Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Analytics expert Aaron Schatz weighs Vikings Super Bowl odds -- it's not crazy!

Episode Date: January 9, 2025

Matthew Coller talks with Aaron Schatz of FTN Fantasy about what the analytic stat DVOA says about the Vikings chances Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Purple Insider. Matthew Collar here and returning to the show, the analytics legend Aaron Schatz. Now FTN Fantasy is where DVOA is housed. You probably knew it from Football Outsiders for many years and you've also made many appearances on shows of mine, Aaron. And here's the thing. Here's what I need to know. for many years, and you've also made many appearances on shows of mine, Aaron. And here's the thing. Here's what I need to know. I need to understand exactly what it means for the Vikings to now be the five seed at 14-3 and what their odds really are.

So that's why you're here. What's going on, Aaron? Hey, I'm doing all right. Better than the Vikings are this week. But I feel like this game is a little overstated because they're not going to have that much trouble in the red zone again in the future. Like that is just not something that tends to be duplicated.

But our stats overall on them are down over the last few weeks. So I'm sort of like half in one, like half optimistic for the Vikings and half pessimistic for the Vikings. I'm sort of like half in one, like half optimistic for the Vikings and half pessimistic for the Vikings. I'm sort of caught in between. Well, why don't we talk about the DVOA journey? Because it's a stat that I use on the show pretty frequently to cross-check ourselves on how well we think the Vikings are doing. And that's really why you invented DVOA was to tell us like what, what's really going on with the team and kind of get rid of some of the noise. Right. So I think

early in the season, we were trying to say like, are they really like five and oh, are they really that good? And they shot all the way up to the top. Tell me where they've gone recently. You mentioned starting to slip back. I would imagine that's the case when you lose 31-9. But explain kind of the trend of where you've seen them go with the DVOA. Yeah, I think there's a lot of fear that Viking fans have had that this is just 2022 all over again. And it's not. And yet at the same time, they're not as good as the record would indicate. And they've faded a bit in recent weeks. So here is the complicated thing.

For the season as a whole, we have the Vikings seventh and the Rams 17th. But in the weighted ratings that give more weight to more recent games with week 18 removed for the rams because they didn't play starters we have the rams eighth and the vikings 11th the issue is not just that the vikings have faded in the second half of the season. The defense has faded. The offense actually played better in the second half of the season, but the defense went from stellar to good. But the Rams got better, especially if you take out like the first three or four weeks of the season. Remember the Rams started one and four, whereas the Vikings had a couple of really big wins early on. So like, for example, someone asked me yesterday, where do the Vikings stand all time in DVOA among

14 win teams? And the answer is they're the second lowest. And the lowest was the 2009 Colts. And the 2009 Colts are only the lowest because they sat all their starters in the last week of the season. And if you take that game out, the Vikings are the lowest 14-winning team. But like we keep saying about the Chiefs all year, that's like being the ugliest Sports Illustrated swimsuit model. Like, they're still a 14 14 win team, you know? And this isn't like two years ago. They're not like two years ago. They were like the most overachieving team of all time.

This year, they're like a little bit overachieving. You know, not that much. Like it's still a great team where with a pretty even chance of winning this game in Los Angeles. But the fifth seed is hard because it means that they have to then go on the road. we're with a pretty even chance of winning this game in Los Angeles. Um, but the fifth seed is hard because it means that they have to then go on the road for three straight weeks. And that is hard to do.

Right. And, uh, the expected win loss based on their point differential is more like 11 and six, which would make sense. And there's no doubt that there were some games that they should have won in more impressive fashion based on their opponent at Chicago was one of them

probably should have blown out Tennessee by a lot more. Now that we know what Tennessee really is. But at the same time, I think defenses are a little bit volatile, a little bit hard to predict over an entire season. And with the offense increasing in its performance until Detroit, now this would have been my argument for, Hey, you know, the quarterback's playing extremely well. It's really crazy how fast things change though, Aaron,

