Geno Smith, Daniel Jones and Jacoby Brissett were all top 10 in QBR this season. 

maya: (I will note that at one point, when we looked at NFL quarterbacks with the same alma mater, Goff and Rodgers had Cal up there at No. 3 in terms of average of Total QBR, behind No. 1 Alabama’s Jalen Hurts and Tua Tagovailoa.)

neil: All I’m saying is that we always talk about teams not being able to win without elite QB play. But when you look at QBs who were elite this season, it’s not at all who we would have predicted before the season. So what do we really know about whether a team will or won’t have elite QB play?

It felt like a paradigm-shifting season in that regard. 

maya: What a great segue into the Seahawks!

We’ve been pretty pro-Geno here this season, so I’d be remiss if I didn’t offer this fun factoid:

neil: That’s pretty hilarious, even granting that a lot of these single-season records are getting broken due to the 17-game schedule.

maya: Shh, Neil, don’t ruin it.

neil:

joshua.hermsmeyer: Do Seattle fans even remember Russell Wilson?

maya: Geno finished the 2022 season as the most accurate qualified passer in the league! That’s not nothing. The Seahawks probably wish they had drawn anyone other than the division-rival 49ers — who beat them twice in the regular season — in the wild-card round, but who other than Geno (and maybe Jalen Hurts) can give this rangy Niners secondary a run for their money?

joshua.hermsmeyer: I really want to root for Geno, but there are some other factors at play here. First, while his rise from the ashes is a great story, it’s not better than Brock Purdy doing what he’s done as a rookie and entering the league as the last pick in the draft.

Second, always pay your gambling debts!

dre.waters: I think you’re right, Josh. Purdy has definitely been the biggest surprise of the season. Even with a third-string QB, the 49ers still have the second-best odds to make it to the NFC championship game and fourth-best odds to make it to the Super Bowl, according to our model.

That’s wild.

neil: It hasn’t been a drop-off from Jimmy G to Purdy at all. If anything, Purdy has the better numbers in many categories.

maya: Here goes nothing …*

* my attempt to trigger the “defend Jimmy G” portion of the chat

… but the Niners have proved they can advance to the NFC championship game with a second-rate quarterback. I’m not yet sure if Purdy is that (small sample size caveats!), but I wouldn’t be so surprised if they did it again.

neil: They’re averaging 33.6 points per game since Purdy became starter. Under Garoppolo, it was just 24.5.

joshua.hermsmeyer: Jimmy G remains handsome even when injured. That’s all I got.

neil: Handsomeness never slumps.

maya: To play devil’s advocate here, though, Purdy starting coincided with the integration of Christian McCaffrey into the offense. There’s a lot going in this team’s favor is all I’m sayin’!

neil: That’s fair, Maya. But when we’re talking about the Niners’ potential this year (as opposed to Purdy’s in the long term), it doesn’t really matter who’s driving the bus as long as that bus is going very fast.

(What a weird bus metaphor I made there at the end.)

maya: The Niners are a Tesla on autopilot. Clear 101.

joshua.hermsmeyer: I’m picturing Sanda Bullock and Keanu Reeves on an L.A. interstate right now.

maya: The Niners-Seahawks game is one of three intradivisional wild-card grudge matches we have on the docket next weekend. Are there any matchups you guys are particularly looking forward to?

joshua.hermsmeyer: Dallas at Tampa Bay looks to be a close game. For some reason I’m not actually very excited to watch either team, though. I feel like it’s a competition to see who will lose the following week.

neil: Same, Josh. And that’s the Monday night game!

maya: I will absolutely watch if it’s a ManningCast. If not …

But yeah, Josh, I feel similarly. I’m definitely looking forward more to the AFC 4-versus-5 matchup, which we’ve already discussed.

dre.waters: Fandom aside, I’m interested in Ravens-Bengals but not for the game, just to see if Lamar plays or not. If he doesn’t, I think the QB carousel in the offseason could get crazy 

joshua.hermsmeyer: Andres, as a fellow Ravens fan — it’s time for Greg Roman to go, right?

maya: Oh wow, Dre, are you saying you think Jackson is outie after this season, depending on whether he plays?

dre.waters: Roman has to go. No exceptions

And Maya, if he doesn’t play this weekend, I could definitely see Baltimore listening to offers. Because they clearly don’t want to pay the man

joshua.hermsmeyer: The worst thing for everyone is to limp along on franchise tags with Lamar. I hope they either commit or set him free.

neil: He’s such a fascinating case. I know there are better stats than QB Winz, but just for illustration purposes: Jackson is one of just three active QBs (along with Tom Brady and Patrick Mahomes) to win 70 percent of his career starts, including playoffs. Clearly, when he plays, he is a huge difference-maker. But availability has not been his greatest ability over the past few years.

maya: Yeah, and I think that becomes a self-defeating cycle. I think he’s very much a victim of the biases against running quarterbacks and fears around their longevity.

There are two more playoff games we’ve left unmentioned thus far — Giants at Vikings on the NFC side and Dolphins at Bills on the AFC. Anyone see a potential upset in either of those?

joshua.hermsmeyer: The Dolphins are such a massive underdog (-11) it can’t be them — even if Tua plays.

neil: Just so we’re clear — would it be an upset if the Vikings beat the Giants or if the Giants beat the Vikings?

I can’t tell which.

Kidding aside, this will be the fourth playoff game featuring two teams who had negative regular-season point differentials, joining Minnesota vs Atlanta in 1982, Pittsburgh-Houston in 1989 and Seattle vs St. Louis in 2004. Fun!

joshua.hermsmeyer: I’ll go with my preseason pick for “Guy who could turn out to be above average” and take Daniel Jones and the G-men for the upset. Why not? Both these teams are exceedingly mediocre.

maya: That piece was so prescient that I now go to Josh for stock tips.

Let’s wrap up this week with everyone’s favorite activity — writing down award predictions that will shortly be proved false! I’d like your votes for MVP, Offensive Player of the Year, Defensive Player of the Year and Coach of the Year as well as the last four teams standing. And prepare to defend any sus picks (I have a few).

dre.waters: MVP: Patrick Mahomes

Offensive Player of the Year: Geno Smith

Defensive Player of the Year: Micah Parsons

Coach of the Year: Pete Carroll

maya: MVP: Patrick Mahomes (but if he didn’t miss those games at the end of the season, I absolutely would’ve cast my vote for Jalen Hurts)

OPOY: Justin Jefferson

DPOY: Quinnen Williams (even though my gut says it’ll probably go to Nick Bosa)

COY: Brian Daboll (I etched this in stone after he went for two in Week 1 and can’t change it, sorry!)

joshua.hermsmeyer: MVP: Mahomes

OPOY: Mahomes

DPOY: Bosa

Comeback Player of the Year: Geno

COY: Doug Pederson

neil: MVP: Patrick Mahomes ( )

OPOY: Christian McCaffrey!

DPOY: Micah Parsons

Coach of the Year: Doug Pederson

maya: And now your final four teams, please!

dre.waters: NFC: Niners vs. Eagles

AFC: Chiefs vs. Bills

(I tried to go with a team that’s not a favorite, but I just don’t see it happening this year.)

joshua.hermsmeyer: NFC: Niners vs. Eagles

AFC: Chiefs vs. Bills in the Real Super Bowl

maya: NFC: Vikings vs. Niners (I’m leaning into whatever witchcraft is going on in U.S. Bank Stadium and no one, not even beloved former sports editor Sara Ziegler, can talk me out of this)

AFC: Chiefs vs. Bills (we deserve this)

neil: NFC: Niners vs. Eagles (), Niners win.

AFC: Chiefs vs. Bills (location, uh, TBD?), Bills finally get it.

I couldn’t pull the trigger on the Cowboys actually making the NFC title game.

dre.waters: Because they won’t LMAO.

neil: LOLOL

And I agree, Andres, about it being tough to find underdogs who feel like they have a shot this year. 

These conferences are really top-heavy.

joshua.hermsmeyer: Before we go, I also need a prediction on whether Sean McVay leaves the sunny shores of L.A. or not.

maya: I’m gonna say no, he returns for one more year and leaves with Matthew Stafford after a fairly ignominious season just under .500.

joshua.hermsmeyer: I like the cut of your jib, Maya.

neil: I kind of want to say yes? It’s the time-worn path of:

• Win with a team that sells out its future
• See how bleak things will be afterward
• Go do TV for a year or two
• Latch on with a different team who has a better future

joshua.hermsmeyer: How do you leave L.A., though? For what, Houston? Yuck.

dre.waters: I doubt he leaves after this season but I agree with Neil and Maya — definitely feels like he’ll be out of there soon.

maya: Maybe Vegas!

neil: Post-Belichick Patriots

 (Honestly not sure that’s any better, LOL)

joshua.hermsmeyer: The one benefit of heading to New England is that you can pull up tapes of all your old practices before games against your previous team.

neil: Bahahahaha.

That’s the winner.

A programming note — we will be back with our wild-card coverage on Tuesday, Jan. 17.

Check out our latest NFL predictions.

NHL

The Bruins Are Unbeatable, The Panthers Are Floundering, And Ageless Ovechkin Can’t Stop Scoring

Plus other storylines that have surprised us in the NHL's first half.

By Terrence Doyle and Neil Paine and Terrence Doyle and Neil Paine

Jan. 6, 2023, at 6:00 AM

The holidays are over, and so is roughly half of the NHL’s 2022-23 regular-season schedule. That means it’s time to take stock of a season that has been decidedly less predictable than last year’s top-heavy campaign so far.¹⁸ Some things about the season aren’t shocking at all, of course — like the tankfest currently unfolding to earn the draft rights to mega-prospect Connor Bedard. But here are the six storylines that have surprised us the most in the early stages of the season:

The Bruins are (nearly) unbeatable

At the beginning of the season, we thought the Bruins would be pretty good — we gave them a 77 percent chance of making the playoffs, and a 5 percent chance of winning the whole thing — but we couldn’t have predicted the ridiculous start they’ve had. As things stand, the Bruins are far and away the best team in the NHL by just about every metric that matters. They (comfortably) have the best Elo rating in the league; they lead the league (by a wide margin) in points percentage; they’re scoring the second-most goals per game, but are giving up (by far) the fewest goals per game; they have a top-six power-play percentage and a league-leading penalty kill percentage; and their SRS¹⁹ is (comically, ridiculously, obscenely, ludicrously) nearly double that of the next best team. Simply put, the Bruins are the best team in the NHL at the moment.

The B’s set the record for the best home start in NHL history, winning their first 14 games at the TD Garden before finally dropping one — in OT, for what it’s worth — to the Vegas Golden Knights.²⁰ Boston did most of that without star defenseman Charlie McAvoy²¹ and some of it without talismanic left winger Brad Marchand.²² And through their first 37 games the Bruins have lost on just eight occasions, and only four times in regulation. Boston isn’t unbeatable — but it’s as close to unbeatable as it gets.

So, why are the Bruins this good? For starters, they’ve got the current best goaltending tandem in the NHL. Starter Linus Ullmark and backup Jeremy Swayman have combined for a league best .926 save percentage — and the former is the current front-runner (at least according to Vegas) to win the Vezina Trophy as the league’s best netminder. It also helps to have David Pastrnak, one of the NHL’s deadliest shooters and among its 10 best players, period. The Czech winger is on pace to break career highs for both goals and points — career highs that currently stand at 48 and 95, respectively. Suffice it to say that Pasta is having an MVP-caliber season (that is, if Connor McDavid didn’t exist). 

Of course, Pastrnak isn’t the only player scoring for the Bruins. Through 37 games, Boston has six other players with 27 points or more, including defenseman Hampus Lindholm, who’s chipped in with four goals and 23 assists from the blue line. The big question for the Bruins in the offseason was whether captain and all-time Boston great Patrice Bergeron was going to sign for another season or hang up the skates for good. But then Bergeron signed, and then longtime No. 2 centerman David Krejci came back from playing in his home league in the Czech Republic, and now the Bruins are running it back for what could be one final Stanley Cup charge with this iteration of the team.²³ So far, so good. 

Tage Thompson is a superstar

Just two seasons ago, Buffalo Sabres center Tage Thompson was a 23-year-old former late first-round draft pick on his second NHL team, with only 18 career goals to his name. Going into the second year of a three-year contract, his future with the Sabres was uncertain. Fast-forward to the present, however, and Thompson’s story has taken a stunning turn: After notching his fourth career hat trick Tuesday night, Thompson became the second player to score 30 goals this season (after McDavid), putting him on pace for an incredible 68 goals, which would tie for the 18th-most ever in a single season if he keeps it up for all 82 games.

Thompson’s breakout started in earnest last year, when he had 38 goals in 78 games while playing on a line with a rejuvenated Jeff Skinner and newcomer Alex Tuch.²⁴ But even granting that, it’s still difficult to find historical parallels for what Thompson is doing this season. Adjusting for league schedule lengths and scoring environments, Thompson’s 66 adjusted goals in 2022-23 is easily the most in a season by any player with fewer than 75 career adjusted goals coming into that season; it’s also the second-most (trailing Wayne Gretzky in 1981-82) by any player with fewer than 100 previous adjusted goals in his career. Factor in Thompson’s age — 25, four years older than Gretzky during his big scoring breakout — and the Sabres’ star is looking like one of best late-bloomers in hockey history.

Buffalo is reaping the benefits of Thompson’s sudden metamorphosis into the new Mario Lemieux, too.²⁵ After ranking 22nd in goals per game a year ago, the Sabres now lead the NHL in offensive output, and Thompson is (both literally and metaphorically) the biggest reason why.

The Devils and the Kraken are … good?

Before this season, the New Jersey Devils hadn’t been good — or even decent — for a while. After making a run to the 2012 Stanley Cup Final, New Jersey failed to make the playoffs in nine of the next 10 seasons — finishing in the basement, or second nearest the basement, of its division on eight occasions. Not great for a team that won three Cups between 1995 and 2003, and that was a perennial playoff menace for an even longer period of time. But all that appears to be changing this season. 

The Devils currently have the fifth-best points percentage in the league, and our model gives them a 69 percent chance of making the playoffs — far better than the 13 percent chance it gave them entering the season. The Devils have a top-10 offense in terms of goals per game — Jack Hughes and Nico Hischier are each following up very solid 2021-22 seasons with career years, and defenseman Dougie Hamilton continues to be one of the league’s most productive blueliners — but it’s their defense that has them looking like legitimate playoff contenders. For the first time in a decade, there’s something to smile about for hockey fans in Newark. 

On the other coast, the Seattle Kraken are in the process of erasing the considerable growing pains that usually accompany inaugural seasons in any professional sports league.²⁶ After a first season to forget, the Kraken are actually … competitive, if not downright good! 

Seattle currently has the 11th-best points percentage in the NHL, and is scoring the fifth-most goals per game. No single player is lighting it up, but balanced scoring has been the key on Puget Sound as eight players have registered 20 or more points. Seattle’s special teams leave something to be desired — its power play ranks 19th, and its penalty kill ranks second to last — and its goaltending has been, uh, not great.²⁷ Elo rating places the Kraken in the bottom half of the league, but our model still gives them a 62 percent chance of making the playoffs — a considerable upgrade from their preseason chances. The Kraken probably won’t win the Stanley Cup, but they’re far more formidable than they were a season ago. After the 2021-22 campaign, things could be much worse in the Emerald City.

The Panthers and Flames’ big offseason plans have flopped

Before the season began, we highlighted a series of interconnected — and hugely consequential — offseason shake-ups by the Florida Panthers and Calgary Flames, two of the league’s top teams a year ago. In the centerpiece blockbuster, the Panthers shipped leading scorer Jonathan Huberdeau and solid D-man MacKenzie Weegar (among other assets) to Calgary for bruising winger Matthew Tkachuk, drastically reshaping both rosters in both the short- and long-term.

The wheeling and dealing was designed in part to help both teams overcome disappointing playoff results against bitter rivals. But now neither team is a sure thing to even make the playoffs again. 

The Panthers are just 17-22 on the season — nine games behind where they were at the same point in 2021-22 — and our forecast model gives them just a 17 percent chance at a postseason return. While Tkachuk remains a bona fide star (he’s tracking for 96 adjusted points), Florida’s goal prevention has slid below average and last year’s record-chasing offense is nowhere to be found. The Flames are in slightly better shape, at 18-21 with 62 percent playoff odds,²⁸ but they’re struggling to score while Huberdeau and Weegar have become completely invisible most nights. According to adjusted goals above replacement²⁹ gained or lost since last season, only the injury-riddled Colorado Avalanche have taken more of a step backward in terms of net contributions from newcomers minus departures than the Panthers and Flames, turning their mega-trade into a lose-lose deal for now.

