Point Blank – October 18, 2016
What a “Bettor Better Know” – NFL #6, Looking down from the Watchtower…I'll trust the Santiago's to make me a boyger over any of those celebrities any day...
The shape of the NFL to come, based on the six weeks now in the books, has created a rather fascinating mix. My current ratings show New England with a bigger gap over the rest of the league than any team since the Patriots dominating outfit of 2007, and among the others there are dramatic plot twists playing out. There are jokers and thieves among this lot, which means plenty of work to do, with a couple of topics held back to Wednesday so that the LCS can be covered today as well.
As noted last Friday this is going to be a Bob Dylan tribute week, with that well-deserved Nobel Prize forthcoming, and the Jukebox will help to accompany you throughout these long reads with his words, but without the occasional harshness of his voice. As the focus turns to the plot twists of this NFL season, grasping who indeed is a joker and who is a thief, brings “All Along the Watchtower” front and center, one of my favorite Dylan creations. There aren’t many lines, but there did not need to be because of such deft imaging.
This song has inspired some fantastic interpretations, among the first and most memorable coming from Jimi Hendrix. But Dave Mason, who played with Hendrix in studio in imagining some of the electric possibilities behind the tune, has probably played it more than anyone, a staple at his concerts across the years. Today we go to a special gem.
Mason and Jim Krueger played together for a couple of decades, and it was Krueger who wrote “We Just Disagree”, one of Mason’s biggest hits. Krueger tragically died far too young from pancreatitis at the age of 43, but he created some memorable musical moments in his time, and he and Mason did something special here (you'll play this more than once) -
"There must be some way out of here" said the joker to the thief
“There's too much confusion, I can't get no relief
Businessmen, they drink my wine, plowmen dig my earth
None of them along the line know what any of it is worth.”
Item: What now for the Steelers (might we see Zach Mettenberger)
Sub-Item: It isn’t just Big Ben that is an issue
This is worthy of being its own full topic, a Pittsburgh offense that could have been the NFLs best with all hands on deck now dealing with the latest blow, Ben Roethlisberger likely out for at least one game, but to go beyond that would just be speculation. This isn’t new for the Steelers, because Big Ben also missed a game in 2015, which turned in to a mini-disaster for Landry Jones at Kansas City (two interceptions, 60.8 passer rating). But there is a potential plot twist this time.
First is a bit of a plus, a bye coming after facing the Patriots on Sunday, which might mean that Roethlisberger only misses one game. But if they believe his rehab needs more than that, might it be Zach Mettenberger instead of Jones? Mettenberger is actually close to being a physical prototype of Roethlisberger, a big guy that can spin it down the field, and the fact that he is so slow afoot, which was a hindrance for other pass blocking schemes, is not as terrible of a fit here because of the way the Steelers build their pocket for Big Ben. The difference, of course, is that when Mettenberger gets hit he goes down, unlike Roethlisberger.
Mettenberger does not know the playbook nearly as well as Jones, but does have 10 NFL starts under his belt. If indeed Big Ben is going to have to miss extended time, Mettenberger may well bring more upside than Jones, especially if the bye week is targeted as a way to get him fully up to speed.
Here is one assumption that the handicapper should not make – though the Pittsburgh offense has so much talent at the other skill positions, this is not plug-and-play. Part of the discussions here this season have focused on how they can use LeVeon Bell so many different ways, and that comes down to the QB reading the mismatches prior to each snap. Roethlisberger could do that; Jones and Mettenberger cannot. Hence why the line adjustment this week is substantial.
But for Pittsburgh it is not just about the QB play. An injury-riddled defense had to play Miami without Cam Heyward, and it was a disaster. They allowed 7.0 yards per play to what had been a struggling Dolphin offense, not coming up with a sack or a takeaway. Jay Ajayi danced his way to 2014 yards, never having topped 48 previously in his NFL career.
This was not all bad on the part of the Steeler defense, there were some Miami positives, which I will get to in a moment. But as part of adjusting the Pittsburgh power rating for this week those defensive injuries absolutely matter, because they have the NFL’s toughest possible matchup coming to town…
Item: The weekly Tom/Marty/Gronkonator update
Sub-Item: Brady failed parts of the Sunday Eye Test
I won’t be too redundant here because this topic has been covered here many times already, but the Patriots terrific trio hooked up 11 times for 176 yards and three TDs vs. Cleveland, and then 12 times for 210 yards and a TD vs. Cincinnati. And note that the Two-TE presence helped open up the Bengal defense for Brady to hit James White out of the backfield eight times, a pair of those connections going for TDs. White is going to find some awfully favorable matchups as opposing defenses have to gimmick up. How the Steelers put their game plan together, with so many key parts as ??? marks (Heyward, Ryan Shazier, Shamarko Thomas, Mike Mitchell), is a key focus point this week.