because against green Bay, Sam Darnold just couldn't have played better. 377 yards, three touchdowns, offense flying up and down the field. And then against Detroit, it was like they got hit by a hammer there in that game by the crowd, the atmosphere, the red zone misses that there's what, four trips in the red zone. Each one of them has a miss by about that much. It was just one of those games. How much does that weigh on where they rank in DVOA? I mean, it ranks, it's a heavy game. It's their worst game of the season. Even if you adjust for opponent, right? Obviously that was the hardest opponent of the season. Even if you adjust for that, it's their lowest game of the

season by DVOA. But don't like read too much into one game. Like here's something I feel like in the second half of the season that they did a better job of discovering the other receivers who aren't Justin Jefferson. Not just Addison, Hawkinson, but Naylor. Now you go back to the week eight game with the Rams, right? Jefferson had 115 yards. Theikings receivers combined had 125 yards so if we've learned anything from their offense over the last two months you would not expect monday night's game to be like that because they've done a better job now of getting the other

receivers open and finding the other receivers. Especially, I think, the improvement in using Naylor over the second half of the season. The one thing that's hard for me to figure out, Aaron, with this team is the offensive line and pass protection. Because talk about week to week against Green Bay, we spent a whole week talking about like, man, wow, they have figured some stuff out. They just shut down green base pass rush sam darnold had a bunch of clean pockets back there was looking great and then against detroit they had every answer under the sun to get to the quarterback and it's not like

that was score affected for most of the game because it was close until the middle of the third quarter and yet they were getting to him in the red zone getting to him on the play actions and things like that and i think i've never really felt like offensive line play was an up and down or week to week thing i thought usually we go into more consistent i i'm with you on that absolutely right and yet this was this was not consistent and now they're facing a really good rams defensive line so i'm not sure what I'm supposed to think here because if the season had ended against Green Bay, the old school 16 games, we would have gone into Los Angeles saying, well, this team could pass protect against anybody.

But now after Detroit, I'm going, well, now I don't know. It's always been that the interior is not as good as the exterior. You follow the Vikings more than I do, certainly. How has Cam Robinson been for the interior is not as good as the exterior. You follow the Vikings more than I do, certainly. How has Cam Robinson been for the season? I mean, we know O'Neal is good, but Cam Robinson was not. When he was with the Jaguars, no one was like, that's one of the better left tackles of the league. So how has he been with the Vikings overall? Because I've really only seen a couple of games. I think that he has been in some games really excellent,

in most games serviceable to the point where you don't just have to have Josh Oliver playing over there the whole game. And there's been maybe two games where he's been well below average. And of course, one of them happened against the Detroit Lions. And this is, to me, this is what an average tackle is. The Vikings just haven't had one in a while because of Christian Derrissaw. They may need to use Oliver a lot Monday night because Jared Verst, Brandon Thorne's true pressure rate, where he measures like easy

pressures versus harder pressures, has Jared Verst third in the league this year. Now, here's an interesting thing I will say about Jared Verse. Jared Verse had a ton of broken tackles, according to FTN data charting. It's really surprising. He's an amazing pass rusher, but he was second or third in the league in broken tackles, which you do not get out of an edge rusher, so maybe you want to run at him. But as far as pass pressure goes, he had an awesome rookie season. And the problem the Vikings have faced in the second half is that they can't really run the ball consistently, especially to the left side, because where Cam Robinson is an average to above average pass blocker, he is a well below average run blocker. And their left guard has never started in the league before and I think has become fatigued as the season has gone along.

And he's not getting a lot. No, I mean, that's the, that's the, this is when we talk about the Vikings being a flawed 14 and three team. I mean, they are really good, but losing Derrissaw does have its effects. And one of them is being able to run consistently. So there's another question for you. We always folks like you and I have always kind of looked at the run game as, And one of them is being able to run consistently. So there's another question for you.

We always, folks like you and I, have always kind of looked at the run game as, eh, well, you'd love to have it, but it's definitely more important what you do in the pass. But if you don't really have it at all to be able to lean on, I think that that could be a problem. You end up in a lot of second and eights. Yeah. Right. Look, the best thing, the funny thing about arguments about offense versus defense and passing versus rushing is that the best thing is balance.

