Point Blank – January 12, 2017
How much is NFL Playoff Experience worth…On the clunker that was the Cavs ticket, and some of the challenges of the Thursday morning post-mortems…
Today we can develop a theme that goes beyond the numbers on both the football gridirons and the basketball courts, and get down into some of the essential, though often difficult, nuances of handicapping. There are some situations that defy conventional measure, yet provide opportunity because of that very fact.
I’ll start in the NFL, before dealing with just a few of the challenges in the morning basketball sorting. Then having sorted through this particular element of the pro football weekend, tomorrow will be a chance to get into the nuts and bolts of the particular matchups.
Item: Just how much is NFL Playoff experience worth this week?
This is a most unique set of matchups for that gets called the Divisional Playoff round (wouldn’t Conference Semi-Finals be more appropriate, since Wild Card teams can still be alive this week?). In the past there has tended to be a pattern of the superior teams, and often the more experienced as correlation, being at home, challenged by upstarts. This week the board is so different that I thought I would bring the experience factor into an isolated focus.
We know what the statistics say about these teams, even if we do have to weigh some of that carefully because of injuries, tactical changes, and the various ebbs and flows that make up a season. But a key question now becomes how much of the teams in the statistical profiles do we see because of the added pressure. There are some that we can expect to be on an even keel because they have been here before, but there are some new faces in the game, and in fact it is rather striking, especially in the NFC -
Playoff wins since 2010
Seahawks 9
Packers 8
Patriots 8
Steelers 4
Texans 3
Chiefs 1
Cowboys 1
Falcons 1
It is not all that unusual to see matchups like Seahawks/Falcons and Packers/Cowboys, where one team has so much more post-season experience than the other. What is unusual is for the team with the major edge in experience to not only be the road team, but on this board for the games also being priced above the usual home field advantage. The Cowboys really were better than the Packers over the course of the season, as were the Falcons over the Seahawks. Hence the pricing. But that was without the pressure of the playoffs being built in. And we can go even further to note that while Dallas and Atlanta at least have one win since 2010, the Cowboys naturally got theirs without Dak Prescott and Ezekial Elliott, and the Falcons were without the current coaching staff.
Where do we go to isolate the value of the factor? It isn’t easy through the numbers, because the sample sizes are simply too small, and each situation truly is unique (more from Andy Reid on that front in a moment). What I have done instead is to focus on how the coaches and players have addressed it because that is one of the keys – the very fact that they are being asked the questions, and having to talk about these notions publicly plant the seeds in their own consciousness, and by now most of us know how much the psyche of a coach or athlete matters in terms of game performance.
Perhaps the most interesting setting comes in Atlanta, where Matt Ryan is on the verge of winning an MVP award, a career-season in which the Falcons have put together some of the best offensive numbers I have ever tracked. The key to the tracking is their dominance above the rest of the league – they averaged 1.2 yards per play better than the 2016 NFL average, despite facing the #2 slate of defenses in terms of difficulty (I use the Football Outsiders for the defensive rankings). That was substantial.
Yet Ryan has been around for a long time and only has one playoff win, that coming by a 30-28 count on the last play against the Seahawks back in 2012, and the bottom line is 1-4 SU and 0-4-1 ATS (some chart the latter as 0-5, the closing line in a 28-24 loss vs. San Francisco in 2012 showing +4, but the game having been +3.5 most of the week).
So let’s go to Ryan’s own words - “I don’t worry about it too much. One thing I’ve learned throughout my career is if you spend time worrying about that you are not spending time worrying about the things that are going to make a difference on (game day). So I focus on getting myself prepared mentally and physically, making sure I’m on top of the plan and making sure that I am ready to go play the best I can on Saturday.”
That is pretty well rehearsed ‘Player-speak’, but here is some genuine honesty from Dan Quinn regarding his QB, as his first playoff game as a HC approaches - “You can’t truly be relentless until you have been right close to it and you didn’t get it. From my experience, you learn so much from a loss. What I can tell you is Matt is a far different quarterback today than he was a few years ago. It’s all about now. Things that are from a while back ago, you definitely learn from it. You take those lessons and now you apply them and you are better for it. You get harder, you get tougher, you get more resilient from going through some of those difficult times. I know in his case, he’s learned from them, just like I have.”
Let’s go to some more from Quinn as he talks about the team approach overall - “I would hope it totally comes across how fast and physical that we play. We are going to go and attack in all three phases in this game. Those are things we stand for in our program, so we want that to totally come to life. The players here, we have a real clear vision of how we want to play. I think that helps a bunch. We are not trying to be anything different than who we are.”
