Point Blank – September 19
What a “Bettor Better Know” – NCAA #3...And perhaps a Rocky Mountain Low, in the early stages at Coors...
The focus is going to be mostly on coaching this week as we sort through the Saturday results, with a myriad of situations of point spread relevance that will take us across different directions.
It starts with some curveballs being thrown by Mark Helfrich at Lincoln on Saturday, despite game situations that would have allowed him to throw a few fastballs fastballs right down the middle, and it means some work to do not only in properly grading Oregon’s loss at Nebraska, but also in anticipating how the Ducks will play it out going forward. So with the usual long Monday read ahead it is time to plug in the jukebox to help you through, and in pondering Helfrish’s allergy to the number one, a natural connection leads to the elegance of Bono and U2, this version of “One” from Slane Castle, Ireland back in 2001
Item: By going for 2, Oregon can forget about any chance of being #1 (those deuces weren’t wild for the Ducks)
Oregon and Nebraska each scored five TDs on Saturday, so they could have gone to OT at 35-35. The Ducks won the Total offense 491-430, and yards per play was a convincing 7.0 to 5.4 in their favor. But they lost 35-32, with Helfrich sending out his “Swinging Gate” formation for the first few PAT attempts, all of them evolving into two-point tries, and then having to go for two based on the game situations later. Only the first try was successful, the failure of the others raising some genuine questions because they were not all times in which “The Chart” would have called for it.
Here is the problem – it would be one thing for Helfrich to keep such details tucked in his pants if his team was good on two-point conversions, but the truth is that they have not been. They entered this season 6-17 on 2-point attempts in his first three seasons as HC, and are just 4-11 so far in 2016. That means the Ducks are just 10-28 on those attempts with him in charge. It has not only cost them points, but on Saturday may have cost them a game.
Let’s start with Helfrich’s own take earlier in the week, a statement of philosophy without the pressure of having to explain Saturday’s loss away, when he was asked if using that formation was being aggressive, or merely taking advantage of specific matchups - "It's really both. We want to be foot-on-the-gas in every phase and that's an example of that. From there it's going to be look-based. There's multiple options every situation. It's all based on the look, we can chip back in and kick it if we want.”
Is Helfrich tryng to be too smart? Perhaps. One of the genuine problems with the formation he is using is that it puts the pressure on the player receiving the snap to make the call. That should not happen when the game situation is as close as it was on Saturday; sometimes the coach has to over-ride. The question that concerns us is how he will adjust going forward. Will there be more kicks attempted, a concession that the experiment isn’t working, or is there a stubbornness that will have Helfrich going back to that well?
Item: Look closely at the Baylor scoring flows
One reason why Helfrich might be a little too creative is the pressure of replacing Chip Kelly, which is not an easy thing to do. Just ask good-guy Jim Grobe as he tries to not only steer the Baylor ship to calmer waters, but at the same time pacify one of the most rabid fan bases in the nation.
The last two Baylor scoreboards may not produce much cause for alarm – it was an 0-2 ATS count, but in beating SMU 40-13 as -34 and Rice 38-10 as -34 it is not as though they have been that far off of the market projections. The game flows have been significant, however – Baylor did not score a touchdown in the first quarter of either game. For some perspective, the Bears rang up 49 points in the first quarter vs. those two teams in 2015. Against Rice on Friday it was three punts in the first quarter, which is right around where the full-game projection would have been.
Is this a case of Grobe slowing things down? No, and it is still Kendal Briles as OC. But that fast pace that the Bears used under Briles Sr. was far more art than science, the sort of thing that he had a particular feel for that is not that easy to emulate.
This is not Grobe’s style of football, and his post-game take this weekend shows some of the frustration - “The thing we had some problems with was we continue to struggle a little bit with running the pace we want to run. I think we had some situations where we had their defense on their heels a little bit, but weren’t going as fast as we can go.”
I bring this up now because the Bears will have a fine line with their execution the rest of the way, although the Big 12 draw does bring Iowa State and Kansas within the first three conference weeks. They just faced a pair of defenses they were supposed to be able to dominate from the start, and the early-game sluggishness may be something that carries forward.
Item: Look closely at the Rutgers scoring flows
Much like those Baylor final scores noted above, someone could see that Rutgers beat Howard 52-14 and New Mexico 37-28, and believe that the offense was on track to compete in the Big 10 this season. You need to look deeper – the QB position is a problem.