Right. I am a Patriots fan. So I come from the school of Belichick. And the school of Belichick says, do everything at at least a B level so that whatever the other team can't stop, that's what you attack is better than I can do this at an A level and this at a D level. Right. So the best thing is balance and that, yeah, the right now they don't seem to have it. Right. Which I think does hurt their chances of going deep in the playoffs but I don't think that it ruins them running is another thing that you know if Aaron Jones has a big game somebody last week breaks a 58 yard run normally that results in you getting a touchdown in the red zone but

it did not in that game against Detroit that could be a little bit on the inconsistent side as well. With Sam Darnold, what do the numbers say about his season? Because everything that I've looked at this year, to me, puts him in just one tier below the truly elite of the elite quarterbacks. Of course, Detroit's going to hurt his overall numbers, but he still finishes with 102.5 quarterback rating for the season. And I think that pretty well sums up how he's played. Not perfectly, but just not Burrow, not Allen, not Jackson, but right behind that.

That's where I would have him for the season. Where would you have him? I mean, I wouldn't have him that high. I guess it depends how many people you think are in each tier. But we had the Vikings offense 12th in past DVOA. And I think Darnold individually comes out around 12th. So that is that second tier? Is that the bottom of the second tier? Is that the start of the third tier? What it is, is it's above average, which is, I think, a lot better than anybody would have ever expected from Darnold before the season began. And it's good enough that with that defense, if that defense plays closer to what it was in the first half of the year, that's good enough to make a run.

I mean, I keep talking about a big seven. And even though the Vikings have faded a little bit in the last couple weeks, I still think of the Vikings as part of the Big Seven. There are, in my mind, there are seven real Super Bowl contenders, and the Vikings are one of them. Ravens, Chiefs, Bills, and then the Lions, the Packers. Sorry, yeah, the Lions, the Packers, the Vikings, and the Eagles. Not in that order. Folks, it's a wonderful time of year in football,

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That's futurefans.com, code PURPLE, and unlock a lifetime of memories together. Yeah, I tend to agree with that, and I was looking at just the odds in the gambling world and things like that. Kind of funny that they're over under with six and a half to start the season. And now they're fifth or sixth in terms of Superbowl odds going into the playoffs. Didn't see that coming. But when it comes to comparing them to these other teams, I have long thought about this team that there's nobody that they would go against where I would say they have no chance. And that still includes the Detroit lions.

Because I think if you play that game a thousand times, most of the time they get at least a couple of touchdowns there in the red zone and that game's going back and forth. It was just a weird football game and it happened in front of 28 million people at the worst possible time. But I still think that they can play with them. Philadelphia is not a perfect team. I'm curious what you think of their passing game because I haven't been that impressed by it this season and everybody else. I mean, everybody else is sort of in the same bucket with them in the NFC. I mean, you know, Dan Campbell himself said at the end of

the game, we'll see you in two weeks. Now I happen to think that there's a good chance that you won't because I think the commanders are better than the Buccaneers. That has nothing to do with whether the Vikings win Monday night. But if the commanders win, six goes to one, not five. You know, the Eagles are the Eagles are interesting because we just ran this article on FTN that we do every year. We did every year on the old site called the Joe Thomas draft, which is what if every playoff team could pick a player off one of the non-playoff teams rosters? And when we got to the Eagles, Brian Knowles, who wrote it, had a hard time figuring out who to pick because the Eagles are kind of a be everywhere team, not on defense. On defense, they're like A. But on offense, right, they've got the running game. They have the great offensive line.

We can argue about how good Saquon really was this year, but they've got the great offensive line. They've got the two killer receivers. They've got a good tight end. They've got a good, not a great, but a good quarterback. So, I mean, the Eagles, I still feel like with the injuries in Detroit, the Eagles are the favorite to make it out of the NFC at this point. You know, I would rather see Detroit or Minnesota do it because I want to see one of those fan bases get a Super Bowl.

But nothing against the Eagles, but they had one a few years ago. But the Eagles are very strong all around. I think if you did say something against the Eagles on this particular show, it would go over fine with the fan base, but I'm not rooting. See, I don't, I'm not rooting against the fan bases, but I just, my general rule. And I know this sounds weird coming from a Patriots fan because we went back over and over and over again. But I like when teams that haven't been there in a while or ever get there.

