The NFC East is dead, long live the NFC East! This week was headlined by a couple huge upset wins by two teams in the NFL’s worst division over two powerhouse division leaders. The New York Giants took down the Seattle Seahawks on Sunday afternoon, not allowing the Seahawks to find the endzone for the first three quarters. Then on Monday afternoon, Washington took down the undefeated Pittsburgh Steelers by holding Ben Roethlisberger to one of his worst advanced stat lines of the season.
Was that enough to knock the Steelers down at all in our rankings? Did an NFC East team finally crack the top half of the table? Before we find out, a reminder about how these are calculated:
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 Cowboys-Ravens game
Pittsburgh climbed to the top spot last week after their Tuesday victory over the Ravens, and the close loss to Washington was not enough to take them down. They’ve got the league’s second-best defense by adjusted EPA allowed (behind the Rams) that’s holding up a decent but unspectacular offense.
There was a bit of shuffling in the rest of the top-6, but no new teams in there. In fact, there is quite the significant dropoff after the first six teams here, indicating a clear top tier of playoff contenders. Notably absent from this tier is the Baltimore Ravens. The Ravens’ powerhouse offense from a season ago is long gone, and they’ve now got a negative adjusted EPA/play, indicating that most of their offensive plays are putting them in a worse position to score. That defense is holding the team up, but only just so.
Can the Cowboys take advantage of the Ravens’ struggles? Initially it seems unlikely, as Dallas has consistently been near the bottom of the league on both the offensive and defensive sides of the ball. But just as Washington and New York proved this week, anything can happen on any given S̶u̶n̶d̶a̶y̶ Tuesday. Dallas has remained static in the ranks this week, as these were calculated before their game, but it seems as though they will remain at 29 or 30 depending on the outcome of Tuesday’s game.
On the topic of NFC East upsets, Washington’s victory was enough to bump them from 20th to 18th, edging closer to respectability and proving that they won’t necessarily be an easy out if they end up taking the division crown. In fact, since Alex Smith took over in Week 9, Washington has produced as well as a top-10 team.
They’re right up there on both offense and defense with the other surprise, the New York Giants. In this same time frame, Daniel Jones has the NFL’s 7th best EPA/play. It’s a small sample size, but it’s pointing in a positive direction for the Giants.
The biggest movers this week come from the same game. The Patriots’ 45-0 route of the Chargers on Sunday brought New England up 5 spots and dropped LA down 4 spots. In a weird turn of events, these teams are now neck and neck in our rankings despite the fact that one just blew the doors of the other only two days ago. This is a good reminder that we can rank these teams in aggregate however we like, but the fact is some teams just match up really well against certain teams despite the perceived talent level difference.
We can modify the opponent adjustment functions to give us predictions for the coming week’s games. These rankings still see Baltimore as 12-point favorites in Tuesday’s game with the Cowboys, which is a larger deficit than either the Giants or Washington faced in Week 13. Moving further ahead, let’s see which NFC East team has the best shot at taking home another victory in Week 14.