But it is also time to pour some cold water goes over those New England numbers. Brady was 29-35 for 376 yards and three TDs vs. the Bengals, with no interceptions, a nearly perfect 140.0 passer rating. Yet there were several times that he looked awkward in the pocket, and that is a serious question for the handicapper – how much of that is rust, and how much is age? Brady worked well in a phone booth in 2015, but not when he had to move off of his spot, and there were late season games vs. the Jets and Broncos in which that really did become a problem. Hence some serious eye test for the next week or two – rust is supposed to wear off; age instead wears on.
Item: So what do we do with the Dolphins/Steelers and Dolphins/Titans box scores (so you wanna be a statistician, huh?)
Sub-Item: What’s up front does indeed count
I am going to consider this part of the set-up for the Wednesday lead topic, which will focus on NFL OL play, in particular the Cowboys (Prescott and Elliot have been good; it is the guys in front of them that have been great). For now it will be a crash course in the difficulty of working with numbers in general, and in particular in weighting them early in the season. Just try to make football logic out of this:
MIA PIT MIA TEN
Points 30 15 17 30
YPP 7.0 5.6 4.9 5.7
Rush Yds 222 128 51 235
Are you ready to make a Steelers/Titans comparison off of those games? Just try, and all of your Difficulty of Opposition attempts will also go spinning and spinning without resolution. Get accustomed to those inconsistencies in this emerging NFL era, which is a theme that will be expounding on here from now until the playoffs.
As noted a few paragraphs above, Ajayi exploded for a career game vs. Pittsburgh, a week after managing just 42 yards at 3.3 per carry vs. Tennessee. It wasn’t just random. In that loss to the Titans the starting left side of the Miami OL was comprised of Billy Turner and Dallas Thomas, neither of whom were on an NFL roster this past Sunday. Against the Steelers it was back to Brandon Albert and Laremy Tunsil, and when combined with Mike Pouncey’s return a week earlier, it marked the first time all season the Dolphins starting OL was available.
I am going to come back on this theme as the lead topic tomorrow, because at a time in which more passes are being thrown than ever before and there is such a focus on the skill players in the betting markets (and also with the added attention the Fantasy crowd brings to that part of the game), the play of the big uglies in the trenches is a rather under-valued part of some of these equations.
Now back to more on the roller-coaster aspects of statistics…
Item: The Eagles stats corrected in a single game (guess what – they really may just be an average team)
Philadelphia has been quite a power ratings challenge. There wasn’t all that much expected from a team with average talent, major coaching transitions, and a rookie QB that did not face much big-time competition in college. Yet three weeks into the season, some clean performances put together a stat profile that rated them atop the NFL on many measures.
A loss to Detroit in Game #4 was not much of a statistical negative, but then came Sunday, the Eagles simply getting pummeled at Washington. Forget the scoreboard, which was kept close by Philly getting a Pick 6 and a Kickoff Return for a TD within a span of four game minutes in the second quarter, this was a thumping.
An average Redskins team won the yards per play 7.4 to 5.0, with a 7.0 vs. 4.5 per rush and 7.7 vs. 5,4 per pass. It is extremely rare when a team wins both categories by 2.0 or more. Note the focus on per-play counts because it is important – when the Eagles got those TDs from their special teams and defense, it deprived them of offensive possessions. Hence while Washington leading 26-12 in first downs and 493-239 in total offense in this instance was an accurate portrait, those categories could have been skewed by play volume. They weren’t.
Carson Wentz may not have had a terrible individual line attached to his performance, 11-22 for 179 yards without an interception, but if take the necessary next step you will note that he was sacked on 18.5 percent of all drop-backs. The offensive did not score a touchdown.
So now the drumroll…
After five games what do we have from a team that looked average on paper coming in to the season?
2016 NFL Yards Per Play
League 5.6
Eagles “O” 5.5
Eagles “D” 5.6
And that may well be who they are.
Item: You have to do a lot of things wrong to lose by 29 to Buffalo
Sub-Item: Chip Kelly did a lot of things wrong vs. Buffalo
The 49ers were beaten about as badly at Buffalo as the Eagles were at Philadelphia, but in this case the scoreboard did not lie. There is an emerging problem here that has been a previous topic, and there needs to be follow-up – Kelly is doing an awful job of managing this roster.
Sunday marked Colin Kaepernick’s 2016 debut, and also another game for a struggling defense to adapt to life without NaVorro Bowman. With both units unsettled a sensible game plan for a road underdog would have been to slow things down and try to create the best game flow to stay competitive. Instead Kelly had his team get off an offensive snap every 24.9 seconds, and with that unit so ineffective it meant forcing the defense out there for 75 plays. It took a toll.