Right. So, you know, I've been talking all about a Detroit Buffalo Super Bowl, but a Minnesota Buffalo Super Bowl would be pretty fun too. It most certainly would. And the joke around here is that if it was Buffalo, Minnesota, then a black hole enters as someone's going to kick the game-winning field goal and we all get sucked into it. And that's the end of the earth. Actually, what the truth is, is if it's Buffalo's Minnesota, then we've learned the lesson that the fifth time is the charm. Oh yeah. No, that is true is true. That's true. Uh, let's go back to, uh, this matchup in particular, the Vikings and Rams. I want to know what you think of their offensive side, because when the Vikings went out to play the Rams last time, they were not aware that Puka Nakua was going to play. And Brian Flores even told us this, that they found out a couple hours

before the game. So they had done a week of practice a week of game planning and then uh-oh what do you mean puka nakua is gonna play because he didn't practice the whole week and not only was he gonna play he was gonna get the ball on every play against the vikings well this week they will have an opportunity to you know game plan for the best player on the other team still with both of those receivers in the lineup, they're pretty nasty, and I think the Rams have a lot of things that they do well that the Vikings struggle with. A veteran quarterback who can pick through the blitzes. He'll get rid of the football quickly these days,

unlike back in the day when he used to get sacked a lot. I think he has 28 sacks for the season, so Stafford's not taking the hits that he used to. I look at them as being pretty dangerous on offense. Can you guess the best quarterback in the league this year by DVOA against the Blitz? Let's say minimum 50 pass attempts. Is it Matthew Stafford? No, it's actually Aiden O'Connell, which is crazy. But if you change it to 100 pass attempts, it is Matthew Stafford. And the best receiver in the league in yards per root run on blitzes was Puka Nakua. So this is the problem, right?

Like, go back and watch that game from week eight. Blitz, blitz, ball out quick, Puka Nakua. Play the game on Monday night. If this is Brian Flores, he has to decide who he wants to be. Does he want to be Belichick or does he want to be Pete Carroll? Right? The Pete Carroll philosophy is you do what you do well and you challenge the other team to beat it. And if that's your philosophy, and that was Detroit's philosophy this week, by the way, you come out and you play blitzing and you blitz and you're like, this is what we do well.

Go ahead, stop Van Ginkle, stop Greenard, go ahead and do it. Or do you do the Belichick thing, which is we attack what you don't do well, in which case Flores changes the way he plays defense and they do not blitz. And they play more man coverage where the Vikings were very good this year, even though they were a primarily zone team, very good in man. And Stafford was 21st in DVOA against man. Although I will admit that when I looked that up, I didn't

filter out the non-Pukanukua and Cup weeks, which you really need to do to really look at Stafford. But Byron Murphy, like, okay, so when I was figuring out my all-pro team, I looked at my coverage DVOA, and Murphy was like fifth or something this year. And coach a, I don't remember his real name on Twitter was like, you know, you should look at guys using just band, just man coverage, right? Cause zone is a little bit of a crutch, right? If you really want to find out the best court. And so I thought, okay, well, the Vikings played more man, more zone than man. When I filter by only man, Murphy's going to go down. Nope. Murphy was the best in the league in man covers this year.

Wow. So they want to, I think, switch up what they do, which is instead of zone blitzing, play man and rush only four and stay on those guys with like a rover. You know Nakua is going to come over the middle. You know there's going to be lots of crossing routes and stuff.

Do like a cover one rover with man coverage. And I think that that goes is much more of an attack on what Stafford doesn't do as well. I think that you are barking up the right analytic tree, my friend, because they against the green bay packers they came out and played a lot more man than we had seen them throughout the season and all of us just even in real time are going like does that love had all kinds of problems with it even though his dvoa against man was actually really good going into that game. Right. Because these teams are prepping for a defense that plays a lot of zone. And at some point though, this is a question for Brian Flores, who has been a revelation with this defense,

but attacking the middle of the field has been a thing that veteran quarterbacks have been really good at. Once again, Jared Goff demolished them in the middle of the field because they do vacate that area with a lot of their blitzes. Ivan Pace comes a lot and so does Blake Cashman. They'll send Josh Metellus up the middle and there's just space there. They may have to do something different. They may have to use the edges a little more. They may have to use the edges a little more. They have, they might have to use man coverage a little more and as big and as awesome as Puka Nakua is, that may give them the best chance to try to actually double him the way the teams do with Justin Jefferson, because he is playing at such a high level. He's up there with the Justin Jeffersons of the world. Yes, he was in my,

