What an absolute gut punch that week was. Dak Prescott riding the injury cart, wearing his emotions on his sleeve after putting himself entirely out there on the field, is an image that won’t soon leave my mind. We wish him nothing but the best going forward.
The Dallas Cowboys still managed to come away with the win after a couple great plays from Andy Dalton and Michael Gallup, but the game as a whole wasn’t enough to bump them up in the EPA power rankings.
Note: these rankings come in before Tuesday night’s game between the Titans and Bills.
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.
The Cowboys slid down one spot to 19th this week as the Steelers leapfrogged two spots ahead of them. By EPA, the Dallas offense hasn’t looked like the buzzsaw we expected heading into this year. They rank 12th in opponent-adjusted offensive EPA through five weeks.
This is in large part explained by their turnover differential. The Cowboys have lost the most EPA on turnovers in the NFL at 58. Interestingly, though perhaps not surprisingly, the next two teams with the most EPA lost on turnovers are also in the NFC East, with Philadelphia and the New York Giants losing 46.5 & 45.7, respectively.
Meanwhile, on the defensive side of the ball, the Dallas defense has only gained 14.7 EPA, sixth lowest in the NFL. All told, their EPA differential on turnovers is -43.3. The next worst is Denver at -30.4.
Turnovers are killer.
The Cowboys are fortunate enough to be the only team in the NFC East outside the bottom six this week. Washington actually jumped up three spots, but that’s more due to the Bengals and Jaguars getting blown out this week and falling quite a bit.
In fact, the Jaguars 16-point loss to what was at the time a winless Texans team caused them to be one of two teams to drop five spots in these ranks. The other? The reigning NFC champion San Francisco 49ers.
The Niners were already looking rough in these ranks, as they’d only beaten the bottom two teams and lost to the fourth-worst team per this list. Jimmy Garoppolo played abysmally in his return from injury, posting a league-worst -25.9 completion percentage over expected (CPOE) in his one half of work. A team that’s already been struggling will now have to face even more scrutiny in regards to their QB position as they head into one of the toughest schedules over the next seven weeks.
On the other side, we’ve got to give out some credit to the Miami Dolphins, who jumped up eight (!) spots this week all the way into the top 10 (!!). This rebuild might be going faster than anyone expected, and they haven’t even gotten to Tua yet.
The Raiders also leapt up quite a bit in these ranks after a statement win against the reigning champion Kansas City Chiefs. They’re now the proud owners of the NFL’s sixth-best offense, which looks lethal with a healthy Henry Ruggs allowing Derek Carr to look deep more often.
The Chiefs remain in the top spot however after facing a fairly difficult opening schedule. The Rams have nearly double the EPA differential of the Chiefs, but four of their five opening games coming against the NFC East really hurts them here.
We can also use adjusted EPA to give us some predictions for next week as well. Here’s how it sees the Week 6 slate breaking down. Please note that these predictions are agnostic of who is starting at quarterback for each team.
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