The Winning Continues: Four NFL underdogs to take to the bank

For those of you who don’t care how we come to our predictions, and trust us with our 10-5 record on the year, you will find the picks at the top of these posts for the rest of the season. The explanations for them are below. Enjoy!

The BSN picks of the week:

Cleveland Browns +11 vs. New England Patriots

Chicago Bears +4.5 at Indianapolis Colts

New York Giants +7.5 at Green Bay Packers

San Diego Chargers +3.5 at Oakland Raiders

We remain in tricky territory when using our YPP metric to make our NFL picks. We are still dealing with a limited sample size and seeing huge swings in teams’ YPP differentials from one week to another, in addition to teams coming off the first bye week and only having three games under their belts.

Much like in Week 3, if we look exclusively at the raw numbers EW outperformed YPP Week 4; EW was 4-and-2 in games with differentials of 1.5 points or more, while YPP was 3-and-5 in games with a differential of over 5-points, two telling thresholds for the two metrics.

This week YPP has only three games with differentials of 5 points or more, as the YPP suggested spreads and actual spreads are beginning to tighten up. EW is still an accurate predictor of the actual spreads but there are some slightly more noticeable differentials then we’ve seen so far this year.

Half of the week’s games (14) see YPP and EW in a consensus as to who to pick against the spread. Much like last week, we’ll continue to lean on YPP more as the season progress, but we’re going to also use EW as well to allow us to make the most accurate predictions possible and continue our winning streak.

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Analyzing our consensus pick:

Cleveland Browns +11 

There’s some risk with this pick, as Tom Brady’s return makes New England’s YPP statistics unreliable. There’s no predicting how Brady and the offense will produce but we can make a statistical projection. In 2015 the Patriots offense was ranked sixth in the league with a 5.7 yards-per-play on average gained. If we are generous and predict that the Pats, with Brady, are a top five offense this year, taking the mean offensive YPP  for the top five and applying it (6.4), their YPP score changes significantly (as you can see in the table below). But not enough for them to be favorited on the road, forget by 11 points.

Projecting the YPP spread with Brady:

Sure YPP no longer has the Browns as 4.5 point favorites, but the spread would be even. That is an 11.5 point differential, which would remain the largest of the week. The Browns actually have a top five YPP offense in the NFL this season as Hue Jackson’s play calling has lead to production and they’ve been competitive for most of the year.

On the hand, Brady hasn’t been able to practice with the team for the past four weeks, some rust should be expected. Vegas is simply baiting you to take the Patriots here, we’re not so quick to jump the gun as even our EW differential has Cleveland covering with the Patriots being 9.5 point favorites in that metric.

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Breaking down the YPP picks:

Chicago Bears +4.5 

So in spite of losing Jay Cutler, the Bears have remained high in the YPP rankings, as they’re the sixth best team in the NFL. They’ve done so with surprising balance as they’re the ninth-ranked offense and defense per those numbers.

The Colts remain at the bottom of the rankings as they’re now the second worst team per YPP, in front of the San Francisco 49ers. Indianapolis seems favored in this game based purely on reputation and perception. The Bears are 4.5 point favorites by our metric, a huge 9 point differential from the actual spread. Though they aren’t the sexiest team, Chicago is ranked highly in YPP and already pulled off an upset last week.  Could it be two in a row?

New York Giants +7.5 

The Giants let us down last week while the Packers are 2-1 coming off of a bye week. However, Green Bay’s offense ranks 24th in YPP, a very surprising figure. The Giants despite their tough loss against the Minnesota Vikings, are still in the top three of YPP behind the Atlanta Falcons and Denver Broncos. Eli Manning’s 1-to-1 touchdown to interception ratio hasn’t helped in capitalizing on all that yardage gained. But last week’s loss was the worst game of the season against a talented and inspired Vikings team. The Giants won their first two and lost by two points to the Washington Redskins Week 3. The Packers, on the other hand, haven’t blown anyone out yet this year and are regularly getting more points than they realistically deserve based on their play.

San Diego Chargers +3.5 

The Chargers are an interesting team. They’ve been in every game they’ve played but have blown the lead at the very end each time. The Raiders, on the other hand, have won two games by a combined 2 points, which seems like a classic case where records are skewed due to close game luck that should even out over the course of the season.

While San Diego ranks right in the middle of the pack for both offense and defense in the YPP data, Oakland has proved to be a true Jekyll and Hyde team. The Raiders are the second best attack but are dead last in defense where they are giving up 0.5 yards more per play on average than their explosive offense is gaining. That puts the Raiders 25th in overall YPP differential, 11 spots below San Diego. Phillip Rivers and the Chargers offense should be well positioned to take advantage of Oaklands struggling defensive unit.

This is a divisional game as well, which often leads to close scores and the Chargers are desperate to get a win. YPP has San Diego as the better team and 3 point favorite in a neutral field setting, with the game being even in Oakland, we’ll take the Bolts to change their late game luck and humble a Raiders team that always seems to fall flat after a win.

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QB changes for the top dogs:

Every week quarterback injuries or changes seem to affect the spreads and the validity of our numbers for those particular games. Last week the spread on the New England Patriots didn’t come out right until the very end, and it took till about Wednesday for a consensus spread to be out on the Seattle Seahawks.

This week it’s Cam Newton’s concussion that has frozen the Monday night Carolina Panthers vs Tampa Bay Buccaneers line. YPP actually has the Bucs favored by 3.5 points if Newton is playing, worth monitoring as injury news comes out and we finally know a spread.

The Panthers aren’t the only 2015 conference championship team that are facing potential changes at quarterback this week. Carson Palmer has been ruled out for a concussion in a short week where the Arizona Cardinals play on Thursday night, the New England Patriots get Tom Brady back, and the Denver Broncos will either start Paxton Lynch or a banged up Trevor Siemian.

The Cards face the San Francisco 49ers on the road and are favored, a spread that both our metrics like for Arizona. However, those numbers don’t take into account how the loss of Palmer could affect these stats going forward; simply put, it’s unpredictable, something that’s should always be avoided.

As news trickles in the spreads are bound to be affected by these important QB injuries for big contenders.

OUR YPP CHART:

Below is the chart with our YPP numbers, our EW chart is in our analysis column of Week 4.