what a sick adjustment catch and movement of the ball over the goal line by Higgins. One for the ages.
Week 15 ATS Picks
I went 3-2 last week on both sets of picks — it could have been a great week, but I decided to go contrarian with the Eagles and Chiefs.
Here’s what I have this week:
I’m surprised the Colts are only one-point favorites at home against the Steelers. They were three originally, and I’m not sure what caused this drastic line movement.
The Broncos strike me as roughly equal to the Lions, so 4.5 seems like a lot.
The Cardinals are only getting 12 here — I liked them better at 13.5 where it opened. But this seems like a letdown road game for the Niners.
The Bills were a last-second hunch pick, fading Dak and the Cowboys away from home. But this one feels the shakiest.
Finally, if Tyreek Hill doesn’t play, the Dolphins are just average, and they always seem to fall off later in the year. The Jets can smash it out with them, maybe win outright.
These are the same, except I subbed in the Football Team for the Bills. The Rams are decent, but coming off a dramatic loss in overtime. I like the rested Team to keep it close.
Sitting him is a no-brainer.
Never in my life have I had Monday Night game(s) go this perfectly for me. Here’s what I needed going in:
(1) Saquon Barkley + 3 > Tyreek Hill and the Packers defense. Check
(2) Titans or Dolphins, preferably both, cover. Check
(3) Giants win outright. Check.
As a result, I have shockingly made the playoffs in my Primetime league, won a double week in my home picking pool (last week was tied) and tied for first place in the pool after going 12-3 ATS.
Third place pays $1100 in the Primetime, plus I get into the playoffs, for which my team is woefully unprepared (two bad defenses, e.g.) because I really didn’t think I would make it. And the picking pool is $70 per week, so another $140, plus a chance to win the whole thing.
It turns out I was 37 points out of second place in the Primetime, thankfully more than the 28 I left on my bench when I made that disastrous last-second swap of Brock Purdy for Dak Prescott in Week 5.
Here’s what I wrote after Week 5:
And the final kick in the nuts (although it’s almost funny at this point) is that Goff outscored Purdy by one point from my bench in Steak, i.e., it was still a bad decision to have Purdy in, even though, I tried to hedge against that by inflicting utter catastrophe on my Primetime team which is 1-4 and pretty much drawing dead even when Saquon Barkley returns.
And here were the Primetime standings after Week 5:
Here are the Primetime standings today (my win hasn’t updated yet):
I lost again in Week 6, then won eight games in a row, not that the record mattered. I do feel bad for Rod Lurie who had me dead to rights before Week 14, but here was his lineup:
He had in-game injuries to Hill and Nico Collins, and started Joshua Dobbs over Trevor Lawrence because Lawrence was supposedly gimpy heading into the game and facing the Browns. Had he started Lawrence, he gets third instead of me. And had I not put Evan Engram (32.5 points) in my flex over Kenneth Walker, I also lose.
It’s important to keep in mind how much fantasy football and the NFL itself are a tragedy or errors and a jungle of bad information. No matter how much you want to defenestrate from a bad decision or bad bounce, it’s happening everywhere all the time.
. . .
I only watched the highlights of both games — it’s impossible to find the 40-minute version at 8 am Western European Time. So here are a couple quick takes:
I’ve already mentioned how I think Hill is a top-three receiver in NFL history, so it’s no surprise the Dolphins offense would struggle without him. There are a few guys — Randy Moss, Terrell Owens, Hill, e.g., by whose presence an ordinary quarterback becomes a star and a good quarterback becomes the best in the league.
Prior to Moss, Tom Brady was a 25-TD/year game manager. After Moss, he was outscoring Peyton Manning. (Rob Gronkowski was also a “king-maker” target in his own right.) Before Owens, Donovan McNabb had 16 TDs and 11 picks. With Owens, he had 31 and eight, respectively. Hill is doing for Tua what Owens did for McNabb.
Hill, Christian McCaffrey and Trent Williams are my three MVPs. Dak Prescott has played great since the 49ers game, but I don’t think you can separate him from Josh Allen and Brock Purdy the way the other three separate from the best players at their positions.
Raheem Mostert has 18 touchdowns with four games to go. What’s crazy about this is his teammate De’Von Achane also has nine TDs himself in essentially five games. And of course Hill has 12 TDs too.