The Vegas Golden Knights are back

The Vegas Golden Knights missed the playoffs for the first time in franchise history in 2021-22. (Fine, it was only its fifth season in the NHL, but still.) This wouldn’t be abnormal for most recent expansion teams, but then again, the Knights aren’t like most recent expansion teams. They made the Stanley Cup Final in their inaugural season, and they qualified for the playoffs in each of their next three seasons, appearing in both the conference semifinals and finals. Since the puck first dropped at center ice of T-Mobile Arena on Oct. 10, 2017, the Knights have been a revelation. Except for last season. 

It’s not that the Knights were particularly bad in 2021-22. They finished middle of the pack in terms of SRS and had a top-12 offense, but they struggled on the power play and penalty kill, and couldn’t figure out how to keep other teams from scoring. In the end, they finished with 94 points, just three off the final wild-card spot. Not an ignominious season; not a great season; but with a points total that is generally enough to earn a low playoff seed.³⁰ 

Well, that’s all changed this season, and order has been restored to the recent NHL universe. The Knights have the fourth-best points percentage in the league, and they’re currently sitting in pole position in the Pacific Conference. At the beginning of the season, our model gave them a 68 percent chance of returning to the playoffs after a year outside looking in. Three months and nearly halfway through the season later, those chances have skyrocketed to 95 percent. Vegas might not be the same team that captured lightning in a bottle in its first three seasons, but it should comfortably qualify for the playoffs. And once the real season begins, anything can happen. 

Ovi and Sid are defeating Father Time

OK, it might not be surprising, exactly, that Alexander Ovechkin remains an elite goal scorer in his late 30s — but what he’s doing in his relative twilight is borderline unprecedented.³¹ At the moment, Ovechkin is tied with Mike Bossy and Gretzky for total seasons (nine) with 50 or more goals. If he keeps up his current pace, he’ll become the first player in NHL history with 10 seasons of 50 or more goals.

Ovi has already reached one milestone this year — just before Christmas, the great Washington winger scored his 802nd career goal to pass Gordie Howe, a player considered by many to be among the greatest — if not the greatest — player in the history of the sport. He’s scored six more since then, and trails only Gretzky on the NHL’s all-time list. If Ovechkin stays healthy and continues potting goals at his current pace, he could score 29 more this season alone, which would put him at 837 — just 57 behind Gretzky’s record. For a player who’s still notching 50-goal seasons deep into his late 30s, it might just be a matter of when — not if — we have a new all-time leader on our hands. 

And it wouldn’t be right if just Ovechkin was having a moment in the sun without also being joined by longtime frenemy Sidney Crosby. While Sid the Kid isn’t chasing huge historical milestones like Ovi is, Crosby’s continued excellence at age 35 is notable in its own way. His current pace of 41 adjusted goals and 91 adjusted points would rank 13th- and 18th-most for any player in a season at 35 or older, respectively. Relatedly, Crosby is tracking for a 12th career season with at least 30 adjusted goals and 50 adjusted assists — which would trail only Gretzky and Howe (at 13 apiece) all time.

Both stars’ teams have needed their leaders’ ageless performances, too. With Ovechkin almost single-handedly driving its offense, Washington has survived the most man-games lost to injury of any team in the league so far. Meanwhile, Crosby has helped carry Pittsburgh through down seasons from some of its mainstays — and the limited availability of stalwart defenseman Kris Letang, who suffered a stroke in late November. In a deep Metro division, the Penguins and Caps could be on a stretch-run collision course fighting for a playoff spot, setting up another classic clash between these two old rivals. 

Check out our latest NHL predictions.

NFL

NFL Leadership Wasn't Prepared For Damar Hamlin's Injury

A FiveThirtyEight Chat

Jan. 3, 2023, at 4:51 PM

maya (Maya Sweedler, editor): Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin is still in critical but stable condition after going into cardiac arrest during a game in Cincinnati Monday night. That much we know. As of this writing, we do not know what caused the cardiac event; what his current status is; and whether or how the game will be made up, though the NFL did confirm that the Bills-Bengals game would not be resumed this week. His family released a statement earlier this morning thanking people for their support and said it would release updates once possible. 

There’s a lot to say about Hamlin, but I thought former NFL player and ESPN analyst Ryan Clark put it best: 

Today’s chat will begin with the events of last night before ending on a brief discussion of where the league stands heading into the final week of the regular season. 

Ty Schalter (Ty Schalter, FiveThirtyEight contributor): As ESPN commentator Booger McFarland said during the delay, “football is entertainment,” and nothing could be further from entertainment than the horror of seeing a human being in mortal peril. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has reportedly long been “terrified” of the impact an on-field death might have on the sport — and everything we saw and felt last night is why.

maya: For as long as I’ve been a football fan, I’ve felt this tension between the violence inherent to the sport and the beauty of its strategy. Sometimes it’s easier to brush aside the qualms associated with the former and focus entirely on the latter; sometimes, even admitting to myself that I find beauty in the game is challenging.

neil (Neil Paine, acting sports editor): I feel exactly the same way, Maya. And we’re not alone in that cognitive dissonance between enjoying the game while also worrying about the devastating injuries players are routinely subjected to.

A Morning Consult poll from October asked Americans whether head injuries — which, to be clear, are different from what Hamlin suffered Monday night — affected their interest in watching NFL games. Overall, 71 percent of U.S. adults said they had “no impact,” and although that number dropped some among younger fans, 62 percent of Gen Z fans answered in the same way. This is despite other polling which shows that the vast majority of fans do consider serious injuries to be a major problem for the league. We recognize the dangers but find ways to compartmentalize them. And I don’t know if seeing something as scary as what happened to Hamlin will change that.

maya: Violence is not unique to American football. There are plenty of other contact sports in which participants experience grievous or life-altering injuries. But there’s something about the way violence — collision, explosiveness, contact — is celebrated in American football that makes it feel like such a central part of the experience. And when something like this happens, I think it’s natural to question whether that’s something we as sports fans and members of the media are OK with condoning. It’s something that I’ve found myself thinking about more and more, especially as the league has so publicly struggled to address these concerns and the TV rights deals get bigger and bigger. 

joshua.hermsmeyer (Josh Hermsmeyer, NFL analyst): Like many people, I had a mix of strong emotions watching the broadcast. The concern on the players’ faces reflected everyone’s feelings in that moment. And then the confusion about whether or not the game would continue was worse than distracting — it seemed to trivialize the seriousness of something that so obviously took precedence over football.

neil: Definitely. ESPN continuously cutting back to Suzy Kolber when nobody really had anything to say just made things worse. (And it wasn’t her fault — she was thrust into just about the most difficult scenario in broadcasting.)

maya: That to me made Clark’s thoughts so powerful — in professional sports, where it’s so easy to take an individual story and distill it into a concept like “comeback” or “perseverance,” it sometimes takes that reminder to keep the person at the center. This is a 24-year-old man whose heart stopped beating.

Ty Schalter: I’ve often criticized the NFL for pretending the first 80 years or so of pro football didn’t happen. The NFL might prefer not to talk about starting out as a hyperviolent sideshow founded by bookies and bettors — but there are fans alive today who grew up watching 49ers linebacker Hardy Brown intentionally knock as many opponents unconscious as he could. The game really has changed; I’ve lived through generation after generation of former players complaining that it’s “soft” now compared to when they played. But it is still football. Considering Goodell’s reported fear of a moment like this one (and his having been party to an active, decades-long coverup of football brain injuries and cognitive disabilities), you’d think the league would have been better prepared to handle its decision-making and messaging in the hours following Hamlin’s collapse.

joshua.hermsmeyer: The NFL has in the past produced a video and other materials on how to address sudden cardiac arrest on the field, but whatever planning was done by the NFL ahead of last night didn’t translate to viewers as an organization oozing with competence.

neil: Right. For instance, we’re still not sure where Joe Buck got his information about the game potentially resuming after a five-minute warm-up period; NFL executive VP Troy Vincent denies that the league ever floated that possibility. But even the confusion there was indicative of just how unprepared the league and the network seemed to have been for a situation like this. It felt like there was no framework in place for an injury that goes above and beyond the typical theme-song-in-a-minor-key treatment we see all too often on broadcasts.

Ty Schalter: In the age of social media, organizations can’t just hope people calmly wait for a complete set of verified facts to be announced. More than three hours passed between Hamlin’s collapse and Vincent’s public insistence that everything was handled appropriately — and everyone in this chat knows that’s enough time not just to tweet speculation, but to report, write and publish entire articles about what we all saw happen during an NFL game.

The NFL’s statement today, which made clear that the league would not attempt to resume the game this week, is exactly the kind of proactive communication we needed earlier last night.

joshua.hermsmeyer: It seems that Buffalo believed that the game would continue. The Bills defense lined up on the field before Bengals head coach Zac Taylor walked over to the Buffalo sideline, and then both teams left the field minutes later. I’d be interested to know why the Bills felt the game would go on.

neil: It would not be out of character for the NFL — or really any sports league, for that matter — to push through something like Hamlin’s injury. There’s a long history of particularly horrible things happening in auto racing, and the governing organizations just don’t stop the race. It’s a mentality of “the show must go on” that seems to often override everything else. So in some ways, it was surprising that they didn’t ultimately choose to pick things up again quickly.

(On the other hand, our senior designer and my fellow hockey fanatic Emily Scherer reminds me that the NHL has seen a few mid-game cardiac incidents in recent seasons, causing that league to postpone games.)

maya: Given how this league has handled scary injuries in the past — I think back to Pittsburgh Steeler Ryan Shazier’s spinal injury in 2017 — a play stoppage felt particularly unusual.

joshua.hermsmeyer: That mentality would fit with the way the Miami Dolphins handled quarterback Tua Tagovailoa’s situation earlier this season, Neil. Tua was rushed to the hospital in Week 4 against the Bengals when Miami allowed him to start despite being injured the previous week (and letting him continue to play) against the Bills.

neil: I suspect many of the reasons why the league took so long to make the call to postpone the game at all simply came down to economics and logistics. It doesn’t take schedule disruptions lightly when advertisers have bought in during a specific time slot — as it was, the NFL-centric ads they kept running throughout the delay were particularly jarring — and it is true that moving or canceling the Bills-Bengals game will have cascading effects on the rest of the schedule. Both teams are set to play other teams on Sunday, so Monday’s game may have to be moved to another date — if it gets completed at all. (For what it’s worth, the Bills have arrived back in Buffalo now.) 

And on a note of much more minor importance, if the league just considers Monday’s game a tie, it would very likely hand the Kansas City Chiefs the AFC’s No. 1 seed and home-field advantage throughout the playoffs, while forcing both Cincinnati and Buffalo to play an extra postseason game. Obviously these are secondary concerns at the moment, and it’s unclear when either Cincinnati or Buffalo will feel comfortable playing again. But it all helps explain some of the decisions that were weighed Monday night.

joshua.hermsmeyer: I don’t think there is any question that economics played at least some role in how things went down last night, and I’d be surprised if they don’t factor in moving forward. A Bengals-Bills tie would have other knock-on effects, as well: It would make the Bengals’ Week 18 season finale against Baltimore moot, since the Bengals would win the AFC North division championship. I’d imagine both the Bengals and the Ravens would then end up resting their key starters. In the end, that might be the best outcome for the players, if not the league’s pocketbook.

maya: Acknowledging that we’re about to turn to the playoffs, which feel so much less important than what we’ve discussed above, seems insufficient, but here we are. Regardless of what happens with this particular game, the NFL has confirmed there are no additional changes to Week 18, which is currently slated to start on Saturday and the playoffs the following week. 

So we’re going to take them as they come. We were off Dec. 26 for Christmas and yesterday for New Year’s, so there’s a lot of football that’s happened. 

The short of it is the playoff picture is mostly in focus. We don’t know who will hold the top seed or the final wild-card spot in either conference, and the AFC South division title remains up for grabs. But for the most part, we know who will be playing in January. 

The NFC East is still pretty strong, with three teams headed to the playoffs (sorry, Washington, you’re the odd man out) — but both Dallas, on a short win streak, and Philadelphia, missing its quarterback, could win the division and the top seed. Minnesota continues to be baffling, and both Green Bay and Detroit have rebounded after tough starts to the season to take the dream of a playoff berth into Week 18. The AFC, meanwhile, has seen a pretty significant reordering. The Los Angeles Chargers are somewhat healthier and in possession of a playoff spot; the Tennessee Titans and Jacksonville Jaguars are going to play for the AFC South division title next week; and after giving their tortured fan bases just enough hopium to make them believe, the Miami Dolphins and New York Jets are both riding five-game losing streaks.

Let’s start with the final wild-card spots. Who do you guys think is in pole position in each conference?

joshua.hermsmeyer: Our model thinks the Jaguars — who, as you noted, can also win their division outright — and the Packers are the best bets. I’m all-in on the Jags as the feel-good team of the AFC.

maya: I’m fairly confident that the Jaguars are going to win that division. Can the Titans offense survive defenses selling out the passing game to stop Derrick Henry? If you look at how Tennessee fared against strong running defenses like Philadelphia and Buffalo, the answer to me is a clear no.

joshua.hermsmeyer: Yeah Maya, I would be very surprised — and disappointed, frankly — if Jacksonville can’t take care of business and wrap up the division against Tennessee. The probability of a Jags’ division title is quite high (75 percent), and if they lose to the Titans, they’ll need a lot of help to make the tournament.

neil: And over in the NFC, the Packers seem like the best bet of any of the teams in limbo, at least according to our model — they’re at 61 percent to make the playoffs — and this is pretty shocking given: a) where they were when we last chatted, and b) how Aaron Rodgers hasn’t been especially amazing during that stretch.

joshua.hermsmeyer: Rodgers is no Brock Purdy.

Ty Schalter: The Packers ranked 23rd leaguewide in offensive expected points added after their Week 9 loss to Detroit (-12.34); since then, they’re ranked seventh (36.26). On the other hand, though, the Lions’ offense improved from 18th in Weeks 1-9 (11.36), to No. 1 in Weeks 10-17 (76.9). But Jared Goff and company are going to be fighting a lot of ghosts (and a prime-time Lambeau crowd), not just Rodgers.

Considering the Lions have only won three road games against the Packers since 1992 — all while Matthew Stafford was quarterback — going into Lambeau and beating Rodgers seems insurmountable, especially when they also need the Seattle Seahawks to eliminate themselves against the decimated Los Angeles Rams.

maya: Anyone willing to go out on a limb for the Dolphins?

neil: Ty and I have been card-carrying Tuanon members all season, but he’s out (and so might be Teddy Bridgewater) for Week 18. The Dolphins don’t control their own destiny, and I wonder if the early-season Miami magic has just run out.

joshua.hermsmeyer: I believe the Dolphins are the favorites if the Jags lose, but Tua being hurt means that, what, the Patriots are in position to make another run? Buffalo might sit some starters…

Ty Schalter: Yeah, Neil, Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel hasn’t quite been able to muster the any-quarterback-will-do magic his mentor Kyle Shanahan has in San Francisco.

maya: Astonishingly, that has opened the door for Mac Jones, with that brief assist from Bailey Zappe, to get some playoff experience.

Ty Schalter: I can’t believe we’re going to live through the roller-coaster comeback season of our lives just to have Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers and either the Steelers or the Patriots right back in the playoffs.

maya: Let’s turn to the seedings. On the NFC side, four teams could theoretically finish with at least 13 wins: the Eagles, Cowboys, 49ers and Vikings. Who is in the best position to grab that bye?

joshua.hermsmeyer: I’m kind of shocked that the Eagles: 1) haven’t clinched their division but 2) have a 93 percent shot at a first round bye. Those things seem to not go together.

maya: The Eagles lost only one game with Jalen Hurts at quarterback; in his two starts, Gardner Minshew doubled that. Entering Week 16, Philly needed only one win (or one Dallas loss) in its final three games to clinch the NFC East and a first-round bye. Philadelphia will probably need to play its starters against New York to secure a first-round bye it needs more than probably any other team in the conference.

neil: I bet the Eagles won’t play Nate Sudfeld out of spite in that one.

joshua.hermsmeyer: The Eagles offense has sputtered badly since Week 15, accumulating -13.8 EPA, good for 23rd in the league. (And one of those games was started by Hurts.) They need some Jarrett Stidham-esque production from their backup.

Ty Schalter: This is several layers of Not The Point of this week’s chat — but Josh McDaniels/Derek Carr/Stidham might be the most fascinating on-field story in football right now.

neil: If we’d had a chat last week, I’d have said McDaniels is clearly scapegoating Carr for his own bad coaching debut in Vegas. But then Stidham sort of vindicated him? Now I don’t know what to think. 