I have this new thing I started doing last year, which was root DVOA. So that was DVOA where the denominator was roots instead of targets. And it's actually, unfortunately, it takes me a lot of time to put together, but it's actually more accurate. It's more consistent from year to year. It's more predictive. Nakua was the best in the league this year. So he had a phenomenal year when he was healthy. He was absolutely in the Justin Jefferson. I mean, the style wise he's more Amon Ross St. Brown camp, but he's phenomenal. He's phenomenal that,

that but they can prepare for him this time. They know he's going to play. Right, exactly. What about, you started talking about verse, but what about the rest of that defense? Because the D-line. Fisk also is really good and Kobe Turner, but the cornerbacks are not.

If you can hold up against the pressure, the cornerbacks are not great. Yeah, and that's the issue, right the vikings can they hold up i i feel like that's where this game is getting decided don't you aaron as if if they can even just give sam darnold a chance to get clean pockets then they can light this team up number one quarterback in the league in dya our value on deep passes of 16 or more air yards was Sam Darnold and the Rams ranked 29th against those passes. But you can only throw those passes. If you can stay standing up long enough to get the receivers downfield, if they can, they will have success. Right? Yeah. I really think, uh think if you were an old school football analyst, if Bob Trumpy was

here and he was saying, you know, Dick Enberg, this game's going to be one in the trenches. I think that there's a lot of truth to that with the Vikings offense versus the Rams defense, but not in the way that it used to mean. I want to get your opinion on the Darnold question that the entire world is asking. And should they trade KOC? No, that's a joke. But I have no idea how that came up last week. But with Darnold, yeah, that was crazy. Just out of nowhere.

We're talking about trading the coach. But with Darnold, there's some options that the Vikings have to potentially deploy to keep him. They could also just entirely roll the dice and go to their young quarterback. Which way do you think that they should approach that? As an owner of JJ McCarthy and multiple dynasty leagues, I favor letting Sam Darnold leave. No, seriously, for the first half of the year, I was like, look,

this team is being driven by defense. Why is there so much talk about Darnold? Darnold is having a slightly below average season. It's really nice, but a lot of that is O'Connell and the receivers and everything. Okay, let him leave. The improvement in the second half of the year, even with the Detroit game, okay, I think at this point they need to franchise him. I would not sign him to a big money long-term deal. I would franchise him. I would come back and have a competition next year, and I would hope that McCarthy wins the competition.

If Darnold wins the competition and he comes out and has another year like this, then you sign him to a long-term deal and you trade McCarthy. But I think to trust that Darnold can do this for multiple years, you don't want to get caught in the Case Keenum situation, where Keenum had that amazing year for the Vikings that was completely out of line with the rest of his career. And then he went elsewhere the next year and turned back into a pumpkin. You don't want to sign Donald for a bunch of money and have him turn back into a pumpkin. If you franchise him, you know you get at least one more year,

and you can bring McCarthy along and have them compete with each other. I'm curious about, in terms of his season, because it sounds like DVOA is a little bit lower on it than some of the other numbers for, for his year, like his BFF grade or his quarterback rating, or even just, you know, touchdowns, uh, which may be also a product of the fact they can't run in the red zone. But when, when it comes to this this caliber of season how often does that fall off uh because the way i was looking at it in the second half of the year was like this play seems to be pretty consistent from week to week again it's not yeah i mean most of the lifetime backups who have a season like this they have a season like this on 350 passes, not on 550 passes, right?

