Today’s Best Bets
Sam Choudhury
It’s Week 10 in the NFL. Do you know where your MVP is?
Handing out midseason awards isn’t about actual hardware or anything – no one celebrates being MVP in October. But it’s a good framework to reflect on what we’ve seen over the first 136 games of the season and try to figure out what we’ll see over the next 136. Will the Ravens will continue to lap the field in DVOA, or will they come crashing back to Earth? Will Mike McDaniels’ track team sputter out as the weather gets colder, or will Tyreek Hill break Calvin Johnson’s single-season receiving yardage record? Will the Cleveland Browns ever allow an opponent to pick up another first down again? Will the NFC have any teams in the top 10 in DVOA by the time the season is over? These are the great mysteries of our age.
So let’s take this opportunity to pause for a moment and look back at what we have seen. I’ll be handing out our midseason awards and talking about who will win the real ones at the end of the year — which isn’t always the same thing!
Also, if you want to see how things have changed in the past two months, here’s what Cale Clinton and I had to say about the awards before the season began. Suffice it to say that neither of us are leaning hard into our Coach of the Year picks of Matt LaFleur and Arthur Smith, but that’s part of the fun of making predictions — seeing who has utterly flopped after nine weeks.
Most Valuable Player
We’re a statistically inclined group here, and we believe in our numbers. We know that quarterbacks are the most valuable players in football, and should win this award barring some phenomenal, once-in-a-decade level performance from another skill position player. And we believe in our stats. All things being equal then, the default choice for MVP should be the player leading the league in passing DYAR. And so, your obvious choice for first-half MVP is Josh Allen. Moving on…
Well, no. Does it really feel like Allen is the MVP? You would expect the MVP quarterback to be leading a team that isn’t second in its division, and an offense that isn’t leading to calls for the coordinator to be fired. Allen and Sean McDermott took some subtle shots at the offense this week, with Allen seeming confused as to Buffalo’s lack of up-tempo offense and McDermott saying the offense just wasn’t scoring enough points. Despite all this, Buffalo is still second in offensive DVOA at 27.1% (and third over the last month at 18.3%), so there’s more smoke than fire here in terms of offensive problems for Buffalo. So why doesn’t Allen feel like an MVP candidate?
And it’s not just us. Allen isn’t just first in DYAR; he’s first in ESPN’s QBR, second in EPA per play, sixth in adjusted net yards – he’s even first in PFF grade and second in Derrek Klassen’s quarterback rankings if you prefer more subjective evaluations. This is the statistical profile of an MVP.
The league-leading nine interceptions are damaging his case, as Allen sometimes gets locked into Hero Ball mode. But all interceptions aren’t made equal, and those picks could have been worse. He’s leading the league with an aDOT of 29.2 yards on his interceptions, and a full third of them have been deep shots on third-and-long. Those are the sort of high-reward, minimum-risk passes that you’re fine with gunslingers trying from time to time. Allen has lost -283 DYAR on interceptions this season, which hurts, but the other three nine-pick players have lost an average of -482 DYAR on their picks. Allen has lost less DYAR on his nine interceptions than Tyson Bagent has lost on six.
I think Allen’s problem is the perception of the Bills’ offense as one lacking the creativity and explosion it had in recent years. That’s not entirely untrue (Buffalo has just 31 plays of 20-plus yards, tied for 18th in the league), and that’s been the bread and butter of the Buffalo offense in the Allen era. Despite that, though, Allen has more DYAR through the halfway point this season (975) than he did in either 2021 (467) or 2022 (616). Allen is being found disappointing because the Bills haven’t lived up to the theoretical picture of them held up before the season. Buffalo has problems, for sure – their run game is average and often vanishes for large swaths of the game, and their defense has fallen apart due to injuries. But the problems that are there aren’t really Allen’s.
The real answer might be that there’s no MVP right now. Look at the players right behind Allen in passing DYAR:
- Tua Tagovailoa (907) is getting more than his fair share of the ‘system!’ tag being applied to him, thanks to his presence in a Shanahan scheme. A lot of credit for Miami’s offense success is going to go to Tyreek Hill and Mike McDaniel. In addition, after a blistering start, Tagovailoa is just 11th in passing DYAR since the 70-burger the Dolphins put on Denver in Week 3.
- C.J. Stroud (899) is also working out of a Shanahan scheme, so he gets at least some of the same raw statistical devaluation. He’s looked great the past couple weeks, but his resume still has some rookie growing pains on it. His Texans are also just 4-4, which starts the “well, how valuable can he be?” conversation. He’s better suited for a different award.
- Brock Purdy (821) is also working out of a Shanahan scheme and going through some interception reversion to the mean at the moment. He’s a solid mid-tier passer who could easily claw his way back into Pro Bowl contention but isn’t the most valuable player on his own offense.