Ty Schalter: Anyway, this is going to be a fascinating iteration of the rest-your-starters debate. Eagles coach Nick Sirianni was probably right to assume they could win two out of these three games running at less than full throttle, and no amount of regular-season wins will matter if Hurts isn’t healthy for the playoffs. But will they be able to rev it up enough this week to earn the bye? And then, if they do, will they be able to take a week off without slowing down again?

maya: The only other NFC team our model gives more than a 1 percent chance of winning the bye is the 49ers, who have the quietest nine-game winning streak I’ve ever seen (and I’m from the Bay Area!). I get the math is tricky with the win-out-win-bye situation the Eagles have, but are we discounting the Niners?

Ty Schalter: Not at all. For all the heat he (rightfully, I think) took over his handling of Trey Lance and Jimmy G, he’s primed to walk over the Cardinals with Brock Purdy and — with the Giants’ help — into the No. 1 seed. It’s an achievement.

joshua.hermsmeyer: I was in the Bay Area recently, and the feeling there is nothing but optimism for another Super Bowl berth. The East Coast Media Bias (TM) is strong, but so is the Shanahan mystique. I don’t think the Niners and their gaudy win streak are being slept on.

neil: But I agree, Maya, that 7 percent in our model feels low for the Niners’ chance at the top seed — all they need is to beat the woeful Cardinals and have a suddenly ordinary Eagles team lose to a bitter rival. I could easily see both scenarios happening.

(The Vikings already did their part for San Fran’s cause as well, taking themselves out of the NFC top-seed race with that ugly loss to the Packers.)

maya: Are they the scariest team on the NFC side of the bracket, with or without the bye?

joshua.hermsmeyer: It’s such a weird year. I wouldn’t call the Niners scary — particularly if their defense plays like it did against the Raiders. Since Week 15, the Niners defense is 13th-best in the league by EPA. They’re not overwhelming offenses lately. But they’re winning, and I’m not sure there’s a reasonable alternate adjective.

maya: Part of me is prepared to be surprised by the Cowboys. Part of me is not. 

neil: Same. Dallas has the NFC’s best Simple Rating System, but some of that was driven by beating an Eagles team that SRS didn’t know was missing Hurts. And some of it is that the Cowboys need to prove they can win in the playoffs after a strong regular season, because we’ve seen this movie too many times before.

Ty Schalter: As loath as I am to invoke vibes in a FiveThirtyEight chat, closing the season with an average point differential of 4.5 against the Texans, Jaguars, Hurts-less Eagles and Tannehill-less Titans doesn’t exactly radiate Big Playoff Energy. 

maya: We’re going to leave it at that. We’ll be back next week to wrap up the 2022 regular season, and in the meantime, like the rest of the NFL and its fans, we’ll be keeping Hamlin in our thoughts.

Check out our latest NFL predictions.

2022 In Review

The Best Teams Of 2022 Weren't Always Champions

By Neil Paine

Dec. 27, 2022, at 6:00 AM

Year’s end is always a cause for reflection, a moment to look back at all the good and bad that happened over the preceding 12 months. If you’re playing football for the Georgia Bulldogs, there’s a lot more of the good! If you play for the Houston Texans, maybe less so. So, in what has become an annual tradition, it’s time for us to take stock of 2022 in sports by comparing teams across all the different leagues we have Elo ratings for. (Including the World Cup, with ratings courtesy of Eloratings.net.)

We’ll be measuring the best teams of 2022 based on an average of three factors: their year-end rating, their average rating throughout the calendar year³² and the peak rating they achieved at any point during the year. To make sure each sport is judged along a similar scale, we also convert the ratings to z-scores (or the number of standard deviations by which a blended rating was above or below average).³³

With all of that out of the way, let’s first look at the teams that won a championship during the 2022 calendar year:

Among the champions of all the sports in our sample, no team rose above its competition more than UGA’s aforementioned juggernaut: The Bulldogs won the 2021 season’s national title in January, then proceeded to go 13-0 this fall en route to another playoff appearance. The only other champ that was better than 2.0 standard deviations above average in its sport was Dawn Staley’s South Carolina Gamecocks basketball squad, which lost only once during the entire calendar year³⁴ and won its March Madness games by an average margin of 23.3 points per game (including a 15-point win over UConn in the final).

Perhaps because of how talent is concentrated more among the top college teams, professional champions tend to have lower z-scores than their counterparts on our list. But the top pro league champs, the Houston Astros and Colorado Avalanche, rose above the rest with dominating performances that lasted all year long. And sandwiched between those two was Lionel Messi’s Argentina team, which capped off a 12-1-3 year with a World Cup final victory for the ages.

At the other end of the spectrum are the Los Angeles Rams — victims of this list in part because of how the football calendar is structured. The Rams were not an overwhelming champion even during the season in which they won (they had a +1.24 z-score in the 2021 season, which ranked fifth among NFL teams), and although they went 5-1 with a Super Bowl win in January and February of 2022, L.A. followed that up with arguably the worst title defense in modern NFL history. But hey, being the worst champ is still better than landing on this next list … 

For the second straight year, the Los Angeles Dodgers found themselves atop our less-than-enviable ranking of sports’ top “paper champions.” Despite being heavy pre-playoff favorites, L.A. fell to the rival San Diego Padres in a four-game National League Division Series upset.

If it’s any consolation, the Dodgers weren’t alone this year. Unlike in the strange, COVID-interrupted season of 2020 (and to a lesser extent, 2021) — when top squads enjoyed surprising success — many of 2022’s big favorites suffered even bigger letdowns. Alabama came into the fall as college football’s biggest preseason favorite of the playoff era, but was all but eliminated from consideration with two losses by early November. Defending champs such as the Rams, Atlanta Braves and men’s college basketball’s Baylor Bears fizzled out in disappointing fashion. And in the World Cup, Brazil was dispatched in the quarterfinals despite entering the tournament with double the championship probability of any other team.

Still other teams, like the Stanford women in college basketball, simply had the misfortune of running up against better competition. The defending NCAA champs made the Final Four again, helping them rank high on our list of near-champs, but lost to UConn in the semifinal — not that either team was going to beat South Carolina in the title game. (Michigan football might be in the same boat compared with UGA, though the Wolverines still have a chance to change that fate in the playoff — but that’s for next year.) Relegating legitimately championship-worthy rivals to that second list above might be the best testament to any team’s greatness, and in the end, we got to see that several times in 2022.

Check out our latest NFL, NBA, college football and NHL predictions.

College Football

Mike Leach Remade Football In His Pass-Happy Image

By Josh Planos

Dec. 20, 2022, at 6:00 AM

When Mississippi State head football coach Mike Leach died last week at the age of 61 due to complications related to a heart condition, it sent shockwaves through the football world. “I can’t imagine college football without him,” Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin said in a tweet upon hearing the news. Many others shared that sentiment.

Leach was a larger-than-life figure in the sport for countless reasons. Perpetually the quirkiest man in the room, he was a singular personality in a sea of coachspeak, eager to dispense wide-ranging insights about everything from American Indian lore to mascot combat hierarchy. He was also consistent in his success — and even more consistent in adhering to the principles that beget the success. Over 21 seasons, Leach led three different power-conference teams to 19 combined bowl appearances³⁵ and a 158-107 overall record. At each stop, Leach was entrusted with the direction of programs that were, at best, second-rate within their own state by both pedigree and support — and then outperformed his neighbors who traditionally served as regional headliners. 

But most notable of all was Leach’s far-ranging influence on the style of the game. By the time of his death, the framework employed by college football’s ultimate mad scientist and champion of unorthodoxy was made to look fairly orthodox. By Leach’s final seasons in Starkville, coaches at all levels of the sport had adopted and implemented the principles that Leach popularized over decades.

The air raid offense is mentioned early and often in Leach’s obituary. He is synonymous with a philosophy he neither invented nor was the first to deploy on a college campus. But it’s largely why so many know of the man who fashioned himself a pirate and brought the scheme to the mainstream.³⁶ Between the expansive coaching tree that bloomed under his tutelage and the increasing grip his concepts have on the modern game, Leach’s fingerprints are everywhere in the sport.

As an assistant coach at BYU,³⁷ Leach had a front-row seat to the pass-heavy concepts implemented by coach LaVell Edwards to rewrite the school’s (and the nation’s) record books. A relentless downfield strategy helped Jim McMahon become the first modern major-college QB to eclipse 4,000 yards passing in a season in 1980. Leach took that into the lab, melding the BYU spread offense with Houston-fueled run-and-shoot principles and air raid innovations he learned under his mentor Hal Mumme (who himself drew from Bill Walsh’s West Coast offense) to build a foundation that punished opposing defenses for decades.

Sideline-to-sideline space and simplicity were prioritized. In an era where playbooks have the thickness of George R. R. Martin epics, Leach’s list — mesh, Y cross and four verts, mostly — could fit on a notecard. “If we adopt a new play, I’ve always tried to cut one that we have so we can control the package, practice and execute it, because execution is the most important,” Leach said. “Better having too small of a package than too big of one.” 

When coaches imported small-scale billboards to sidelines to relay plays, Leach merely held up a finger or two. When traditionalists demanded that the ball be snapped from under center, Leach relied on the shotgun for more than 98 percent of his plays in Pullman and Starkville. And in a complete rejection of conservative coaching, which often scripts and constrains arguably the most important position in sports, Leach’s quarterbacks were entrusted with the complete freedom to adjust every play at the line of scrimmage.

In many ways, Leach’s offensive ethos stood in direct opposition to the status quo. And like many things that are misunderstood, that contrast led to derision of Leach for using gimmicky ploys in a sport that has long prioritized traditions like repeatedly running headlong into a wall of humanity. Leach didn’t much care for that tradition, either, so his teams finished each of the final 12 seasons he coached last in rush rate. 

Naysayers would say that radicalism was why Leach failed to ever reach a conference championship game, much less win a conference title. But as we mentioned earlier, there were inherent disadvantages to the positions he held: Mississippi State, Texas Tech and Washington State have never won a conference championship outright in the modern era. And it wasn’t as though Leach never won big games — perhaps his signature coaching victory was the Red Raiders’ iconic last-second win over No. 1 Texas in 2008:

More importantly, the big picture of the college football landscape looks fundamentally different now than it did when Leach earned his first head coaching job in 2000. Points and pass attempts have skyrocketed. That alone is at least partially attributable to Leach, who came to Lubbock and immediately tasked quarterback Kliff Kingsbury with throwing the ball a nation-leading (and then No. 2 in a season all-time) 585 times. From that point onward, the game’s all-time passing leaderboards have never been the same. Ninety-two of the 100 most prolific passing-yardage seasons since 1956³⁸ have taken place since 1998, when Leach — as Kentucky’s offensive coordinator — helped Tim Couch throw for 4,275 yards. (At the time, that mark ranked eighth on the list; now it ranks 77th.) Quarterbacks coached by Leach account for four of the 11 highest single-season passing totals in Football Bowl Subdivision history.

The success of Leach’s philosophy was on full display this season. Pass rate (as a share of all offensive plays) reached an all-time high of 53.2 percent, and three of the top five Heisman vote-getters played for Leach disciples.³⁹ Had USC not face-planted in the Pac-12 Championship Game, half of the field in the College Football Playoff would’ve been running a version of the air raid.⁴⁰

It’s not just the college game, either: Many of the core plays Leach relied on now come standard in the NFL, too. To take just one example, look at the depth of throws from today’s quarterbacks. Leach-led teams consistently threw the ball at or behind the line of scrimmage, ranking near the national lead most of the time. “We want to throw it short to people who can score,” he once said. That checkdown mantra has taken hold both in college and the pros. Like in the NCAA, the NFL has reached an all-time high in short-pass proliferation. 

It makes a lot of sense when you consider that at least a handful of the league’s starting quarterbacks came up under air raid coaching.⁴¹ Patrick Mahomes played under Kingsbury at Texas Tech before exploding onto the scene in 2018 and establishing himself as an all-time great. What once was seen as a trick offense that only worked in college is now a staple at every level of the game.

“Three of the last four teams that won the Super Bowl have run [the air raid], so I guess it’s doing pretty good,” Leach told the AP in August.

It’s said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and there was plenty of that for Leach in recent years. Leave it to a trained lawyer with no playing experience at the college level to shake things up. “If you do the same thing everyone else is doing, that’s all you are — everybody else,” he once said. On or off the field, there was no one quite like Leach. But when you watch a game nowadays, at any level of the sport, you’ll see that everyone else is doing what Leach was up to decades ago. 

Neil Paine contributed research.

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NFL

We’re Still Processing Week 15’s Most Mind-Blowing Finishes

A FiveThirtyEight Chat

Dec. 19, 2022, at 4:26 PM

maya (Maya Sweedler, editor): Quick show of hands, who else is still picking themselves up off the floor from Sunday?

neil (Neil Paine, acting sports editor):

maya: One day after the largest comeback in NFL history, Sunday’s games brought some of the wildest finishes, thrilling sequences and (sorry to New England) funniest game-losing plays I’ve ever seen. Week 15 saw THREE 17-point comebacks! The AFC playoff picture couldn’t be any messier than it is right now! Jalen Hurts is now one rushing touchdown away from tying the NFL record for quarterbacks, and there’s a nonzero chance we’re not going to get to it today!

Instead, we’re going to start with the four most, for lack of a better phrase, bonkers games of this week.

Each of us has picked one of this week’s win probability Hall of Fame entries — the Minnesota Vikings’ massive comeback against the Indianapolis Colts, the Cincinnati Bengals’ rally over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the Jacksonville Jaguars’ overtime victory over the Dallas Cowboys and the Las Vegas Raiders’ walk-off over the New England Patriots — and talk through one key trend or stat that led to the wild swings we saw. 

Salfino (Michael Salfino, FiveThirtyEight contributor) The first game was Colts vs. Vikings, so I’ll start there. It’s the revenge of Frank Reich game, since he authored the biggest comeback in NFL playoff history and this is the first in regular-season history where a winning team had trailed by at least 30 points (it was 33-0 at halftime).

joshua.hermsmeyer (Josh Hermsmeyer, NFL analyst): Matt Ryan might be bad at holding leads. So weird!

neil: I feel bad for the guy at this point.

Also, I love weirdo coincidences like that, Mike — there was no reason for Frank Reich to be connected to both games, except the Football Gods wanted it.

Salfino: I can’t really get on Jeff Saturday here or even Matt Ryan. I know it’s very convenient to criticize both, given Ryan blowing that Super Bowl and now this game, and Saturday being a TV studio-to-sideline joke.

maya: I remember watching that Falcons-Patriots Super Bowl and feeling some sense of inevitability around seven minutes into the fourth quarter. I certainly was not feeling that on Saturday (perhaps the difference between having peak Tom Brady under center vs. Kirk Cousins), but given how the Vikings have been playing this season — always somehow finding a way to win — perhaps I should’ve.

neil: When it became clear the Vikings could make it a one-score outcome, you knew they were going to win.

(Because that’s just what they do.)

Salfino: So after the big comeback to get to one score, where the Vikings always win for some reason, the Colts fumble and stop the Vikings. They get the ball back and really the game comes down to a QB sneak. After all this. After all the win probability frittered away, the Colts have a fourth and a foot at the Vikings 36-yard line and Ryan, who was 9-for-11 on sneaks since 2020, does not convert. QBs are 82.4 percent getting a yard or less on third and fourth down since 2020. And 82.5 percent this year. But should a TE or someone take that snap? A real runner? Would that make it near 100 percent?

While those probabilities are on plays needing up to a yard, this was about a third of that.

Why not do the new play that should be outlawed where a real runner gets pushed by two guys behind him?

That Eagles play.

neil: We call that the “Reggie Bush.”

joshua.hermsmeyer: I just want to point out that as much grief as Cousins takes, he’s certainly above average. You always need luck to win in this league, and the Vikings are getting it.

maya: The wonderful thing about this Vikings team is that their expected win-loss total, based on point differential, is 7-7. They’re four wins over that. How many more until we can call them the luckiest team in the history of the NFL?

neil: There’s a very strong case for them as the LOAT (Luckiest Of All Time). Among all NFL or AFL teams with at least 10 games played, they have the largest gap between actual and expected winning percentage, beating out the <checks notes> 1929 Orange Tornadoes:

joshua.hermsmeyer: Why do the Tornadoes gotta be orange?

Salfino: Yeah, that’s weird.

neil: They played in Orange, New Jersey!

joshua.hermsmeyer: Aha!

Salfino: Awesome!

neil: Interestingly, the 2022 Eagles are also on that list …

maya: They’re just doing it without the drama.

