Why do you seem to blame your teams being not good on anything but the qbs not being good? Sure, it's nuanced. The front office might suck (this is observably true for all 3 of you). Your coach may suck (much more Bears). Yes, your offensive lines are not good but really, have you seen anything that suggests these 3 qbs are anything but bad? I watch a lot of football. DJ and JF have been in the league long enough we know they are not good. They aren't gonna transform, they simply are not good. Now Bryce is a rookie, but he does not appear to be a starting NFL qb. Why every time someone criticizes your not good qbs is the response to make excuses for them? I'm curious

I'm talking the wide end of your personal analysis range, which could be narrow (the extreme being PHI v KC) or very wide (something like PIT v ATL).

For me, I would have it at 5 teams in each Conference, in this order -- that's it:

PHI SF DAL DET/NO

KC CIN/BAL JAX BUF

So basically you could say based on current odds, that the longest shot SB Matchup I could possibly see occurring would be NO v BUF, although I definitely prefer JAX to BUF.

TLDR

Some teams are going to have an easier schedule in the second half of the season and some teams are going to have a harder schedule in the second half of the season. I'm using DVOA to quantify just how much easier/harder things are going to get for each team. The Raiders will have the biggest swing in terms of more difficulty, and the Colts will have the biggest swing in terms of getting easier.

Longer Version

The 4-5 Raiders started off this season facing quite a few crap teams like the Giants, the Bears and the Patriots. They didn't have the easiest schedule per opponent DVOA, but they did have the 7th easiest with an average opponent of -5.5% DVOA. But after the Jets this week they face the Dolphins, the Chiefs, and a few weeks later, the Chiefs again. Their average opponent for the 2nd half of the season has a DVOA of 7.8%, giving them the third most difficult schedule per DVOA in the 2nd half.

Rather than a focus directly on their 2H schedule difficulty, I was more interested in the gap between the first half and second half of the season. Because we know their record, and we can get their avg opp DVOA thus far, I thought it's more useful to see how much better or worse things are going to get as compared to what they've already been up against. For the Raiders that means, that their opponents in the second have will average 13.4% points more in DVOA than their first half opponents. In terms of the shift between 1H and 2H, they have the largest increase in opponent DVOA.

Conversely, things should get a lot easier for the 4-5 Colts. They've faced a gauntlet of tough teams like the Ravens, the Jaguars (twice), and the Browns, giving them the 5th toughest schedule (8.0% DVOA) in the first half of the season. But with the Patriots, Falcons and Raiders on their schedule, they have the theoretical 3rd easiest schedule remaining (-5.2%). Comparing the first half to the second half shows a difference of -13.2% DVOA per opp, giving the Colts the biggest drop in opponent quality from the first half to the second half.

To be clear, this doesn't mean the Raiders have the toughest schedule in the 2nd half, that is the Bengals at 15.3% opp DVOA. And it doesn't mean the Colts have the easiest schedule in the second half, that's the Saints (avg opp -13.6% DVOA). It means the Raiders and Colts have the biggest shifts in terms of opponent quality when comparing 1H to 2H.

Where did I pull all the data?

FTN Fantasy has some really good DVOA data (offense, defense, ST, opponents, etc). More on DVOA here, from Aaron Schatz the creator of the metric.

How to interpret the charts:

On the scatterplot, the horizontal X-axis represents each team's average opponent DVOA in the first half of the season. Further left and below zero, means their opponents were easier, further right and above zero, means their opponents were harder. (WAS easiest, PIT hardest). The vertical Y-axis represents the DVOA of each team's average opponent in the 2nd half of the season. Higher on the chart and above xero, means more harder teams, lower on the chart and below zero means easier teams...in the seconf half. As mentioned earlier, CIN has the toughest, and NO has the easiest.

• Teams in the top-left had an easy first half, but things are about to get difficult.
• Teams in the bottom-right had a tough first half, and now it will ease up.
• Those unlucky teams in the top-right, have a difficult first half AND a difficult 2nd half.
• And the lucky teams in the bottom-left have it easy all season.

