Week 15 NFL Survivor Friday Update: Still Marchin’ With The Saints
- 8 comments - NFL, NFL Survivor Pools - posted by David Hess on December 14, 2012
One of our Tier 1 picks, the Cincinnati Bengals, took care of business on Thursday against the Philadelphia Eagles. The Bengals were picked by only about 4% of Survivor contestants, so the end result probably had little impact on your pool, unless you had Cincy available and are now through to Week 16.
As far as the rest of the Survivor landscape, a couple line shifts have led to a slight re-ordering of our top Tier 2 teams, but there have been no high impact movements. Let’s review.
QB Performance Plots for Week 14: Skelton Goes Epic Bad
- 0 comments - NFL - posted by Gregory Matthews on December 13, 2012
This is a guest post by Greg Matthews (Twitter: @StatsInTheWild), founder of Stats In The Wild, a blog focused on sports analytics and data visualization. If you’re interested in guest posting on TeamRankings, email us your post and we’ll consider it.
In Week 14, Tom Brady’s 125.4 QB rating led all quarterbacks who attempted more than 10 passes. (Kirk Cousins, who was 2 for 2 with a touchdown and no interceptions, was good for a “perfect” passer rating of 158.3, but he’s disqualified!) Brady completed 60% (21 for 35) of his passes for 296 yards, no interceptions, and four touchdowns.
That stat line helped lead his team to a 42-14 victory over the Houston Texans who arguably, prior to Monday night at least, were the best team in the NFL.
(Just click on the graphic below to enlarge it…)
Week 15 NFL Pick’em Strategy: Upset Possibilities Galore This Week
- 12 comments - NFL, NFL Pick'ems - posted by Matt Woods on December 13, 2012
The Rams, coming off a dramatic win at Buffalo last week, possess a defense that has performed quite well this season. In fact, St. Louis ranks 9th in the NFL in opponent yards/play with 5.2.
While Adrian Peterson has enjoyed an incredible bounce back year for the Vikings, his efforts have done little to overcome a passing game that ranks second to last in the NFL in yards/pass attempt with 5.6. Minnesota QB Christian Ponder, who has posted a passer rating over 70 just once in his last ten games, has particularly struggled.
Our models do see the game as a close matchup, but with two-thirds of the public picking Minnesota, it’s the best chance this week to gain ground on pool competitors without absorbing too much risk.
Where We Stand After Week 14
Here is where our game winner pick’em strategies currently stand on ESPN (not confidence points based) heading into Week 15. All three strategies enjoyed a fairly stable week in the standings, and our Conservative strategy continues to be a highlight, ranking in the top 5% nationally on ESPN:
- Conservative: 95.8st percentile (+0.7 from last week)
- Aggressive: 88.1st percentile (-0.2)
- Very Aggressive: 86.5th percentile (+1.7)
Week 15 NFL Survivor Strategy: There Are Other Fish In The Sea
- 79 comments - NFL, NFL Survivor Pools - posted by David Hess on December 12, 2012
Welcome to the Week 15 installment of our NFL Survivor contest advice column. We apply a data-driven strategy to get an edge in Survivor pools, using analysis based on NFL predictions from our algorithmic Team Rankings models, public picking trends, future team schedules, and other data. This article presents our preliminary Survivor pick of the week; we publish our final, official pick on Fridays.
When it rains, it pours.
After our 29-game regular season winning streak came to a close last week, we’re now on a 2-game losing streak. Hopefully we’re getting all the bad mojo out of our system now, in one big burst.
Do we regret switching off our Wednesday pick of Cleveland? Well, based on the results, sure, a little. But given the closing lines (-350 for the Steelers, -305 for the Browns), Pittsburgh still seems like the smarter choice. Sometimes you make the right choice and get the wrong result.
And there is one silver lining here. Given that we were going to lose in Week 14 anyway, we can stop kicking ourselves over flipping the Week 13 pick from Denver to Detroit.
For those of you who survived, Week 14 was a fairly uneventful week. There were several minor upsets, but none knocked out more than a few percent of the public. Overall 13% of your opponents likely bit the dust, slightly boosting your chunk of the pie.
