Divisional Round Saturday Football: Advanced Reviews
All the advanced stats, visualizations & commentary for Broncos-Bills & Seahawks-49ers
The adjusted scores quantify team play quality, with emphasis on stable metrics (success rate) and downplaying higher variance events (turnovers, special team, penalties, fumble luck, etc). Adjusted expected points added (EPA), in conjunction with opportunity-based metrics like total plays and drives, projects adjusted points. Adjusted scores have been tested against actual scores and offer slightly better predictive ability, though their primary benefit is explanatory.
All 2025-2022 and historical Adjusted Scores and other site metrics are available in a downloadable format to paid subscribers via Google Sheet.
Find previous advanced reviews here
** Adjusted Scores table:
“Pass” - Pass rate over expectation (based on context of each play and historical averages
“Success” - Success rate on offense, a key metric in adjusted score vs actual
“H & A” - Home or away team
DEN (-1.5) vs BUF
I’m not surprised to see that the adjusted scores had the Buffalo Bills as the better team in their loss to the Denver Broncos. Normally if a team has a -4 turnover differential and was in the game through overtime, they were considerably better by more predictive measures, like offensive success rate - the Bills were at 51% to the Broncos at 44%.
But games aren’t played on spreadsheets - or so I hear - and turnovers have an enormous impact on results, with the Broncos’ advantage translating into +13.6 EPA. That numbers is actually less than you’d expect from +4 in turnover differential, as two of the Bills’ turnovers had relatively low impacts on EPA: Josh Allen’s fumble at the end of the first half (-2.0 EPA) and the controversial almost-catch-turned-interception throw to Brandin Cooks in overtime (-1.2 EPA).
I’m ambivalent about whether the refs, and their abbreviated review process, made the right call, but the most compelling rationale I saw for the interception is that the play likely would have been ruled incomplete if cooks lost the ball while rolling over, meaning Cooks didn’t have complete control and it was still live when Ja’Quan McMillian ripped it away.