I don’t really understand how the Titans came back down two touchdowns with 4:39 left. I saw the actual scores, but the highlights excluded everything in between. How badly did the Dolphins look on those final drives on both sides of the ball?
His late fumble notwithstanding, I love Saquon Barkley. He delivered big time for me, and I hope he remains a Giant.
I didn’t get to see enough Tommy DeVito — his rollout pass to Isaiah Hodgins was like Joe Montana to Dwight Clark, and he took no sacks and threw no picks. At the very least the Giants seem to have found a competent backup.
WanDale Robinson had a big day as a rusher and receiver. He’s more of a gadget guy than a No. 1, so the Giants still need a WR, but if he and Darren Waller can ever stay healthy, they will be good building blocks.
Brian Daboll is a good coach. The Giants play hard and compete every week despite being arguably the worst team in the league a few weeks ago.
Week 14 Observations
Things were going pretty well until the Chiefs-Bills and Cowboys-Eagles. I was 3-0 and 2-0 ATS before that, and I probably shouldn’t have done the “fade-the-narrative” thing so reflexively. It seemed like everyone was sure the Bills would beat the Chiefs, and the Cowboys-Eagles got up to -3.5 which seemed excessive. The moral of the story is no heuristic really works. They’re all crutches we use as weak subsitutes for exercising our own judgment.
Heuristics come in handy when we don’t know much about a subject — I was sure glad to use the NFBKC ADP for my basketball draft, for example — but I’ve watched football every week for 45 years. I should have waited for a lean — like I did with the other games — or passed on those contests. To fall back on “everyone’s so sure the tide is turning, I’ll stick with the tide” was lazy. It might feel smart at the time, and it’s fine if it ends up being your post-hoc justification, but it should never be the basis for picking a particular side. That basis should always be your own unclouded judgment.
If it’s unclear what that is, that’s because you probably haven’t used it that often. I think I went about five years without using mine after getting caught up in the midwit stat nonsense. When Tom Brady went back to pass, he wasn’t checking off boxes, using heuristics or probabilistic thinking to decide where to throw. He was seeing the field and using his judgment. You will not cook like Thomas Keller just because someone handed you his recipes.
In any event, I’m annoyed because the other picks (Saints, Broncos, Bears, Rams) were good, and those lazy ones ruined what might have been a strong slate.
. . .
The Chiefs-Bills, it turns out, wasn’t that bad. But for Kadarius Tone Deaf playing in the band, the Chiefs might have covered yet. (There would still have been more than a minute left for Josh Allen, so Buffalo still might have won/covered, but we’ll never know.)
Everyone seems to be destroying Patrick Mahomes for complaining about the offsides call, but they’re being purposely dense. “A rule is a rule, bro.” “Oh, so you only want them to enforce the rule when it benefits you?” Stop.
Everyone knows Toney’s foot being in the neutral zone had absolutely zero effect on the play. That doesn’t mean it was wrong to call a foul because it was a foul, but don’t pretend a non-event like his foot being 12-inches up the field is the same thing as holding or PI. It was a preposterous way to negate an amazing play with the game on the line. It was bullshit. He should be pissed about it. It’s natural he would complain about it.
It’s not going to change anything, the refs won’t be reprimanded for it because they called the violation correctly to the technical letter of the law and Mahomes will have to move on because he has no recourse. Just stop with the fake incomprehension of why Mahomes is so justifiably annoyed. “But rules are rules!”
. . .
I can’t help but poke fun of the “position X doesn’t matter” crowd. What a bunch of midwits.
After another strong game, 38-year old Joe Flacco was named Browns quarterback for the rest of the year. Joshua Dobbs was the GOAT for two weeks, but discovered scoring points against the Raiders isn’t rocket science. Now Jake Browning is playing better than Joe Burrow, Patrick Mahomes has a meager 7.0 YPA and last pick in the draft Brock Purdy is leading the NFL is every efficiency stat. Quarterbacks don’t matter, I guess.
. . .
The Jaguars went for two after scoring, rather than kicking the PAT and being down three, in the game’s final minute, and people were scratching their heads. If they kick the PAT, they only need a FG to tie (after an onside kick), but by missing the two-point attempt, they needed a second TD.
But let’s game this out. There’s a 50/50 chance they make it, and if so, the FG wins it rather than sending it to OT. So they’re taking the 50/50 chance early (on the try) rather than later (in OT). (If they don’t recover the onside kick, it’s moot anyway.)
