Wild Card Sunday Football: Advanced Reviews

All the advanced stats, visualizations and commentary for Bills-Broncos, Eagles-Packers and Buccaneers-Commanders

The adjusted scores quantify team play quality, with emphasis on stable metrics (success rate) and downplaying higher variance events (turnovers, special team, penalties, fumble luck, etc). Adjusted expected points added (EPA), in conjunction with opportunity-based metrics like total plays and drives, projects adjusted points. Adjusted scores have been tested against actual scores and offer slightly better predictive ability, though their primary benefit is explanatory.

All 2024-2022 and historical Adjusted Scores and other site metrics are available in a downloadable format to paid subscribers via Google Sheet.

Find previous advanced reviews here

** Adjusted Scores table:

• “Pass” - Pass rate over expectation (based on context of each play and historical averages

• “Success” - Success rate on offense, a key metric in adjusted score vs actual

• “H & A” - Home or away team

BUF (-7.5) vs DEN

The Buffalo Bills were pretty big favorites coming into the game, and they handled business against the Denver Broncos with relative ease. Although, the final score is a bit misleading, with my adjusted scores estimating that the Bills were around eight points better than the Broncos, not the actual 24-point differential. The Bills were significantly better according to offensive success rate, but the Broncos’ 44% figure normally implies a lot more points scored than the single first-drive touchdown they ended up putting on the board.

The problem for the Broncos was the timing of those successes wasn’t often enough on high-leverage third and fourth downs, with conversions of 2-for-9 (-5.3 EPA) and 1-for-3 (-2.3), respectively. On the flip side, the Bills were excellent on the most important downs, converting 8-of-14 third downs (+10.0) and 2-of-2 on fourth (+5.2).

The Bills passing attack was truly by committee at receiver. Eight of their receivers were targeted at least three times, none with more than six. The Bills leaned a bit on their effective rushing attack, calling designed runs on 54% of plays. James Cook carried most of the load (23 carries for 120 yards and a score), though his EPA figure was flat-ish. Unsurprisingly, Josh Allen was the ball carrier on the Bills’ most valuable runs, generating +4.5 EPA on just four designed runs, including two conversions on 3rd & 3, one on 3rd & 1 and another on 4th & 1.