Point Blank – July 29-31 Weekend Edition
What if the Panthers didn't over-achieve in 2015 (and just how good might that passing game become this season)…It is now “game on” in the U.S. General Election…
It is going to be a two-part take in discussing the Carolina Panthers today, since getting to 2016 properly requires cleaning up 2015 a bit first. And in the process of doing that it leads to a wagering opportunity as well.
Item: The Panthers had a Pro Bowler from every position group last year
Let’s start with this because it matters. Despite going 15-1 in the regular season, and leading Arizona by as many as 34 points and Seattle by as many as 31 in the NFC playoffs, before closing mostly -4.5 in the Super Bowl vs. Denver, Carolina is not rated as the favorite to either win the most games this season, or the Super Bowl. There has been a tendency across the various pre-season publications, and reflected in the betting marketplace, that what was close to being a historic season will not come close to being repeated.
It is easy to understand an aspect of that – the betting markets and the Sports Mediaverse did not get the Panthers right in 2015, and in fact there was one of the highest degrees of market error in recent memory across a team’s regular season – the Panthers beat the expectations by 126 points across 16 games, more than a full TD per week. In the NFC playoffs the projections were even more off the mark, and while it was indeed a sloppy ending vs. Denver in Super Bowl 50, it was not a case of Carolina losing on talent – first downs were 21-11, and total offense 315-194, in favor of the Panthers, with YPP at 4.2 to 3.5.
What did the markets miss last year, and perhaps again this season? There is one aspect I will deal with in a moment because it is something I badly missed my own read on early in 2015 – the Carolina pass game was much more productive than I would have projected. But instead of pegging the team as having over-achieved, let’s note how historic 2015 really was. The Panthers didn’t just have 10 players in the Pro Bowl, which is unique by itself, but were the first team to ever have at least one player from every position unit -
QB - Cam Newton
RB - Jonathan Stewart, Mike Tolbert
WR/TE - Greg Olsen
OL - Ryan Kalil, Trai Turner
DL - Kawann Short
LB - Thomas Davis, Luke Kuechly
DB - Josh Norman*
• - Now gone
It is not hard from a football aspect to understand what that means – you are fielding a team not only with a lot of strengths, but also one that lacks particular weaknesses that can be exploited. Take a moment to think about that from a Football Science standpoint. Carolina finished in the Top 10 on the Football Outsiders charts in Running, Passing, Run Defense and Pass Defense.
When you have good players across all units it is not just about physical talent, but also the playbook flexibility that comes with it. At the same time, you limit the options of the opposition, not providing them with elements that they can exploit. The Panthers were indeed a damn good team in 2015. Now there are two major questions – how much they will miss Norman, with some good prospects in the fold, but no one of his abilities; and where the ceiling is for the passing game, which I had a terrible read on to begin last season.
Item: Carolina rated #9 in offensive pass efficiency last season
First note that I again use the Football Outsiders charts as the measure. I thought the loss of Kelvin Benjamin was going to be a crippling blow. Not only was he the team’s best receiver, but there was also a style fit with Newton – Newton has tended to be “wild high” with his throws, and at 6-5 Benjamin was the ideal fit for him. Benjamin caught 73 passes as a rookie in 2014, good for nine TDs at 13.8 per catch.
As it turns out Benjamin was indeed missed – imagine a team going 15-1 without any WR catching 50 passes? But Newton stepped up to make the other pieces fit, elevating his passer rating from 82.1 to 99.4 largely through getting the most there was to get out of some role players at WR, along with Olsen’s (77 catches) dynamic season. Some of that was the late-season development of 6-4 Devin Funchess in his rookie season, with Funchess only getting seven catches in the first seven games, before stepping up with 24 the rest of the way.
Now fast forward to this season and what could happen is that the biggest 2015 Carolina weakness now becomes a 2016 strength. The plan is to match Benjamin/Funchess as starters in what will be one of the biggest and most physical tandems in the league, the ideal prototypes to work with Newton, while also having the speed of Ted Ginn and Corey Brown to spread the field. Put those guys out wide, and have Olsen working the middle, and there is a major upside out there, especially since defenses have to be respecting a staunch ground game at the same time.
I believe there is also a chemistry that is worth following. Newton and the TE/WRs went to the Under Armour facilities in Baltimore last week for a pre-training camp session, something that appears will be an annual event. There is a significant degree of hunger showing with this bunch, and while losing Norman is an issue against the talented QBs and WRs in the NFC South, the Panthers overall have the opportunity to be a better team than they were in 2015. It is unlikely that they repeat 15-1, but the marketplace may be selling them a bit short, and I will get back to that in a moment.
About Last Night, Politics…
And now the real game begins, the most unique election cycle of my sporting lifetime (even more so than when Ross Perot joined the fray back in 1992), officially down to Hillary Clinton vs. Donald Trump. I believe there has been more “Noise” in the polling than ever before because of the unique circumstances, and as such stepped into play on Monday the belief that this particular week offered the best time for a shopper to find value to the Democrats. Part of that logic has also started to unfold, and as the Democratic National Convention came to a close there is some reading between the lines that brought the sort of thing we find in the finer points of sports handicapping each day.
