Welcome to Week 6 of Deconstructing the Vegas Betting Lines. The Week 1 article has all you need to know about methodology, but here are the Cliff’s Notes:
- We’re breaking the implied team total into four scoring types — passing, rushing, kicking, and defensive/special teams scores (i.e. returns and safeties).
- To do this, we’re leveraging the rates at which teams score their points and their opposing defenses concede them in each phase of the game.
- There are two calculation methods — one averages the offensive and defensive rates, and the other squares, combines, and square roots the differences of the rates from the league mean. The latter method uses the principles of standard deviation to emphasize rates further from the mean.
As with every analysis, it’s great to get more data each week. We’re heading into the middle part of the year, where this analysis can really provide an edge.
As always, consult the NFL homepage for more information on individual matchups that stand out. One note is the Tennessee-Indianapolis Monday night game did not have lines at the time of writing on account of uncertainty surrounding Marcus Mariota (hamstring). Thus that game is omitted from the below projections. Let’s jump into the Week 6 deconstructions.
Passing Scoring and Notes
2017 League Average Pass TD Points Rate: 41.6 percent
2016 League Average Pass TD Points Rate: 40.5 percent
Note: Lines pulled from Sports Insights on October 14.
Deshaun Watson is a popular name this week, and the passing projections show why. Apart from the Texans sporting a high team total and scoring a high percentage of their points through passing touchdowns thus far, they face a Cleveland defense that has allowed the second-highest rate of scoring through passing touchdowns. Watson and DeAndre Hopkins are projected in the Models as the top-owned players at their positions, with Will Fuller and tight end Ryan Griffin as a little less popular.
I noted in this week’s AFC Stealing Signals article at RotoViz that a high percentage of Watson’s monster Week 5 line came in comeback mode. Sixty percent or more of his passing yards, touchdowns, and fantasy points came in the fourth quarter, when the Chiefs also had a three-minute scoring drive and Tyreek Hill ran a punt back for a score, twice turning the ball back over to the Texans quickly. The Week 6 matchup’s great, but keep that positive fantasy variance in mind when looking at Watson’s back-to-back performances of over 34 DraftKings points. With a salary increase of $1,400 since the start of the season, Watson doesn’t have to be locked in.
Tom Brady, Drew Brees, and Aaron Rodgers quarterback the teams after the Texans with the highest projections for passing points. All of their offenses have somewhat predictably scored passing points at a rate higher than league average, but they all have matchups with defenses that have allowed higher-than-average rates as well.
Returning from injury, Derek Carr (back) is the highest-projected quarterback priced under $6,000 on DraftKings, and his two top wide receivers are also both reasonably priced. Oakland has a team total in the top six as the favorites in the game with the highest over/under on the week. It’s rare for a Carr stack to open up salary, but his price has dropped $500 while Amari Cooper‘s has fallen $1,500 over the past month.
Rushing Scoring and Notes
2017 League Average Rush TD Points Rate: 19.1 percent
2016 League Average Rush TD Points Rate: 22.7 percent
On the rushing side, Kareem Hunt looks to be in a great spot. After scoring six touchdowns in his first three career games, Hunt has been held out of the end zone two weeks running. The Chiefs face a Steelers defense allowing 40.4 percent of their total points on the ground, a rate almost six percentage points higher than that of any other team in the league. It’s a great week for Hunt to get back in the paint.
The next two defenses that allow the highest percentage of points via rushing touchdowns are playing each other, and both have elite running backs. Todd Gurley leads the NFL with seven touchdowns and was potentially robbed of an opportunity to add to that last week when a replay review appeared erroneously to rule his fumble a touchback for Seattle. Check out this week’s NFC Stealing Signals article at RotoViz for a more detailed explanation, but the Rams nearly had a first-and-goal from the one-yard line, a situation where Gurley has dominated touches.
The Rams face the Jaguars, and Leonard Fournette sits in a tie for second in the NFL with six touchdowns, having scored in every game. The Rams-Jags game carries a low total, but with both defenses allowing scoring on the ground at a high rate and these running backs dominating the high-value touches in their offenses, both make for strong bets to score.
Kicking and Defense/Special Teams Scoring and Notes
2017 League Average Kicking Points Rate: 33.9 percent
2016 League Average Kicking Points Rate: 31.5 percent
Last week, four of the five kicker recommendations scored eight or more points on FanDuel. For the season, 17 of 25 recommendations have hit that mark, with 10 in double digits (40 percent). Note the data should be getting stronger, as we cut in possibly outdated 2016 splits in the early weeks but are now relying solely on current-season trends.
One might presume, due to the style of analysis, the recommendations are the same names week in and week out. Across the five weeks, no kicker has been recommended four times, and just two names have come up in three different weeks. Overall, we’ve used 15 different kickers in the 25 recommendations.
We do have some chalky recommendations this week, though. This analysis likes Dustin Hopkins, Matt Bryant, Wil Lutz, and Giorgio Tavecchio as the top kickers in both calculation methods, and all four project among the six highest-owned kickers in the Models. Brandon McManus and Nick Novak are more contrarian kicker options with solid projections.
2017 League Average D/ST Points Rate: 5.0 percent
2016 League Average D/ST Points Rate: 4.3 percent
As always, the D/ST table is included mostly to be transparent with all the data. In my review of 2015 data, the subdivided defense/special teams scoring projections were the only scoring type to perform worse than the betting lines, and it was notably worse. The implication is that conceding or scoring D/ST touchdowns and safeties isn’t predictive of future performance, which is useful to know, since it’s possible that some teams have inflated over/unders and/or implied point totals if they have scored and/or conceded a high rate of points via defense/special teams.
In other words, it might be useful to fade a small degree of the implied totals for teams who grade highly here. Of course, the passing, rushing, and kicking projections in this column control for this with relatively lower percentages.
Good luck this week, and be sure to use our Tools to research for yourself.
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Ben Gretch is the Senior Fantasy Analyst at RotoViz, where he authors the weekly column Stealing Signals.
News Updates
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