The bar chart to the right, subtracts the teams' 2nd half of the season opp DVOA from the first half of the season opp DVOA. Positive means their schedule is going to be more difficult relative to the first half, and negative means it will be easier relative to the first half.

​

https://preview.redd.it/gvt00b0y2rzb1.png?width=1272&format=png&auto=webp&s=f5c29be763af607b69565de295b8b96939b38472

Apologies for the paywall, but I thought this was worth sharing anyway. Really excellent profile of McDaniel.

Title. In a season with a lack of these great games, which have been the best contests so far? One I’d like to nominate is the Texans/Bucs from last week - while the defenses didn’t show up, the offenses were locked in a close shootout. Are there any others that stick out so far?

The highlight video for last week's Texans vs Bucs game (https://youtu.be/bMykBLbbD9s?si=iy0dA9yDLnw_ludq) skips the final TD pass in the last seconds of the game.

From the YT comments it seems this isn't a new thing in terms of the highlight videos having bad editing and missing big plays. Meanwhile random plays will make it.

How is the biggest and richest sport organization in America bad at highlights and is this why they copyright everyone else cuz they are mad their editors can't do it?

The Panthers were playing inspired football last year down the stretch with Wilks and came within a couple of Brady voodoo 4th quarters of winning the division.

Based on this year, it's starting to give me Bisaccia/Raider vibes (ie team plays their asses off for interim HC, but instead hire a recently failed retread).

I don't think they could have fared any worse this year if they kept Wilks.

The following rookies have at least one QB start under their belt already:

Bryce Young (CAR)

CJ Stroud (HOU)

Anthony Richardson (IND)

Will Levis (TEN)

Aidan O'Connel (LV)

Clayton Tune (ARI)

Dorian Thompson-Robinson (CLE)

Jaren Hall (MIN)

Tyson Bagent (CHI)

and soon to be Tommy DeVito (NYG)

For reference, 2020 had six different rookie QBs start a game (I originally had five before remembering the Kendall Hinton emergency), while 2021 had six and 2022 had seven

I try to do this weekly during the season. Third year now. The previous edition can be found here.

#What is ANY/A and why does this matter?

ANY/A is a QB statistic which correlates extremely well with wins. Aside from EPA/play (which as far as I’m aware is much harder to calculate as an individual, I think it’s the best available (to us plebeians, that is). Its full name is Adjusted Net Yards per Attempt, and it’s basically a modification of yards per attempt in the following manner:

(20 x TDs + passing yards - 45 x INTs - sack yards)/(pass attempts + sacks)

A higher number is better.

Is it perfect? No, obviously not. It doesn’t account for a lot of things, like fumbles and rush yards and pick sixes and several other things like torrential rain games which skew stats in weird directions, but it is a pretty good stat and is not too terribly difficult to calculate by hand.

ANY/A is often computed over at least several games, but most often over a season or career. This is because it’s very prone to volatility. As you’ll see below, QBs can put up ANY/As in a single game that can be far better or worse than their career ANY/A.

So, why should you care about this? Frankly, if you don’t care than feel free to ignore this post. I just like statistics and thought it was be interesting to put up. But my argument for it is that even at a small sample size, the larger ANY/A in a game seems to win a lot (generally because it means the QB played better than the other QB). So maybe it’ll give you one more aspect you can pay attention to in a football game.

With all that being said, here’s the data I’ve accumulated.

#Data Table for Week 9

#Grades

Now, what are those little letters listed after the ANY/A? Well, those are my grades.

Before you start screaming at me about your favorite player’s grade, let me just say that it isn’t just random where the cutoffs are. Specifically:

An A grade corresponds to a single-game ANY/A greater than or equal to 10.

A B grade corresponds to a single-game ANY/A greater than or equal to 7.5, but less than 10.

A C grade corresponds to a single-game ANY/A greater than or equal to 4.5, but less than 7.5.

