Week 4 Monday Night Football: Advanced Reviews

All the advanced stats, visualizations and commentary for and Dolphins-Titans and Lions-Seahawks

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

MIA-TEN

Congrats to any non-Titans/Dolphins fans who made it through watching this one. The battle of Tyler Huntley versus Mason Rudolph wasn’t anyone’s expectation even a couple weeks ago, but we got it in primetime. The Titans deserved a significant win by the adjusted scores, mostly by being the less bad offense. The Dolphins did enjoy substantial late-down and special teams advantages, which explains why the adjusted score differential is a bit more narrow.

I guess you should expect too much for the Dolphins offense with Huntley off of the street to quarterback in a couple weeks. That said, they still have offensive weapons and Huntley had time to prepare to play, and the results were about as bad as they get: 3rd percentile EPA efficiency and a 28% success rate.

Mistakes litter the top of the high impact plays, along with big-EPA but meaningless-WPA (win probability added) plays coming in garbage time. Beyond special teams gains, the Titans drove their better efficiency through the running game, with Tony Pollard providing flat-ish EPA, plus a couple higher EPA gains from a Calvin Ridley run and Will Levis 3rd & 1 conversion.