For the game the Bills had a college-like rushing count of 312 yards in 44 carries, and they ran for 136 yards in the fourth quarter alone, despite the starters not being on the field for the final two possessions. It is only mid-October, yet there may already be a crisis of confidence for that defensive unit, and when two different players bring up the word embarrassing it is time to take note –
From Eric Reid - “Yeah, it is embarrassing. To get the ball run on you like that, when you know they’re going to run, we just have got to stop making the same mistakes, stay in our gaps, make the tackle.” And Michael Wilhoite - “As a man, that is embarrassing, and I think everybody in here would feel that way.”
There was indeed some bad defensive football being played, but it was also the case of a coach putting his team in a vulnerable position that allowed for it. This is not an easy team to power rate right now. A combination of bad offense and bad defense has put the 49ers in a -50 play deficit over the last five games, which means that the fast pace is exacerbating issues, instead of helping them to compete.
Item: The Bears were sneaky bad against the Jaguars
If you watched the game flow it looks like Chicago let one get away against Jacksonville on Sunday – if you have the lead against a bad team you have to be able to close it out. The Bears didn’t, a 13-0 advantage into the fourth quarter, and a 16-7 advantage with 8:28 left, not enough. The Post-Mortem brings something different, however. The Jaguars were pretty bad, but Chicago managed to be even worse. Let’s count the strikes.
If you are favored at home, you need to win with a +2 turnover advantage, which the Bears had. One game after bursting on the scene with 118 yards rushing at Indianapolis, and three catches for 45 more yards, rookie RB Jordan Howard looked like a rookie RB, managing only 34 yards on 15 carries, and only six yards on two receptions. Brian Hoyer put the ball in the air 49 times but only got 302 yards out of it, and as the guys at Pro Football Focus detailed - Brian Hoyer’s limitations as an NFL QB were on display Sunday afternoon. Hoyer has always been able to hit short passes, but struggles down the field, and that’s exactly what happened on Sunday. On throws under 10 yards, Hoyer was 25-35 for 233 yards. On all throws over 10 yards, however, he was 5-for-13 for 79 yards. Hoyer also struggled when pressured, with his QB rating under pressure a dismal 54.6.
The flip side of the equation brings even more. The Jaguars did not seem to do anything special on offense, and that is the way it should be graded – they did nothing special, and not necessarily because it was the Bears holding them down. Once again it helps to go to the guys at PFF to see the things that the box score does not measure, a poor game from both Allen Hurns and Allen Robinson out wide - The Jacksonville offense has the potential to be high-powered, but that’s only when they can get their two star receivers going. That did not happen on Sunday, with Allen Hurns catching five passes on nine throws to him for 74 yards and two drops. Robinson had three catches on six targets, and also added two drops. One was costly, as it was in the end zone and resulted in an interception.
So as I do my grades extra early for Bears/Packers leading up to Thursday, there turns out to be more to see than the first glance brought, some of the key stops by the Chicago defense merely being dropped passes by the Jaguars.
Item: On to the MLB Diamonds…
There was a temptation to do a separate MLB column because there is so much to see tonight, but I decided to keep it here for now, and move some NFL takes to Wednesday. We have the calculated gamble of Terry Francona, who has been superb through the playoffs so far, of starting Corey Kluber on short rest, and then the likelihood of Cubs/Dodgers Game #3 being a carbon copy of Game #2, with tension pitch-by-pitch in a game in which neither offense may produce much.
Let me start here with Eric Strasser, author of “Betting Baseball for Profit”, and better known as Palmtree around these parts -
For all of the supposed brilliance of Joe Maddon, it's been Terry Francona who has been absolutely perfect this postseason. I didn't think the Indians could win even one serious with the injuries they suffered in the rotation, but he's used the bullpen as his biggest weapon and now he's going to the World Series. What a shame for the Blue Jays. They're not going to be able to re-sign Encarnacion and Bautista so this pretty much ends their run. Compare how well Francona has done to John Gibbons. He came in with a fully rested team and has already lost the Series before he even used Aaron Sanchez. He refused to deal with Russell Martin's deficiencies and stayed with the slumping Travis way too long.
I don't think anything has changed in the National League series. One of the all-time greats pitched a wonderful game but none of the fundamentals have changed. I do question why in the biggest at-bat in the game Maddon let Jason Heyward hit against Kershaw. The outcome was preordained. I've never bought into the Madden as a genius storyline so to me it wasn't too surprising
Like you I'm a little bit unsure of what to expect from the shadows tonight. Essentially shortening the game is an advantage to the Dodgers. I would expect to see some life from the Chicago bats tonight, but the pressure this team is facing has sunk other teams before.
