Angles hits inboxes on Thursday mornings throughout the regular season; you can also find Angles in The Scroll on Thursday afternoons.
OWS Fam!!!
(whispers) “We’re rounding into form”
Following the Binks channel the last few weeks, the OWS community is popping up more and more on the leaderboards. This isn’t a surprise. We talked a few weeks back about how four(ish) games of data is a significant sample size. Though we’re still early in the NFL season, around the one-month mark we start to see teams show their true selves. Then we get some data to back it up, and can identify trends, regression opportunities, and more. Thus, success is following, and YLTSI!
By my count in Week 5, we had at least a handful of DK Milly sweats (including a 10th place finish!), and peppered the leaderboards in other flagship contests as well. (Collectively) We are rounding into form.
Is there any exercise more futile in a football context than looking at a team’s schedule in the preseason and laying out W’s and L’s? Maybe NFL mock drafts? But that’s all I’ve got.
It’s a waste of time and effort to look at a team’s schedule and run through it game by game to come up with a final record, and with how the 2024 NFL season has played out thus far, this feeling of mine is more reinforced. There’s no way you pencil in the Giants for a win at Seattle and “August You” does not expect the Ravens to lose at home to the Raiders with a QB (Minshew) who is now benched three weeks later. We don’t know what injuries will take place, what coaching adjustments and changes may transpire, and what each week’s situation will look like (e.g., Giants traveling to Seattle when they are on a short week after playing the physical Lions).
Taking micro events (one game) and projecting them out as one event is a difficult exercise. It’s futile because of the variables at play. But why do we do them? Because we can more accurately predict long-term outcomes. Sticking with the Seahawks season for a moment, sure they just lost a crushing game to the Giants, who will likely be mediocre at best this season with low odds of making the playoffs. We may not have been able to predict that outcome, but we can predict that it’s likely Seattle will pull off an upset of their own at some point later this season to balance this out. We can assess the long-term prospects (generally) but the peaks and troughs along the way are harder to identify.
Another brief example of this is the Bengals season through five games. 1-4 is #notgreat. Did anyone have them losing to the Commanders AND the Patriots at home?! Nope. But, believe what you want about Cincinnati’s season-long outlook, and the smart money would say most of us could be within a few games of predicting their final record (say 8-9 to 11-6).
The point is this…stick to the long-term visions while predicting one-game samples. You have to consider the context and current point on the continuums of NFL seasons to think through what could happen in any game. We’ll always have outliers, but while the full season records should generally have some sense of normalcy (we get at least 60% or so of the same teams in the playoffs from the previous season), the week-to-week outcomes will vary.
We write and talk about angles every week on OWS. And this week we’re going to lean into that here to prime you for the week. Every one of these teams is at a point of their season (thanks for clarifying!). There’s the typical or standard expectations and then there’s at least one scenario we can call out based on what we’ve seen and what we are expecting over a longer sample. Let’s run through it!
The two undefeated teams left in the NFL are on a bye this week: the Chiefs and Vikings. We’re also down the Dolphins and Rams, as they rest. Off the main slate are the 49ers // Seahawks // Jaguars // Browns // Bengals // Giants // Bills // and Jets. Well, using Seattle and Cincy in the intro now feels bad. You can think through which players won’t be included in our pools here as we head into a second consecutive 10-game slate featuring….
The Baltimore Ravens (28.5) as nearly a touchdown favorites hosting their stately neighbors, from Washington DC (22.5). Lamar Jackson and Jayden Daniels will surely find themselves in side-by-side graphics on more than one occasion and the similarities seem appropriate. After watching what Baltimore has done to the Bills and Bengals defenses in back-to-back weeks, public consensus will never be higher than against Dan Quinn and the Commanders. There will be high confidence in the Ravens succeeding offensively once again, but remember that despite last week’s tournament-winning shootout, they would optimally like to win games on the ground. Washington, similarly, would like to win football games with their QB and RBs through a dynamic running game. Daniels’ pass attempts through five games: 24, 29, 23 (@ CIN), 30, 25.
Detroit (27.5) heads to Dallas (24.5) in what sets up as the likely other game to top the ownership charts this week. For more reasons than one, the Lions seem to always be potent on offense, stout against the run, and impotent in coverage, which can breed high-scoring games. The Lions have a big rest advantage coming off their bye and the health of Dallas’ defensive line looms. I’d expect much of the public here to align with Detroit, especially if Micah Parsons sits again, which seems likely. Interestingly, we haven’t had the 2023 Cowboys offensive outputs at home yet in 2024 with mostly the same personnel, so maybe this is the week.
The Falcons (at Carolina) and Packers (vs. Arizona) come in with healthy 26.5 point totals against their foes. The Panthers seem like the ideal matchup for any QB to get right, or in Kirk Cousins’ case, continue a hot streak. The way the Bears handled Carolina last week will make it seem like Atlanta will do what they want here. Could they decide this is the get-right Bijan Robinson game? Or will they overthink and come in overconfident and get punched in the mouth by an inferior opponent?
For Green Bay, they had the good fortune of a win last week against the Rams when they had an incredibly low net success rate but made up for it with chunk gains. Jordan Love has not looked great since coming back, but he should have a healthier WR room for this one. The law of averages will still say an unlucky game will follow a lucky one. Do what you will with that! The Green Bay defense is still not at full health and the Cardinals had some turnover fortune but also a solid second-half performance against the 49ers in Week 5.
Beyond these four games, some other notes:
My statement to you heading into Week 6 is simple: Think about how these games on this slate fit into the story of an NFL season. There will be unforeseen outcomes, there will be rare performances, and although we can’t predict those with certainty, we can prepare for them.
Lean into the variance, find where you agree or disagree with the “face value” of a game. And build. To. Win.
We’ll see you at the top of the leaderboards!
~Larejo