Week 14 NFL Survivor Friday Update: Fear The Compression Pad, Bolts
- 35 comments - NFL, NFL Survivor Pools - posted by David Hess on December 7, 2012
As expected, the Broncos took care of business on Thursday against the Raiders, advancing about 7% of the public on to Week 15. Though it would have been nice to be in that group, or for Denver to have taken a surprise loss, at least their win means another 7% of our opponents won’t be able to take them in Week 16.
As for our official pick, it looks like we’re going to be flipping it for the second week in a row, and the third time this year. The first time we flipped, our original pick lost while our new pick won. The second time, our original pick won while our new pick lost. Let’s hope this time we get a repeat of the former … or even a “both win” scenario.
Week 14 NFL Pick’em Strategy: Colts Ripe for an Upset?
- 13 comments - NFL, NFL Pick'ems - posted by Matt Woods on December 5, 2012
Note Friday 12/7, 4pm ET: The line for San Diego-Pittsburgh didn’t come in until after our picks locked, so you may notice that the pick/confidence looks off. The Steelers are 9.5-point favorites, and we’d recommend taking them to win, most likely with a high confidence. For the ATS pick, our models like San Diego as a toss-up pick to cover and 80%+ of Yahoo! users taking Pitt -9.5. Consequently, in most cases we’d recommend going with the Chargers in ATS pools since there seems to be a lot of value there.
Titans RB Chris Johnson is seven yards shy of 1,000 on the season, and has his highest yards/carry average (4.9) since 2009, which is good for 6th best in the NFL.
While Andrew Luck has helped the Colts exceed all reasonable expectations this year (we currently give Indianapolis 77.5% odds to make the NFL playoffs), the run defense has been a weak spot. In fact, the Colts rank 30th in the NFL in opponent yards/rush attempt (4.8).
Our models do see Indianapolis as favorites, with adjusted win odds of 60%+, but they could be vulnerable on Sunday. As less than 5% of the public has picked Tennessee to win outright, the Titans are a tempting choice for those needing an upset pick to make up ground in the standings.
Where We Stand After Week 13
Here is where our game winner pick’em strategies currently stand on ESPN (not confidence points based) heading into Week 14. All three strategies rose in the standings last week, and our Conservative strategy continues to be a highlight, ranking in the top 5% nationally on ESPN:
- Conservative: 95.1st percentile (+1.3 from last week)
- Aggressive: 88.3rd percentile (+4.0)
- Very Aggressive: 84.8th percentile (+7.7)
QB Performance Plots for Week 13: Romo Nearly Perfect
- 0 comments - NFL - posted by Gregory Matthews on December 5, 2012
This is a guest post by Greg Matthews (Twitter: @StatsInTheWild), founder of Stats In The Wild, a blog focused on sports analytics and data visualization. If you’re interested in guest posting on TeamRankings, email us your post and we’ll consider it.
Tony Romo shined this week as he led his Dallas team, who did everything possible to make their betting fans miserable, to victory this week over the Philadelphia Eagles. Romo completed 22 of 27 passes for 303 yards, three touchdowns and no interceptions, averaging 11.2 yards per attempt. That performance was good for a nearly “perfect” passer rating of 150.5.
Romo was closely followed by Brady Quinn and Cam Newton, who clashed head-to-head in Week 13, with the Chiefs ultimately prevailing for their second win of the year. Quinn and Newton compiled passer ratings of 132.1 and 121.2, respectively.
(Just click on the graphic below to enlarge it…)
Week 14 NFL Survivor Strategy: 29 In A Row Ain’t Bad
- 127 comments - NFL, NFL Survivor Pools - posted by David Hess on December 5, 2012
Welcome to the Week 14 installment of our NFL Survivor contest advice column. We apply a data-driven strategy to get an edge in Survivor pools, using analysis based on NFL predictions from our algorithmic Team Rankings models, public picking trends, future team schedules, and other data. This article presents our preliminary Survivor pick of the week; we publish our final, official pick on Fridays.
