Winner winner chicken dinner, analyzing our Week 13 picks

It was nice to have an easy week like this, for once, one in which there was no real thinking required in making the picks and almost all the games worked out with few nervous moments.

Our picks went 3-1 on the week to take us at 26-23-2 on the year. As you’ll remember our selections were encouraged by large YPP differentials in Week 13 though EW was crucial in advising us to stay away from a couple games. In unity, the metrics gave us a great week that could have been perfect if not for one of the NFL’s best safeties singlehandedly changing a game.

In general, our raw numbers did ok on the week. EW went 2-0 in the only two differentials over 1.5 points, and overall EW cleaned up going 6-3 in differentials of 1 point or more. Our other numbers didn’t do as well as we went 3-3 in YPP with differentials of 4.5 points or more – with several caveats, more on that later – and 3-9 overall in games of differentials of 2 points or more.

As always here’s the breakdown, going into all that worked and didn’t in the NFL’s Week 13, plus an early preview of our Week 14 numbers. Here we go.

The Vikings defense brings home the cover

One of many risky picks this week the Minnesota Vikings had a big test at home on Thursday night and their defense showed up in a major way. Though Minnesota’s ‘D’ has fallen off statistically compared to their otherworldly performances earlier in the season, the Vikings did everything they could defensively to cover here.

The Dallas Cowboys game plan never faltered though and that proved crucial. They never went off script despite the Vikings playing special defense, as the running game still managed 140 yards and 5.0 per carry. While Dak Prescott only had to pass the ball 18 times and was efficient enough to get the job done.

With the defense holding them to only 17 points, Sam Bradford and the offense only needed 15 points to get the close cover for us. The Cowboys defense keeps on impressing but as they managed to pull off the ‘W’ even in a low-scoring affair like this one.

YPP was right, Eric Berry just messed it all up

It’s not every day that a safety single handedly changes a game and accounts for 9 points on his own, but the Kansas City Chiefs Eric Berry did exactly that.

In two huge momentum changing plays Berry got a pick-six on Matt Ryan as he and the Atlanta Falcons attempted to get points with 37 second left in the first half, something Ryan and crew did immediately after the Berry touchdown. In the fourth quarter Berry managed to steal the game for KC by scoring a two point conversion on a 99-yard INT return that gave the Chiefs the decisive 29-28 advantage – though it should be said that even if Atlanta had converted we still wouldn’t have beat the 3.5 point spread.

We mentioned how the Chiefs didn’t rank highly in YPP but did have a great turnover margin in their favor. Turnover margins can be fluky and Kansas City, on the stat sheet at least, didn’t win the turnover margin but they sure made it count when they did get those TO’s. Another reason why KC doesn’t rank highly per YPP and Atlanta does is shown in how the Falcons had 32 first downs to the Chiefs 17. Though it’s certainly worth noting that while Atlanta had a very good 6.3 yards per play the Chiefs managed a staggering 8.1 YPP in this game. That’s a clear indication of how the Falcons are struggling to overcome their defensive issues as they allowed the Chiefs to efficiently eat up yards at the tune of 5.6 per rush and 10.8 per pass on average.

The Falcons proved the metric correctly in this game, Matt Ryan and the offense just didn’t make the crucial plays while Berry made huge ones the other way.

The Bengals make it look easy

We’ve talked about how the Philadelphia Eagles have been trending in the wrong direction and that beard out this week. Two big changes have occurred in Philly since their hot start; the attack and Carson Wentz have been figured out and now too much of the burden lies on his shoulders, while the defensive front is no longer able to overcome their deficiencies on the back end.

The Cincinnati Bengals didn’t run all that well in this game and didn’t have to as Andy Dalton was efficient, even without A.J. Green, tossing it around to nine different targets for 332 yards and a 130 quarterback rating. Tearing the Birds secondary apart.

The Eagles front seven dissapointe as well managing only one QB hit and zero sacks, a recipe for disaster with their corners. Offensively Wentz struggled as he tossed it around for 300-plus yards but also threw for three interceptions and was barely over 50-percent completions. A rookie signal caller who was lauded for his lack of turnovers in his first several starts has now struggled with it as all the pressure has fallen on him. The ground game was poor and there’s little commitment to the run with a 19-60 run to pass ration and the passing attack is all predicated on short throws that went nowhere most of the time.

Cincy absolutely clobbered the Eagles 32-14 and though they’re virtually out of the playoffs these Bengals can still be a pesky team in December who could wreck some post season hopes, watch out.

In a bout of bad teams the Bears rule the day

We wouldn’t typically want to trust YPP when it comes to the Chicago Bears, but given the circumstances and the opponent we felt good about this pick and right we were.

We said that the Bears defense was simply superior to the San Francisco 49ers unit and that was absolutely accurate. Though the real travesty in this game turned out to be the 9ers offense.

San Francisco’s attack was just horrible, averaging 2.7 YPP in the game and gaining only 10 first downs, while Colin Kaepernick got benched halfway through. The 49ers quarterbacks completed five passes all game on 15 attempts, a staggering figure.

Chicago’s actually been competitive in their two games since starting third stringer Matt Barkley who isn’t doing anything special but he’s allowing the team to stay in games. More importantly for the Bears the defense played well and created pressure getting six sack and eighth tackles for a loss, while running back Jordan Howard ran for three touchdowns and 117 yards.

How this affects the Bears YPP ranking, which was already worrisome, will be interesting to see as we dig into the Week 14 numbers.

EW saves us by not to trusting two big underdogs 

As we reminded you in the intro, this past week was a clear cut week for making picks off of our two metrics. EW was so close to the actual Vegas lines that we couldn’t make any picks based off of it but it was essential in telling us that YPP was potentially wrong in two differentials above five points; the New England Patriots vs the Los Angels Rams and the Denver Broncos against the Jacksonville Jaguars.

While our YPP suggested spread was in favor of the Rams and Jaguars covering, EW disagreed having the only two differentials above 1.5 points as the Patriots and Broncos. EW proved to be right  and saved us from going 3-3. The importance of looking at consensus picks and having both metics to work off of is shown with these two examples as YPP helped us pick the three winners but EW saved us from two losing bets.

As always here below you’ll find our EW suggested spreads for Week 14, our updated EW spread and YPP, plus our picks will be coming out tomorrow.