We’ve been skeptical about how long this luck would last for quite some time, but so far, it hasn’t run out. I might just sit back, let myself believe and simply enjoy the Justin Jefferson show. Catch you all in the divisional round …

Salfino: Maybe the Eagles are the poor man’s Vikings when it comes to luck, yet everyone thinks the Eagles are a legit Super Bowl favorite and no one respects the Vikings (rightfully, IMO).

maya: Does anyone respect the Vikings more for this comeback?

joshua.hermsmeyer: I do, Maya! It was the greatest comeback ever. That it came against one of the worst head-coaching hires since, well, Urban Meyer, shouldn’t take away from that. Much. 

maya: I do too. I’m just repeatedly impressed by this team’s discipline. Even when they’re down big, they don’t get frantic and/or sloppy. Not sure if that’s because Minnesota has some experienced players or because they’re well-coached, but I allow for both.

Salfino: Incredibly it was 36-7 late in the third quarter. But, no.

Are the Colts worse since hiring Saturday and firing Reich? I don’t see that, honestly. 

neil: Well, I mean, they were 3-5-1 under Reich and are 1-4 under Saturday.

Reich probably could’ve gone 1-4 too.

Salfino: I just mean that the Colts with Saturday are performing like a random team with an interim coach. It seems to me.

maya: To be fair, they haven’t exactly played a cupcake schedule since firing Reich. Cowboys and Eagles in the first four games?

neil: That’s true. Maybe I am just measuring it against Jim Irsay’s justifications for the move.

He “sensed something with the team” (or whatever) and needed to change it.

But honestly, they were going nowhere before and they’re going less of anywhere now.

maya: I don’t feel at all bad about devoting this much space to a team that tied (TIED) the Houston Texans in Week 1.

Salfino: That was the tell, Maya.

neil: Hey, the Texans have given the Cowboys and Chiefs fits in recent weeks!

joshua.hermsmeyer: Back-to-back weeks, even.

maya: I was much more willing to write off last week’s tumble in Texas as a fluke until yesterday afternoon.

But speaking of! Let’s turn to some of those other games.

joshua.hermsmeyer: My pick for the stat that decided the Tampa Bay-Cincinnati game is turnovers. The Bucs had four second-half turnovers that directly led to 21 points. What’s interesting, though, is that the Tampa Bay defense gave up more points than we’d expect. The EPA on those turnovers was just under minus-15. So It wasn’t all Brady’s fault! Also, Joe Burrow might be good.

Salfino: Brady had four turnovers.

joshua.hermsmeyer: One was at the mesh point, hard to put it all on Tom Terrific.

Salfino: OK, he had “three-plus.” Everyone goes out of their way to ignore the obvious fact that Brady is toast. He’s averaging 6.3 yards per attempt this year.

joshua.hermsmeyer: If you grind the film fine enough, you’ll see that Brady’s arm is still good, Mike. You just need to watch the games correctly.

Salfino: I confess to not grinding.

joshua.hermsmeyer: It was interesting how the Bengals defense confused him on the first interception. They showed a full-on blitz with seven players on the line of scrimmage, then only rushed three!

Salfino: The Bucs score how many points per game? Even including that garbage-time TD yesterday?

neil: They’re averaging 17.6, Mike — or 4.4 worse than NFL average. That’s easily the worst offense that ever had Brady as its primary QB, relative to the league. (In fact, it’s the only time he’s ever led a below-average offense.) 

And yet the Bucs will win their division and host a playoff game. (And they will scare approximately no one.)

Salfino: That ranks 28th, Neil. But I guess you’re right. We get the Ghost of Brady in the playoffs, and the Cowboys clearly can lose to anyone.

maya: Brady has been bad under pressure for years. The fact that three of his turnovers came under pressure yesterday was neither surprising nor evidence that he’s washed — it’s been a feature of his play for at least the last decade and a half.

Just google “Tom Brady Super Bowl XLII.”

joshua.hermsmeyer: Yeah, that second pick was when they brought pressure, Maya. Was an impressive interception that Jim Nantz was sure hit the turf.

maya: Brady was 1-for-6 against seven pressures in the second half with two picks and a fumble.

Salfino: What would prove Brady is washed if not this entire season? 

Everyone else is in the “Where will Brady play next year?” camp. It’s just me saying: the broadcast booth, hopefully, for his sake and ours.

neil: It’s weird, Mike. Brady’s individual numbers are not horrible. His adjusted net yards per attempt is basically league average still. Yet the Bucs offense is horrible.

We’ve seen Brady have meh numbers on teams that won anyway. We’ve seen Brady have all-time numbers on all-time offenses. But I don’t think we’ve seen Brady have OK numbers on a team where it didn’t translate to points.

Salfino: I hate adding TDs and picks to YPA. Just use YPA where he’s GRUESOME. It’s not like the Bucs are scoring points, either. So who cares about that adjustment?

neil: I don’t really want to get into a YPA vs. ANYPA argument this morning, LOL.

Salfino: Plus 10 of his 20 TD passes have been in the fourth quarter. He has 10 — TEN — in the first three quarters.

neil: Yes, he has been the king of “do nothing for 45-plus minutes and then try to furiously come back at the end” this season.

Salfino: The circus leaves town for everyone eventually. Brady is low-key 2015 Peyton.

joshua.hermsmeyer: Woof.

neil: Without the 2015 Broncos defense.

maya: Ouch.

neil: (Not that the Bucs defense is bad or anything, but you need to be one of the best ever to overcome such an ineffective offense.)

maya: Let’s move onto the next game. I’m gonna take the Jaguars’ win over the Cowboys.

I thought about going with Dak Prescott’s interceptions. He’s had seven in the past four games, for a total of 11 on a season in which he’s played only nine games. But that feels a bit facile — Dak isn’t the reason the Cowboys lost Sunday.

The Jaguars put up 503 yards. FIVE HUNDRED AND THREE. In just 27 minutes and 42 seconds of possession.

So this one goes out to Trevor Lawrence, who has indeed arrived and is making a killing on short passes across the entire width of the field.

Salfino: The Jaguars are fun. It’s fun to see a franchise QB announce himself to the world.

Dallas’s defense is regressing before our eyes when we just assume that defense is not stable more year-to-year than week-to-week.

joshua.hermsmeyer: I am an absolute child.

neil: Good use of analytics, or bad use of analytics? LOL.

joshua.hermsmeyer: But yes, I am on Team Trevor.

maya: I’m particularly impressed with his outside-the-numbers passes. Through Week 15, he’s got a raw QBR of 77.3 on passes outside the numbers this season, the fifth-best in the league.

Yesterday, he put up 159 yards and threw two touchdowns on passes outside the numbers at any depth. 

That’s like a whole-ass Zach Wilson gameline.

Salfino: Holding fire on Wilson being the Jets’ whipping boy. Pins and needles, needles and pins … 

neil: We just compared Brady to Peyton at the back end of his career. So why not do another comparison? Feels like Lawrence is making that leap Peyton did after a rough first season-plus at the beginning of his career.

(Both led the league in picks as rookies but improved dramatically during Year 2.)

Salfino: Well, I am old enough to have been there, and no one (I mean NO ONE) didn’t think Peyton wasn’t going to be great as a rookie. Most of those picks came early. And picks weren’t as big a deal then.

neil: But no one didn’t think Lawrence would be great either.

Salfino: So Lawrence as a rookie was way different/worse than Peyton. 

neil: Lawrence was probably the most hyped QB prospect since Peyton.

maya: Since Andrew Luck, I’d say.

Neil: OK, sure.

Salfino: But I’d bet a lot of money that Lawrence will continue to be great/a true franchise QB.

joshua.hermsmeyer: I like Luck as the anchor there, Maya. It leaves open the possibility that Lawrence is good, but not a Hall of Famer. 

maya: I’ve also really come to appreciate how horrendous Urban Meyer was.

The difference between this year’s version of the Jags and last year’s is as clear to me as it is to Rayshawn Jenkins:

Salfino: Any thoughts on Dak? This is his worst QBR season. Is he in the average QB bucket?

neil: I was thinking about that too, Mike. The Cowboys offense is one of the best in the Dak era, yet Dak himself isn’t having one of his best statistical seasons.

Is that good or bad for the Cowboys? Who knows.

joshua.hermsmeyer: The Cowboys feel like a team at the end of their window, and their window wasn’t particularly large to begin with. 

Salfino: The window for teams with four playoff wins since 1995.

ABC. Always. Be. Closing (the window). 

Dak needs the Glengarry leads.

joshua.hermsmeyer: He already stole the money, hey-o.

Salfino: America’s team is the Lions.

maya: We will absolutely get to them, but before we do — Neil, bring it home with the last of Sunday’s crazy games! 

Perhaps the craziest of them all …

neil: Uh, yes. My important stat was going to be the Pats’ defense and ball control in the second half against Vegas, when they clamped down on Derek Carr and ran roughshod with Rhamondre Stevenson. Instead, it became the fact that this was only the second go-ahead defensive TD with zero time on the clock in regulation in NFL history.

(And who could forget the previous, Chuck Shonta for the Boston Patriots — of all teams — versus the New York Titans in 1960?)

BTW, I liked this headline: 

“Pats players say costly laterals were improvised”

Oh really? I thought maybe Belichick drew it up that way.

But seriously, that was maybe the dumbest way a team ever lost a game in NFL history. Growing up, one of my favorite VHS tapes was the NFL’s 100 Greatest Follies.

No. 1 on the list was Jim Marshall’s wrong-way run. I think this might have been dumber.

Salfino: 

joshua.hermsmeyer: Jakobi Meyers threw the game to protect his boy Josh McDaniels’s job, prove me wrong.

Salfino: The Colts did get a break this weekend, in no longer having the most ill-advised play in NFL history. 

maya: For a former high school quarterback, Meyers certainly threw one of the worst-looking passes I’ve ever seen …

maya: And poor Mac Jones! The last potential tackler before the end zone.

joshua.hermsmeyer: Jones got stiff-armed into oblivion. 

neil: When it became clear Chandler Jones only had to truck Mac Jones to score a walk-off TD, I started laughing so hard. It was so ridiculous.

Salfino: They really picked the wrong-way run, Neil? I think this is in another category. But we will be talking about it in 60 years. Well, not me. But it will be talked about.

neil: Take it up with NFL Films in 1993, Mike.

BTW, what was Mac Jones going to do with it anyway? (Even if he had somehow caught it.) Nothing about it made any sense.

maya: That’s a great point.

Salfino: The stiff arm was the coup de grâce. And right, Neil. Jones can’t throw it forward.

joshua.hermsmeyer: If the pass was to Justin Fields, it would have made some sense.

maya: It honestly might’ve made more sense if it were going to Bailey Zappe …

Salfino: Jones is lucky because we’re all too distracted by the play to talk about how horrible he was. Again.

neil: What’s crazy is that Kyle Dugger had an amazing pick-six earlier in the game on one of the best reads to jump a route I’ve ever seen. And it wasn’t even the best “pick-six” (yes, I know technically Jones’s was a fumble return) of the game.

joshua.hermsmeyer: That was an amazing jump Dugger got on the ball. Kind of collected it with one hand while moving at light speed. 

Salfino: BTW: 

neil: Bahahahahaha

joshua.hermsmeyer: Never forget that the Patriots signed Drew Bledsoe to the largest ever contract while Brady was already on the team, too.

maya: OK, so we’ve hit on all four of these games. Which one produced the biggest WTF moment, and which one will be most important come January?

I think my jaw hit the floor on the Pats’ woebegone lateral, but I see the Jaguars’ win actually mattering the most for the playoffs (for them, though — despite their loss, the Cowboys still locked up a playoff spot with the Washington Commanders’ loss on Sunday night).

Salfino: I think the games were most important for the Bengals, who to me are a true Super Bowl contender and right there with the Bills and Chiefs, if not better/more balanced. They pretty much win the division now. 

joshua.hermsmeyer: I’m not sure I’m as sold on the Bengals, but I am also biased because of my Baltimore fandom. I am all-in on the Jags though. I noted last week the Jags and the Lions would make my top eight teams I don’t want to face in the playoffs, and both won this week. 

Salfino: Neither team plays any defense though. That’s a problem in January. If they get there.

neil: The Pats/Raiders WTF moment didn’t really matter for Vegas much — their playoff odds went from 4 percent before the week to 5 percent now. But it did really destroy the Pats’ odds (39 percent to 19 percent) and opened the door for some other AFC bubble teams as a result.

maya: It feels like the entire AFC is on the bubble at this point.

Salfino: Again, the Lions are America’s team. But they got that game gift-wrapped. Special teams TD. Robert Saleh/Jets selling out on fourth-and-1 at midfield and giving up a TD with a four-point lead in the final two minutes (the play was essentially meaningless beforehand). And then the gross, just disgusting clock/timeout management by Saleh, who took a TO in the locker room, called his first of three with 19 seconds left and had to kick a 58-yard FG on first down. 

joshua.hermsmeyer: The roar is restored though. They hit their preseason win total (6.5) over with weeks to spare. 

neil: And hey, the Jets have better playoff odds than the Patriots at this point!

(Twenty percent to 19.)

Salfino: I think I can speak authoritatively that that Jets loss was a top-three most disgusting loss in their history. As far as just giving a game away.

joshua.hermsmeyer: LOL

Salfino: The only loss clearly ahead of it was the playoff loss in Pittsburgh when they missed a couple of field goals, which lead to them drafting a kicker in the second round the next year.

maya: Fourteen months ago, Neil — a wonderful colleague, as many of our faithful readers have likely surmised — made a “distracted boyfriend” meme about Zach Wilson and Mike White that I started using as my avatar on Slack. I’ve never regretted keeping it, and after Sunday, I don’t think I ever will change it.

joshua.hermsmeyer: Neil is a prophet, it is known. He speaks in meme to those who will listen.

Salfino: Maya, this loss is 100 percent on the head coach and not Zach Wilson. An enterprising beat reporter would have asked Saleh if he can look his team in the eye after that game and then trashed him when he, like Zach weeks ago, took ZERO accountability.

maya: Oh, I disagree! He doesn’t deserve all the blame, but that third-quarter interception was on Wilson.

Salfino: OK, he threw a pick. He also made enough plays to win. The coach lost the game, there is no question.

maya: But after the pick, he started missing open guys all over the field. Garrett Wilson basically disappeared. 

Salfino: I’m not even defending Wilson. I don’t care about him. White is very overrated, though, to be fair. His QBR is barely better than Wilson’s. But whatever. This was a coaching error that could have been obviated by paying some low-level assistant $75,000 to just manage the clock and timeouts. Instead, the Jets are probably out of the playoffs now.

maya: It’s definitely not looking great for the Jets. But right now, the only team that’s joined last week’s eliminated teams is Arizona. Meaning the 4-9 Rams and 4-9-1 Colts are still mathematically in the hunt.

Salfino: Wilson is playing again Thursday versus the Jags, 100 percent. No way does White, who has a broken rib, get cleared to play.

joshua.hermsmeyer: I would feel safer if the Jets don’t make the playoffs, to be honest. I don’t need Saleh going full Liam Neeson on the people he has receipts on. 

Check out our latest NFL predictions.

2022 World Cup

You're Not Imagining Things. There's Way More Stoppage Time At This World Cup.

And it's having more of an impact on the action than ever.

By Ty Schalter

Dec. 15, 2022, at 1:55 PM

With the finalists of the Qatar 2022 men’s World Cup decided, it’s a perfect time to look back on some of the incredible moments that shaped the tournament: Morocco’s stoppage-time brace against Belgium that set the tone for their run to the semifinals, Kylian Mbappe’s sparkling second goal against Poland that put him in the lead for the Golden Boot and sealed a knockout-round win in the 91st minute, and Argentina blowing a 2-0 quarterfinal lead to the Netherlands 11 minutes past the end of regulation time (before forcing, and winning, a penalty-kick shootout that kept Lionel Messi’s World Cup title hopes alive).

Wait a minute — just how much of this World Cup has happened during stoppage time?

From the opening match, it was clear that this competition’s official time was going to be unusually kept; Ecuador’s 2-0 cakewalk against their Qatari hosts went on 10 minutes and 18 seconds longer than expected. FIFA referees committee chairman Pierluigi Collina soon confirmed that throughout this World Cup, officials would be adding much more time than usual, at least in part to punish teams that deploy time-wasting tactics.

With all but two matches⁴² in the books, the record is clear: These games have been running far longer, on average, than in any previous World Cup. But according to ESPN’s Stats & Information Group, it isn’t a one-off. It’s an acceleration of a decadeslong trend:

In Russia 2018, there was a then-record average of 7.3 added minutes per regulation game (i.e., excluding overtime periods). But that was still, according to FiveThirtyEight’s research, nowhere near how much time should have been added if officials were really trying to account for every second the ball was out of play. Thirty-one of the 32 games FiveThirtyEight measured undercounted stoppages by at least two full minutes. Twenty-one undercounted by at least five minutes, and 11 undercounted by an incredible eight minutes or more. Had 2018’s officials accurately tracked every lost second, an average of 13.2 minutes would have been added to every game — nearly double the actual average.