You're a Josh McCown in 2013. There's a Brian Hoyer year that's really good. Something like what Keenum did in 2017 is more rare. I think it was 2017. Is more rare and then turned back into a pumpkin, but it does happen. Like this is not, he's not having Lamar Jackson's leap year out there, right? Like there are plenty of quarterbacks in history who've been below average and then had a year where they were like 12th in the league.

So it's not out of the realm of possibility that with a year to watch film, defenses figure out what to do with him and that he declines. And it's also not out of the realm of possibility that so much of this is about O'Connell and Jefferson and Addison and the line that McCarthy can come in and do better. I honestly don't know. And that's the problem. And that's why you want to franchise him because you just you don't know no you don't and with Darnold I do think that he possesses some things in his toolbox that fit so well with what Kevin O'Connell does now that's not to say that J.J. McCarthy doesn't have a great arm no and it's why it's why they always talked about Darnold was one of those guys who always was talked about as would you like to see him in a shanahan mcveigh type offense and this is a mcveigh type you know it's kevin o'connor worked for mcveigh right and being able to push

the ball downfield as accurately as he has to jefferson to addison makes for a very explosive offense and what happened in the second half of the season is he really, I think, started to capture the short passing game where early in the year it was basically, if he's not hitting deep shots, the offense is just failing. But then teams started to play way, way deep. And he started to take what was given to him underneath. And he started to get better, not against Detroit, at adjusting protections and having full command of the offense and growing and growing to the point where I would like to see him in a second year of O'Connell's offense, especially because of what I saw in Kirk's second year and O'Connell offense,

which was, he was even more comfortable when he came into 2023 before his Achilles popped, but he looked like he was really getting it and mastering it. And it's complicated for these quarterbacks. So, and which is another reason to say, if McCarthy waits another year, it's not a tragedy of sports. Um, and just to add one point to it, I think that there are enough Darnolds through history who struggled until age 27, 28, or didn't even get to start until that point and turned out to be really good that I want to see that's, that's the biggest thing I just want. I want to, I want to

find out what you've really got here, which I think you can do if you keep him for at least one more year. Yeah, I agree. Uh, can we run through, uh, the other playoff bracket real quick? You got time. I mean, this is, this is your, this is your air and shots media tour so i don't want to you know take up yeah and people should know by the way ftn stats hub is free all weekend so go to the ftn ftn fantasy.com and you can get all these cool stats all the blitzing stuff all the like man coverage stuff all that filtering is all in there through all 18 weeks, and it's free all weekend. You should really check out what we have. Awesome.

Let's do a lightning tour of the rest of the playoff bracket. Yeah. So on the NFC side, you said you think Washington is going to beat Tampa Bay, huh? I like Washington. I mean, you know, I'd say 65%. You know, Washington is higher in full season DVOA. They're higher in weighted DVOA. And Tampa's really had some problems the last couple of weeks passing the ball.

And yeah, I like Washington. I like Washington in that too. Real quick, where does, if Washington wins and Philly wins, what happens? Then Washington goes to Detroit. Okay. And then the Vikings go to Philly? Vikings would go to Philly. Oh, boy.

That's not great. So how about Philly and Green Bay? What do we got there? Yeah, it's interesting because DVOA loves Green Bay's second half of the season, except for the last couple of games. But if you look at the weighted trend, they've been really good. They come out as the second-, they've been really good. Like they come out as the second best team in the NFC. The problem is the first best is Philadelphia.

So I do like Philadelphia, but I think that's a closer game than people realize. Packers are going to miss Christian Watson a good amount because he's so much of their deep passing game. So I do think Philadelphia is definitely favored to come out of that. I mean, the X factor there to me is just where is Jalen Hurts in his health? They're going to make sure he's back out there. I'm assuming that Jalen Hurts is healthy and ready to play. If he's not, it's a different story. Yep.

And I'm also, Packers fans, I think, tend to think Matt LaFleur chokes in playoff games. And I guess they've got some history with that. But I think he's a pretty good coach. So I'm curious about. Yeah. Or as a great coach to, first of all,

he's very aggressive on fourth downs, which analytics people like second of all, his ability to design an offense that worked for Malik Willis. When you compared it to the inability of Mike McDaniel to design an offense that worked for Tyler Huntley or Skylar Thompson really stands out. Yes, definitely. Let's see chargers and Houston.

