I said last week that I want to make this a regular thing, so I’m going to do my best to follow through on that.
Using essentially the same formula as I did last week, I’ve created offensive and defensive passing and rushing coefficients for all 32 NFL teams. In some cases, the differences between teams are nearly identical to the differences between their weighted DVOAs according to Football Outsiders. In other instances, the differences are quite, well, different.
My purpose for creating this formula is to help provide a basis for my picks. I’m a very busy person and can’t read up on every storyline involving all 32 teams in the NFL, but by seeing disparities between offensive and defensive units in specific aspect of the game, I can narrow down what additionally research I want to do as I make my picks and assign confidence points.
Before I get to this week’s slate of games, I’d like to briefly look back at some of the predictions I made last week that panned out and a few that didn’t.
Starting with Thursday night’s game, I overestimated the Cowboys ability to pass the ball. Their passing DVOA is still incredibly inflated from what they did against terrible defenses early in the season. The Bears haven’t done great this season defending the pass, but they were more than a match for Dallas. The Cowboys had a great opening drive and then did absolutely nothing the rest of the way.
On a better note for me, I said of the Buccaneers, “…this is a team that can easily absorb a turnover or two to pull out a home win…” Well, they actually absorbed a -3 turnover differential to come back and win against the Colts. I think Jameis Winston is proving that, while frustrating, he’s absolutely a starting quarterback in the NFL. I hope he can work on his decision making to cut down on the interceptions next season, but he’s a dynamic play-maker who you can’t afford to keep off the field if he’s on your roster.
I took the 49ers to win on the road in a one-score game, and they did just that in maybe the most thrilling game of the season. Meanwhile, in Jacksonville I said Gardner Minshew would play like he’s got another starting quarterback breathing down his neck. Instead, he averaged a season-low 6.75 yards per completion in a 45-10 loss against the Chargers.
Russell Wilson proved me wrong Sunday night after I said he’d more than make up for his team’s shoddy pass defense. He failed to throw a touchdown pass for the first time all season and fell under 7 yards per attempt for just the third time in 2019. And I predicted that Doug Pederson might soon be out of a job if his team lost on Monday night. They almost did as it took two late Zach Ertz touchdowns to drop Eli Manning below .500 for his career (BUt YoU sTILl cAn'T spElL ELITe WiTHoUT eLi).
Feel free to make fun of me for any other miscalls I made last week; I’ll hang my hat on the handful of predictions I nailed. Let’s see if I can fair a little better in Week 15.
NY Jets at Baltimore
I mentioned last week that I’m basically comparing four numbers for each team as a basis for my predictions. Each team’s rushing offense against the other team’s rushing defense and each team’s passing offense against the other team’s passing defense. Last week, only one game featured a team that was better than the other in all categories. We’re off to quite a start this week as Baltimore has already given us that.
According to my formula, the Jets have a defense capable of slowing down (but not stopping) Baltimore’s rushing attack, but not much else. And keep in mind, Lamar Jackson and Mark Ingram provide a one-two punch that no other team in the NFL has, one that the Jets have not yet seen and almost certainly are incapable of preparing for.
Expect a blowout on Thursday night to start Week 15.
New England at Cincinnati
I’ve been happy to see the Bengals playing a little bit better of late. They beat the Jets two weeks ago and hung in against the Browns more than I expected them to last week. New England has proven to be vulnerable recently, but this is just too lopsided a matchup.
Does anybody really think that the Patriots wasted their time trying to film signals from this team? The Bengals present absolutely no threat; and if the Bengals are using signals to call plays instead of, oh I don’t know, RADIOS, maybe that’s a hint as to why the Bengals suck so badly this year.
I digress. The Bengals rush defense will probably win more battles than New England’s rush offense in this game, but it won’t be by much and the Patriots don’t run enough for those minor victories to keep Cincinnati in the game.
Tampa Bay at Detroit
This one isn’t really that tough to pick. Even with the Lions at home, this matchup strongly favors the Bucs.
The Lions defense is even less opportunistic coming into this game than Indy’s was entering last week. The Bucs could again turn the ball over four times and Detroit would still have fewer takeaways than the Colts do.
I can’t put a lot of confidence on this game because Mike Evans hurt his hamstring last week and will miss this game, and likely the rest of the season. But the biggest advantage the Lions have in this game based on the numbers is in their passing offense, and those are still inflated from when Matt Stafford was the starter. After looking pretty good on Thanksgiving, David Blough took a big step back last week, albeit against a pretty good Vikings defense. I’ll take the Bucs with a narrow margin of victory.