A D grade corresponds to a single-game ANY/A greater than or equal to 2, but less than 4.5

An F grade corresponds to a single-game ANY/A less than 2.

Now, these grades aren’t like those in school, where the average ends up usually being a B, and very few people get D’s and F’s. This is a curve where the average is intended to be a straight C. Similarly, the vast majority of single-game performances also are intended to be a C, because C’s should be enough to be competitive in most games. As such, B’s and D’s are somewhat unusual but not extraordinarily so, and F’s and A’s are extraordinary games, for either good or bad reasons.

Note that single-game ANY/As do not necessarily match up with season-long and career-long ANY/As. Single-game ANY/As are much, much more volatile and will yield a much larger spread than a typical season-long ANY/A spread. For that reason, you cannot treat them the same as you would a season-long ANY/A, where an exceptional, MVP-caliber season would be an 8+ ANY/A. It’s kind of like the PFF system, where a lot of consistently good performances will get you a higher grade than one great performance and a bunch of mediocre performances.

Well then, what do the grades mean? While they are certainly somewhat subjective, this is what I intended them to represent:

A: This grade represents an exceptional game through the air. This performance was nearly flawless and is incredibly difficult to replicate game in and game out. It’s nearly unsustainable, even for the best QBs. There should be no more than a few of these per week. A string of these would probably result in the greatest season of all time.

B: This grade represents an excellent game through the air. While some mistakes were present, the good vastly outweighs the bad. These are certainly more sustainable than the A-graded games, and the best QBs can sometimes have these games for long stretches at a time. A lot of these games will probably put you in the MVP race, and there should be a handful of these per week.

C: This grade represents a mediocre or satisfactory game. There were mistakes and success, but neither vastly outweighed the other. This kind of performance will put most teams in contention to win most games, and the majority of QBs in a week will have this kind of performance.

D: This grade represents a bad game. Many mistakes were made, enough so that they significantly outweighed the successes. A team with a QB playing like this will be hard-pressed to win games, and if your QB is playing like this often, it’s probably time to look for a replacement. There should t be too many of these per week, but there should definitely be some.

F: This grade represents a terrible game. The QB had essentially none or very few positives throughout the game, far outweighed by the negatives. With this kind of performance, it’s almost impossible to win a game. A string of these warrants a benching almost immediately. Just like for the A’s, there should only be a couple of these per week at the most.

My opinion is that my cutoffs do represent these grades well. The vast majority of grades fall between B and D, with the most in C, and A’s and F’s are few and far between. I didn’t just throw darts at a board either, I spent quite a few weeks looking at the numbers before coming up with these cutoffs, sometime last year (unfortunately I do not remember exactly when). Obviously you can always make slight changes here and there, but I’ve been using this system for a while and it’s easier for me to keep using it than to do some statistics with standard deviations and percentages and the like and figure out what the perfect cutoffs would be. [And actually, most of the time, these track pretty well with the idea of standard deviation - usually the number of C’s is pretty close to the amount within a single standard deviation of the mean, and usually there are only a couple A’s and F’s, which are ideally meant to be outside 2 standard deviations from the mean. While this hasn’t been numerically tested or anything, I feel pretty good about it in general].

If you don’t like them even after this explanation, feel free to ignore them. I just made them for fun anyway.

#Tl;dr

ANY/A is a QB stat that tracks well with wins; larger is better. This includes a list of the single-game ANY/A for any QB who played significant snaps (aka both meaningful in number and meaningful in value) this week. There are attached grades which are somewhat arbitrary (I set the cutoffs once in the past but I don’t make changes to individual grades). I think they make sense and fit my goal, but if you don’t like them feel free to ignore them.

The bears now have as many wins in 13 games using a backup QB as they do in 31 games when Fields starts. People keep talking about how bad the rest of the roster is (which is true) but it's crazy how other guys have somehow managed to get it done.

I am trying to recall a list that someone did.

1st team to win—> team that beat the first team and so on all the way to current day.

Anyone help with this?