This is, this might be a, it might be a hot take two, five seeds in the super bowl. Maybe here. I mean, I really, I don't think that the chargers are a super.

No, I don't, I, but I mean, but I'm intrigued. It would be a shock to me if it's not one of the top three seeds in the AFC. Yes. But none of those teams are in this game.

So the Chargers are better than Houston. If you look at the 14 remaining playoff teams, using weighted DVOA minus Week 18 for the teams that sat starters, the 14th of 14 is Houston. Their offense has just gone from bad to worse over the course of the season. Stroud is not playing as well. The offensive line is shambles. No tank Dell.

Yeah, I think the Chargers will win that. I think so too. I'm just intrigued by Chargers Chiefs and what that could potentially mean. If the chargers could pull something out, they always play the chiefs really tough. Um, how about, uh, Pittsburgh and Baltimore seems almost too easy.

Uh, is it wrong to just be like, okay, Baltimore, do not mess this up. The line is 10. And I feel like as much as my numbers are so in love with Baltimore, you know,

Baltimore for two straight years has been one of the best teams ever by DVOA um I do feel like these teams tend to be closer and I feel like Pittsburgh I would you know Pittsburgh might cover but I I do feel pretty strongly that Baltimore is going to pull out a win here yeah yeah I think so too and I feel the same way about uh Buffalo and Denver. I like what Denver's done this year. Most people thought they'd be like a five or six win team. And this is the evidence that if you have a Sean Payton or a Kevin O'Connell or a Jim Harbaugh, that you're likely to go over when you have one of those great coaches in the league.

Although the thing about it with Payton is this is Peyton succeeding in a different way than he did before. This is Peyton succeeding with a defense-dominated team rather than an offense-dominated team. But here's the thing. Riley Moss comes out at the bottom of the league in charting of coverage. And it's not just my coverage stats. The stuff that Dan Pizzuta has played with at 33rd team,

which is based on, I think true media or whatever also has him near the bottom of the league. I don't understand the talk about him as being super awesomely important to the Denver defense. Patrick Sertain has been like, go ahead, throw on the other side. And Riley Moss has been like,

not that good. So I think that Buffalo just, Josh Allen, just Josh Allen's it up. He runs, he scrambles, he finds whoever's not being covered by Sertain, and they're fine. So now one more big question about this is you've mentioned you think Philadelphia's got the best chance of the NFC. How does one even go about guessing between Baltimore, Kansas City, and Buffalo? I mean, my odds like Baltimore and Kansas City best because Kansas City has the buy,

while Baltimore is the best team by DVOA and Buffalo is somewhere in the middle. And trying to figure out just how much Kansas City has been taking their foot off the gas is very difficult. Nobody wants to pick against Kansas City. Nobody wants to be the person who, when Kansas City wins, everybody's like, how did you ever doubt Patrick Mahomes? But that defense has not been as good in the second half of the year, even though the offense is getting better and the odds are the Kansas city will not make it right.

I mean, the odds are that either Baltimore or Buffalo will make it over Kansas city, but the odds are the Kansas city. If you look at each team individually, Kansas city has the best odds because they're the number one seed, but it, you know, it's trying to judge them this year is very difficult yes it's been uh quite quite a journey there with the opinions on kansas city i just feel like with josh allen that if you are this good for this long you're gonna make it at some point but then the same is true with lamar

jackson exactly so who's gonna do those guys struggle in the playoffs until the year. They just don't. Right, right. Exactly. So I don't know that somebody's not getting to the AFC championship between Lamar and Josh Allen. And that is a shame.

Anyway, FTN fantasy is where you could go to get all these great statistics that you have cited and free for the weekend. Tremendous. So Aaron Schatz, this has been a great breakdown preview of playoff weekend. I greatly appreciate it. Maybe we'll be getting together again before the Super Bowl.

We'll see. I mean, like I said, I do consider them a serious contender. So we'll see whether they make it all the way to New Orleans. I do as well, but they got to prove us right in Los Angeleseles so aaron thanks so much great to get together with you again and enjoy the playoffs my friend sounds good