Did you notice an almost complete lack of reference to the Republican Party by the speakers in Philadelphia this week? It leads to where I believe there was a failure in Cleveland for the Republicans to come together at least enough to build out a platform, literally and figuratively, in support of Trump. By not doing that a major part of the Democrat focus will be on Trump the individual, turning much of the next cycle into a referendum on him. While that may sound rather obvious in any election cycle, this is different.
Leaving Trump in isolation is something that I believe the Republicans needed to prevent. It will come as a surprise to many, but in truth Trump himself has not been much of a factor to this point. There was a hungry group of voters looking for change, and they flocked to him because he was an agent from outside the system, an outlet rarely available. My perception is that it wasn’t even remotely about him as an individual for many that fell in to the camp of supporters, but instead the fact that there was any option at all outside of “politics as usual”. And through the Republican primaries it was rarely about him – in the early stages he was not taken seriously as a candidate, so precious few attacks, but even as the field dwindled the other candidates did not want to run the risk of alienating the Trump base that had grown.
I will repeat something that was in a post-column thread earlier in the week, and is worth a spot on the lead page. Through serious crunching of the numbers (especially exit polling) over this cycle there was a genuine pattern that formed across Trump “supporters” that I believe is relevant. When you break it into three groups, there was a lot of –
A. I am supporting Donald Trump because I want change;
And –
B. I am supporting Donald Trump because I do not believe in Hillary Clinton/Democrats and what she/they stand for;
But a significantly low distribution of –
C. I am supporting Donald Trump because I believe in him and what he stands for.
As such, until this week, I am not convinced that much of this frenzied cycle has actually been about Trump himself at all. Now from the Democrat focus in Philadelphia you can begin to see how the landscape will change, and there is a tremendous pressure on Trump to hold up for the next 100+ days, a pressure that builds because he will be on the defensive, a role he is unaccustomed to, and may not be well-suited for. The very fact that Trump came out of the gate this morning with this tweet -
General John Allen, who I never met but spoke against me last night, failed badly in his fight against ISIS. His record = BAD #NeverHillary
is a sign of that inexperience. A potential Presidential candidate, and hence Commander-in-Chief, has to be able to find a better way, and there are three months of this ahead.
What Trump would have liked to have done is stand up as a successful businessman, and project that his acumen on that front would make him a fit to solve problems across other areas, but now he is also going to have to spend a great deal of time defending what should have been his strength, his business history and practices being made an open issue, without the usual Party backing behind him. There are awkward details that would have been better exposed, and dealt with, long ago, rather than being brought front and center under the brightest of spotlights.
That is the handicap in play. Not a political choice on my part, but an understanding of the mechanics of how these things work (Clinton certainly brings her baggage and weaknesses, but with significantly more experience and decorum in having to work around them), and I believe finding value in sifting through the “Noise” of a unique episode that brought a solid wagering opportunity, -225 or less the value point to the Democrats.
Now back to sports for some more.
In the Sights…
I don’t like the Friday MLB board, unless the markets open something up, which indeed they have done a few times this week. If that happens, I will plug it in here later. But in exploring today’s NFL theme more deeply, we can get in play with Carolina Team Total Over 10.5.
It is almost as though it has become “handicapping chic” to not like the Panthers, and believe that they were over-achievers. But this build started to happen late in the 2014 campaign, when they closed the regular season on a 4-0 run and beat the Cardinals in the first round of the playoffs, before being eliminated at Seattle. There have been good personnel decisions made across the board, and you could see more of that philosophy at play in this year’s draft, when they took DT Vernon Butler in the first round despite the fact that they are already well-stocked at the position. The “best player available” philosophy has played out well for them, especially when the luck of the draw put them in position to grab Newton a few years ago.
For this ticket to fail the Panthers will have to lose five more games than in 2015, despite the fact that as I look through the schedule they could easily be favored 15 times, the only likely underdog role being at Seattle in Game #12. The fact that 11-5 is a “win” brings value, and I will take advantage of it.
In the Sights, MLB Saturday…
I may have written more about Drew Pomeranz than any other pitcher in MLB over the course of July, first as a feature topic on why you should like him overall, but then an update on why his attributes might not translate all that well to Fenway. Pomeranz is not in Fenway tonight, he is back in a comfy West Coast ballpark where his style works well (he can get some lazy fly ball outs), and I believe the best way to take advantage is #929 Red Sox/Angels First Half Under (9:05 Eastern), with 4.5 out there in the early trading.
My focus goes to the lefty starters early because neither side has much experience against them, and some of the experience there is has not been good at all (Trout/Pujols are 2-20 vs. Pomeranz with six strikeouts), while Santiago on the hill will bring a night off for David Ortiz. But I also do not like these bullpens right now, despite the fact that they are fresh – the Red Sox are down Uehara/Kimbrell, while the Angel assortment is #28 in WAR. So the play is for the starters to make a couple of good passes through the lineups, and then I won’t have to care the rest of the way.
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