Of course Quinn has five playoff wins and a Super Bowl ring under his belt, and at least Ryan has been in five playoff games. Jason Garrett only managed one playoff win though his first five Cowboy seasons, and now Dak Prescott will be taking his first playoff snap. Prescott has gone through the season without showing many of the nerves usually associated with being a rookie, and in an odd way might the lack of any experience at all, rather than the negative experience Ryan brings, be a plus?
Try this, from former NFL QB and current ESPN analyst Matt Hasselbeck – “The (Cowboys rookies) don’t even know what they don’t even know. They’re so naïve it will help tremendously. … It’s kind of freeing when you don’t know how big the moment is.”
As for Prescott, he not only echoes some of that, but also openly relishes the challenge of being up against someone like Aaron Rodgers - “Can’t really say I’ve ever truly put it in my head that I’m a rookie that I can’t do something. I’ve never put that stigma on myself. So I’m excited and ready to go. … I want to go where those guys are. I want to win multiple Super Bowls in this league. So it’s going to be great going against those guys, seeing those guys on the other side and just watching them and knowing I have a good team, and a team that can beat them.”
Of course there is a benefit that Prescott has, and it will be one of the storylines I will touch here tomorrow – what is the best way to take pressure off of a QB? Second-down-and-four. Many of you will know what that means, and how big a part it has been of his rookie campaign.
There are also some blends here of coach experience and player inexperience – Andy Reid has seen the playoffs often, and has been to a Super Bowl, while the only playoff win the Kansas City franchise has since 1993 was that 30-0 walkover vs. an inept Houston team in the Wild Card round last January.
Reid’s record off of a bye is legendary, enough to be of market impact in Sunday’s pricing, and one of the things he chose to do was give the Chiefs a complete week off during the bye, so that they will at least be physically fresh, and perhaps get away from the pressure.
But is it rocket science? Not according to Reid - “Every team is crazy different. Every situation in the league is different, every year is different. I know the bye normally doesn’t hurt you, if you handle it the right way. I have enough trust (our team) will handle it the right way. There’s a lot of trust that goes into this thing.”
There is a lot to sort through on this front. Tomorrow the focus goes to the fundamental matchups, but before getting there the shrewd handicapper does need to weigh just how much the gaps in experience may mean across these games.
About Last Night (and the challenges of post-mortems)…
Notions that the travel scramble would bring Cleveland an advantage over Portland last night were crushed rather quickly, the Cavaliers going into the dead ticket pile early in the game. And in filing that one away properly we can also note how conventional thought processes can get turned inside out.
Cleveland played with heavy legs, but it did not have to be that bad – the Cavaliers got to their Portland hotel about three hours later than usual following their game against the Jazz in Salt Lake City. But that was nothing compared to what the Trail Blazers had to deal with, yet it all got turned inside-out on the court.
The Portland players spent the aftermath of Tuesday’s win over the Lakers hanging around the Staples Center, not heading to the airport because they had no idea if there would even be a flight anywhere. They finally did board a plane, but it was to Seattle instead of back to Portland, leaving LAX at 1 AM and landing at Sea-Tac at 3:30. They then checked in to a hotel near the airport a little after 4 AM, and after hanging around that hotel for a few hours it was back to the airport, where they got a flight to Portland that landed a little after 1 PM. But because the road conditions were so bad the players were not given the option of going home, and instead were checked into a downtown Portland hotel for the afternoon, before getting a bus to the Moda Center for the game.
So what happened on the court? The #28 team in defensive efficiency, facing the #5 team in offensive efficiency, allowed just .89 per possession. That is without having had any kind of shoot-around or walk-through to come up with a game plan. And such are sports.
Now the question becomes how much weight to attach to the game in the charting process, because it was such an outlier both in terms of the set-up, and also the outcome. But that is just a natural order of business on a morning that also includes such items as -
Louisville 85 Pittsburgh 80 – This total was sitting on 144 with 1:30 to play, so plenty of adjusting is necessary to the pace tables.
Tulsa 81 Memphis 71 – The game was tied 69-69 with 2:10 left, so the vice needs to be brought out to squeeze the final sequence into something that better resembles the true game flow.
Celtics 117 Wizards 108 – A win and cover for Boston despite trailing outright with 5:30 remaining as the Washington lack of depth shows again. Go back to yesterday’s breakdown of how bad the Wizards were when John Wall was not on the court, and note it was another dismal -7 in the 9:17 he sat out last night.
76ers 98 Knicks 97 – After New York 93-83 with 2:30 remaining. The psyche of the Knicks was already fragile enough, but given all of the egos involved Jeff Hornacek faces a serious challenge in the immediate cycle ahead.
And that is just part of the morning ahead, all the while watching the bright lights of the Thursday board flash, locking up the prime opportunities as they present themselves.
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