Week 16 Christmas Day: Advanced Reviews

The Ravens defense turns over and then shuts down the league's dominant offense. Lamar Jackson the MVP leader, though probably not deservedly

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

KC-LV

The Chiefs lose one of the weirder games of the year. The Raiders defense scores more points than their offense, and they didn’t complete a pass in the second half, yet they still won the game. The Raiders did run the ball successfully, but still finished with sub-25th percentile offensive efficiency by EPA per play.

We keep waiting for the Chiefs offense to return to normality, but there were no signs of that in this game. Their passing game having 42nd percentile efficiency, while accounting for a massively negative pick-6, isn’t that bad. But their rushing attack posted the worst efficiency of any team over the past two seasons (-0.96 EPA per play).

Even the positives of the Chiefs passing game were few and far between, and heavily reliant on Patrick Mahomes to “do something”, including a number of scrambles that added +7.4 EPA.

Because the Raiders didn’t turn the ball, and didn’t even attempt to make big plays offensively, they’re completely absent from the top-10 highest impact plays of the game. Unsurprisingly, the two Raiders defensive scores were the biggest plays of the game, costing the Chiefs 14.6 expected points and over 45% in win probability.

It was a very bad game for Aidan O’Connell but he wasn’t asked to do much after the Raiders defense took control of the game. O’Connell only completed nine of 21 passes for 62 yards (3.0 yards per attempt), and took two sacks for 14 lost yards. Raiders interim coach Antonio Pierce may have clinched a head coaching job next year with the win, though I’d be lying if I said the process of how this game played out is a sustainable winning formula. That said, the defense did play well and hard, plus cash-poor owner Mark Davis might not mind getting a discount on his new coaches salary with Josh McDaniels’ contract still good through 2026.

The pick-6 killed Mahomes’ efficiency in what would have been an awesome effort to just have some positive EPA. But you have to be majorly worried as a Chiefs fan about the fact that Mahomes’ passing EPA was barely positive when removing interceptions.

The No. 1 seed is dad for the Chiefs, and the only way they won’t be hosting a Wild Card game is if they lose out against the Bengals and Chargers, while the Broncos win-out against the Chargers and Raiders. They could conceivably miss the playoffs altogether if a long string of results all go against them, but my numbers put that at a <3% chance.

PHI-NYG

The Giants and Tyrod Taylor made the game interesting at the end, cutting the lead to two point with a pick-6 at the end of the third quarter, but the game was never really close according to the fundamentals of how the teams played. The Eagles -15.0 EPA disadvantage kept the game close, especially the aforementioned pick-6 that alone was -10.2 EPA.

Outside of the big mistakes, the Eagles offense was consistently positive (50.6% success rate) and had a high efficiency running and passing. The Giants didn’t do much through the air outside of a 69-yard touchdown to Darius Slayton, though they did run the ball well.

Not sure if this is the end for Tommy DeVito, but we should have known the entire time that Taylor was the better bet to play well in any given week. DeVito was good/okay in a couple games, and very poor outside of those outings. Taylor is the definitional low-floor, low-ceiling option that could have been useful in a game where the Eagles shot themselves in the foot multiple times.

Jalen Hurts had solid numbers, despite the one huge negative. With the 49ers loss to the Ravens, the Eagles are now, somewhat, in the mix of the No. 1 seed (~15% chance). To get the Wild Card bye, the Eagles would need most likely need to win-out against the Cardinals and at the Giants, and have the 49ers and Lions lose at least one game each in the last two weeks. They have a game lead of the Cowboys for the division and will need to match their record the final two weeks to secure a home game.

SF-BAL

The game of the week was somewhat of a disappointment. It wasn’t so much for Ravens fans, but for neutral observers who wanted to see the best offense in football go against one of the best defenses, and two other good units facing each other. You can say the Ravens elite defense won the battle against the 49ers elite offense, but it wasn’t that simple.

The 49ers offense started the game red-hot, other than an unfortunate propensity to turn the ball over. The 49ers averaged 14.8 yards per play on the first drive which ended in an interception, 5.2 yards per play on the second drive (field goal), and 9.5 yards per play on the third (another interception).

That’s three drives averaging an elite 8.6 yards per play and only three points to show for it. Then the 49ers suffered their second tipped interception, before coming back with another really strong effort, going 67 yards in only six plays for the touchdown. The 49ers would have definitely been the better team fundamentally by the adjusted scores at halftime, but were down by four points, even with two coming from a safety.

The second half was a different story, with the largely moribund Ravens offense coming to life, and the 49ers offense hitting the double whammy of continued turnovers and just being flat-out bad in terms of success rate and yards per play. The Ravens added two more touchdowns on their first two second-half drives, but only needs to travel a total of 53 yards to get those 14 points.

In fact, the Ravens only averaged gaining roughly 35 yards in their three touchdown drives, and scored a field goal after losing three yards on another drive. The MVP of this game was the Ravens defense, even if stuff like the tipped interceptions had a healthy portion of luck on top of good play to break up the passes.

Lamar Jackson will be the new MVP odds leader, and this game was very typical of how he got to being second in odds going into Monday night. He was good, not elite, yet the defense gave him a lot of short fields to accumulate points. But his +0.18 EPA per play (around 68th percentile performance) was actually a bit better than what he’d done previously this year, and he got dinged for a weird ref-induced safety in these numbers.

This was one of Jackson’s best games, but that says something that he only had great and not elite numbers. You’d expect an MVP candidate to stack several games of +0.30 EPA per play or better, and we haven’t seen that from Jackson. In fact, if Jackson wins MVP and finishes with similar efficiency to hit current pace (+0.11 EPA per play), it would be the lowest number for any quarterback MVP winner since EPA data is available (2000+), and his currently ranking at 12th would be a complete anomaly, with Cam Newton winning with the 6th highest EPA per play the only MVP not in the top-2.

This loss will sting for the 49ers and the media cycle will be vicious, but the larger picture for their Super Bowl hopes is mostly solid. They are still likely to get the No. 1 seed in the NFC (85% probability), and I don’t think this will have a huge affect on their fundamental power rankings. They’ll still be No. 1 when I publish them tomorrow.

The Ravens got a huge edge of the AFC field for the No. 1 seed with this victory. The Dolphins could still take the No. 1 seed from the Ravens if they beat them next week, then defeat the Bills in Week 18. The Ravens don’t project as much of a better team, but they will be at home, and face a much easier final opponent in the Steelers at home.