The 2022 added-time average, 11.6 minutes, isn’t quite that high. But it’s a 59 percent increase over 2018, a 93 percent increase over the prior record, set just four years before that, and a 136 percent increase over 2010. All that added time doesn’t just stretch out the length of the game, it means a larger share of all minutes being played are ones that weren’t originally on the game clock. And with stoppage time accounting for so much of these games’ total time, it’s no surprise that a decent chunk of the tournament’s most meaningful soccer has been played beyond the 45th and 90th minutes.

Some of that is because a record 11.5 percent of all the regular-time soccer at this World Cup has been played after the referee’s watch has already run for 90 minutes. But even after accounting for all that added time, a disproportionate amount of offensive action has still been concentrated within it. In Qatar, 12.6 percent of all goals have been scored — and a record 13.8 percent of all expected goals have been generated — during stoppage time.

It’s not unusual to see such a flurry of activity during the extra minutes officials add to the clock, since those moments are usually among the most frenetic in any game — particularly at the end of the second half, where the majority of regulation stoppage time takes place. (The average 2022 World Cup game has seen 7.6 extra minutes tacked onto the end of the second half, nearly double the 4.1-minute average added to the end of the first half and more than the average added to entire games in 2018.) Only one World Cup since 1986 — the 2010 tournament in South Africa — didn’t feature a disproportionate share of xG taking place during stoppage time, relative to its share of all minutes. The desperation of a close game in its final minutes is a good recipe for creating scoring chances.

But because there has been a concerted effort to add more time than what the game clock prescribes — and it’s clearly working — that means stoppage time is taking on a more prominent role in determining the outcomes of World Cup games. And that trend might continue: The last time there was such a significant jump in stoppage, from 1990 to 1994, there was a one-cycle-later spike in the share of goals and xG generated during those minutes. In 1998, the share of minutes played in stoppage time only increased from 5.4 percent to 5.8 percent — but the share of xG generated in those minutes jumped from 6.0 percent to 10.1 percent, presumably because teams could actually plan tactics for what to do with all that extra time. If this trend repeats itself, the expanded field of 48 teams might show up to the 2026 men’s World Cup co-hosted by the United States, Canada and Mexico prepared to make even better use of their games’ extended final minutes.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing. One might even argue it makes for a more exciting product, despite taking longer to consume. Actual xG generated during non-stoppage time has been roughly flat over the last three World Cups, so it’s not like the regular-time action has been more boring. But it’s definitely a different thing than we’ve seen in World Cups past. And if the trend toward ever-increasing amounts of stoppage time continues, it’s a thing soccer fans should get used to seeing more of at the game’s most famous tournament.

Neil Paine contributed research.

Check out our latest World Cup predictions.

NFL

The Dolphins Take Another L, The Lions Grab Another W, And The NFL Playoff Picture Gets Clearer

A FiveThirtyEight Chat

Dec. 12, 2022, at 4:27 PM

maya (Maya Sweedler, editor): With four weeks remaining in the regular season, the NFL playoff picture is beginning to shape up quite nicely. But there’s still a fair amount of uncertainty remaining, with a couple of yesterday’s outcomes — the L.A. Chargers hanging on to defeat the Miami Dolphins, the Detroit Lions (who have won five of their last six games) taking a look at the Vegas line and going “yeah, OK” against the Minnesota Vikings, the Jacksonville Jaguars solidly beating the division-leading Tennessee Titans to remain within two games — adding to that.

We’re going to hit on the team that clinched a berth, the eliminated teams and the teams that found success with new quarterbacks (I can’t guarantee we won’t get to the obligatory “defend Jimmy G.” part of the chat), but let’s first talk about those three games.

A week after the San Francisco 49ers defense executed their game plan to perfection against Tua Tagovailoa and the Dolphins’ receiving threats, the Chargers defense got right up on the line of scrimmage and held Tyreek Hill and Jaylen Waddle to a combined 112 yards. Why was that so effective? Have teams learned how to stop this insanely talented Miami offense?

neil (Neil Paine, acting sports editor): One big thing for L.A. was taking away the deep passing. Tua came into the game ranked third in QBR on passes of 15-plus air yards, but he was the second-worst QB of Week 14 on deep throws, with a 9.9 QBR (ahead of only Geno Smith). Those deep numbers are UGLY: 1-for-9 with a -26.6 completion percentage over expected. 

joshua.hermsmeyer (Josh Hermsmeyer, NFL analyst): I think the Chargers did three things well:

1. They were physical with the speedy receivers at and even behind the line of scrimmage. And not just the corners playing press — Kyle Van Noy got some shots in on Waddle and Hill.

2. They handled motion really well. Heading into Week 14, Tua led the NFL in dropbacks with motion at the snap, and he had a raw QBR of 63.5 on those plays. Against the Chargers, he had a QBR of just 29.9 on 12 dropbacks with motion at the snap.

3. They played press on all but five snaps. I’m not sure how much this is something other teams can emulate, though. Hill’s long touchdown came against press-man coverage. I think that’s going to be the likely outcome in a game more often than not for DBs on teams that try and copy L.A., but the Chargers were up to the task on the rest of their snaps.

Salfino (Michael Salfino, FiveThirtyEight contributor): Things aren’t perfect for Tua now. Waddle has been banged up. Hill hurt his ankle at the end of the second half (when the Dolphins were already dead offensively, to be fair). The Dolphins offensive line has some injuries. The test of a QB isn’t how they play when things are perfect and against terrible defenses. It’s how they perform when circumstances are far from ideal, and Tua has failed over the past two weeks. I did see this film analysis on why Tua was so clearly confused:

maya: Is press coverage against the Dolphins this year’s version of cover-2 defense against the 2021 Chiefs? How does this compare to the game plan the Niners rolled out last week, which seemed to rely less on removing the deep ball and more on Fred Warner and the rangy Niners secondary forcing Tua to throw to the sideline?

joshua.hermsmeyer: It was different from the Niners, to answer that part. The 49ers used quarters coverage about one-third of the time against Tua, while the Chargers only played cover-4 once.

Chargers coach Brandon Staley spoke about this when he was asked after the game about the similarities between the two team’s approaches. He said “They didn’t play press stuff like we did tonight. They played quarters off most of the time or two-deep, so their game plan was completely different from ours.”

neil: Staley trying to get out ahead of the “Niners did it first!” comments.

“We didn’t just copy them!!!”

Salfino: I think the Dolphins made the classic mistake of playing to your perceived strength vs. attacking the opponent. The Chargers are among the league’s worst run defenses, and nine of the Dolphins’ 12 plays were pass plays — and they punted three times. If teams are playing cover-2, you have to run them out of that. 

neil: That’s an interesting question, Mike — where is that line between taking what the defense wants to give you versus doing what you want to do? Clearly the Dolphins didn’t figure it out. 

maya: To be fair, there are pretty fundamental differences between the Niners and Chargers defenses — the base (Niners play 4-3, Chargers play 3-4), the (sorry!) level of talent.

Salfino: Also, the Niners defense is great and the Chargers defense is bad.

joshua.hermsmeyer: Yeah, Maya, I think the key was how physical they were and taking away the Dolphins’ favorite concepts, like jet motion. Here’s an example where they do both, with Van Noy blowing up Waddle in the backfield.

 I just think the Dolphins weren’t ready for this defense.

Salfino: This is a great plan against the Dolphins, Josh, because Tua wants to get the ball out quickly so if you disrupt the route initially, the entire play has already gone sideways.

neil: Right. One other interesting aspect of that was that Tua did have time to throw. He was pressured only 6.1 percent of the time, one of his lowest rates of the season.

Yet he did nothing with the extra time.

joshua.hermsmeyer: Absolutely. Tua has one of the lowest average times to throw in the league. 

maya: Is that on Mike McDaniel, the Dolphins more broadly or Tua?

I’m not trying to call down TuaNon — I think Tagovailoa has acquitted himself quite well this season — but the fact of the matter is he’s a gifted but young quarterback who remains somewhat skittish in the pocket.

Salfino: Well in fairness, Tua obviously has an A game (especially against the bad defenses, i.e., most of the NFL). But does he have a B game? This may just be Tua’s limitation, not McDaniel’s lack of planning/making adjustments. 

neil: And it’s a bad time for him to have a few games that seemingly “expose” him the way his critics have been hoping to see all year.

joshua.hermsmeyer: I think the Dolphins could have won this game if Waddle and Tua had been on the same page — or if Waddle had won his one-on-ones. 

Salfino: The Buffalo Bills are on deck. Murder, She Wrote.

The Dolphins might not make the playoffs.

neil: If they lose to the Bills, their playoff odds somehow drop below 70 percent, Mike. (That hadn’t been true since Week 7.) 

Salfino: They’re probably behind the Jets after next week.

maya: And what about the Chargers? 

It’s been pretty clear for weeks that this AFC West division wasn’t going to be the juggernaut that a lot of folks predicted preseason. But even if the division title is out of reach (literally or spiritually), could the Chargers — who today have a 59 percent chance of making the playoffs, according to our model — do some damage?

Salfino: Herbert was fantastic and had his starting receivers for the first time since Week 1. Not a coincidence. 

neil: Also, the Dolphins thought they had a plan against Herbert — bring pressure with the blitz, where he had been ranked 21st in QBR (59.8) going into the game. He proceeded to have an 89.7 QBR against the blitz Sunday night.

Here are some numbers from ESPN’s Stats & Information Group:

“The Dolphins tried to hurry Herbert all night, blitzing on 26 of his 56 dropbacks (46%), the most blitzes he has faced in a game in his career. He was unfazed by the extra rushers however, completing 15-of-24 passes against the blitz for 133 yards and 8 first downs.”

Salfino: My problem with the Chargers is they have a very slow, unexplosive offense and can’t stop the run, which is a bad combination against good teams.

joshua.hermsmeyer: I’m not sure how deep L.A. goes into the playoffs, if it makes it. It’s such a slog watching the offense sometimes. Maybe that’s why people get really excited when Herbert makes a great throw. You’re so annoyed at that point, it is cathartic. 

neil: That’s what makes Herbert and Tua such an interesting juxtaposition. When Herbert has a great throw in a sea of checkdowns, people go wild; when Tua has a bad game or two after a season of amazing deep passing, people see it as pure doom and gloom.

Salfino: Who has the amazing deep passing been against, Neil?

neil: I mean, they haven’t played the toughest schedule, but also not THE easiest.

Salfino: I’m sorry. Tua is not an amazing deep passer. You just have to look at him throwing to see that. I don’t care about the stats.

joshua.hermsmeyer: Tyreek Hill disagrees.

neil: “I don’t care about the stats.” — you heard it here on FiveThirtyEight, folks!

Salfino: Well, I just mean you don’t have to statify EVERYTHING. His receivers are great at getting very open against most defenses. But Bills, Patriots, Niners … we’ll see how Tua does against the Jets. Is any defense afraid of him? They’re afraid of Tyreek, but good defenses can limit his damage.

maya: Speaking of different standards, let’s move on to the Lions, whose offense and defense are in totally separate classes. 

The Lions came in as 2.5-point favorites over a 10-2 Vikings team we’ve been skeptical of all year (though perhaps not as skeptical as Vikings fans themselves — we see you, self-hating Minnesotans) and … beat them by 11. How does this no-defense, high-flying offense do it?!? 

neil: Jared Goff is having a great year, and I kinda love to see it.

Last year was such a pile-on. He gets dumped by the Rams, and then they win a Super Bowl?

Salfino: The Lions are well positioned with that Rams pick and their pick to rebuild their defense. I’m interested in whether Josh thinks they should replace their QB, who may not be championship caliber but seems good enough.

maya: Yeah, Mike, that’s true. But I will point out this is a team with really good bones on both sides of the ball — the fifth-ranked offense by points scored, two fantastic rookie defensive players in defensive lineman Aidan Hutchinson (who leads all rookies in sacks and first pressures) and linebacker James Houston (who is second among rookies in sacks) and a very likable new talent in wide receiver Jameson Williams. How could you not cheer when his first career catch was that beautiful 41-yard touchdown? All this, plus a likely 2022 top-five pick, suggests that this is a team that could really find its rhythm in a year or two.

neil: Goff making the playoffs — we see you, Lions, at 20 percent — while the Rams don’t would be pretty poetic.

joshua.hermsmeyer: Some would say Goff should get limited credit for his production this year; that he’s a play-action passer who gets manufactured looks. I don’t know. I saw some nice third-down throws yesterday from Goff. He may not be as good as his numbers, but as Neil said, everyone roasted him for his poor numbers last year. Seems unfair not to give credit now.

neil: He gets the double-standard treatment like Tua.

Salfino: Any No. 1 overall pick can make throws. Goff has a very loaded offense and is playing in a QB-friendly scheme. The issue is whether he can get just a good — not great — team over the hump.

joshua.hermsmeyer: You mean can he make a Super Bowl?

maya: LOL Josh.

neil: Haha

Salfino: Yes, could they be a Super Bowl team with Goff in that three-year window?

I mean, we’re probably getting ahead of ourselves. The Vikings defense is straight trash, and the Lions and Goff next have to go into MetLife to face the Jets defense. I think we’d all agree that’s not going to be pretty.

neil: I do think that’s right, Mike — that Lions game probably said a lot more about the Vikings than anything else.

Salfino: (Goff has already made the Super Bowl.)

neil: (We know …)

maya: (We don’t need to talk about how the Rams offense looked in that Super Bowl.)

Salfino: (Yet they still almost won.) But here’s the thing, Neil, most defenses are garbage. If the Lions hit on some defensive studs in April, can they win 12 games with Goff? One-hundred percent.

neil: “Most defenses are garbage,” LOL.

Certainly we can’t reliably predict they won’t be!

Salfino: Bill Walsh said you really only have to worry about eight teams, and that’s still true today.

joshua.hermsmeyer: In college you only have to worry about 2.5.

maya: OK, so who are those eight teams?

joshua.hermsmeyer: That’s a great question!

maya: I think we’re all on the same page about the Bills, Chiefs and Eagles.

Probably the Cowboys. Niners. Maybe the Bengals? 

joshua.hermsmeyer: Not the Bucs … 

maya: Yeah I would scratch out both the AFC and NFC South.

neil: The Titans have gone from “looking solid” to “total mess” in under a month.

Maybe the Ravens if Lamar is healthy?

Maybe.

But yeah, that might be it.

joshua.hermsmeyer: Gosh, I think if the Lions or Jags make it to the playoffs, they’d make my list of top eight I’d be worried about. 

Salfino: The teams no one wants to play … You need at least one dominant side of the football or no weaknesses. The Niners, for sure. The Bengals have no obvious weakness. The Dolphins, if the conditions are right and those receivers are healthy. I don’t think any playoff team would want to play the Jets and that defense. That’s about it.

maya: Mike, I so admire how hard you ride for this Jets team.

neil: I’m with you on the Jets! They’ve shown at least the potential to make life uncomfortable for a better team.

(The Bills did not have an easy time with them this week, either.)

maya: Neither did Mike White, though — once George Fant briefly went out, it felt like he was under pressure every play. This patchwork offensive line isn’t enough to keep a pocket clean for Tua, let alone White.

Salfino: If you asked the Bills if they want the Jets in the playoffs, they would unanimously say, “No.”

As for the Titans and New York Giants, show me a team that has to win with coaching, and I’ll show you a team with cleat marks on their foreheads. You can’t make chicken salad out of chicken shit. (If we’re allowed to say that.)

joshua.hermsmeyer: I’m still trying to get my wind back after watching White take all those shots to the ribs. What a painful day. 

And this was without Von Miller!

maya: Rookie Greg Rousseau, with two sacks yesterday and seven pressures the last two games, is a pretty impressive replacement.

Salfino: Mike White showed me something and showed the Bills something, too:

He left the locker room in an ambulance, Rocky II stuff. No way does Zach Wilson play again. The Jets are winning out with White, regardless of whether Miami needs the game (they will). 

maya: Does Wilson start another game this season?

… Does Wilson start another game for the Jets?

neil: Does Wilson ever start in the NFL again?

joshua.hermsmeyer: If he doesn’t, I have nothing but respect for New York’s ability to move on from failed top draft picks at the QB position. And I mean that sincerely. 

neil: Although Sam Darnold was a winner this week …

(Against Geno Smith. An all-ex-Jets matchup.)

joshua.hermsmeyer: Speaking of Geno, regression is real.