Houston at Tennessee
This is a tough one for me because I want to pick Houston. I love Deshaun Watson. He’s become my favorite player in the league and he is, for my money, the best passer in the NFL right now. But the Texans can’t keep him on his feet.
Houston has been doing a little better preventing sacks in the last few weeks, but the difference has been marginal. Meanwhile, the Titans look really good right now. Derrick Henry is a monster and Ryan Tannehill is playing his way into a long-term contract, a prediction that would’ve gotten any analyst laughed out of the industry two months ago.
I expect this to be a very close game. Houston can absolutely win this thing, but I’m going to give the nod to Tennessee, primarily because they’re at home. This is a huge game for division placement as the two teams come into this game tied atop the AFC South at 8-5 and will face each other again to close the season in two weeks.
Denver at Kansas City
On both sides of the ball, Denver has the advantage in the ground game. So far this season, the Chiefs poor run defense has been masked by the fact that their opponents only run the ball on 41.5 percent of plays, a number that has, oddly, dropped to 34.4 percent in the last three weeks. The Broncos would be smart to give Kansas City a heavy dose of Phillip Lindsay and Royce Freeman.
Drew Lock gives the Broncos a big boost in the passing game that they’ve been lacking all season. But the Chiefs pass defense is no pushover and their offense is more explosive than I think the Broncos can handle.
Denver will surprise some folks by keeping this game closer than the current Vegas line of KC -9.5, but the Chiefs will defend Arrowhead successfully on Sunday.
Miami at NY Giants
Talk about a toilet bowl game. Can I pick neither team to win?
I’m basically taking the Giants because the numbers are on their side and they’re at home. I absolutely would have gone against the numbers and taken the Dolphins if DeVante Parker was healthy. He averaged about 10 targets and more than 100 yards per game in the three games leading up to last week’s loss to the Jets, in which he caught two passes on two targets before leaving the game with a concussion.
His availability is in question and, with their season down the toilet anyway, I don’t see Miami rushing him back. He’s been the biggest catalyst to the Dolphins’ recent success and with him likely missing this game, I don’t think Miami wins.
That said, the Giants are terrible and so I’ll be keeping the confidence points very low for this one.
Philadelphia at Washington
Make no bones about it, the 2019 NFC East is a worse division than the 2010 NFC West, and it’s no close contest in my book.
The Eagles are putrid. They are poorly coached this year and Carson Wentz gets far more credit than he deserves as a quarterback. By the way, can we talk about how sad it is that the bar in Philly is so low that Wentz was congratulated by the Monday night crew for being the first quarterback in Eagles history to reach 3,000 passing yards in four straight seasons? And Philly likely still won’t get their first 4,000-yard passer in franchise history!
Anyway, back to this Sunday. The Redskins are trash and Haskins has ankle and wrist injuries that he is, for some inexplicable reason, playing through. I might have considered taking Washington because they’ve been keeping games much closer than they should be lately, but I’ll give the Eagles the win with moderately low confidence this week.
Seattle at Carolina
Like this week’s Thursday night game, we’ve got a team that wins on paper in all four facets of the game. The numbers suggest Christian McCaffrey shouldn’t be expected to win on even half of his runs, and that’s Carolina’s best matchup against the Seahawks.
Charlotte has the feel of an Achilles heel for the Seahawks, but Seattle is 4-1 on the road against Carolina since 2012. Not one of those five games has been decided by more than a touchdown, but I think this one will be. I’ve got Seattle bouncing back from their loss in LA with a blowout victory against Carolina.
Chicago at Green Bay
Chicago has been very impressive lately. Allen Robinson is a stud and Mitch Trubisky looks like a completely different player than we saw leading the Bears to their demise in the first half of the season. If this was in Chicago, I’d strongly consider picking them to win this game.
But the game is in Wisconsin, the Packers are coming off an embarrassingly narrow victory against the Redskins, and Green Bay knows Minnesota is right on their heels and is playing very good football right now. They can’t afford a misstep and I think they’ll get the job done this week.
Minnesota at LA Chargers
The Packers traveled to LA in Week 9 following a big win over the Chiefs and got their butts handed to them. I don’t see the Vikings suffering the same fate this week. Minnesota has been playing very consistent football and Minnesota showed how unconcerned they were about Dalvin Cook returning from injury by giving him 20 touches against the Lions, his most in a game since Week 10.
The Vikings defense has struggled a bit against the pass this year, and every broadcast team appears to be obligated to bring up Xavier Rhodes’s surprisingly poor play. I can see the Chargers putting up some points with a strong air attack, but Philip Rivers hasn’t been consistent enough for me to put any faith in the Chargers.
Keep in mind, LA’s win against the Jaguars was the third double-digit victory of the season. The Chargers followed each of the previous two with three straight loses.
