POINT BLANK – August 18
The Weekend That Was
Looking back at things a “Bettor Better Know” before you put your money down on the games ahead…
Flag Football
There have already been a couple of takes in this column on the number of penalty flags thrown through the first two weeks of the NFL pre-season, and their impact on the scoreboards. Now it is time for a different viewpoint. It is not just the way that the penalties will directly impact game flows, but also how much the new rules interpretations strip defensive players of parts of their arsenal that shows up on plays without flags. The results have been eye-popping.
The focus this time is on how the first-team offenses performed through the air over the 15 games this weekend, pre-Browns/Redskins. And the bottom line is that they did awfully well. During the 2013 regular season, passes were completed at a 61.2 percent clip, good for 7.1 yards per attempt, and a passer rating of 84.1. This weekend there were 349 passes thrown by first-teamers (counting the New Orleans starting offense even though Drew Brees did not play), and they connected at 68.2 percent, generating 7.6 per attempt and a 105.7 rating (the latter buoyed by a ratio of 21 TD passes vs. only four INT).
The completion percentage and passer rating numbers are significant increases above the norms, and while yards per pass was not up as dramatically, perhaps the new interpretations have something to with that – a case can be made that with defensive backs afraid to make contact they are playing off the receivers a bit, which actually lowers YAC a bit. The per-pass yardage is up because of more completions, but not because the receivers are finding it easier to break free after they have possession.
Some of the top-tier passers looked unstoppable. The tale of Andy Dalton will be told in a moment, but there was Peyton Manning at 12-14-102, Aaron Rodgers at 11-13-128, Tom Brady at 8-10-81 (his Pick Six was more of an offensive miscommunication than a positive defensive play), Russell Wilson 11-13-121, etc. It was almost too easy for them, often looking like seven-on-seven practice drills.
These tables will continue to be evaluated as we enter week #3 of the pre-season. The teams are out of “training camp” mode now, which may make it even more difficult for defensive adjustments. If this is indeed how the game is going to be played once the scoreboards count for real, there will have to be some major changes in handicapping approaches. More on that as things unfold.
The Giants, and that new playbook
Good performances by offenses this past have to be taken with a grain of salt, given the silliness in play noted above. But while not giving out rewards is smart policy, there should absolutely be power ratings punishment for those that failed. As such, forget what the scoreboard, or the box score, shows from NYG’s 27-26 win at Indianapolis on Saturday. The adjustment for Eli Manning and the offense to new coordinator Ben McAdoo’s tempo/playbook is not going well at all.
Manning had a decent outing vs. Buffalo in Canton, completing 6-7 passes, though they went for just 43 yards. Since then he has gone 1-9 for six yards, and the first-team Giant offense managed only 45 yards on 23 snaps against what will be a lower-tier Colt defense.
Eli’s take afterwards - "Still figuring out what's going to be our style of football, which concepts are going to work the best for us and all of those things." That is particularly ominous because it was the third game against a live defense. Looking ahead, we can anticipate an intense focus on making something happen against the Jets this week. The question becomes just what capacity they really bring at this stage.
Pay close attention to Andy Dalton
The Bengals have opened 0-2 in the pre-season, but there should not be anything negative attached to that. The starters have built double-figure leads in each of the first two games, and if anything there is something particularly positive that you should focus on from the offense.
Evaluating Andy Dalton has been a bit of a juggling act through the years. He got off to a strong start in his professional career because he was much more NFL-ready coming out of college than most QB. He has not risen to a higher level because his physical skills are only average, and the struggles in the playoffs have been visible for all to see (a 56.2 passer rating, with six INT vs. only one TD). But Dalton does have a significant football savvy, and under new OC Hue Jackson and a faster no-huddle approach, that may be getting unlocked a higher degree.
The Bengals have scored on every possession with Dalton in the game, and he has put up a terrific 11-13-215 through the air. They ran the offense at such a fast pace that the Jets had to call a defensive timeout in the first quarter on Saturday night, a true rarity. Yes, all of the caveats about the rules interpretations urge some caution, but this new scheme may be an ideal for for his particular skill set, and the receivers around him (just try to cover 6-4 A.J. Green, 6-2 Marvin Jones, and all of those TE without the allowance of some contact).
Jake Arrieta is just fine
Extreme outings can make for bad databases, especially in categories where there are sample-size issue. Like the game that Jake Arrieta had at Coors Field three starts back. He had worked to a 2.11 prior to that game, and carried a 4-3 lead into the bottom of the 6th, with no signs that he was off track. But the wheels came off that inning, with all seven batters that he faced reaching base. Six of them scored, and he left with a 2.80 ERA, one of the biggest single-game jumps you will ever see this late in a season. Most of that outburst was the result of bad pitches, but there was also a bunt single on a play only intended to be a sacrifice, and another single that went off the glove of SS Starlin Castro.
Think about the impact that kind of sequence can have. Arrieta had been solid the game before that (one run on three hits over 7 IP), and the follow-up (two runs on five hits over 7 2/3), but if you looked at the “Last 3 Starts” table over your Sunday morning coffee, you would have seen a 1-2/5.59. Of course, those bad short-term numbers would have also created a value setting for you if you adjusted them properly, with Arrieta going off at a short price vs. a Met lineup that was without David Wright. And he was terrific, not allowing a run, while getting nine K and allowing only two hits and a pair of BB. Only the archaic scoring rules of baseball kept him from being awarded with the Win.
Yet even the next time out, when you look at those L3 tables again, Arrieta will show an uninspiring 1-2/5.12. The fact that he has responded as well as he has off of that dismal inning (13 K vs. 10 base-runners) shows how much confidence he now has, and that outing at Coors is just one of those blips on a radar screen that turn out to mean next-to-nothing in terms of adjusting your ratings going forward.
And more “decoding baseball”
Jake Arrieta (above) not being given a win for Sunday is the sort of thing that Baseball forces the handicapper to work around, and over time you develop your own rules and interpretations, to get to a higher plane of truth. It is a significant part of the daily processes if you want to win, and Sunday in Fenway Park the sport provided another of those conundrums.
Joe Kelly was terrible against the Astros, and is laboring badly with his control – it has been 13 BB in just 17 IP since he joined the Red Sox. But if you only look at the bottom line vs. Houston, which shows seven ER over four IP, you will miss something important.
Kelly was going to get out of the second inning down 2-0, pitching out of a jam (runners on first and second with one out) by inducing a double-play grounder from Marwin Gonzalez. But there was an issue – on what was a relatively routine play, Boston shortstop Xander Bogaerts made the throw to first a half step before his foot touched second. The play went to review, and was overturned, and instead of the inning being over, the Astros had runners on second and third with two outs. A walk to Robbie Grossman, a grand slam by Jose Altuve, and it was quickly 6-0.
Here is the issue in terms of sharpening your databases – Bogaerts was not charged with an error, for what clearly was one. Hence, all runs are charted as earned according to MLB, and will remain so until the end of time. But for our more precise purposes, that is not a proper grading. It is not as though removing four ER from Kelly alters his outing all that much, with the other key pitching metrics pummeling him properly for the number of base-runners he allowed. The key is to understand the balance between pitching and defense for each team, and what would be missed over time is the impact the Boston defense had on that inning. It is not necessarily that Kelly deserves relief, but that the defensive failure needs acknowledgment.