First TD Bets — Wild Card Monday Slate
Alex Christenson
We said all season that the Kansas City Chiefs couldn’t possibly keep doing this. They couldn’t possibly keep winning all their games unless they played better football. And so, the Chiefs did what we all expected them to do since way back in the preseason. They saved their best football for the playoffs.
Yes, the Chiefs only beat the Bills 32-29, but DVOA says they stomped all over the Bills. There were five fumbles in this game, and remember that fumble recovery is generally random. The Bills recovered all five fumbles. That’s pretty lucky, so the underlying stats favor the Chiefs to a signficant extent.
The Chiefs had a higher success rate on offense, 56% to 46%, and also gained more yards per play, 6.3 to 5.5 (not including kneeldowns). Kansas City’s DVOA, with opponent adjustments for playing the Bills, was at 71% for the game. That’s nearly as high as what the Eagles put up in the NFC Championship Game which they won 55-23.
| DVOA (with opponent adjustments) | ||||
| TEAM | TOT | OFF | DEF | ST |
| WAS | -41% | -1% | 39% | -2% |
| PHI | 76% | 42% | -33% | 1% |
| BUF | -35% | 1% | 38% | 2% |
| KC | 71% | 44% | -20% | 7% |
| VOA (no opponent adjustments) | ||||
| TEAM | TOT | OFF | DEF | ST |
| WAS | -67% | -19% | 47% | -2% |
| PHI | 68% | 47% | -21% | 1% |
| BUF | -47% | -3% | 46% | 2% |
| KC | 49% | 40% | -1% | 7% |
The Post-Game Win Expectancy formula says that we would expect the stats in the Kansas City-Buffalo game to result in a Kansas City game 99.2% of the time! Philadelphia’s Post-Game Win Expectancy is even better at 99.9%.
Continuing with my traditions from the old site, we’re not going to bother with the full 32-team table of weighted DVOA ratings, since there are only two teams left and most teams haven’t played for three weeks. We’ll just take a quick look at both teams set for Super Bowl LIX.
This is a little complicated because both teams sat their starters in Week 18, plus Jalen Hurts missed Weeks 16-17 and the Eagles offense definitely suffered without him. Even with Week 18 removed, the Eagles come out better in the DVOA ratings, but we know that Kansas City is peaking at the right time. In particular, their defense which had declined at midseason has rebounded in the last few games. That decline is why the Chiefs are higher in total DVOA than in weighted DVOA, because weighted DVOA is still counting those decline games in Weeks 9-13 but not their good early games back in September.
| TOT | Rk | OFF | Rk | DEF | Rk | ST | Rk | |
| PHI total | 25.7% | 3 | 6.4% | 21 | -18.7% | 1 | 0.6% | 15 |
| KC total | 18.1% | 6 | 12.7% | 7 | -3.5% | 11 | 1.9% | 9 |
| TOT | Rk | OFF | Rk | DEF | Rk | ST | Rk | |
| PHI weighted | 28.8% | 3 | 2.9% | 14 | -24.8% | 1 | 1.0% | 13 |
| KC weighted | 10.5% | 9 | 12.8% | 8 | 4.5% | 21 | 2.3% | 9 |
| TOT | Rk | OFF | Rk | DEF | Rk | ST | Rk | |
| PHI total (no Week 18) | 26.9% | 3 | 7.5% | 12 | -18.8% | 1 | 0.6% | 15 |
| KC total (no Week 18) | 23.5% | 4 | 14.7% | 5 | -6.9% | 6 | 1.9% | 9 |
| TOT | Rk | OFF | Rk | DEF | Rk | ST | Rk | |
| PHI weighted (no Week 18) | 31.2% | 2 | 4.7% | 14 | -25.5% | 1 | 1.0% | 13 |
| KC weighted (no Week 18) | 20.9% | 7 | 17.1% | 5 | -1.6% | 11 | 2.3% | 9 |