I think the line is a little short but I won't be jumping in as I am already heavily invested in the Cubs. I will look carefully at the props tonight as I expect a short night for Rich Hill. Cubs to score first and under strikeouts may make sense depending on the numbers.
I'll head to this afternoon in the AL first, where I will be in play with a full "In the Sights..." behind #955 Toronto (4:05 Eastern), with value at -125 or less (I see as low as -115 in the morning trading). As much as I respect Francona and admire the way he has handed his team, I do not believe starting Kluber on three days rest, something he has never done before, is the optimal strategy. This is not just a case of the starter likely bringing a lesser level of effectiveness, but of Shaw/Allen/Miller all having worked multiple innings at more than 20 pitches last night. Yes, Miller appeared to be impervious to that load in Game #2, but for both him and Allen it would now been a fourth stint in five days, which can take a toll, especially with the short turnaround.
Francona had a chance to gamble on winning today without Kluber, and then having his best pitcher, and a potentially fresh bullpen, for Game #5. The one advantage he does get is that if the series turns he can bring Kluber back for a Game #7, but there is the potential for downside here. For the Blue Jays it will be a fresh Aaron Sanchez, and while he had some jitters in his first-ever playoff start vs. the Rangers, I believe getting that game under his belt becomes a plus for this one. Now it is only his second start in 16 days, so unlike Kluber he will be physically fresh, and can bring his best stuff.
Cubs/Dodgers is a difficult pregame read because of the conflicting notions of the slumping middle of the Chicago order (3-4-5 hitters have gone 6-60 in the playoffs, including a 1-23 from Anthony Rizzo), vs. the wild card that is Rich Hill. Hill was not sharp in either outing in the Washington series, needing 137 pitches to get through seven innings, with 13 base-runners allowed. But the only Cub with any experience against Hill is David Ross, who has posted a dismal 1-13 with seven strikeouts, which opens the door for the Dodger lefty to make something happen, if only he can harness his command.
How about the other side of the equation? While it is a short sample, Jake Arrieta has faced the Dodgers twice over the past two seasons, throwing 16 shutout innings, including a no-hitter from this mound, with a combined count of 20 strikeouts vs. only two hits allowed.
As for the potential impact of the shadows, the current forecast is for clear skies at first pitch which brings them into play. But note that sunset is projected at 6:14, so there may only be an inning or two in which there is impact.If it stays clear through the day, it might be worth searching out some first inning props favoring the pitchers.
Vegas: Monday with the Review-Journal NFL Box score page
A running theme that will continue through the leisurely Monday lunches this fall is a heart-warming one, and also something that lets me know that my taste buds are not overly romanticized by the folks making the food, as much as the actual end product. These places are also connecting with others, and one of inspiring success stories is Fat Boy. I do get sentimental for this one.
The Santiago family opened Fat Boy at 4425 East Stewart (the corner of Stewart/Lamb) in March of 2008, a small spot with only 12 seats, in a non-descript strip mall in what was becoming a largely Hispanic neighborhood. You can find just about any item from the Mexican food spectrum within a mile or two of that location, but they focused on hamburgers and French fries, although over time a varied menu has developed (cheese steaks, chicken wings, burritos and even their own hand-made pizza). What impressed me so much was the effort they put into their product, and also the fact that when you come in you are asked for your name, and referred to that way. It has helped them to build a loyal base, and when I am in the mood for a cheeseburger and fries, that is where I go.
Las Vegas is a monument to utter human silliness on the burger front. There are about a dozen celebrity chefs that will sell you one on the Strip in the $15 range, sides extra, and it is one of the all-time culinary shell games being played on the consumer. But visitors to our fair city continue to pay those tariffs, whether by attraction to the name or pure convenience, so the absurdity continues. What I pay for a double Cheesboyger Combo (yes, that is the spelling), which includes terrific steak fries and a soft drink, brings back change from a $10 bill.
And you know what? It may be every bit as good as what the gourmet guys are peddling, the combination of using quality meat, making the patties fresh each day, and having a well-seasoned flat top that brings just the right char.
And now the twist – Fat Boy #2 is now open in Henderson, at 1570 West Horizon Ridge. I have not been there because it is a bit of a schlep from home base, and there will always be a charm in going back to the original, but for the Santiago’s to have worked as hard as they did in their little 12-seat store front, and having enough success to expand, lets me know that those boygers may indeed be as good as I think they are. I wonder if the owners ever thought that a day would come when they would even have a logo…
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