Week 7 Review: Looking Back At Projections
This week’s top random performers were:
- Jeff Wilson RB1
- Scotty Miller WR6
- Nelson Agholor WR7
- Harrison Bryant TE1
Predicting these players can be a fools-errand most of the time but what we can do is understand the ‘why’ of what happened so that we have a better chance of predicting the ‘what’ next time around.
As always, I’m not going to spend time working through waiver wire adds, or buy low/sell high candidates, but instead I’m going to take a retrospective look at the assumptions I used for my weekly projections. I’ll pick out where I was significantly different, where I was close, and some of the players that sit at either end of some key stats on the week.
Let’s get into the Week 7 review.
Week 7 Review: Team play counts
Key Stats
- Highest: Seattle Seahawks (82 plays)
- Lowest: Carolina Panthers (43 plays)
- Average: 64 plays
The Facts
- Seattle and Arizona played deep in to OT so it’s not really reflective of much that they’re at the top. The most plays from four quarters was the Los Angeles Chargers
- The Chargers have the 4th highest average plays per game behind Dallas, Atlanta and Cincinnati
- 58-percent of teams are running more than 60 plays (same as last week) and the average number of plays has been 62 or 63 every week since week 2 (2019 average was 61)
- 13 teams hit the over on their Vegas implied totals in week 7 and 54-percent (15 of 28) were within one score (up from 39-percent in week 6). 13 teams were within 5 points and 7 teams were within a field goal
- Two teams ran less than 50 plays in week 7 and another three only just topped that mark
- Dallas have been one of the highest marks in play totals but only managed 54 in week 7, their lowest of the year
- Houston maintained their position as the team with the lowest average play volume but they’re catching up to Baltimore
- Tennessee’s 54 plays is their lowest of the season, closer to their 2019 season average of 55.8
- Pittsburgh’s average plays this season (66.5) is almost 10 plays higher than their 2019 average. Thank goodness for Big Ben
- Carolina’s play count in week 7 was their lowest since week 6 of 2013
- New England have had their two lowest play counts of the season in the last two weeks and week 7 was their lowest since week 3 2018
- Kansas City ran less than 50 plays for the first time this season and only the 3rd time since the start of last season. We can put that one on the snow and the defense
The Results
- The average number of plays across the league was pretty much perfect and 16 of 28 teams (57-percent) were within 10 plays (down by three from last week)
- 8 were within 5 plays and I was 1 out on the Texans.
Week 7 Review: Pass Attempts
Key Stats
- Highest: Seattle Seahawks (50 attempts – 63-percent passing)
- Lowest: Dallas Cowboys (22 attempts – 46-percent passing)
- Average: 36 pass attempts
The Facts
- Seattle and Arizona again got boosted by a long OT period. Pittsburgh were next highest with 49 pass attempts
- Dallas could not get anything going with a leaky O-line and a backup QB
- Detroit’s 63-percent pass rate was their highest of the season so far
- Jacksonville had their lowest pass rate since week 1
- San Francisco went one better and had their lowest of the season
- 64-percent is the highest average pass rate for a team this season and that belongs to Chicago. If you take out the games Trubisky started, that jumps all the way up to 70-percent
- The lowest average pass rate belongs to Baltimore with 48-percent, with New England (49-percent) the only other team below 50-percent
I’m going to keep this note here every week – this metric will always be gamescript driven so the trick is going to be getting that right. The reliance is still on the Vegas over/under and implied team totals to drive my projection totals so getting that right is going to help to get closer.
