Week 5 Preview and Picks

Vikings fans have come a long way from the dog days of Moss and Culpepper

First things first: we couldn't have been more wrong about last night's pick.  Here's hoping Kevin Kolb still has all of his limbs attached after getting sacked nine times last night.

Onward to the rest of the week, where we pause to look at a surprise juggernaut in Minneapolis.  The Vikings quietly sit tied with the Bears atop the NFC North standings with a 3-1 record.  Among those chiefly responsible for their ascent?  QB Christian Ponder, who ranks 10th in ESPN's Total QBR ratings, ahead of Philip Rivers, Eli Manning, Aaron Rodgers, Matthew Stafford, Cam Newton, Michael Vick, Drew Brees, and Tony Romo, among others.  Ponder was 29th in last year's rankings and is a big reason for Minnesota's turnaround.

Our preseason model didn't think much of Minnesota, projecting only 1.7 wins, a total they nearly doubled in September alone, and we had them worst in the NFC in free agency.  But those rankings only took into account performance to date, not potential, and we knew the Vikings would be going with a youth movement this year.  We called out their young / inexperienced starting guards, Brandon Fusco and Charlie Johnson, calling the guard position a "potential nightmare" this year.  The 2 have performed admirably; Minnesota has the #6-ranked offensive line in the league on the run and is in the middle of the pack in the rare instances they throw the ball.  Sometimes your young players perform, sometimes they don't.  The former appears true so far in Minnesota, with Fusco, Johnson, and Ponder leading the way.

How long might the fun continue in the great white north?  While no one (ourselves included) is picking Minnesota to outlast Green Bay or Chicago, the schedule appears friendly in the near term:

Week 5: TITANS (1-3)
Week 6: at Redskins (2-2)
Week 7: CARDINALS (4-1)
Week 8: BUCS (3-1)
Week 9: at Seahawks (2-2)
Week 10: LIONS (1-3)

Minnesota could have trouble with any of the 5, but none stand out as a clear loss.  Is it so crazy to think the Vikes will go 4-2 over this stretch and be sitting at 7-3 with 6 games to play?

The bye follows week 10 and, with it, the Vikings may well fall back to earth -- their 6-game stretch run includes 2 games apiece against Chicago and Green Bay as well as road games in St. Louis and Houston.  So enjoy it while it lasts, Vikings fans.

UPDATED PLAYOFF PROJECTIONS
For those scoring at home, we're weighting our preseason projections at 73%, and season-to-date Pythagorean performance at 27% (note: we're debating bringing down the preseason weighting at a faster clip going forward).  As always, expected wins are in parentheses.

AFC Division Champs: Ravens (10.4), Texans (10.4), Chargers (9.9), Jets (9.0)
AFC Wild Cards: Bengals (9.7), Broncos (8.8)
New to the field: Broncos; Dropped out: Bills (7.9)

NFC Division Champs: Niners (13.1), Falcons (11.9), Bears (11.3), Eagles (9.8)
NFC Wild Cards: Cardinals (11.0), Packers (10.3)
No changes since last week

DO TEAMS PLAY BETTER AFTER THE BYE?
A few of the lines looked a bit off this week -- particularly the 1-2 Steelers, who are 3 point favorites at home against 3-1 Philadelphia.  A lot of the pundits assessing this game cite that the Steelers are coming off a bye and will likely be with the services of Troy Polamalu, James Harrison, and Rashard Mendenhall, none of whom have suited up this year.

Isn't great that we've got a bye this week?  ISN'T IT!?

In this instance, it's clear the bye week helps the Steelers.  Conventional wisdom holds that in general, regardless of a team's injury situation, it does better after a bye.  We sought to set that theory, along with the corollary -- if it does, has Vegas caught on?

We looked at every game played since 2008 where one team was coming off a bye and the other was not.  There were 111 such games.  58 times the team coming off the bye played at home, 53 on the road.  Teams win games by an average of 2.5 points, so we would have expected teams coming off the bye to win by a very small amount -- it turns out to be 0.1 points.  In reality, teams coming off a bye won by an average of 1.6 points, implying a 1.5 point benefit from coming off a bye.

So, has Vegas caught on yet?  Somewhat.  In the same set of games, the team coming off the bye was favored by an average of 0.6 points.  So Vegas gave them an extra half point, when in reality they should be giving them an extra 1.5 points.

The result?  Teams coming off a bye are 59-47-5 against the spread since 2008, good for 55.7%.  It's not a slam-dunk by any stretch, but there does appear to be some value, all things equal, in picking teams after a bye.  Good news for the Colts and Steelers this week, both of whom got a 1.5-point bump when we crunched the numbers for our picks this week.

WEEK 5 PICKS
Our model still doesn't think all that much of the Texans, Vikings, and Patriots, and that's reflected in our picks below.  The Jets, despite all their injuries, may represent Houston's toughest test to date.  A resounding win at MetLife Stadium will go a long way toward convincing us that the Texans are a legitimate Super Bowl contender.

LAST WEEK: 7-8 against the spread, 11-4 outright
SEASON: 33-26-4 against the spread (.559), 43-20 overall (.717)
THIS WEEK: 0-1 against the spread, 0-1 outright

(in order of confidence, outright winner in parentheses):

JETS +9 over Texans (Jets)
Titans +5.5 over VIKINGS (Titans)
Broncos +6.5 over PATRIOTS (Patriots)
SAINTS -3.5 over Chargers (Saints)
CHIEFS +6 over Ravens (Ravens)
Browns + 8.5 over GIANTS (Giants)
BENGALS -3 over Dolphins (Bengals)
COLTS +7 over Packers (Packers)
PANTHERS -3 over Seahawks (Panthers)
STEELERS -3 over Eagles (Steelers)
REDSKINS +3 over Falcons (Falcons)
NINERS -9.5 over Bills (Niners)
Bears -4.5 over JAGUARS (Bears)

Think we're crazy?  Think we're brilliant?  Tell us in the comments!

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