Salfino: Geno still made some big throws, but the turnovers were a problem. I think Geno is legit good.

joshua.hermsmeyer: This is from Kevin Cole, and I thought it was surprising: “The first four weeks of the season, Smith was a top-five efficiency quarterback, but ranks 18th from Week 5 on. In fact, Smith’s total EPA was higher the first four weeks (30.9) than the following nine (29.7).” 

neil: It’s interesting that Geno is still top-five on the QBR board for the season as a whole.

Even yesterday, he ranked 11th among all qualified QBs.

maya: To be fair, the offense has seen some pretty major injuries that have required rejiggering the run game multiple times.

neil: Right, no Kenneth Walker or DeeJay Dallas this week.

Salfino: The Seahawks also lost their running game after Week 5. From that point on, they’ve had a rushing success rate of 36 percent. The league average over that period is 46 percent. So that has hurt Seattle’s passing efficiency, I think. I mean, Geno is not Mahomes. He needs some help.

joshua.hermsmeyer: Geno is still making some great throws. He’s just also making more big mistakes. 

Salfino: He’s playing in a lot of pitcher’s counts now.

neil: It’s sad because that was another feel-good surprise story that is sort of evaporating. The Seahawks are now only 55 percent to make the playoffs, down from 84 percent after Week 9.

maya: I blame the NFC East.

Speaking of … Is the best team in that division the one that’s currently leading it?

Salfino: The Eagles took care of business against an inferior opponent, while the Cowboys were slow dancing with the Texans for some reason.

neil: It’s hard to be an Eagles skeptic after that beatdown they laid on the Giants.

And right, Mike, the Cowboys were not exactly blowing the doors off the worst team in the league.

Salfino: The Eagles are a complete team with explosive receiving weapons. Jalen Hurts is playing at an MVP level (when he doesn’t get too run-happy).

neil: But I do get your overall point, Maya, that by the advanced metrics the Cowboys are basically the co-best team in the NFC East with Philly.

The metrics always love the Cowboys more than us skeptical football-watchers, I think.

joshua.hermsmeyer: I respect Elo, but I am all-in on the Eagles. I’m not sure how much to weigh the nearly averted catastrophe against Houston, but I much prefer Philly to the Cowboys.

neil: I’m with you, I don’t quite buy it.

It’s not even just Elo, it’s EPA, DVOA, SRS, all of them basically have those teams tied.

But statistically, the Eagles have the better offense, while the Cowboys have the better defense and special teams. That Christmas Eve game should still have stakes because the Eagles can’t clinch a first-round bye next week. I’m here for this rivalry again. 

Salfino: I don’t think Dak Prescott is playing anywhere near Hurts’s level. They’re not in the same universe this year to me. Hurts is averaging almost 1 more yard gained per pass attempt, which is massive.

The Eagles are also built to beat the Cowboys with that running game, though I’ll add that Hurts and Co. were very disappointing in their last matchup.

neil: To be fair, that was a Cooper Rush game.

(Then again, Rush might be good.)

Salfino: (Rush isn’t good.)

neil: LOL.

Salfino: (Josh is with me here, I can feel it.)

joshua.hermsmeyer: Rush is fine.

Salfino: Purdy >> Rush.

And Maya wants to call him replacement level!!

joshua.hermsmeyer: All hail our new QBR King.

maya: He’s a very accurate passer, yes! And he maybe brings a type of deep ball that Jimmy G. seems unwilling or unable to uncork (small sample size caveats please). But I need like four more weeks.

Salfino: Todd Bowles sleepwalked through that game, it’s true.

maya: I could put 35 points up on the Bucs at this point.

No I couldn’t, I’m 5-foot-3. But I remain skeptical that Purdy isn’t simply inheriting a great game plan and gifted skill players. 

neil: Isn’t that most successful QBs, Maya?

maya: Sure! But when your team rushes for over 200 yards, you’re getting an extra little boost there.

Salfino: Are the Niners QB-proof? Josh? If so, why so many resources on QB?

I say “Josh” because Josh wants to draft a QB every year until you find Mahomes.

joshua.hermsmeyer: I do not think they are QB-proof. Just look at their record when Jimmy G. is not on the field! But they are like those watches that are water resistant down to 25 feet.

neil: Haha, I love that analogy.

That also implies Purdy is not in the depths of the Mullenses or Beathards (or Lances? ).

Salfino: What is the line adjustment in Vegas now with Purdy vs. Jimmy G.? 1.5 points, tops? Less? I can’t believe the disrespect I’m giving to Jimmy G.

I’m saying the Niners’ Super Bowl odds from two weeks ago should be … unchanged?

maya: The Niners’ last four games are Seattle, Washington, Las Vegas and Arizona. With the possible exception of the Washington game (though I think the Niners defense is more than capable of handling their three-headed monster of a receiving corp), you could do that with a snorkel.

Salfino: The Commanders are the NFC’s Jets. That game will not be easy.

joshua.hermsmeyer: I thought this explained QBs under Shanahan pretty well: 

Salfino: I don’t think Shanahan is QB-proof without Christian McCaffrey, though. He was the best player on the field BY FAR.

neil: And you guys say RBs don’t matter …

Salfino: (I know, a RB. I hate myself for saying this.)

joshua.hermsmeyer: I agree, CMC’s catch for a touchdown was very good.

maya: If the Niners beat the Hawks next week, San Francisco will clinch the division, joining Philadelphia (currently the only team with a guaranteed playoff berth). 

Salfino: So the Niners will clinch the division.

joshua.hermsmeyer: It’s been almost a decade since I called myself a Niners fan, but I may end up rooting for them this year.

Salfino: I am a secret Niners fan. I’ve always loved that team. I started because I hated the Cowboys and loved passing.

neil: I had a Trey Lance dynasty in Madden last year. But we don’t need to talk about that.

joshua.hermsmeyer: This explains so much …

Salfino: Purdy or Lance next year?

(I couldn’t resist. I get it’s ridiculous. It might become a low-key White vs. Wilson, though.)

maya: I still would love to see Lance run the triple option with Deebo Samuel in San Francisco

Just for the pure chaos.

Let’s end with a brief requiem for the three teams that have been eliminated from the playoffs: the Houston Texans, Chicago Bears and Denver Broncos. What went wrong for each of these teams, and what should be their biggest offseason priority?

neil: 

Texans: Davis Mills and Lovie Smith weren’t who we thought they were

Bears: Remember when Chicago was known for its fearsome D?

Broncos: Russ is cooked.

joshua.hermsmeyer: I still don’t know what exactly happened to Russell Wilson, but I think I know what needs to change. The head coach and the offensive coordinator are both in over their heads. Nothing they called this week worked. They can’t even execute screens for positive yards when the defense is playing deep and off. Everyone seems to know what’s coming. It’s terrible. Burn it all down.

Salfino: There is no Wilson solution. They take a $107 million hit if they cut him after this year. If they cut him after June 1, 2024, they take a $35 million hit in 2024 and an $18 million hit in 2025. 

Wilson is getting sacked a sickening 9.8 percent. He’s not escaping much anymore and he still has a hard time seeing over the lineman from the pocket. Sacks are mini-turnovers.

maya: The Bears need to fix their defense, but I’m looking forward to seeing Justin Fields next season. The Broncos need a new offense and the Texans a full rebuild.

joshua.hermsmeyer: The Texans also need to get a new GM. I think their head coach is fine. The opposite will happen though, probably, and it will lead to more failure. 

Salfino: The Texans are getting the QB reset at least. I hope they choose wisely.

The GM has to bring in his own coach though, Josh.

maya: RIP to these three teams’ seasons. I’m excited to not have to talk about Russell Wilson for the next few months.

Check out our latest NFL predictions.

NHL

It Took A Year, But The Seattle Kraken Have Been Released

By Neil Paine

Dec. 8, 2022, at 6:00 AM

Are expansion teams now about instant gratification, or do good things still come to those who wait?

The Seattle Kraken are yet another fascinating data point on the speed at which a new franchise can become competitive. Now in its second NHL season, the team is 15-10 and ranks ninth in the league with a plus-0.44 goals-per-game differential.⁴³ Not only is that a far cry better than last year’s horrendous showing (a 27-55 record and minus-0.84 differential), but it’s also much more in line with what we expected from Seattle going into its debut season — which itself was informed by how good the Vegas Golden Knights started out of the gate in 2017-18.

The timeline for a successful expansion team seemed to shrink when the Golden Knights stormed to the Stanley Cup Final during their debut campaign. Such a season would never have been possible under the traditional rules of expansion, but Vegas had access to better talent than its predecessors — in part because of new leaguewide economic conditions (a salary cap!), plus other factors that suggested the sport didn’t want its newest fan base to languish for years before cheering on a winner. With Seattle cribbing from the Vegas blueprint, too, it wasn’t outrageous to think the Kraken would also be far better than the typical expansion club right away.

Clearly, that’s not what happened. Beset by a lack of scoring firepower and some of the NHL’s most abysmal goaltending, Seattle never had a winning month and finished with the third-worst record in the league. And unlike Vegas, whose collection of surprisingly-decent-on-paper talent also performed well beyond its previous track record, Seattle’s similarly solid-looking expansion group almost uniformly disappointed. Of Seattle’s expected top 20 players last season, according to the established level of their adjusted goals above replacement⁴⁴ over the previous three seasons, 17 fell short in their actual GAR production. (For Vegas in 2018, by comparison, 14 of the top 20 exceeded their established GAR levels.)

That landed Seattle pretty much in line with the typical pre-Vegas expansion team from recent NHL history — which in turn seemed to suggest that not as much had changed about new teams’ expectations as we had believed. But the twist is that this year’s Kraken are having the type of season we thought was possible last year. In fact, their winning percentage and goals-per-game differential are not only light years ahead of the pre-Vegas average for expansion teams in their second seasons, but also well ahead of where Vegas was in Year 2.

What’s the difference? Certainly, the Kraken spent their second offseason shoring up deficiencies from Year 1, perhaps most notably in the addition of talented offensive winger André Burakovsky from the reigning Stanley Cup champion Colorado Avalanche. In terms of net adjusted GAR gained from newcomers minus GAR lost from departures, Seattle’s offseason dealings rank eighth in the league, gaining the team 14.4 net goals per 82 games. However, a much larger factor driving the Kraken’s sophomore-year improvement has been a massive 92.7 net GAR improvement by holdovers from last season’s roster, third-most in the NHL behind only the New Jersey Devils (plus-139.9 GAR per 82) and the Boston Bruins (plus-102.6).

Whether it’s original expansion draftees who are back to their old selves after a year of settling into the Pacific Northwest, or youngsters like phenom center Matty Beniers (who appeared in just 10 games last season but is on pace for 33 goals as a regular now), members of the first Kraken squad who stuck around are being rewarded for enduring all those hardships in 2022.

Seattle’s belated success has shed light on yet another possibility when it comes to a new franchise’s path to success (in any sport). We’ve seen plenty of bad expansion teams over the years; with Vegas, we saw one that was immediately good. But the Kraken are showing that sometimes a new team needs to wait an extra season before truly competing with the rest of the league.

Check out our latest NHL predictions.

NFL

The Bengals And Niners Are Winning Us Over, But We're Still Not Sold On The Vikings

A FiveThirtyEight Chat

Dec. 5, 2022, at 4:28 PM

maya (Maya Sweedler, editor): December football is upon us, and yesterday the NFL blessed us with a great slate of games. We’ll get to the tie between the Washington Commanders and the New York Giants (which I think we can all agree was objectively the funniest possible outcome), the Baltimore Ravens and backup quarterback Tyler Huntley squeaking by the Denver Broncos and Deshaun Watson’s return to football after a lengthy suspension for sexual misconduct.

But let’s first talk about the late games, which saw the Cincinnati Bengals defeat the Kansas City Chiefs for the third time (!) this calendar year and the San Francisco 49ers’ horrendous injury luck get even worse. Quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo broke his foot on the Niners’ first drive Sunday, and is out for the remainder of the season. Still, the Niners put on a dominant defensive performance and beat the Miami Dolphins (a team some of us had identified as a serious playoff contender last week!) by two scores. How did San Francisco pull it off?

joshua.hermsmeyer (Josh Hermsmeyer, NFL analyst): From a big-picture perspective, the defense played zone on all but five of Tua Tagovailoa’s dropbacks. On the first play of the game, which was a home run TD to Trent Sherfield, they were in man. The Niners quickly switched out and it seemed to cause Tua to be uncomfortable all game long.

neil (Neil Paine, acting sports editor): Yeah, it was uncharacteristic to see Tua make so many mistakes. He had as many turnovers Sunday (three) as he had the entire season leading up to that game.

maya: I was particularly impressed by how effectively the Niners took away the middle of the field. Tua has been feasting in that intermediate range, from sideline to sideline, but in Week 13, he really struggled in that intermediate zone and on the right side of the field. (To be fair, the Dolphins were missing their two starting tackles, which is not a recipe for success against this terrific Niners defense.) Though Tua completed a higher share of passes there, it’s not a region the lefty usually throws so many passes to.

Salfino (Michael Salfino, FiveThirtyEight contributor): Tua has been feasting on bottom-shelf defenses and finally faced a premium brand. I was not surprised he struggled. They’re a two-man offense and those men are really good, but if you take one out, or if one is hobbled like Jaylen Waddle seemed to be, I don’t see Tua or this offense grinding things out.

neil: And it’s not like they totally took away the Dolphins’ big-play weapons — there was that long TD to Sherfield, and Tyreek Hill still had 146 yards and a TD. But they neutralized most everything else Miami has been doing well.

joshua.hermsmeyer: The initial TD to Sherfield was over the middle, interestingly. This really was a missed opportunity for the Dolphins though. If you told me that the first play of the game would be a TD, that Fred Warner would have his second-worst coverage game of the season (per PFF) and that Jimmy G. would be injured, I would have said a Miami win was a lock.

Salfino: Yeah, I think the Miami defense was more exposed than its offense in this game.

maya: One thing that gave me pause was that Miami ran just 45 plays yesterday, the second-fewest plays in a game this season.⁴⁵ 

Salfino: And beyond the play count, Maya, the Dolphins had only 28 “move” plays (runs plus completions). That’s terrible. They allowed Purdy (mostly) 59!

maya: That to me says it was a pretty solid offensive effort, despite the debut of 2022’s Mr. Irrelevant, Brock Purdy. How did the Niners keep the Dolphins off the field?

neil: That’s Mr. RELEVANT now, Maya.

joshua.hermsmeyer: He had a Purdy good game.

neil: (We’ve got jokes for days with this guy.)

maya: Good, because it sounds like we’re going to be seeing a lot more of him.

joshua.hermsmeyer: I think you have to tip your hat to Kyle Shanahan for orchestrating another solid sock puppet performance behind center. He seems to be able to call plays for these guys that put them in positions where they stand a chance. But also, to argue against myself, on Purdy’s very first play at QB, Shanahan called a play with five wide receivers, which is kind of wild. Purdy dumped it off short left, but that’s not a great way to throw a new QB in there. 

neil: My question is, will Purdy finally help us settle the “Is Jimmy G. good?” debate? He did a solid Jimmy G. impression in relief for sure.

maya: I want to see another few games with Purdy under center, but it seemed like he was more amenable than Jimmy G. to those quick checkdowns (or perhaps they were called for him more?). Christian McCaffrey led the team yesterday with eight receptions for 80 receiving yards, the latter of which is the most he’s had with the Niners.

Salfino: I’m going to have to defend Jimmy G. here, as 5.7 yards per attempt is not a Jimmy G. impression. Garoppolo is all-time in YPA, almost always over 8.0 (7.9 this year).

neil: Mike, Purdy had a 57.0 Total QBR in the game. Jimmy G. was a 59.2 last season.

Let’s just say it was a solid-enough impression.

joshua.hermsmeyer: We have defended Jimmy G. for the last time this year!

Salfino: I also think we need to remember how bad the Dolphins defense is. With a week for an opposing defense to prepare, it’s going to be Purdy ugly.

maya: LOL

So let’s move to the Chiefs-Bengals game, which might’ve looked a bit different had Miami’s biggest playmaker been on his previous team.

Salfino: In the Chiefs’ two biggest games so far, against the Bills and Bengals, their top competition in the AFC, we’ve seen the loss of Tyreek Hill really hamper the ability of Patrick Mahomes to generate easy plays on offense. That was a Chiefs trademark. Now, against good defenses, it’s a real slog. Nothing is easy. They really have no A-game.

joshua.hermsmeyer: I saw a couple things that jumped out to me in this game.

