Why are We Here?
Because the Oregon Sports News is on holiday break
for Thanksgiving until Monday, December 1st, I’m publishing my week
thirteen picks on my personal blog, The Hight of Insanity. Since, in order to maintain
continuity in what is ultimately a grand experiment to see if certain advanced
football metrics can be used to predict the spread of NFL games (looking iffy
at this point), I was going to do the research and make the picks this week
anyway, I thought I might as well go on the record with a column. So, here we
are.
Week Twelve Recap
Last week I was 2-3 in the column, but 8-7 overall.
I had fully expected Arizona at Seattle to be
closer than it was and I also expected San Francisco to beat Washington by more
than four points. On Sunday night, Dallas failed to cover against the New York
Giants by a half a point.
On the winning side of the ledger, I won when St.
Louis covered against San Diego, and I correctly picked Baltimore to beat New
Orleans on Monday night.
For those of you who are new to my NFL Picks
column, be sure to check out my Archive page at Oregon Sports News and follow
me there for all subsequent columns.
Abbreviated Picks
Usually, in the column I cover the NFC West and the
Sunday night and Monday night games. This week, with it being Thanksgiving,
meaning three games on a Thursday, I’m going to focus only on the NFC West,
which gives us just three games. If you‘d like to see all my picks or pick
against me, go to ESPN’s Pigskin Pick’em. You’ll find me as Brian Hight’s OSNPicks in the Fans of the Seattle Seahawks (spread) group.
The metrics I apply when prognosticating about these NFL contests are weighted Defense-adjusted Value Over Average (DVOA), which you can find an explanation of on Football Outsiders, a team’s absolute point differential, as a means to judge how convincingly a team is winning or losing, QBR, with the assumption that the quarterback is the single most important player in today’s NFL, and, finally, the Elo rating system, that is used weekly in a super column by senior writer Neil Paine at FiveThirtyEight.
Seattle
((7-4) at San Francisco (7-4) -0.5
In the night game on Thanksgiving, the Seattle
Seahawks travel to San Francisco to play the 49ers in a game both teams need to
win to stay in the playoff hunt. For the first time in several weeks, the
Seahawks project as a playoff team, albeit the sixth and final team in the NFC.
In overall weighted DVOA, the Seahawks rank 6th
with 16.0%, while the 49ers rank 11th with 8.2%, giving Seattle a
7.8% efficiency advantage. While the ‘Hawks are fairly well balanced, ranking 8th
in offensive DVOA and 7th in defensive DVOA, the 49ers rely heavily
on their 2nd ranked defense to win games.
In winning seven games and losing four, the 49ers
have only managed a +3 point differential, while the Seahawks sit at +61 with
the same record.
The quarterbacks are relatively even. Russell
Wilson has a slight QBR advantage over Colin Kaepernick, 59.4 to 56.4, and each
has similar weapons, leaning heavily on the ground game.
The Elo Ratings have the home team 49ers winning
the game 52% of the time and put the spread right where the Vegas line is,
-0.5.
With this game being essentially a tossup, I’m
going to take the 49ers this week and then probably turn around in week 15 and
take the Seahawks back at Century Link.
Pick – San Francisco 49ers
Oakland
Raiders (1-10) at St. Louis (4-7) -7.5
Are the St. Louis Rams the best darned 4-7 team
around, or what? Dating back to the October 19th home win against
Seattle, the Rams are 4-2 against the spread, with outright wins against the
Seahawks, 49ers, and the Denver Broncos. They played well at San Diego and I
fully expect them to pick up win number five against the Oakland Raiders.
Despite the surprising win over the Kansas City
Chiefs, the Raiders still rank 29th in weighted DVOA with -20.3%.
The Rams have been on the rise for several weeks now and find themselves 23rd
in weighted DVOA with -13.1%, giving them a 7.2% efficiency advantage over the
silver and black.
Now, don’t get me wrong. This game should not be
pretty by any means, as each team ranks in the mid-twenties in efficiency on
both sides of the ball, have been outscored by 109 (Raiders) and 76 (Rams)
respectively, and have quarterbacks with mediocre to poor QBR: 41.3 for Derek
Carr and 39.7 for Shaun Hill.
But, Elo has the Rams winning 80 percent of the
time and places the spread at 9.5, two points higher than Vegas.
I’m going to go with the home team Rams and hope
they can generate enough offense to beat the Raiders by eight or more.
Pick – St. Louis Rams
Arizona
(9-2) -2.5 at Atlanta (4-7)
As strange as it may seem, this is a matchup of
division leaders when the 9-2 Arizona Cardinals travel to Atlanta to take on
the 4-7 Falcons.
Let’s put in perspective how bad the NFC South is.
The 2-9 Tampa Bay Buccaneers are only two games out of first place and still
mathematically alive for the playoffs. I’m now starting to actively root for
teams in the South to lose, just to see how bad of a record a playoff team can
have. And, after this game, I fully expect the Falcons to be 4-8. It’s up to
the New Orleans Saints to “keep pace” when they travel to Pittsburgh on Sunday.
Despite the huge differential in records, the
Cardinals hold only a 10% efficiency rating advantage, ranked 16th
in overall weighted DVOA with 1.0% compared to the Falcons 20th
ranking and -9.0% efficiency.
But, whereas Arizona could only manage three points
against a good Seattle defense last week, they should fare much better against
Atlanta, who ranks last in the NFL in defensive efficiency.
For the season, the Cardinals are +45 while the
Falcons are -19.
Matt Ryan earns the slight edge in QBR at 64.2,
compared to Drew Stanton’s 61.6. And, the absence of Larry Fitzgerald at
Seattle had to account for some of Stanton’s ineffectiveness.
Elo has the Cardinals winning this game 71 percent
of the time, and would place the line 3.5 points higher than it currently is at
Cardinals -6.
Accordingly, I’m taking the Cardinals to win and
drop the Falcons to 4-8.
Pick – Arizona Cardinals
Wrap Up
Everyone have a Happy Thanksgiving and I’ll see you
next week back at OSN.
