Division Round Recap

Table of Contents

• AFC Roundup

• NFC Roundup

• Updated Super Bowl Projections

  • Super Bowl Matchup

WE recap all of the behavioral explanations for what we saw Divisional Round Weekend:

• What we got right, and

• What we didn’t.

PLUS: For Pigeon Pick+ Subscribers, We share our latest Super Bowl projection, betting insights for early line bettors, and where the public is currently on next week’s games!

AFC Roundup

As Expected

Like we said last week, the AFC was going as expected.

Back on December 20th, weeks before the playoffs started, we projected that the AFC Championship was most likely to be a matchup between the Buffalo Bills and Kansas City Chiefs:

^{*We obviously didn't nail the NFC, which we’ll get to below.}

Well, after last night’s game, that is the matchup we are getting. In fact throughout the AFC playoffs, we were only incorrect in projecting one game, the Texans upset of the Chargers, which as we noted was inconsequential on the pathway to the Lombardi.

Chiefs vs. Texans was Easiest Game to Project

It’s no surprise we nearly perfectly projected this game. We projected the Chiefs scoring behavior against the Texans defense to yield 23 points.

It did.

We projected the Texans scoring behavior against the Texans to yield 17 points. They scored 12, but missed two field goals that would have given them 18, one point off.

The reason this was so easy to project, is that we have the Football Behavior Consistency Score to rely on, and the Texans and Chiefs were ranked 1 and 3 respectively, in overall team scoring consistency, which accounts for both sides of the ball.

On offense, specifically, they were 1 and 2. The Chiefs have been among the most consistent teams all year, and in a game they are involved win, we feel really good about what’s going to happen.

Bills vs. Ravens Was As Close As Expected

We projected this game to be a likely matchup in the divisional round, with a Bills win, before the playoffs started, from our Wildcard preview:

Once we included wildcard behavior data, we not only projected a Bills win, but we projected them to win by 2 points:

We were four points off on each team’s final score, but a two point margin nonetheless.

The challenge in projecting Buffalo games is that, unlike the Chiefs and Texans, Buffalo ranks 15th overall in Consistency Score, and 23rd defensively. So the question will always be, which Bills defense are we getting?

That will matter for the AFC championship game against the Chiefs. Consistency Score is so valuable because it gives us insight into how much environmental control a particular team has.

As the environment changes, can they adapt, or are they unable to have strong internal control. The Bills opponent?

The Chiefs have faced 7 teams in the bottom half of the league in Consistency Score. 7 of the most inconsistent teams in football.

7 times they hit their season average on both sides of the ball. They tend to make you bend to their will.

But the Bills already beat the Chiefs…

Yes. Just as the Ravens had previously dominated the Bills. But behavior changes over the course of the season, and the first Bills game was one of the few outlier games the Chiefs had this season.

Two interceptions by Mahomes, one leading to a touchdown. And the Bills held the ball for nearly 10 more minutes than the Chiefs did. They haven’t had a TOP disparity that large since.

Heading into this weekend, we told you that a hypothetical Chiefs vs Bills matchup yielded a virtual tie with a a 0.11 average point difference favoring the Chiefs.

Now adding in Divisional Round behavior data, that slight favor to the Chiefs has grown a tiny bit to 0.26 on average.

We’ll release our Conference Championship projections later this week after we run everything, but as of now?

This was the matchup we projected for a month, and it promises to be another classic.

NFC Roundup

Inconsistent Teams Prove It

Speaking of Consistency Score, we said 12 days ago that the Lions were the most difficult playoff team to project.

We highlighted this by specifically focusing on their defense. The Lions had the 6th most inconsistent defense this season, and were the 7th most inconsistent team overall.

We concluded the defense was likely worse than most people thought, and that their week 18 game against Minnesota was most likely an outlier.

However, they still had more than five data points since their bye week where they held opponents under 0.5 points per minute, and those data points can’t be discounted, they happened.

But those data points also lend to their inconsistency as they also had three games of allowing opponents top score over 1.1 points per minute, and those three games were three of their last five entering the playoffs.

This presented a conundrum.

Time of Possession Matters

What we really missed on, and what was the biggest outlier of their loss to the Commanders, was time of possession.

Their 26:01 of possession was their least amount of possession since October 27th, and just the second time they were held under 31 minutes of possession time since November 17th.

So, even though we accounted for their defense being worse than expected, the huge time of possession outlier proved to be where the miss on this projection was.

In fact we go back, and adjust the time of possession in the projection to match how it played out, and keep everything else from the original projection the same, the Commanders should have been favored by five points.

Five points in a game their offense out scored the Lions offense by seven points.

So Now What?

So now we get an epic NFC East showdown for the NFC Championship. The Commanders on a Cinderella run, take on the Philadelphia Eagles who seem to get bailed out in all the right ways at all the right times.

The Eagles won their game, which we projected them to lose, by six points. They scored a serendipitous six points off of Rams turnovers.

In razor thing margins, outlier events like turnovers are the key. Both Rams turnovers gave the Eagles short fields that they converted into field goals.

It should be noted that behavioral projections do take into account those types of outliers in our projections.

Don’t be surprised to see an upset.

Updated Super Bowl Projections

We will release official score projections and Pigeon Picks later this week on Thursday. But for our Pigeon Picks+ subscribers, we offer this sneak peak for those who want to jump on early week lines.

Hint: We get a fun, and surprising Super Bowl Matchup!

Super Bowl Matchup

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