The Cowboys played a football game on Thanksgiving. It did not go well. But it was not the worst loss of the week across the league! That honor belongs to the Las Vegas Raiders, who got blown out by the Atlanta Falcons, of all teams. The Raiders were enjoying a two-week run in our top-10 teams heading into the week but alas, it was not meant to be. How far did they fall in our EPA Power Rankings? And was the Cowboys loss enough to move them below the lowly Jaguars for the first time this year? Let’s rank the teams by their opponent-adjusted EPA differential and find out.
EPA stands for Expected Points Added. Expected Points, the foundation of many analytical arguments, uses data from previous NFL seasons to determine how many points a team is likely to come away with on a given play based on down, distance, time remaining, and field position. The difference in expected points at the start of a play and expected points at the end is referred to as expected points added, or EPA.
Taking the difference between each team’s offensive EPA and their defensive EPA allowed gives us something not unlike point differential, with a bit more context included. For these rankings, we’ve adjusted each team’s EPA based on the strength of their opponent.
Please note these numbers are coming in prior to Wednesday’s Ravens-Steelers game
Let’s start with the elephant in the room, the Buccaneers remaining in the top spot. Tampa Bay is at a point now where it sure looks like they can dispatch of bad teams easily but fold like a house of cards against any decent opponent or the Bears. Is that really good enough to get to the number one rank here? Well, yes and no.
These numbers are volume stats, meaning we’re totaling the EPA earned by each team offense and defense over the course of the year. As we near the end of the season, when every team has played the same number of games, it holds up well. But right now, with the wild Pittsburgh schedule shifts and the late-as-possible bye week for the Bucs, Tampa has an advantage strictly by playing more games. If we calculate by EPA/game, the Bucs drop to third, swapping places with Pittsburgh while Kansas City remains in second.
But how is a 5-loss team still so high? Just take a look at who beat them. The Bucs’ 5 losses came against teams that currently rank:
5th
21st
5th
4th
2nd
With the exception of the Chicago game, none of those losses are going to hit Tampa very hard in their adjusted EPA differential because we’re adjusting by strength of opponent.
Let’s jump down the list to see if the Cowboys fell down any more after getting run over by Antonio Gibson on Thursday. As luck would have it, they remain 29th by nature of the Lions also taking a double digit loss at home on Thanksgiving, the Jaguars being bad for a longer period of time this year, and the Jets still being the Jets. Dallas did, however, manage to distance themselves further from the rest of their division, and not in a good way.
Washington bumped up to 20th this week, the best ranking for any team in the NFC East since Washington was 19th in eek 3. It’s not a whole lot to write home about, but they are fielding a legitimate NFL defense that’s making up for a poor offense at times this year.
But not all is looking bad on the offensive side of the ball for Washington. Antonio Gibson has been running wild of late, and it’s more than making up for the mediocre passing game. By EPA/carry, Gibson had one of the better rushing performances of the season on Thursday, even if it was overshadowed three days later by Derrick Henry and Nick Chubb.
This performance, paired with a defense that produced the third-best EPA/play allowed in Week 12, bumped Washington up three spots this week.
Speaking of jumping up three spots, the Falcons leapfrogged over the Raiders not only on Sunday but also in this week’s power rankings. The Raiders’ fall was our biggest fall of the week by far, dropping them from 8th all the way to 19th, their lowest rank since Week 4. It’s wild to see such a drop after just one game, but losing by 37 to a below-average team has consequences. The Raiders have toyed with being a great team at times this year, but overall they’re still probably just an average team.
Bringing it back to our home division here, let’s take a look at how the East’s EPA differential has moved over the course of the season. This is where we can really see Washington taking over as the team to beat for the division crown.
And now, looking forward, we can use these opponent adjustments to make predictions for the outcomes of the Week 13 games. We’ve got a murderer’s row coming up against the NFC East this weekend, with only the Giants expected to come within one score of their opponent. But then again, these predictions don’t know that Baltimore is facing a severe COVID outbreak right now, and could be without numerous starters for thee Cowboys game. Can that make up a 12.5 point spread? Only time will tell.