The Results
- A whopping 23 of 28 teams had a pass-ratio within 10-percent of projection (up from 14 last week)
- 17 were less than 5-percent off (up from 5); and 3 within 1-percent (up from 1)
- Two perfect hits with the Raiders and Rams pass-percentages
- Biggest miss for the week was the Washington Football Team. I knew Dallas were bad but I didn’t expect them to be able to run 61-percent of the time
Rush Attempts
Key Stats
- Highest: Washington (39 attempts)
- Lowest: Carolina (14 attempts)
- Average: 26 rush attempts
The Facts
- Only two teams had less than 20 rush attempts in week 7 (down from 5 in week 6 and 5 in week 5)
- Chicago have refused to run the ball since Foles took over as QB, with bottom two rush attempts for three out of four weeks
- Washington had their highest rush total of the year in a divisional blowout game
- 49ers, Rams and Broncos all remain rush-heavy offenses at the top of the charts
Intended Air Yards per Attempt (IAY/A)
Key Stats
- Highest: Cam Newton (11.3 yards per attempt)
- Lowest: Matt Ryan (3.7 yards per attempt)
- Average: 7.6 Intended Air Yards per Attempt
The Facts
- I’m lying AGAIN, Jarvis Landry, Brett Kern (who?) and Ben DiNucci had higher but three or less pass attempts isn’t a sample size
- Cam Newton‘s 11.3 IAY/A is his highest since this stat became a thing in 2018. It was low volume so a few deep throws skew the number
- Similarly, Nick Foles‘ 11.2 IAY/A is the first time he has hit double-digits since 2018. His wasn’t low volume, it was just Foles slinging deep and missing Darnell Mooney every time I looked up
- Drew Lock had his lowest of the season after back-to-back career highs, reflecting his shift to targeting his tight ends
- Deshaun Watson‘s 6.4 IAY/A is his lowest since week 11 2018. Lots of Randall Cobb in week 7
- Matt Ryan had a monumentally low 3.7 IAY/A. That’s lower than any season-long IAY/A numbers you’ll see for any QB from the last few years and is not what we’d expect from Ryan. When Julio is the main target and you’re throwing to him with an aDOT (average depth of target) of only 2.4 yards, that’s what happens. Throw short to Julio, let him do the rest
The Results
- 68-percent of QBs were within 2 yards of projection (up from 65-percent last week)
- 43-percent were within a yard (up from 32-percent)
- 6 QBs within 0.5 yards and only 0.1 yards off on Herbert, Murray and Mayfield
Targets
Top Targets
| 1 | Tyler Lockett | 20 |
| 2 | Davante Adams | 16 |
| 3 | Diontae Johnson | 15 |
| 4 | JuJu Smith-Schuster | 14 |
| = 5 | Tyler Boyd | 13 |
| = 5 | Keenan Allen | 13 |
Target Market Share (Percentage of Team’s Target Share)
| 1 | Terry McLaurin | 50 |
| 2 | Davante Adams | 47 |
| = 3 | Tyler Lockett | 42 |
| = 3 | Tyreek Hill | 42 |
| = 5 | Corey Davis | 33 |
| = 5 | Amari Cooper | 33 |
A few other notable receivers who saw double digit targets and around 30-percent market share:
- AJ Green – two weeks in a row with double-digit targets, getting 13 targets in week 7
- Cole Beasley – 12 targets, 29-percent market share
- Randall Cobb – 10 targets, 26-percent market share. Is this the ex-Cowboys slot receiver show?!
- DeAndre Hopkins – 12 targets, 27-percent market share
- Corey Davis – 10 targets, 33-percent market share
Carries
Top Carries
| 1 | Todd Gurley | 23 |
| 2 | James Robinson | 22 |
| = 3 | James Conner | 20 |
| = 3 | Derrick Henry | 20 |
| = 3 | Antonio Gibson | 20 |
Carry Market Share (Percentage of Team’s Carry Share)
| 1 | Todd Gurley | 88 |
| 2 | Derrick Henry | 87 |
| = 3 | Kareem Hunt | 82 |
| = 3 | David Montgomery | 82 |
| 5 | James Robinson | 81 |
Notable additions:
- Jamaal Williams – 19 attempts, 70-percent market share with Aaron Jones injured
- Melvin Gordon – 17 attempts but only 52-percent market share
- Giovani Bernard – 13 attempts, 62-percent market share with Joe Mixon injured
- Boston Scott – only 12 attempts and 46-percent market share with Miles Sanders injured
Week 7 Review: Summary
- When Vegas get close with their implied team totals, we can get much closer with the volume projections
- Most of the QBs have some predictability to them now
- Week 7 was the week of slot receiver volume
- We have some definite workhorse backups when the starters go down
The trade deadline could be huge this year with so many injuries, and that’s going to turn everything on its head.
Be ready to adapt, be ready to learn from ‘why’ things happened, and be ready to adjust the ‘what’ for the next round of projections.