Well, it had to end sometime.
Since the start of the 2011 season, we made it through a run of 29 straight regular season weeks without a Survivor loss. Even taking solid favorites each week, the odds of that are pretty slim.
Taking a quick glance back at the last five weeks, the average TR win odds for our Survivor picks has been 73%. If we pretend that was our chance of being right in each of the previous 29 weeks, then our chance of actually making it through unscathed was 0.01% … that’s 1 in 10,000. We’ll take it.
Unfortunately, our Luck finally ran out (sorry, couldn’t resist), as Andrew tossed a game-winning TD with no time left on the clock to complete a 12-point 4th-quarter comeback by the Colts, handing both the Lions and our Survivor column a loss. If you watched the Lions’ strategy in the fourth quarter, you probably have some serious questions for Coach Schwartz, but alas, that’s just how it goes sometimes. I’m sure we’ve been on the other side of this coin as well at some point during The Streak, so there’s no point in moaning about it.
At least we can take solace in the fact that we weren’t alone. Week 13′s most popular pick, the San Francisco 49ers, fell to the Rams, knocking out roughly a quarter of Yahoo! contestants. The Ravens and Bears also were upset, knocking out another 12% between the two of them. Altogether, over 40% of the public was eliminated.
We know not all of you have followed our official picks each week, particularly last week when we faced such a close call. So we’ll continue to make Survivor picks for the rest of the year, even though our chance at a second straight perfect season is busted.
Let’s get to it.
Week 13 NFL Survivor Friday Update: Maybe We’ll Keep That Last Ace…
- 144 comments - NFL, NFL Survivor Pools - posted by David Hess on November 30, 2012
Wow, it’s been a while, but we’ve finally got an interesting Friday update on our hands … or at least, one that can’t just be handled by a robot bartender.
There hasn’t been any earth shaking line movement over the past couple days, but there have been a couple shifts in our decision-making process:
- First, it has come to our attention that the Yahoo! public pick data may be contaminated. Apparently Yahoo! lets you start Survivor pools at any point in the season, and allows you to restart after everyone is eliminated. This means that their published pick rates are probably not a good proxy for those in a normal pool. As a result, we’re switching to using only data from OfficeFootballPool.
- Second, some great discussion in the comment section of Wednesday’s post convinced us that when we plan out our future path, we need to be giving more weight to how popular a team will be. This changes the value of the possible future picks we laid out Wednesday, and makes us lean more towards saving some teams with high future value.
Our Wednesday decision was a very close call, so these changes, along with line movement in the Detroit game, have led us to reconsider our official pick.
Week 13 NFL Pick’em Strategy: Can The Redskins Rush To Victory?
- 16 comments - NFL, NFL Pick'ems - posted by Matt Woods on November 28, 2012
The New York Giants rush defense has been less than stellar in 2012, and they currently rank 22nd in the NFL in opponent yards per rush attempt (4.4). Given the competition this week, that could spell trouble.
Washington has two explosive rookies in their backfield that rank in the top 13 of the NFL in yards per rush attempt. Last year’s Heisman trophy winning QB, Robert Griffin III, has continued his success at the professional level, and is currently tied for first in the NFL with 6.7 yards/carry.
While RG3 was a household name coming into the season, rookie RB Alfred Morris has been a revelation. Morris currently ranks 13th in the NFL in rush yards/carry with 4.7.
This rookie tandem appears to pose matchup problems for the Giants, and our models see this game and as virtual tossup. With more than 70% of the public picking New York, Washington provides significant value as an upset pick.
Where We Stand After Week 12
Here is where our game winner pick’em strategies currently stand on ESPN (not confidence points based) heading into Week 13. All three strategies more or less held their positions, and our Conservative strategy continues to be a highlight, ranking in the top 7% nationally on ESPN:
- Conservative: 93.8th percentile (-0.1 from last week)
- Aggressive: 84.3rd percentile (+0.8)
- Very Aggressive: 77.7th percentile (-0.3)
