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FiveHourMarathon  Listen to Pierre  2yr ago (text post)   1897 thread views

MONDAY MORNING MOTTErBack SPORTS THREAD

I know there are some other sports fans on here, and I thought a discussion thread might be fun, and Monday is the natural day coming after the weekend football (both varieties) games and without a side thread scheduled. What's going on with your favorite teams/players/etc? What fun media controversies in the microcosm of sports can tell us something about the broader world? What culture war bullshit do you want to discuss in a sporting context?

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I've been following football pretty heavily this year, primarily because my mother has been and I like to watch the games with her and my father. My team, the Eagles, have been way outperforming expectations, and it's what you want to see, but on a meta level I can't help but look ahead and predict that they're going to be massively overrated going into the late season. Look at this schedule, they don't play a single team in the top half of TheRinger power rankings until the Cardinals; and they only play two real contenders all season in the Packers and the Titans. Any given Sunday and all that, but the Eagles could easily have a 13-14 win season while losing all their games against teams that finish with winning records. It's remarkable how the Dak Prescott injury really throws the Eagles season into easy mode for now; they're strong favorites in the division and likely to get homefield for part of the playoffs as well.

So if you have some kind of opportunity to short the Eagles on a bet late season, do it, they're going to look much better in the regular season than in the playoffs, even if they are a legit team. I'm all aboard the Jalen Hurts and the three batmen train, but they're going to look great against bottom feeders all season and then run into a bunch of pros in the playoffs and have to learn to hit a higher level; much like they did with the Bucs last season.

So now that the Eagles have made the Super Bowl,

Any thoughts on how this post played out?

Good job predicting 13-14 wins!

From this vantage point they seemed to have gotten pretty good luck with their playoff draw, between a Giants team that seemed like a good matchup, then a 49ers team that promptly ran out of QBs.

I guess the Eagles were a 2.5 point favorite going into the 49ers game, were you motivated to short them on that line? (fwiw, I was somewhat favoring the 49ers going into that game, not a sports bettor generally though, so my wallet wasn't behind my thought processes).

Looks like the Super Bowl opened as a pick 'em, and moved to Eagles by 1.5.

You motivated to short the Eagles now? Have they converted you?

So I was 100% wrong on virtually every point. I expected the division to be a breeze, in reality the NFCE wound up having zero losing teams. Where I was wrong:

-- I underestimated the Eagles, but I also overestimated the rest of the league. This was a historic season of teams that should have been good failing. I did not think this would be the year that Brady, Rodgers, Stafford, Carr, Murray, and Wilson would all suddenly suck. There's a good chance if those guys all replicated their past seasons, the playoff picture is likely very different. Throw in that the 49ers were on their third, and then their fourth, and then out of, quarterbacks; along with injuries to NFC starting quarterbacks in NOLA and Arizona. If you had told me at the time of writing that post that the most accomplished quarterback in the NFC Divisional Round was Dak Prescott, I would have reassessed my view of the Eagles chances. Hell, consider if Garropolo had been the starter for SF Sunday night, then Purdy would have been the backup, that game would have been a hell of a lot harder. My assumptions about the Eagles running into a team like last year's Bucs relied on a team like last year's Bucs existing! You have to go back years to see a Divisional round with a QB group this "bad" in terms of past accomplishments. You always had to get through some mix of Brady, Rodgers, Brees, Wilson to get to the Super Bowl. I'm using QB as a simple proxy for teams, but it works pretty well: you just didn't see well organized veteran teams this year, which I think is the Eagles' weakness.

-- Right now the line on the big game seems to be bouncing between small advantage either side and even money. If Mahomes was 100% healthy, I think the Chiefs are favorites by at least 3 points. This is a straight bet on Mahomes' ankle health. Mahomes isn't 100% healthy, and the Eagles happen to have a demonstrably destructive pass rush. Matchups make fights. Travis Kelce is a hell of a Tight End, but he's a bad-mediocre blocker when he is even asked to block, who is gonna stop Reddick and Sweat? The Eagles weakness has been teams running on them. Can Pacheco carry the Chiefs? There's a good chance that the Eagles win this game against a visibly hobbled Mahomes (if not from the kickoff, he very well might be slow to get up after getting buried under Cox, Reddick, and Sweat in the first half, the Chiefs have a worse O-Line than SF and the Eagles got hits on half the drop-backs on Sunday); afterward there's a reasonable argument that no Super Bowl win has ever been cheaper. But flags fly forever. After a very well-earned win with Foles, a cheap one would be funny just to watch the Seethe.

-- I didn't realize that the Eagles had essentially invented a new play, almost certain to be banned next year based on a lot of complaints from other teams, the QB sneak/tank where they just SHOVE the QB into the endzone. No one does it quite like Philly, with the pro-bowl O-Line and a quarterback that squats 600. It really allows for reliable fourth down conversions other teams don't get. The Eagles were 4th in 4th down conversion percentage, but they had double the attempts that the other top-5 teams had. Being able to reliably gain 1-2 yards might not seem like much, but it meant that the team could play 4 down football aggressively. Getting 3 yard carries on 1st-3rd down put them in position for a quick sneak; this is great clock control. It allowed for shots downfield on 3rd and 1, which lead to some touchdowns. It generally intimidated the other team, which is good for everything.

-- Turns out Jalen Hurts is a national treasure, and a Super Bowl between Hurts and Mahomes represents significant moral and racial progress for the United States as a country from the days of Brady throwing to Aaron Hernandez. I really think that the leadership he showed, along with Kelce, helped drive this team. Tra Thomas talked about it on his podcast; when you see your QB willing to go out there and take a big hit for a few yards, it inspires the whole team to go to war for him.

The upshot of all this is, I'm just bad at predictions, my arrogance is showing. Even if the Eagles lose on Sunday to a team with the best Quarterback-Coach combo in the league, it's still hard to say they were overrated.

I think a lot of these power rankings suffer from the same problem that college rankings do; namely, that they stick too closely to preseason rankings regardless of what happens on the field. So a team like the Giants that's showing promise is going to be ranked behind the Bengals regardless of what happens on the field because we just know that the Giants are terrible and that the Bengals Super Bowl appearance wasn't a fluke. Take a look around the NFC and take stock of what you're actually contending with:

NFC East

You've already heavily implied that the Eagles are the best team in this division, especially with Dak out, and only one of their three wins was against a team from this division. The Commanders suck and the Cowboys don't have a QB. The Giants are an interesting proposition. The media has completely written them off as being terrible for the foreseeable future but they're 2–0 due to wins against mediocre teams (but unexpected wins nonetheless), and if they beat the Cowboys tonight it doesn't tell us anything else. So there's no real playoff competition here that the Eagles won't see during the regular season.

NFC North

The Eagles already beat 2 teams from this division and a third, the Bears, shouldn't be a problem. The Packers are a different story but they don't have a passing game so while I'd definitely call them a contender, they aren't scary enough to come across as a team you have to watch out for.

NFC South

The Falcons, Saints, and Panthers aren't going anywhere. Their offense looked anemic yesterday but that probably has something to do with all their wide receivers being out (and Cole Beasley being in), so I wouldn't count them out just yet. That being said, Tom Brady hasn't played particularly great so far, and there are rumors that he's having personal problems. With Godwin and Evans back I think they'll be good, but not some kind of juggernaut.

NFC West

The Seahawks aren't going anywhere. The Niners might, but I wouldn't be too worried about them. The Cardinals get a lot of hype, but they haven't looked good since their mid-season meltdown last year, and they couldn't get anything going yesterday. That leaves the Rams, the reigning Super Bowl Champions. They looked good yesterday against the Cardinals but their performance against the Saints last week was questionable and the Bills had them completely figured out in the season opener. I wouldn't count them out, but the evidence so far this season isn't looking too good.

My point is that I don't think the NFC has the kind of juggernaut that is going to tear through the playoffs an embarrass a team that only made it in on an easy schedule. If the Eagles get torn apart, it won't be until the Super Bowl, and even then only if Buffalo and possibly Miami or Kansas City are the opponent.

I'd love an Eagles/Chiefs "Revenge of Andy Reid" super bowl.

Agreed, I'm fairly confident (and the sports books seem to agree right now ) that the Eagles are going to win the division and probably get good seeding in the playoffs, only possible downside risks are like Saquon goes off (local kid) or Dak comes back playing better than originally expected. They could easily end up the #1 seed in the NFC! But the team lacks a certain, idk, professionalism that was on display in their playoff loss last year to the Bucs. I'm not sure I'd bet on the Eagles against the Bucs rematch in the playoffs (flashback to the Warren Sapp days). So far it seems Hurts took a big step forward, thanks to having more targets he has less tendency to force a pass to Smith or run the ball all the time; but you get in there against a real veteran playoff team they aren't going to make easy mistakes and they aren't going to give away points, I'm not sure. Maybe that doesn't happen, like you said, until the super bowl. Regardless I'll be getting high and cheering for them, the analysis doesn't matter in the end.

Who's your team?

I got a twitter follow recommendation for you, I've really enjoyed following @TheHonestNFL, pretty technical football heavy, claims to be an anonymous ex-NFL scout, (I supposed no one really know who you are on twitter, if he's bullshitting, he does a pretty convincing job of it). Anyway, a lot of the content he puts out is Eagles based.

(on a larger scale, expecting some regression to the mean and not overreacting to small sample sizes, are typical good ideas when considering the NFL)

Good luck this year!

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