No one else is within 200 DYAR of Allen. And neither the 49ers offense (Christian McCaffrey) nor the Dolphins offense (Tyreek Hill) is having the record-setting levels of production you’d need for a non-quarterback to take home the top slot. Maybe you just say there is no first half MVP, or that it stays with the default presumption that Patrick Mahomes is the best passer in football, but I’ll have to stick with Josh Allen for now.
I do think the Bills will fall out of contention, however, and Allen’s candidacy will die along with it. My gut is that by the end of the year, we’ll be talking Mahomes versus Lamar Jackson as the Chiefs and Ravens fight for the top seed in the AFC. There’s an outside chance that Jalen Hurts takes it if the Eagles just run away from the NFC as the Brotherly Shove remains unstoppable. Joe Burrow is another interesting option; he leads the league with 357 passing DYAR over the last two weeks, and could put on a “please ignore my injured first month” campaign. But I think Jackson’s place at the helm of the best team in football (at the moment, by DVOA) versus Mahomes’ place as the accepted best quarterback in the sport (despite his poor receiving corps) will be on all the talking head shows come January. I’m going to give a slight lean to Jackson at the moment, but it may well end up going to whoever’s team has the better record at the end of the year.
Coach of the Year
Mike McDaniel is on pace to shatter records for most appearances in the Year in Quotes section of next year’s Almanac. Oh, and his offense is pretty exciting, too. It’s slipped a little to third in DVOA after some lackluster showings against Buffalo, Philadelphia and Kansas City (that music you’re hearing is the ominous foreshadowing), but when it’s clicking in high gear? It’s been a revelation. His cheat motion concepts were almost immediately copied throughout the league, as McDaniel has opened up new avenues of the Shanahan scheme. Sure, the Dolphins are fast, but McDaniel has found ways to squeeze every drop out of his fleet of track stars in ways that are overloading highlight reels. When you can have that immediate of an impact, you’re a great candidate for coach of the year.
The fact that it has yet to work against good teams is a warning sign, however. DVOA is already adjusted for opponent, but Miami has an offensive DVOA of -9.1% against teams currently in playoff position; 41.2% against everyone else. If that trend keeps up, McDaniel’s candidacy has to take a hit. If the Dolphins’ magic can’t work against the other top teams in the league? Then it’s a lot of sizzle and no steak. An off game or two can be written off; a pattern can’t.
That would open the door for a number of other candidates. John Harbaugh is running the best team in the league by DVOA. DeMeco Ryans has the Texans in playoff contention in his first year as a head coach. Robert Saleh has navigated losing his starting quarterback four snaps into the season to keep the Jets alive. All are worthy of praise for the job they’ve done.
But with the Eagles facing down a gauntlet of doom over their next five games (Kansas City-Buffalo-San Francisco-Dallas-Seattle), and the 49ers having let a couple winnable games slip through their fingers, the door is wide open for the Detroit Lions to win the No.1 seed in the NFC. If they do, hand the award to Dan Campbell.
Offensive Player of the Year
This is a three-horse race, both for your current leader and your end-of-season winner.
In the red and gold corner, you have Christian McCaffrey. McCaffrey has scored in every single game he’s played this year, as broadcasts love reminding us every 27.3 seconds. He’s also taking a sledgehammer to part of the Running Backs Don’t Matter argument by playing nearly every snap this season. You can’t provide value if you’re on the bench, but McCaffrey doesn’t go to the bench, appearing on 80.9% of San Francisco’s offensive snaps this season. He’s “only” fifth in rushing DYAR at 128, but his 168 receiving DYAR is 75% more than any other running back this year. His 296 combined DYAR is 59 more than any other running back in the league, and he’s on pace to have one of the 10 best seasons in DYAR history. The only players who have had more than McCaffrey’s projected 629 DYAR in a year are Marshall Faulk (four times), Priest Holmes (twice), Terrell Davis…and McCaffrey himself in 2019. Oh, and he’s doing all this while dealing with a groin injury.
In the aqua and teal corner, you have Tyreek Hill. You don’t need advanced stats to make Hill’s case – he’s on pace for 2,032 receiving yards, beating Calvin Johnson’s record and being the first player to hit that 2K mark. Not that his advanced stats are shabby, by any stretch of the imagination – second with 317 receiving DYAR is nothing to sneeze at. He is, by far, the best receiver on deep balls this season. He has 273 DYAR on passes at least 15 yards downfield; Jordan Addison is second with 165. Addison, Hill and Amon-Ra St. Brown are the three receivers to have a DVOA of over 100% on deep passes, but Hill’s done that on 30 targets; the other two haven’t hit 20 yet. That level of volume and efficiency is hard to top.
