Week 15 TNF, Raiders-Chargers: Advanced Review

A record-breaking offensive performance for the Chargers, with Brandon Staley fate now sealed

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 2023 & 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

LV-LAC

For the second time this season, a team has put up 60-plus points, but this game reads a lot closer by the adjusted scores. Perhaps the Raiders took their foot of the gas a little, but their coach didn’t indicate that was happening, despite being up 42-0 at haltime.

Offensive success rates actually weren’t hugely different, but everything that could go against the Chargers did. They lost four of five fumbles (-26.3 EPA), plus were the victim of an amazing, one-handed pick-6 (-6.8 EPA). All of those mistakes turned a decently successful offense into one with a 2nd percentile efficiency, and a loss of 9.2 expected points in special teams and penalties.

The Raiders offense was good with 95th percentile efficiency, but probably not as good as you’d expect considering the final score. The Raiders 63 points were highly juiced by field position gained on turnovers and two defense scores.

The game was so out of hand, so early that seven of the top-10 impactful plays by EPA had no effect on win probability, which was already 100% for the Raiders well before halftime.

Justin Herbert was playing a lot better than the Chargers record indicated going into this game, but I’m not going to overreact to the results of one game to say this indicates some sort of massive extra value of Herbert that isn’t simply indicated in his numbers.

Easton Stick had poor efficiency overall, but it was completely due to turnover losses. The play-by-play fundamentals of the dropback passing game were okay, with a 48.6% success rate and +13.3 EPA on non-interception pass attempts. Now, nearly 50% of that total was on one broken-coverage, 79-yard touchdown to Josh Palmer, but still it wasn’t as bad of a passing attack as the overall numbers.

Aidan O’Connell averaged a very solid +0.32 EPA per play, limited mistakes, but his accuracy wasn’t great with a -7.3% CPOE. Coming off of a bagel offensive performance the prior week, this was a fun story for a team going nowhere, though way out of the tankathon race to get a top quarterback at 6-8 (10th worst record).