Week 2 Sunday Early Window, Part One: Advanced Reviews

All the advanced stats, visualizations and commentary for Ravens-Raiders, Panthers-Chargers, Cowboys-Saints, Lions-Bucs and Packers-Colts

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 2024-2022 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

BAL-LV

For the second week in a row, the biggest favorite of the week goes down at home. The Raiders were 9-point dogs going into the game, with the betting moneyline giving them an implied win probability of around 20%. Well, things with a 20% probability tend to happen around one of five times. The adjusted scores didn’t see the Raiders win as a fluke, but also didn’t see them as a superior team.

Both teams were about equally successful on a play-by-play basis, aligned with a league-average 44% rate of positive EPA. But the Raiders leveraged an enormous 13.6 EPA advantage on special teams and penalties to win the game. The Ravens were whistled 11 times for 109 yards, versus 3-for-15 for the Silver & Black.

All-world Justin Tucker missed his second kick in as many weeks, now 0-for-2 from 50-plus yards this year. A 24-yard punt by the Ravens Jordan Stout and a five-yard penalty set the Raiders up on the Ravens 43-yard line with 3:54 remaining in a tie game, ultimately leading to the game-winning field goal.

The Raiders were forced to win the game through the air, struggling with 6th percentile run efficiency. They dropped back to pass on 74% of their offensive plays, hitting the 55th percentile in passing efficiency. The Ravens were mediocre in both phases of the game, leaning less heavily on the run (60%), with Lamar Jackson providing little value on only three designed runs (-0.9 EPA).

Gardner Minshew’s accuracy was excellent (+15.9% CPOE), but he was his worst enemy with an interception (-3.4 EPA) and five sacks for 43 yards lost (-8.9 EPA). Minshew has always been the prototype of a “low upside” quarterback from a tools perspective, but his numbers usually combine good value creation with bigger losses.

Jackson was net negative on the ground, appearing to dial back the urgency to make plays with his legs that we saw Week 1 against the Chiefs. He scrambled twice this week, versus 11 times on kickoff Thursday night. These were the type of dropback results from Jackson that would have still produced wins a year ago with the Ravens defense (and special teams) firing on all cylinders, but not enough this week.

The Ravens have fallen all the way to seventh in mid-Sunday Super Bowl odds, below the Chiefs, Bills and Texans in the AFC alone. The Ravens will fall below the Bengals too if they win (results pending as of publish).

CAR-LAC

The Week 1 offensive results for the Panthers were enough to bring the panic meter to “red”, and now we’re in full-out break the glass and insert Andy Dalton territory. I had to adjust the coloring scale for the visualization above to incorporate the Panthers’ 15.6% offensive success rate, the third lowest figure for any offense in a game since 2000 (that’s a sample of 12,924 offensive performances). Somehow, the Panthers underperformed their -23 point differential in the adjusted scores, something you never see when the margins are that wide.