1. Mahomes was 1-for-8 for 19 yards and two sacks when pressured. Burrow was 4-for-4 for 48 and one sack. So Burrow and the Bengals responded better when things broke down. Burrow was also 6-for-7 with a TD when blitzed.

2. The Chiefs tried both man and zone defense against Burrow. He killed them with both. He was hyper efficient, taking what the D gave him against zone, going 14-for-15 for 162 yards — that’s 10.8 YPA. And against man, he didn’t have the efficiency (11-for-16) but he threw for two touchdowns.

maya: That’s super interesting, Josh, especially when you compare it to Burrow’s first year in the league! His improvements when facing pressure have been stratospheric the past two years.

Salfino: Yeah, Josh, that sack on third-and-3 really wrecked the game. Mahomes had a lot of time to get rid of the ball and was dumped for a 4-yard loss. I still would have gone on fourth-and-7 versus kicking a 55-yard field goal. They never got the ball back. He needed to live for the next play and go on fourth-and-7 there. That sack was a turnover, pure and simple.

Burrow making that throw after the two-minute warning into a very tight window for a first down to run out the clock was a signature play.

neil: And speaking of teams with explosive offenses not running many plays: After scoring that TD with 3:49 to go in the third quarter, K.C. ran only 12 plays the rest of the game. Cincy ran 28, while chewing up 12 minutes and 19 seconds of clock. 

maya: We crapped all over the Bengals for the first few weeks of the season, and I’d be lying if I said I had thought much about them since October. But … this is a good team! What did we miss about them early on?

Salfino: The Bengals are probably the most balanced team in the AFC. They don’t do anything great but they do everything well.

joshua.hermsmeyer: With Lamar Jackson out for at least a few weeks, and Burrow playing like a vet, I like their chances in the division now.

Neil, where do we put the percentages?

neil: Right now, we have a very close division race — Ravens 54 percent, Bengals 43 percent (this is after accounting for Lamar’s injury). Cincinnati plays the tougher schedule over the rest of the season — fifth-hardest, per Elo, versus 12th-hardest for Baltimore.

Honestly, the Bengals might have been victims of the Early Season Perception fallacy … I feel like teams who come out of the gate with losses in Weeks 1-2 have to fight harder for respect even when they win later on. And it’s worth noting that Burrow is also picking up steam at the right time, playing his best football of the year recently.

Salfino: I thought the Bengals were MUCH better than the Ravens even with Jackson.

joshua.hermsmeyer: Yes Mike, and you thought the Jets would beat the Vikings.

Salfino: Well, if you would have told me they’d have 200 more yards and 1.6 yards more per play, I’d feel pretty good about that prediction.

maya: Guys, we’ll get to the Jets soon, I promise. But I want you smarties to help me understand why Burrow has picked it up! 

joshua.hermsmeyer: I think it’s things like delivering under pressure. Burrow ranks fourth in the league in raw QBR while pressured since Week 9, with a 70 percent completion percentage. League average is 47 percent. Now he could keep this up — but it’s not a great bet. Performance under pressure is one of those things that isn’t very sticky.

Salfino: Given how he kept the Bengals alive without his best weapon, Burrow has as good a case for MVP as anyone in the AFC. I’m not going to be upset if anyone says Mahomes, because Mahomes is better. But Burrow has been great and has figured out a way to play a tough hand after that terrible first game without Chase against the Browns.

neil: Yeah. I don’t know if it was rust coming back from that offseason injury or what, but Burrow has gone from middle of the pack in most rate stats early on to the top of the league.

And as you alluded to Josh, I like his accuracy in particular. Burrow was 22nd in lowest off-target throw rate through Week 5 and has been No. 2 since Week 6.

maya: Yeah, I think my issue with the Bengals has very much been the Early Season Perception fallacy, combined with the fact that they peaked so late last season. I’m ashamed to admit it, but I sort of thought the Super Bowl run was a bit of a fluke! Do they beat the Chiefs in the AFC Championship Game if the Chiefs hadn’t had such a wild finish against the Bills the previous week? But perhaps it was no fluke!

Salfino: And Josh gets a big “RBs don’t matter” win with Samaje Perine’s performance, just sayin’.

joshua.hermsmeyer: Perine held the college record for most yards in a game, 427 yards against Kansas, breaking a record held by Melvin Gordon — who is currently on Kansas City’s practice squad.

Salfino: He was the top fantasy handcuff/upside injury play all year, I’ve been saying.

Remember the pearl-clutching when the Bengals gave Perine a big carry over Mixon in the Super Bowl? Like Mixon was Jim Brown and Perine some scrub.

neil: Perine is the Leroy Kelly to Mixon’s Jim Brown, got it.

maya: Let’s move to the Giants-Commanders game, the season’s second tie (and also the second 20-20 tie of the year). The Commanders, much like the Bengals, feel like a late playoff contender thanks to their impressive record and the effectiveness of their quarterback switch. Is Taylor Heinicke going to be the guy to take Washington to the playoffs?

neil: It is quite unbelievable how much better Washington has been since Carson Wentz went out. They have gained the most Elo points of any team since Wentz’s last start for them (which actually was a win, albeit of the ugly 12-7 variety over Chicago).

Salfino: I wouldn’t brag about tying the Giants. But the Commanders are sort of the NFC’s Jets. Good defense, good skill players, well-coached mostly but big questions at QB.

joshua.hermsmeyer: The Brian Daboll as Coach of the Year hype lost a bit of luster with this tie, but I give the Commanders a ton of credit. Moving away from Wentz at quarterback has been a blessing. Maybe the potential to move on from their owner is helping as well.

Salfino: Is this Heinicke or the defense and Terry McLaurin? I think this is a classic case of giving the QB too much credit.

neil: I think you’re right, Mike. Heinicke has still been meh — he’s just better than Wentz.

joshua.hermsmeyer: Until this week McLaurin was underproducing his opportunity. He was a solid buy low.

Salfino: I think the QB change is a coincidence (though Wentz DID NOT throw to McLaurin).

McLaurin is getting 30 percent of targets with Heinicke and it was 15 percent with Wentz — just gross.

maya: There’s a pretty clear hierarchy in terms of productivity, but there’s no denying that the combination of McLaurin, Curtis Samuel and Jahan Dotson have been effective. In an average week this season, they’re responsible for 48 percent of Washington’s total receptions and 59 percent of its receiving yards.

When Dotson was out for a few weeks, McLaurin and Samuel couldn’t quite pick up all the slack.

joshua.hermsmeyer: I think that’s probably it, Maya. You need multiple receiving threats for anyone to really shine.

Salfino: McLaurin’s pace with Heinicke is 97 receptions for 1,400 yards. With Wentz it was 62-1,040.

neil: Right. It’s not that Heinicke is doing anything any half-decent QB wouldn’t. It’s just that Wentz was mismanaging that offense. And then their defense is allowing 5.2 fewer points per game too, that helps!

maya: For what it’s worth, we have Washington with a 69 percent chance to make the playoffs — 19 points higher than the Giants.

neil: I tell ya, Daniel Jones gets no respect out here!

Salfino: The Giants are dead with their schedule.

Plus, Saquon Barkley has been pretty terrible — 39th of 41 RBs in success rate (min. 100 carries).  

neil: Yeah, Mike. The schedule is maybe the big thing. According to Elo, they have played the No. 1 easiest schedule to this point.

Over the rest of the season, they will play the No. 1 hardest.

joshua.hermsmeyer: If you believe in EPA as a measure of team strength, the Giants are still probably the better team. But EPA doesn’t know about their schedule the rest of the way.

maya: Those two games against the Eagles are probably doing a lot of work schedule strength-wise. Plus the Vikings, I guess?

Salfino: But Darius Slayton is a good player. Why he was buried by two coaching staffs for so long after a great start to his career for a fifth-round pick is a major mystery.

maya: My dreams of an entire division going to the playoffs are being dashed by the week. And honestly, I hold the Vikings at least somewhat responsible (at least for messing things up on the AFC side):

Salfino: The Jets got a big break with the Chargers Chargering in Las Vegas, at least. But the Vikings loss was super gross.

neil: This is our way in to talk about the Jets?

maya: Yes, Neil, it’s time to talk about the Jets.

Salfino: Let’s go!

joshua.hermsmeyer: Mike, I know you were disappointed that the Jets didn’t survive the ground on that fourth down non-catch in the end zone, but you actually wanted them to stay on the ground, right? Run the ball?

neil: And here I was going to say at least they went down guns blazing on the arm of the legendary Mike White …

maya: Fifty-seven pass attempts!!!

neil: And their last eight offensive plays were all White passes.

joshua.hermsmeyer: [I triggered a Salfino essay.]

Salfino: Yes, not running twice from the 1-yard line to win the game was dumb. Bam Knight is also a tough runner. Teams used to score less than 10 percent of their 1-yard TDs in the air and now it’s over a third. There’s an epidemic of passing there. I don’t get it. It’s not easier to pass near the goal line. Even the element of surprise isn’t doing much work. Teams through Week 12 were 58 percent passing there and 62 percent running. But again, the Jets had TWO TRIES.

maya: I really wish Breece Hall wasn’t injured.

Salfino: Knight had a 50 percent success rate and just made a great run to avoid a loss. Even two sneaks there is fine, though it was in fairness a full yard. But look, this was typical Vikings red-zone luck. I won’t go so far to say red-zone defense is a potted plant, but scoring or not is way more about the offense and the Vikings are just getting super lucky. All those field goals and poor decisions were on the Jets, who deserved to lose despite dominating the stat sheet.

joshua.hermsmeyer: Meanwhile the Vikings keep winning by being almost perfectly average. It’s an incredible display of positive variance in a league dominated by luck. This is the team you always hoped for with Kirk Cousins behind center.

neil: Yep.

Salfino: They get outgained 5.9 yards per play to 4.3 and win. Incredible. 

neil: And it wasn’t even their luckiest win of the season.

maya: The Vikings have won all nine one-score games they’ve played. With five weeks to go, they really could break the league record for most regular-season wins by a single score, which is currently nine.

joshua.hermsmeyer: That’s an incredible accomplishment. Yay analytics.

neil: Who holds that, Maya?

(Genuinely curious.)

maya: The 2019 Seattle Seahawks were 9-2 in single-possession regular-season games, though the record for most one-score wins without a loss goes to the 2009 Indianapolis Colts, who went 8-0 in their first eight such games.

joshua.hermsmeyer: Speaking of incredible accomplishments, Russell Wilson may not pass for more touchdowns this season than his house has bathrooms. 

neil: Mr. Unlimited (places to poop) has met his match.

Salfino: What if he removes a bathroom? Problem solved!

joshua.hermsmeyer: I think it’s OK to ignore Deshaun Watson like No. 71 ignored the line call on this play.

Him falling down at the end is the chef’s kiss.

neil: I know the Browns still won, but Jacoby Brissett would’ve done better. Just saying.

maya: Ugh. Very underwhelmed by the Texas-Browns game in general yesterday. And I came in with low expectations.

Salfino: Just talking about the football, Watson probably needs a few games to get reacclimated to playing. Though I hate that we’re even talking about Watson.

neil: I guess playing the Texans is the equivalent of a preseason tune-up.

Salfino: I want to say before we go, throwing it out there, that in a year where the AFC was supposed to be so dominant, the Eagles are by far the best team in football in my key stat: net yards per pass play for minus allowed. They are nearly a yard ahead of everyone else. If they just leverage that advantage by having Hurts throw like in Week 13 vs. all that pointless, minus-EV running like in Weeks 11 and 12.

BTW, Ian Rapoport is reporting the Panthers are expected to waive Baker Mayfield. Niners?

maya: The Niners already picked up Josh Johnson, though!

joshua.hermsmeyer: My goodness. Baker might be out of the league.

neil: Purdy is better than Baker at this point.

maya: Oof. How the mighty have fallen.

(Was Baker ever mighty?)

neil: (In college.)

joshua.hermsmeyer: He’ll always have the rookie touchdown record. Narrator: No, he won’t. 

Salfino: Well, after his rookie year and winning the playoff game, I think.

Look, no one wants to say it but 6-foot and under is too short. Drew Brees was the outlier.

Wilson is showing he’s too short now that he can’t run around.

Yet who is the No. 1 QB prospect now? A 6-foot QB.

joshua.hermsmeyer: Wait, is Russ bad now because he’s short!?

Salfino: Russ has to play from the pocket now and can’t.

He can’t see! 

neil: And he has way too many bathrooms.

Check out our latest NFL predictions.

NFL

The Jets Have The MVP, The Browns Shouldn't Switch QBs, And We Want An Entire Division In The Playoffs

A FiveThirtyEight Chat

Nov. 28, 2022, at 3:22 PM

maya (Maya Sweedler, editor): Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Before everyone clambers up to their roofs to start stringing up Christmas lights, let’s put Turkey Day to rest and briefly run through all the NFL action of the past two weeks.

Week 11 had some fun outcomes (well, fun for everyone except perhaps the New York Jets’ special teams unit): A Kansas City Chiefs fourth-quarter comeback on the road against an AFC West rival; a dominant Dallas Cowboys performance over the then 8-1 Minnesota Vikings; a Philadelphia Eagles double-digit comeback against the Jeff Saturday-led Indianapolis Colts. And Thanksgiving had some excitement as well, from Dallas’s CeeDee Lamb coming in clutch against the New York Giants to a fantastic debut from Detroit Lions linebacker James Houston IV to Minnesota’s Justin Jefferson passing legendary wide receiver Randy Moss for most receiving yards in a player’s first three seasons (with six games to go!).

Which leads us into the rest of Week 12. We’ll talk about the two overtime games, the Washington Commanders’ mini-win streak, where depth (or lack thereof) is most important, but before we get into all of that, let’s look at the past few weeks of play as a whole. Which teams have stood out in the season’s doldrums? Any teams on the upswing or displaying flashing red lights you’re starting to worry about?

Salfino (Michael Salfino, FiveThirtyEight contributor): The San Francisco 49ers right now are the best team in the NFC. I think that’s the biggest story in the NFC. The Cincinnati Bengals are probably the biggest story in the AFC. Are they better than the Buffalo Bills? Their game against the Chiefs in Cincy is the game I’m most looking forward to in Week 13, especially with Ja’Marr Chase due back.

But of course the biggest story the last two weeks, not just in the NFL but in the entire world, is The White Lotus, Mike White.

joshua.hermsmeyer (Josh Hermsmeyer, NFL analyst): While I’ve been firmly on team #abhortheroar all season, it’s been exciting to see the Lions take advantage of the soft part of their schedule and rack up a few wins and take Buffalo, my pick for the first- or second-best team in football, to the limit. They’re in second place in the NFC North and we give them around a 9 percent shot at making the playoffs. They’re in the hunt!

Salfino: I want the Lions and Seahawks in the NFC playoffs replacing the Giants and Commanders. But it’s not going to happen for Detroit.

neil (Neil Paine, acting sports editor): I have one vindication and two non-vindications: The top three teams in Elo rating points gained over the past 14 days are the Cowboys (who I warned you guys were good) and the Bengals and Raiders (whom I wrote off to varying degrees). Although it’s probably too little, too late for Las Vegas anyway — we still only give them 5 percent playoff odds — the Bengals are alive and well, and maybe playing out a repeat of last year.

joshua.hermsmeyer: The Cowboys are good, and they’re good even while being robbed. It was a catch. Even Dez agrees.

maya: Let’s talk about the Raiders, who beat the Seattle Seahawks (an early season darling of ours) in overtime Sunday. We were all over this team for being awful in every facet earlier this month. But even though a playoff berth is unlikely, this is a much better looking team than just a few weeks ago. What’s changed?

neil: I must admit their crappy luck in one-possession contests has turned the other way for a few games.

Salfino: I feel good for Derek Carr, who like in “Almost Famous” is a midlevel quarterback struggling with his own limitations in the harsh face of stardom. It’s not his fault he’s not great. He really cares. I respect it. And he’s made the plays he had to, especially against Denver, and QBR loved him vs. Seattle. The story there of course was 300 scrimmage yards for Josh Jacobs. Just crazy.

neil: Jacobs had one of those performances we all used to put up against a low-difficulty CPU opponent in Madden.

Salfino: Bo Jackson in Tecmo “Bo”.

joshua.hermsmeyer: Neil I think puts his finger on it. You’re going to get one-score games to go in your favor once in a while. I don’t think this team has fundamentally changed … unless you play games with numbers, like NFL Research did with this stat: “Josh Jacobs is the only player since at least 1950 with 225+ rush yards & 70+ receiving yards in a single game.”

neil: What are you talking about? Those are totally natural cutoffs, Josh! LOL.

maya: I have no problem with that. When you have the fourth-longest overtime touchdown from scrimmage, you can massage all the stats you want to get that “first.”