Senior Chris Laviano won the job in fall camp but it was not all that clear cut, and note that despite those seemingly decent scoreboard results he was just 22-49 for 289 yards over the two games. The completion percentage and yards per pass counts are rather frightening, considering that those will be the two weakest defenses that the Scarlet Knights will face this season. But here’s the thing – the situation behind Laviano may be even more of a muddle. Chris Ash has already used three different back-ups, including prime recruit Tylin Oden, who was expected to redshirt this fall.
On Saturday Laviano was so inconsistent that he got pulled for a series in the fourth quarter, and to the surprise of many if was TCU transfer Zach Allen, who had not played in a game in two years, that was the replacement. From Ash, who may not have a great handle on things in his first season - "We thought there were a lot of throws on the field for us to get and he (Laviano) missed them, and he just was going through a bad stretch in the second half. We needed to pull him out and just get his mind right and give Zach a chance to go in and see what he can do, and we ended up putting Chris back in the game."
As for going forward - "There's nothing set with the backup quarterback position yet. It's going to be really by committee based on the preparation throughout the week. Zach had a great week of preparation. He knew the game plan. He executed well in practice and he deserved that right to go in as the backup quarterback today. It's just going to be by performance in practice. You earn the reps you get on Saturday."
This could get messy – Rutgers will be a major underdog through each of the next three weeks, opening Big 10 play up against a gauntlet of the best defenses in the conference. That includes one next week against a guy they really don’t want to have to face right now…
Item: The return to football grace for Greg Schiano (The Ohio State defense has scored twice as many TDs as it has allowed)
Instead of being a frenetic shoot-out the doubts of who was going to win Ohio State/Oklahoma were erased early, the Buckeyes in command most of the way. It continued one of the best storylines of early 2016, how a young but gifted defense has gotten up to speed much faster than conventional wisdom would have called for, and there should be a tip of the cap to Schiano, listed as Associate HC and DC.
There has never been much question about Schiano’s defensive acumen, and that even earned him the opportunity to coach on Sunday’s with Tampa Bay. He did not have the overall grasp of managing players to succeed at that level, and indeed may be a better fit for the college level anyway. It was a coup for Urban Meyer to get him on board, and when one looks at the performance of that defense so far, and then considers the upside, this is a prime story to watch.
A tool that you should have in your handicapping arsenal is to break down offense and defense each week rated against the projections of the betting markets, which is an asset in developing overall Power Ratings. There is a simple exercise to get started, taking the closing Side and Total and generating a market prediction from that, then comparing to the scoreboard (yes, using the Team Totals can save time, but not everyone has access to them). That leads us to this table for the Buckeye defense so far in 2016 -
Market Scoreboard
Bowling Green 18 3*
Tulsa 22 3
Oklahoma 28.5 17**
* - Also scored on an Interception Return
** - Also scored a TD on a KO Return
They have been expected to give up 68.5 points, yet have allowed about one third of that, coming in 15 points per game below the projections. Admittedly the weather did help vs. Tulsa, so be careful with the grading of that one.
Here is what really stands out – how about the fact that the defense has directly scored more touchdowns off of interception returns (four), than it has allowed (three)? They have come up with 11 takeaways already.
What makes it remarkable, and a tribute to the coaching staff (Luke Fickell is also playing a major role, and will be the HC somewhere next season), is that there is not a single senior in the starting lineup, and there are 10 underclassmen on the two-deep (in this case a list of 25 players, not just 22, because of competition for the #2 spot at three positions). The talent on hand is superb, and is also coming together much faster than would have been anticipated. It has surprised many, though perhaps not Meyer, who said this about Schiano back in July before fall camp had started – “He’s been a gold mine for me.”
Now that defense gets a week off for a mini-camp of instruction, and the next time they play just happens to be against those struggling Rutgers QBs, Schiano perhaps bringing an added focus because of the 11 seasons he spent as the guy in charge in New Brunswick.
By the way, that exercise of comparing the performing of a defense to the market expectations can also set off fire alarms in the other direction…
Item: Mark Stoops was more active last week with the Kentucky defense
Sub-Item: New Mexico State scored 42 points, and had 28 first downs and 500 yards at 8.1 per play, vs. that defense
In putting a quartet of large favorites in similar settings last Thursday, Kentucky made the ticket. For those of you who got in play in time the Wildcats cashed, but for many the game failing 20 was a push or a loss. It wasn’t an issue of getting points on the scoreboard – 62 should have easily been enough. And the problem wasn’t a lack of focus going in, but instead something that might have made you feel better about the ticket – HC Stoops stating during the week that he was going to be more active with the defense. “We did some different things this week that I already addressed, but on the game day itself, nothing different, with the exception of I will be more active with play-calling.”
