Since a wide margin of incoming funds have reportedly moved on from the NFL as of late and found their way to the NBA side of things, I’ve leaned more towards experimentation in a few GPP lineups the last few weeks. More so, I’ve become enamoured with the idea of success in football correlating to success in lineup creation.
For instance, if we know fumble recoveries and record in one-score games regress the following year (two categories I weigh heavily when first scouting Season Win Totals prior to the season), then I believe the question is more which, not if, categories regress from week to week. Or, in this particular case, which lead to success.
Explosive plays, for example, are historically known to be directly correlated to success. Some teams define them as passes of 20-plus yards and runs of 10 or longer, but really, it varies from team to team (the Seahawks define explosive plays as passes over 16 yards and runs of 12-plus, for whatever reason). For this experiment, we’re sticking with the norm of passes ranging from 20 yards or more.
*Andy Dalton exited during the first half of Sunday’s loss with a thumb injury.
A few quick antecedents:
- These rankings are sorted by explosive plays per game (ExplPPG). Essentially, the goal is to discover whether or not value can be had if a quarterback’s salary doesn’t match up to how many explosives he’s averaging on a weekly basis.
- Explosive runs from the quarterback position are not factored in. This would clearly give an edge to Cam Newton, Russell Wilson, Johnny Manziel, etc. I’m not saying those shouldn’t be factored in. They absolutely should be considered, especially since his rushing alone is why Cam’s floor continues to be a safety net for his salary. But for the purpose of this week only, we’re exclusively taking a look at explosive passing plays.
- I’ll be the first to say that this clearly shouldn’t be evaluated in a single week. If you’re looking for affirmation, look no further than Ben Roethlisberger, who ranks first in explosive plays per game (ExplPPG) but finished Week 14 with the 24th-highest point total at DraftKings. Still, he’s averaging the sixth-most DraftKings points per game on the year (the column furthest to the right) and will obviously be just fine moving forward.
- As it pertains to the above note, Blaine Gabbert would likely also not be factored in this first tier if we had a larger sample size. Again: one-week problems.
Even in the second tier, you can see that there’s some balance between explosives per game and average DraftKings points this season. Our biggest outlier is Jay Cutler, who is 23rd-overall in points per game but is averaging 3.63 passes of 20-plus yards. Considering his Week 14 performance (and current salary of $5,300), Cutler will definitely be someone I throw in a lineup or two for the sake of this experiment in Week 15.
I’ll throw in Jameis Winston as well, and potentially even more than Cutler — the fact that the Bucs have a top-five rate in rushing and Winston, despite averaging 3.5 explosives per game, ranks in the 20’s in average points is mind-boggling, especially given his similar numbers across the board to both Derek Carr and Ryan Tannehill.
Exactly what you would think — the bottom-third of passers in explosives per game rank accordingly to their average points on the season.
And rounding it out, the fewest explosives per game align perfectly with those averaging the fewest weekly points on DraftKings.
As I said, this is just an experiment in the preliminary stage, but it appears to be something else we can hang our hat on. For those interested in following along, below are the sorted tallies for Week 15:
