When I first looked at the Week 13 NFL card, one matchup stood out: Patriots at Chargers. Bill Belichick versus Anthony Lynn. What is this kind of coaching mismatch worth in terms of the point spread?
Here are my thoughts, along with those of a few other bettors -- plus my current top 10 teams, compared to ESPN's Week 13 Power Rankings.
Odds courtesy of Caesars Sportsbook by William Hill and subject to change.
New England Patriots at Los Angeles Chargers (PK, 47)
When this point spread settled in at Chargers -1 on Sunday afternoon, it got my attention. I thought it was a little low. I did my projection and made it Chargers -1.7, but I hadn't updated my numbers to include Week 12 results yet. The Patriots, despite their 20-17 win over the Cardinals, were outplayed. They were outgained 298 yards to 179. They threw for 69 yards on 18 attempts, to go along with two interceptions. They lost the turnover battle as well. And this was against a Cardinals defense ranked below average in both expected points added (EPA) and success rate.
My updated projection ended up being Chargers -2.3. But the last thing I wanted to do -- after watching Lynn choose to run the ball twice without any timeouts inside the 5-yard line with less than 30 seconds left, down 10 points to the Bills -- was back the Chargers.
Then it hit me. Lynn is going up against Belichick, the GOAT, this week. And the Patriots are still vying for a playoff spot. Is this the biggest coaching mismatch we have seen this season?
I asked four other NFL bettors that I respect what their projected point spreads were, and whether they were trying to quantify the difference between the coaches. All four said they made the Chargers -3 to -3.3. All four said they would struggle to bet the Chargers at -1. The spread is PK now, and I imagine their position hasn't changed.
Rob Pizzola thinks it's extremely challenging to quantify the impact of a head coach. "I do think there is a hidden factor there," Pizzola said. "I adjusted the Patriots under Belichick for years. I have subjective coaching values built into what I do right now, but there is the possibility that coaching affects the game much more than I am even accounting for."
I have used coaching values for years in my college football work. The impact of a head coach, or even a high-level offensive or defensive coordinator, can make a huge difference in college. With the NFL, however, I have assumed the gaps aren't nearly as wide. But the fact that Pizzola has been doing his own coaching valuation in the NFL, and still thinks he may not be weighing it enough, is telling to me.
So how can we objectively assess the impact of a head coach? We can look at ATS win-loss records to see if he regularly outperforms expectations, but there are so many other factors at play and the sample sizes are generally small. Pizzola reminded me that the Patriots recently had a decade-long run when they were outperforming their actual numbers by about 1.5 points per game. "You don't go an entire decade exceeding your expected points so consistently without there being something there," Pizzola said. "I was attributing that to some form of coaching."
Let's go back to that Cardinals-Patriots box score from last week. How did a New England team that was outgained so heavily, lost the turnover battle, and was called for the same amount of penalties win that game? Let's look at it this way: It was Belichick versus Kliff Kingsbury, a second-year head coach who continues to make end-of-game decisions that cost his team.
"ClevTA" is one of my favorite NFL follows on Twitter. He works with Warren Sharp, and I was curious if he does anything in terms of assessing coaching values. "I haven't quantified it, but there are specific cases where I pause or give greater value to coaching over others," he said. "Maybe one coach is especially good coming off of a bye, or if the importance of the game plays a factor for one team and not the other. Oh, and it's going to matter much more in a game with a close spread than one that the market expects to be a blowout."
This is a great point. And there's probably a reason these Lynn-led Chargers teams consistently lose one-score games.
I think we can narrow down a coach's impact to two aspects of a game. The first is how well a coach prepares his team. The second is how effectively a coach can make in-game adjustments and decisions.
You can be good at one and not the other. Rams coach Sean McVay designs arguably the best offensive scheme and game plan in the NFL each week. But he is probably one of the worst coaches in the league making in-game adjustments and decisions.
According to ESPN Stats and Information, the difference between the Rams' offensive efficiency in the first half compared to the second half, for example, is worse than 21 other teams in the league this season. The majority of the 10 teams dropping off worse than the Rams are benefiting from game scripts tied to big leads they're sitting on. The Rams have been trailing or leading by just one score in 10 of the 11 second halves they've played, yet they still struggle to move the ball like they do in first halves.
Now let's go back to Patriots-Chargers. The Chargers' defensive EPA drops more significantly in the second half than every other team in the league. They have been 7.06 EPA worse defensively in second halves this season. The next biggest drop-off is only 2.8 EPA! And 21 teams actually improve defensively in the second half.
This 2020 Patriots team is far from Belichick's most talented. But Belichick is still doing his thing. The Pats' offense is 3.06 EPA better in the second half this season, third best in the league.
The underlying season-long numbers show value on the Chargers at PK for bettors, but I'm going to wait and see how the first half goes. The coaching mismatch is more likely to play out in the second half. And if you can muster the courage to actually bet on the Chargers, I'd stick to the first half.
ESPN Power Rankings
Steelers (10-0)
Chiefs (10-1)
Saints (9-2)
Packers (8-3)
Bills (8-3)
Seahawks (8-3)
Titans (8-3)
Buccaneers (7-5)
Colts (7-4)
Rams (7-4)
Preston's power rankings
Chiefs
Steelers (+2.3)
Saints (+2.5)
Ravens (+3.1)
Seahawks (+3.8)
Packers (+3.9)
Buccaneers (+4.1)
Rams (+4.4)
Titans (+5.4)
Bills (+5.6)
I started getting flak a few weeks ago for having the Ravens at No. 2 after back-to-back losses to the Patriots and Titans. But the betting markets still had Baltimore as a six-point favorite at home over Tennessee.
Even now, after dropping the Ravens to No. 4, the Steelers and Saints would barely be favorites over them. Take a look at the opening line for the Ravens-Steelers Week 12 matchup in Pittsburgh, before the COVID-19 news -- it was Steelers -3.5. I probably would have bet on Baltimore.
The team that gets left out of my top 10 is the Colts, but I have them at 11, in a similar tier as the Titans and Bills.