Jacksonville at Oakland
I think this game is a little more of a tossup than the 6.5-point spread Vegas favors Oakland by. The Raiders are wildly unpredictable and have lost three straight games by at least three touchdowns!
No doubt Jacksonville is a bad team with no direction, but a touchdown seems like easy money for anybody taking the Jags to beat the spread.
That said, it’s Oakland’s last home game ever. They’ll play two on the road and then return to the field in 2020 as the Las Vegas Raiders. I’m going to give them the nod to win their final home game in the Bay Area.
Cleveland at Arizona
This is one of the tougher games to pick for me. Vegas has the Cardinals as 2.5-point home dogs. Both my formula and Football Outsiders’ weighted DVOA gives the Browns about a 56-percent chance of winning this game with no consideration for home field.
That’s not a particularly significant advantage and with the game being in Arizona, I have to at least give them a look. But they’ve lost six straight games, including their last two in the desert. I don’t see much good from the Browns right now, but Arizona’s pass defense is abysmal and the Browns have an above average pass defense to keep Kyler Murray at bay.
I’m putting low confidence on this one, but I’m taking Cleveland on the road.
LA Rams at Dallas
I’ve learned my lesson. Dallas still has the edge based on my formula, and a slightly bigger edge based on weighted DVOA, but at best I estimate the Cowboys have a 53.3-percent chance of winning this game based on those numbers. Even at home, that’s not a big enough gap for me to put my faith in a team that has won just two of its last six games.
The Rams, meanwhile, bounced back from a blowout loss against Baltimore to win two straight games I thought they would lose, including a really good win against Seattle last Sunday.
I’m not going big on the confidence here because I still think the Cowboys should win this game at home. But the Cowboys haven’t been winning games they should win lately and I’m not going to gamble on them now.
Atlanta at San Francisco
If Atlanta and San Francisco were still in the same division (yes, remember how a team from Georgia was in the NFC West until 2001?), I might be less willing to do so, but this is in the running to be my max confidence pick and I doubt I’ll be putting less than 14 on it.
San Francisco’s only weakness right now is their rushing offense, and it has me scratching my head. Tevin Coleman and Matt Breida are both very fast runners and have had flashes of really good vision this season. Breida was a bit inconsistent early in the year, but he had a couple of huge games and then suddenly they stopped using him. Coming off an injury, he played a season-low 18 percent of the 49ers snaps last week against New Orleans, but he averaged 9 yards per carry and hopefully will get a bump in touches based on that performance.
Even if Atlanta does shut down San Francisco’s rushing attack, that’ll be their only victory of the day. The 49ers passing offense is hitting its stride and their defense is almost impenetrable. I put 16 confidence points on the Ravens to beat the 49ers two weeks ago and, while I ended up getting those 16 points, I came very close to taking myself out of the running to win that competition with my cohosts of The Sportsballers Podcast.
This is the best team of a very strong NFC crop we’re talking about. They should have no trouble at home against a Falcons team that hasn’t won a game outside its division since Week 2.
Buffalo at Pittsburgh
This is a pretty interesting Sunday night football matchup. The Steelers aren’t really a good team this year, but Mike Tomlin has coached his butt off and kept this team’s head above water. They enter this week 8-5 (and when I went to look up their record, I was honestly surprised to find they were above .500).
Buffalo, for its part, has been a little underappreciated this season. But they made a game out of their matchup with the mighty Ravens last week and I think they’re the better team in this matchup.
This will be a defensive battle. Both of these teams have terrific, top 5 defenses according to weighted DVOA. The Steelers are top five against both the run and the pass while Buffalo is top five against the pass and 17th against the run. Just goes to show how much more crucial pass defense is than run defense.
What my pick came down to was which offense I trust more to make a few big plays. Not to say I trust Josh Allen in a crucial, late game situation. I don’t. Pittsburgh’s pass defense is on the same plane as Baltimore’s and Allen came up short in the 4th quarter last week at home.
But Buffalo has more play makers and I think it’s more likely than not that it will be Pittsburgh that needs to make some big plays on offense in the fourth quarter, and I don’t trust Hodges any more than I trust Allen.
Indianapolis at New Orleans
Monday night should be another snoozer, but at least we’ll see a good time playing this week. The Saints are a far better team than the Colts and, coming off a tough home loss to San Francisco, they’ll be ready to go.
The Saints and Packers are currently tied for the second first round bye in the NFC and they’re both 3-1 against common opponents with the Packers getting a second game against the Bears this week and the Saints getting a second game against the Panthers in Week 17. The Saints can’t afford to drop another game, and I predict that they won’t this week.
-Cory Puffett