The issue is the difficulty of getting the second TD rather than the FG. So let’s split this into the possibilities: (1) Make the try, FG wins; (2) Miss the try, need to get a TD, TD wins; (3) kick the PAT, FG ties. (Again, let’s assume they recover the onside kick and drive at least into field goal range, otherwise this is all moot anyway.)
Scenario (1) happens 50 percent of the time — it’s a win. Scenario (2) happens the other 50 percent. Let’s say there’s a 25 percent chance (with a minute left) you get from field-goal range to the end zone. So you’d have 25 percent of 50 percent (12.5 percent) to win the game on a second TD. All told, you’d have a 62.5 percent chance to win the game (assuming onside kick, FG range and FG made), either by getting the two-point try and winning on a FG, or missing it and winning on a TD, and a 37.5 percent chance you’d recover the kick, down four, get into FG range, but never make it into the end zone and lose.
(And even if you think 25 percent is high for going from FG range to the end zone with a minute left, there is surely *some* chance you do, which pushes it over 50/50.)
If you kick the PAT, you’re settling for a straight-up 50/50 overtime no matter what.
. . .
I argued with Alan Seslowsky that Trent Williams deserves to be MVP just as much as Tyreek Hill or Christian McCaffrey. I mean NFL teams pay left tackles more than skill players for the most part, so the market knows their value. But I’ve changed my mind. Brandon Aubrey should be MVP — a 60, 59, 50 and 45 last night and still hasn’t missed all year!
Toney and Jerry Jeudy (who dropped a perfect deep ball and then couldn’t get his feet in bounds on a would-be TD) have all the physical skills but are missing some key gene. Once you ID these players, they belong on the do-not-draft list. Then again, I used to think that of Evan Engram, and he’s turned the corner somehow. Never say never.
I actually started Engram over Kenneth Walker in the Primetime, and now just need Saquon plus three points to hold up against Tyreek Hill and the Packers defense to make the Primetime playoffs. I’m still a big underdog, but a live one at least. (The overtime punt return TD to end Ravens-Rams really sucked because I had Keaton Mitchell and Justin Tucker going, one or both of whom would very likely had gotten me more points.)
I loved the end-of-game punt, up 3-0, by Vikings FG kicker Greg Joseph to preserve the Raiders cover. It was the right football call too because there was no time for the Raiders to get a FG, and, up six, a TD would beat them anyway. Why not waste more time and pin them back rather than risk a miss?
I was really rooting hard for a 0-0 tie. Heartbreaking not to get it.
The Chargers are the softest. Such an easy ATS win.
I hard some faulty reasoning in the Seattle-SF broadcast. The Seahawks punted on fourth and short from midfield and two plays later the 49ers had the ball right from where the Seahawks had punted. The announcer said this is why you don’t punt because even if you failed on fourth, they’d have the ball here anyway. But the 49ers only had the ball there because they made 40 yards worth of plays after the punt! If they made 40 yards worth of plays after a failed fourth-down try, they’d already have scored another touchdown!
The Falcons had a last-second chance from the Bucs’ 30 yard line to win the game, but Desmond Ridder threw four-yards short of the end zone. Just throw a screen pass if your plan is to run it in.
Mahomes’ valid complaints aside, respect to the Bills for hijacking the shit out of that game. They straight-up terrorized the Chiefs.
Karius Toney -- FFS
and another one. Just undid the first down flag. Now might as well throw for the first down again.
Bills trying to give them new life by throwing an incomplete pass before the 2-minute warning
so dumb to end a game on a holding penalty, but it was a penalty so what are you gonna go?
love the punt by the Vikings instead of the FG. Let the Raiders cover. But it was a bad punt. Still right move. TD beats you either way.
Scoring points is not rocket science
rooting for a 0-0 tie in MIN-LV
of course Jeudy didn't get his feet down in the EZ
bad reasoning in SF-SEA broadcast. Punt on 4th, then other team has the ball in two plays where they would have been had you failed to get the 1st D. But no, if they had moved the ball 50 yards from where they got it, they'd already have the TD.
of course Kadius Toney and Jerry Jeudy drop passes.
Quarterbacks don't matter
Bills are really hijacking the shit out of this game!
Ravens ending sucked. Had Keaton Mitchell and Tucker, thought I would get some point.
Actually 2-pt try I think was the right call in Jax-CLE