Quarterback injuries hurt, analyzing our Week 7 NFL picks

Some weeks things just don’t go as you planned. For our picks, YPP, and EW that certainly was the case this week. There are times when the reality doesn’t reflect the stats and things just go wacky; for us, that was the NFL’s week 7.

We offered up six picks with huge differentials in favor of all our selections, armed with updated EW numbers and everything. It all lead to a 1-5 disaster, taking us down to 15-13-1 on the year and simply ruining what had been a fairly stellar record to that point.

More so than our picks, either the numbers or reality was simply off this week. Usually, one can find a few oversights, games that the numbers suggested, maybe not strongly, but that when contextualized show that they’re worth believing in. That’s not the case this week. Games with differentials of 5 or more points for YPP went 1-6. Expand that further to differentials of 3 points or more and those were 2-9. Things were just off.

Our newest EW spreads didn’t do all that better going 4-6 in differentials of 2 or more points (mind you differentials are much smaller with EW). Our old EW numbers based on the preseason over/under predictions didn’t do any better either.

We expect things to regress back to bearing out our numbers, but Week 7 was not one such situation.

Now there are circumstances that greatly impacted things, as you’ll read below.

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What changed behind center?

It’s pretty amazing when three teams of six end up having different quarterbacks than what their projections are based on.

The first, the San Francisco 49ers we knew about, but given their low standing in YPP (29th in the NFL going into the week) the difference between Blaine Gabbert and Colin Kaepernick seemed minimal. Ultimately, the 49ers and Tampa Bay Buccaneers were about even per YPP, with San Francisco having a slight edge and home field.

With that, the 49ers were a healthy favorite for us. However, the line had Tampa -1 throughout the week. When things settled on the field the 49ers simply looked like a bad team in this one, despite starting off nicely. The wheels just fell off quickly. Home field mattered very little in this one and Kaepernick was outplayed (in a big way) by Jameis Winston, who finally seemed to find his groove.

The other two quarterback situations we really could do nothing about and obviously a mid-game injury is a bettor’s nightmare. Despite less than stellar records, Cody Kessler and Brian Hoyer had the Cleveland Browns and Chicago Bears offenses playing some decent football. As both got knocked out by halfway through the second quarters of their respective games, we were doomed.

The Bears put up a fight for a while until the Green Bay Packers offense became too much to handle with no time to rest on the sideline. While the Cleveland Browns were competitive, they had nothing to show once their starter went out. Once the Browns allowed a spectacular but maddening end of the half hail mary catch by A.J. Green, you knew this was over.

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Jay Ajayi is already in the record books

Allow us to gloat at least a bit this week. The Miami Dolphins have been largely undervalued per our YPP projections and in back-to-back weeks that’s proved to be true. Of course, YPP couldn’t have projected the impact of Jay Ajayi but the numbers saw there was more than met the eye with Miami.

The Dolphins took care of the previously  white-hot Buffalo Bills this week in an always tough to predict divisional bout. Miami actually had a nice comeback to win this one as they were down 17-6 half way through the third quarter.

Ajayi and the rest of the offense came alive about then with even Ryan Tannehill playing his part in the form of a 66-yard bomb to Kenny Stills. Ajayi has now joined an elite group of backs to go back-to-back 200-yard games in his first two NFL starts and in turn Miami is far from a pushover all of a sudden.

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Jaguars and Titans show their immaturity

Ultimately, what the numbers allow us to do is uncover market inefficiencies, often derived from public perception. This can, however, leave you picking young teams who might not have the chops to finish out games on a consistent basis. We saw that with these two AFC South picks, as both the Jacksonville Jaguars and Tennessee Titans let us down.

The Jaguars being favored by -1 at home was a surprise at face value considering they were playing another hot team in the Oakland Raiders. However, our numbers loved the Jaguars and when you considered that Oakland had only won 2 of their last 20 eastern time zone games you could see why.

We also prognosticated that a good young Jags ‘D’ would limit the Raiders offense while exploiting their defense. That didn’t happen. Jacksonville got down early and never quite managed to get out of that hole. While the Titans and Jaguars aren’t showing the maturity to win these winnable games, the Raiders seem to be blossoming into a professional group that shouldn’t be overlooked. We’ll try to keep that in mind next time.

The Titans were playing the Indianapolis Colts, one of the few teams who’s managed to defy YPP pretty consistently this season. The Colts and Titans were in a bit of a shootout by the end of this one. With Indy up 27-23 with 1:55 left, this still seemed very much within reach.

Two snaps later that dream turned into a nightmare as the Colts returned a Titans fumble for a touchdown.We usually have one game like that a week, but having that happen on a down week like this was a true slap in the face.

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No early numbers

With the “old” EW numbers no longer reliable (trust me I went to look back at those and the success rate was no better than our other metrics) we are stopping the tradition of an early EW preview for this week. We’ll explain and uncover both our YPP and EW suggested spreads for Week 8 throughout the week so stay tuned.