Salfino: I remember Garrison Hearst beating the Jets in OT with a 96-yard TD in 1998.

joshua.hermsmeyer: I was in Cancun watching that at one of those beach bars. I nearly fell off my stool screaming.

Salfino: I was screaming for different reasons.

neil: And that was probably the last Jets team as good as this year’s Mike White version.

maya: Mike, how all-in are you on the White-led Jets?

Salfino: I think the 2010 team was quite good. But perhaps with White, the true NFL MVP right now. Three hundred-plus yards and multiple TD passes? He’s the 12th ever to do that in at least two of his first four starts. The other active QBs who matched White: Patrick Mahomes and Joe Burrow. The only QB ever with three such games in his first four starts? Kurt Warner.

joshua.hermsmeyer: Wait, is White the best Jets QB since Chad Pennington?

maya: I mean, Brett Favre did technically spend a season in New York somewhere in there …

joshua.hermsmeyer: Favre was on the low cycle by then …

neil: In many ways. (Although we didn’t yet know how low he could sink.)

Salfino: Look, seriously with White, he has a very good arm — he was a pitching prospect. But the big difference is vision and guts, which Zach Wilson lacks. White will stand in the pocket and take a hit to make a play. Wilson I can’t remember ever doing that wittingly. But White has been good-to-great in three of his first four career starts (he was playing hurt the other game vs. Buffalo, I believe).

neil: The Jets’ season is fascinating because they have really been straddling the line between trying to capitalize on a better-than-expected start and letting Wilson develop.

Wilson did them a favor with that disaster game versus the Pats, which gave them permission to actually use a better-in-the-here-and-now QB.

Salfino: I agree, Neil. Robert Saleh had to choose between the quarterback and the team and chose the team, as he needed to. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one.

neil: Let’s just hope Wilson didn’t imprint his Katra into Chris Streveler.

(That’s a “Wrath of Khan” reference, folks. I’ll show myself out.)

Salfino: Very good, Neil!

joshua.hermsmeyer: Saleh deserves consideration for coach of the year. He won’t get it, but he deserves a mention.

Salfino: I think Saleh is a good bet to get it if you think the Jets can finish 11-6, probably a 20 percent chance.

maya: Let’s turn to the other overtime game of the week: the Browns’ 23-17 win over the Buccaneers, which saw Cleveland tie the game on a two-minute drive and win on a Nick Chubb up-the-middle run in overtime. I don’t think the Browns’ 2022 season got a lot of preseason attention for its football potential, but other than losses to the entire AFC East (LOL), this team under Jacoby Brissett has looked pretty complete. With Deshaun Watson set to return from an 11-game suspension due to allegations of sexual misconduct, should Cleveland consider sticking with Brissett? 

joshua.hermsmeyer: The David Njoku one-handed catch on fourth down to send that Cleveland game to overtime was one of the best I’ve ever seen. And I watch Justin Jefferson every week.

neil: Yes! What a gutsy win for Cleveland, even if the Bucs aren’t what they used to be.

Let me make the case very simply for the Browns sticking with Brissett: Brissett’s current QBR (61.2) isn’t that different from Watson’s during his last season in 2020 (63.7). Tack on the rust of missing two whole seasons, and would we even expect Watson to be better? And that’s without even getting into how Brissett’s teammates seem to really respect him as a leader. Not sure what kind of respect Watson could still command after everything.

Salfino: Every metric overrates someone. I have a hard time reconciling Brissett’s eyeball test with his QBR. Maybe it’s me.

joshua.hermsmeyer: I am no fan of Watson, I will be booing his every snap. But there’s no way you pay what the Browns paid for him and don’t start him. Brissett could have played like vintage Joe Montana and Watson would be starting this week.

Salfino: I suspect Brissett’s QBR is lifted by really timely running, even though he’s not really a runner. He seems to be hyperefficient there. I think it’s a very fair question, but there is 0 percent chance that Watson doesn’t start in Houston, ironically.

neil: Oh, I totally know that they will start Watson. It’s just not clear to me that they should. (From a football perspective, not even from an ethical one.)

Salfino: I think if they were 6-5, it would be more of an open question. I respect the stats always, but would anyone rank Brissett this year where he ranks in QBR?

neil: The QBR rankings in general this season show that our ideas about the good and bad QBs are more wrong than we think. (Hello, Geno Smith, etc., etc.)

maya: Hold on, is that fair?

I think QBR rewards a very specific type of quarterback performance — efficient passing, minimal turnovers. It’s not necessarily going to reward the most innovative offenses, as even context-dependent football stats still fail to take the gravity of a running QB into account, but for what it is, I think QBR captures something of value.

Salfino: I have no issue with Geno, even though QBR hated him for some reason vs. the Raiders.

joshua.hermsmeyer: I think the Browns need a more dynamic QB. The defense especially. I’ve been seeing some talk that “analytics” are to blame for the team’s defense being unable to stop the run. Over-investment in stopping the pass or some such. I don’t accept that premise, but assuming it’s true, the way they are built with Brissett (control the clock with the run game and win close games) encourages your opponent to run on you. A more dynamic passing attack will encourage more opposing offenses to attack through the air, and that will play to the defense’s strength.

neil: OK, but I thought we were all about encouraging the offense to run … ? (Particularly to pointlessly “establish” the run.)

Have teams neglected run D to the point that now we want them to pass?

maya: I feel like I can predict what Josh is going to say here …

No, gap-sound defense is and has always been important! No defense coordinator worth his salt would completely neglect the run. 

joshua.hermsmeyer: Yes Maya! Also, I think you’re fine with people running against you when you have a two-score lead. Less fine with getting gashed when you’re also trying to grind out drives.

Salfino: I think you want teams to run but if you can’t stop the run, you just can’t win. It’s just too easy for the opponent to keep pounding you into submission. But few run defenses are that bad generally. You can be Peyton Colts bad. Not this bad.

neil: FWIW, running still generates WAY fewer (i.e., negative) EPA per play this season than passing.

So call me skeptical that a team should want opponents to pass on them instead of running.

joshua.hermsmeyer: I think where we will agree, Neil, is that building a team to win close games is not building a team to win consistently.

maya: Well, let’s run through the five worst run defenses in the league by EPA. From worst to fifth-worst, they are the Cleveland Browns, Green Bay Packers, Detroit Lions, Philadelphia Eagles and Los Angeles Chargers.

There’s still a pretty good amount of winning happening there.

Salfino: All disappointing teams except the Eagles, who still outrush their opponents, generally. Plus the Eagles snapped into action to try to fix that problem, so I believe their analytics considered that deficiency to be grave.

joshua.hermsmeyer: Ehhhh. I’m not sure about that. They always wanted Hurts to rush as much as he felt like it. I think he may be running too much now, though. Or at least, when he does run he needs to slide!

maya: The Eagles make for such an interesting contrast with the post-Week 6 Chicago Bears. The way Hurts is used as an option runner versus the called runs for Justin Fields seem to offer pretty different paths forward for the future of running quarterbacks.

Salfino: Totally agree the Eagles are running too much. My problem with the running QBs is the volume. If you push 200 attempts, there is no way these guys are going to be at the top of their games in December and January, when they must be for their teams to win. Running backs spend all their time building their bodies to withstand the toll of running that much. Quarterbacks can’t do this. They’re not lifting weights and building core strength and leg strength. They’re doing QB things.

joshua.hermsmeyer: I seem to remember a running QB against the Packers defense in the playoffs doing pretty well … 

neil: Another guy who fits that description, Josh, is somebody whose record Hurts broke last night.

joshua.hermsmeyer: Maybe it’s just the Packers.

neil: I think each of us could run for 100 against the Packers in the playoffs. (Or this year, in the regular season.) 

Salfino: Kaepernick had 63 regular-season attempts that year, Josh. This Hurts/Lamar/Fields volume is not a sustainable business model. 

You have to save it for the biggest games like Mahomes does.

maya: LOL. I would very much like to opt out of running against the Packers.

But Mike, that question of volume is key. We’ve already seen backfields get reshaped by injuries, which has produced some pretty unexpected outcomes (the Broncos’ “running back by committee” collapsing, the Chiefs rolling out a three-man system). Whose depth or rotation appears best suited for December/January games?

Salfino: Everything about the Broncos offense has collapsed with Russell Wilson having six straight games with a QBR under 34, which has to be close to a record. The Chiefs just run for show (and pass for dough), but even though Isiah Pacheco got 51 percent of snaps, he got 23 of 31 RB touches (74 percent). I don’t think you have to worry much about RBs being worn out in January if they are reasonably managed. Josh Jacobs maybe is a problem. Again, they’re whole lives are building their bodies to take that punishment.

joshua.hermsmeyer: I’ll be predictable and say the teams with the best passing attacks and innovative schemes will stand the best shot at postseason rushing success. K.C. is one, as Maya mentioned. The Dolphins will trot out anybody who can run a 4.5 and find success. And the Niners have a bevy of talent in the backfield they can call upon when Jimmy G. gets scared and confused.

Salfino: Jimmy G. slander! Sorry, I do think wins largely are a QB stat:

joshua.hermsmeyer: I saw this! I fell off the couch! 

maya: If I were Fred Warner or Nick Bosa (or even Deebo!) and I saw that, I would be seething.

Salfino: Maybe he’s an exception to the rule, but Occam’s razor says you have to sort of stipulate, based on that alone, that Garoppolo is at least good.

My sense, Maya, is that Jimmy G.’s teammates love him.

maya: We have again reached the “defend Jimmy G.” portion of the chat.

neil: Hahaha

Salfino: He’s going to be retired for five years and we’ll still be debating if he was even good.

joshua.hermsmeyer: There’s no doubt that the defense carried the Niners on Sunday. I don’t think it will continue, because it never does, but it was one of the more impressive performances of the season. Even Fred Warner was good!

maya: Let’s use the Niners as a jumping-off point for a quick step back to look at the playoff picture. If we axed the last month and a half of the season, here’s who would be in the playoffs:

• NFC: The entire (!) NFC East, with the division-leading Eagles joined by wild-card teams Cowboys, Giants and Commanders. The other three division leaders are the Vikings, 49ers and Buccaneers (the latter of whom are the only NFC playoff team with a losing record).
• AFC: Division leaders Chiefs, Miami Dolphins, Tennessee Titans and Baltimore Ravens, plus wild-card teams in the Bills, Cincinnati Bengals and Jets.

Of these 14 teams, whom do you least want to match up against? No boring answers, like Kansas City or Philadelphia, allowed!

neil: Buffalo … ?

maya: Mm definitely a boring answer, too. Sorry, Neil!

neil: Haha. You didn’t prohibit them! But they are the best team in football by SRS, so I should have known better.

Salfino: If healthy, the Niners. 

joshua.hermsmeyer: Unless I’m Buffalo or K.C., I would not want to face Miami. Just too much scoring potential.

Salfino: Josh, if Miami is so good, why are they seventh in the conference in point differential? Is this all the Tua missed games? He lost the game against the Bengals, who were going to thump Miami that night regardless.

joshua.hermsmeyer: Mike, Miami is firmly in the second tier of teams. I think they’re legit!

Salfino: Right now, the Jets could definitely beat Miami in the first round. I would not be remotely shocked. They can cover those guys.

joshua.hermsmeyer: I had Sauce Sauce on my wings this weekend. It was good.

maya: Tasted like victory?

Salfino: Sauce is very good but a little overrated. He’s not Revis remotely, not yet. 

joshua.hermsmeyer: He’s a rookie!

Salfino: Right, but even compared to Rookie Revis. Too much contact and not enough turning back to the ball.

neil: I think I would not like to face Baltimore. They are fourth in SRS and above-average in every single schedule-adjusted EPA category. 

Salfino: Baltimore’s pass defense is craptastic. Come on.

neil: Yes, Trevor Lawrence carved up the Ravens Sunday. But before that, they’d held the opposing starter below his usual QB Elo norm in eight straight games!

maya: Personally, I can’t wait for Baltimore’s luck in one-score games to flip. It’s rough out there.

joshua.hermsmeyer: I will second the defense of the Ravens. However there is one part of their defense that is troubling, and it’s exemplified by this stat: They’ve lost three games when leading by multiple scores in the fourth quarter, tied for the most in a season in NFL history.

neil: Yeah, it feels like that is becoming sort of a reputation for them. But before 2022, they had a 31-3 record with Lamar Jackson at QB when leading by two scores at any point in a game. It’s possible this is all noise.

Salfino: But that’s pass defense. It’s bad. They also have little pass rush. The Bengals are winning the North.

maya: I always look forward to Tennessee doing some January bracket busting, so that’s who I’m going with (unless Derrick Henry gets hurt, and until Ryan Tannehill is asked to do just a little too much).

Salfino: The Chiefs and Eagles seem set for No. 1 seeds. The Niners have seized control of the NFC West and I think they’re the best team in the conference when healthy. But the Vikings will hold on to the No. 2 seed because after the Jets in Week 13 their schedule is so easy. The Giants will be the odd man out in the NFC playoff picture due to their schedule and loss to Seattle. The Chargers could replace the Jets but I think the Jets will get to 10 wins and maybe 11. L.A. must win two of their next three at Raiders, Dolphins and Titans. I don’t think they do it.

maya: All I want is an entire division to make the playoffs for the first time ever. The only thing that can improve Wild Card Weekend is a series of interdivisional grudge matches.

joshua.hermsmeyer: I’m starting to get excited for the playoffs, Maya, and you’re helping.

Salfino: Do we really want the Giants and Commanders in the tournament? I’m a hard no on that.

neil: LOL, Mike, I was gonna say. I think I’d rather see all four AFC East teams.

maya: As long as one of them meets Dallas at some point, I’m into it. 

Salfino: The Cowboys have won four playoff games since the 1995 season. FOUR. Look it up. I ain’t lyin’.

neil: That sounds high.

Check out our latest NFL predictions.

Which World Cup Player Should You Root For?Take our quiz to find the best player for you in 2022.Start

1. Fame

I want a player who …

Is a hidden gemIs kind of well-knownIs famous!

2. World Cup odds

How important is contending for the title?

I prefer underdogs.A trophy would be nice.We’re here to WIN.

3. World Cup experience

Grizzled veteran or first-timer?

Experience is overrated.I want someone who’s been there before.

4. Origin

Where should they hail from?

EuropeAsia or AfricaThe Americas

5. Penalty kicking

Should this player be good at shooting penalties?

Shootouts are silly anyway.Be at least OK at it!Yes, give me a player who lives for that moment.

6. Position

Which position is your favorite?

ForwardMidfielderDefender

7. Goals

Do you prefer the glory of the goal or the joy of helping teammates?

There’s nothing like a pretty pass.You can’t win if you don’t score!

8. Fouls

What are your feelings on flo– err, drawing fouls?

I’d rather hit someone than be hit.Flopping is just the smart thing to do.

Kylian Mbappé

Kylian Mbappé (France) is a great fit for you. Les Bleus won their second World Cup title last time around — now they’re looking to become the first back-to-back champ since Brazil in 1962.

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Why Kylian Mbappé?

Kylian Mbappé matches 7 of your 8 answers. So does Karim Benzema.

1. Fame

I want a player who’s …

Famous!

Kylian Mbappé matches your choice

020406080100Fame index

MORE INSTAGRAM FOLLOWERS

MORE INSTAGRAM FOLLOWERS

Our “fame index” is calculated as the percentile of each player’s Instagram follower count among the total player pool.

2. World Cup odds

I want a player who’s …

Part of a team with strong odds

Kylian Mbappé matches your choice

020406080100Team’s odds of reaching Round of 16

STRONGER TEAM

STRONGER TEAM

3. World Cup experience

I want a player who’s …

Had at least one World Cup under their belt

Kylian Mbappé matches your choice

01020Number of previous World Cup matches played

MORE EXPERIENCE

MORE EXPERIENCE

4. Origin

I want a player who’s …

From Europe

Kylian Mbappé matches your choice

From Europe

From Asia or Africa

From the Americas

5. Penalty kicking

I want a player who’s …

Not a good penalty shooter

Kylian Mbappé matches your choice

−2−10123

BETTER ON PENALTY KICKS

BETTER ON PENALTY KICKS

6. Position

I want a player who’s …

A midfielder

Kylian Mbappé doesn’t match your choice

A forward

A midfielder

A defender

7. Goals

I want a player who’s …

Mainly a goal scorer

Kylian Mbappé matches your choice

020406080100Share of goals vs. assists

MORE GOALS

MORE GOALS

8. Fouls

I want a player who’s …

Draws more fouls

Kylian Mbappé matches your choice

−202Fouls committed vs. fouls drawn (adjusted for position)

MORE FOULS DRAWN

MORE FOULS DRAWN

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