Of course it didn’t work, with the Aggies likely having the best offensive showing they will all season. That meant an extra focus on Stoops in putting a post-mortem game breakdown together, and it was not the kind of read that leads to positive expectations for the weeks ahead.
Here is an abridged version of the Stoops post-game press conference concerning the play of the Kentucky defense – “It wasn’t good. It was a combination of things. I talked all week about having a higher football IQ. And we didn’t do that. … They got some aggravating yards … And it’s a combination of things. Right now, we have got a lot to get fixed there, but we will. When we’re playing both fronts and we’re playing the Okie front and then the over front, we’re searching right now. We got guys that are — it gets difficult with fits and so on. I don’t want to get too complex, but there’s, we have got to get some things ironed out. It’s getting a little bit confusing to them, even though we’re trying to be simple.”
Nice and easy, isn’t it? If the HC comes away sounding that confused you can imagine the way the players feel. How bad has this defense been? Let’s go to the tables -
Market Scoreboard
Southern Miss 29.5 44
Florida 31.5 45
New Mexico St 22 42
The Wildcats are allowing 16 points per game more than the market expectations, and note that all points allowed were by the defense, not turnovers or special teams returns by the opposition. This is an awkward place to be when a coach is in his fourth season with a program, and has mostly his own recruits on the field now.
Item: The last two weeks Syracuse is +53 plays and -59 points
Syracuse has been under the microscope as the Dino Babers transition takes place, something that was a particular focus here. A deeper look this week shows how much work he has ahead of him.
The Syracuse side of the two recent scoreboard losses vs. Louisville and South Florida may not look all that damning because the two opponents are on quite a surge, but an advanced analysis needs to be taken. The Orange came up 59 points short on the scoreboard, and 29.5 points below the market expectations, despite getting the benefit of 53 more offensive plays than those two opponents. That is rather ominous.
On Saturday the Syracuse offense snapped the ball 105 times vs. South Florida, shattering school and conference records. It shows the aggressiveness that Babers wants to have in the program, and that he is willing to take a step backwards to lay a foundation before real progress can be made. And it was one of those snaps in particular that tells the tale of where the Orange are right now.
Syracuse played well early, and had a 17-7 lead, when the offense was confronted with a 4th-and-3 from their own 47-yard line. Babers chose to gamble on making the first down, which failed, and it was a 42-3 onslaught by USF the rest of the way. Some folks in the Sports Mediaverse tried to call that gamble a negative turning point in the game, but if you read through Babers’ own take afterwards there is a lot of open and honest truth to be found -
"Let me back this up. Think about who we have. Think about who is playing. Think about who we're playing against. Look at what's going on defensively with injuries. Look at those skill receivers and that quarterback. Even though you're in the first quarter you can look at what's going on down the road. You saw numerous dropped balls by their wide receivers. You saw guys getting open. If they're making those catches it's a different game. … As a coach I need to look at it and make a decision based on what I believe will happen. What I believed was going to happen was we needed those fourth downs to win the game.”
That is a refreshing honesty from a coach that knows that his team is not very good, which makes it easier to set a proper Power Rating.
Item: How Akron/Marshall happened
One of the biggest gaps we will ever see between market expectations and a game result came in Huntington, West Virginia on Saturday, Marshall losing 65-38 to Akron despite being favored by -17.5. That is a 44.5 point margin (I'll get to Army/UTEP in a moment), and in particular note that the Zips scoreboard projection at kickoff was 19 points. Their offense had not reached the end zone the previous week at Wisconsin, the only TD that day coming on a punt return.
What you naturally find are a lot of big plays that are not necessarily predictive for either team going forward – Akron scored TDs on a fumble return, interception return and a blocked punt. But that only explains part of it – when the Zips did have the ball they moved with ease. That is important.
Earlier this season there was a take on the difficulty of sorting through games like this one – Box Scores, Old Joe, and the 800-yard field, and some of those methods can help to better understand a game flow like this one. Yes, you don’t want to overly reward the Akron offense or the Marshall defense for those TDs in which neither unit played a part. But you know what, the Akron offense was damn good, and the Marshall defense terrible, when those two were on the field.