And in the green and silver corner, you have A.J. Brown. Brown is the one guy ahead of Hill in DYAR (350), and he has a notable edge in DVOA, as well (34.4% to 28.5%). After a slow start to the season, Brown put up six games with at least 125 receiving yards; an arbitrary streak if we’ve ever heard one but certainly a fantastic string of performances. Brown has been the best receiver on short and intermediate passes this season, with 189 DYAR on passes less than 15 yards downfield. He’s also been the best receiver on the boundaries, with 275 DYAR on passes marked as either left or right, rather than up the middle. When Philadelphia’s offense was sputtering earlier this year, “throw the ball up and hope Brown comes down with it” proved to be a reliable, consistent strategy.
Right now, I’d give it to McCaffrey in a close race. My argument is that there have been more good plays with McCaffrey than any other player in football this season. McCaffrey leads the league 56 first downs; only one other player is above 50. McCaffrey has 91 plays marked as a success in our play-by-play database, having met the minimum threshold of yards gained for the down and distance. Hill has 58, Brown has 57. The extra explosiveness provided by Hill and Brown matters, for sure, but that’s a lot of extra plays where McCaffrey keeps churning out positive results. In addition, you could imagine the Dolphins offense getting by for a little bit without Hill, with Jaylen Waddle stepping up – a lesser passing offense, but still a potent one. The Eagles’ passing offense could survive for a bit with DeVonta Smith being their lead option. The 49ers’ offense doesn’t work without McCaffrey.
As for the season-long winner, Hill gets it if he hits 2,000 yards. Big, round numbers are hard to turn away from, even for us advanced stats types. If he doesn’t, I’ll stick with McCaffrey, so long as he stays healthy. Knock on wood.
Defensive Player of the Year
Another three-horse race in my books. It’s Myles Garrett, Micah Parsons and T.J. Watt, because a dominant pass rush is your friend. Parsons and Garrett are 1-2 in ESPN’s pass rush win rate, the only two players to be clocked in above 30% this season. Watt is not quite up there in pure pass rush, but has better advanced numbers in run support and pass coverage, as well as three fumble recoveries and an interception for a team that has desperately needed splash plays from their defense.
While none lead the league in sacks, Watt and Garrett are just a half-sack behind Danielle Hunter at the moment with one fewer game played; Parsons lags a little further back at 7.5. Other pressure numbers will vary from source to source, but you’ll generally find all three players in the top 10 in pressures and knockdowns, with Parsons generally speaking ahead of the other two. Watt is the leader in Sports Info Solutions’ total points saved metric among edge rushers with 39, and leads all edge rushers in our numbers with 15 pass successes. Garrett tops PFF’s edge rusher leaderboard, and is second among edge rushers in our numbers with 10 pass defeats. And, of course, it’s Parsons who leads the three on our yards per pass play numbers at -6.1.
The short version is that none of the three have a strong statistical case to be ranked over the other. You can cut and slice and dice the numbers however you like to make an argument for any of the three, and you’ll be entirely justified. I’m taking Myles Garrett at the moment, partly just to acknowledge how good the Cleveland defense as a unit has been to this point of the year. And for as good as that Cleveland defense has been, opposing offenses are still double-teaming Garrett 31% of the time, and he’s still destroying quarterbacks at these rates.
For the season-long award, though, I think I’d shade towards Micah Parsons. Parsons is getting to the quarterback more than Garrett and Watt, and I think his sack rate is underperforming his pressure rate at the moment. That’s likely to revert towards the mean; his sack numbers should catch up to the other two, and his other ancillary stats put him over the top. But really, this is anyone’s race.
The last three awards are not, in fact, anyone’s race.
Offensive Rookie of the Year
It’s C.J. Stroud.
Full credit to Puka Nakua for going from day three pick to short-pass specialist to legitimate second option over just half a season, but when you have a first-round quarterback well on his way to setting rookie records? Yeah, we’re done here.
Defensive Rookie of the Year
It’s Jalen Carter.
There are other viable candidates here, with both Brian Branch and Devon Witherspoon showing off. If you want to dock Carter a little for the midway award because he missed a little time, Witherspoon has been a solid zone defense player both on the outside and in the slot, and would be a fine choice. But Carter has slotted into a Philadelphia line filled with All-Pros and has not looked even remotely out of place. He leads all interior linemen with a 22% pass rush win rate, and is 10th in SIS’ total points saved metric. Carter’s in the argument for the most productive player at his position, and so wins DROY in a walk.
Comeback Player of the Year
It’s Damar Hamlin. Because if you have an injury on national television so severe that the game is called off and there’s fears you may die, and then you return to playing football the next year, you get this award. It doesn’t matter that he’s only been active for one game, or that he has yet to play a defensive snap. It’s Damar Hamlin.