Touchdowns by the defense and special teams can screw up box scores because the team that scored does not get the ball. When there are multiple such plays in a game it can get gapped out pretty wide – the Thundering Herd had 97 snaps, to just 62 for the Zips. Naturally that imbalance will show up in first downs and total offense, and also a fatigue element to the Akron defense.
But take a look at the production rates. The Zips got 26 first downs and 524 yards out of those 62 plays, a significant 8.5 per snap. Marshall only netted 5.8 per play. Yes, there were some fluky plays for Akron, but over the totality of the game the Zips averaged nearly 50 percent more yards per snap than they allowed. The fact that the underdog won the game outright was anything but a fluke.
And sometimes fluky results get us into not black and white, but instead murky shades of gray…
Item: Yes, the UTEP Defense stinks, but how much should we really penalize them for Saturday?
It isn’t easy recruiting enough talent to play good defense at a school like UTEP, there just won’t ever be enough size, speed or depth. It should not be as awful as Saturday’s 66-14 wipeout for Army, only favored by -3.,5 at kickoff however, so for as bad as the Miners are, there does need to be some tweaking.
The Army option attack was something unusual for Sean Kugler and his team to face, and as it turns out they did not have a clue. The Black Knights never punted, getting a FG on their first possession, then eight straight TD drives, before kneeling down with the ball to run out the clock at the end (Army also scored on a fumble return). Total plays were 80-42, and the UTEP offense did not get their hands on the ball for the second possession of the game until it was 13:39 left in the second quarter.
But instead of a full harsh penalty I will be a little kinder in the grading, because it appears that they did not game plan much at all for the unique Army schemes anyway. With three straight conference games ahead, Kugler and his staff chose to not have the defense get too far out of kilter by practicing all week for something that they will not see again. From LB Dante Lovelle - "We didn't play gap assignment, we didn't play quarterback/dive/pitch. We didn't do that. They played fundamental, we didn't."
This may not sound like all that big of a deal in the grand scheme, but as we all inevitably learn over time, every half point matters. The precision at which we can grade the Army offense, and the UTEP defense, may well come into play over the remainder of the season for each team, and in learning the nuances of game flows, and having the patience to carefully break them down, there can be opportunities to get ahead of a marketplace that can get lazy with such results.
Item: The Cubs -200 Prop comes down the stretch
It looks like it is going to be a one-on-one showdown to the end in Wrigley. The Cubs are sitting on 43 entering Monday, and unless there is a major move based on lineups later, will hit 44 this evening. That eliminates all but “TeaserDude” and “Tajulia”, and it breaks down this way – TeaserDude controls 44, 45 and 46, and Tajulia everything from 47 and higher.
The response to the contest was terrific, and I will make certain that we have something of similar interest when 2017 rolls around.
In the Sights, Monday MLB…
It looks like the Tyler Anderson party is not yet over for the 2016 season, perhaps his last outing at Arizona being misread by the marketplace, and in what has the makings of a much better early pitching matchup than the markets are calling for #958 Rockies/Cardinals First Half Under (8:40 Eastern) brings the value to get in play, with 6.5 available in the current trading. Make it good to -125, or a 6 at even money or better.
Anderson has been written about often here this season, a guy that does not bring the sex appeal to the marketplace of teammate Jon Gray, perhaps because many were skittish as he worked his way back from injury. But he has done all of the little things right, with an 8.1 K/9, 2.3 BB/9 and 51.6 GB%, and in particular note his confidence from this mound, a 5-1/3.04. Yes, he was out early at Arizona in his last outing, but note that there was nothing wrong with his stuff that day – he had seven strikeouts vs. only two walks, and did not have a fly ball out. With a full week since that one I expect him to be fresh and ready, and he can make a couple of good passes through a slumping St. Louis lineup that has only scored 16 runs across the last eight games, and will be seeing him for the first time.
Meanwhile Carlos Martinez has a world of upside, not only throwing a fastball averaging 96.3 mph but also getting ground balls at a 55.8 percent clip, and like Anderson his last outing caused more of an ERA dent than the quality of pitches would have called for – 72 of his 99 pitches were in the strike zone vs. the Cubs, with nine strikeouts and no walks. No one on the Colorado roster has more than eight plate appearances against him, which sets him up well for the early stages.
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