Beating The Book: Warren Sharp, 2020 NFL Strength of Schedule Analysis

within the scope of the National Football League schedule. Think you'll enjoy this, A lot of good tidbits to file away for when, if, and when we have the National Football League season. Warren Sharp, enjoy Welcome back to a numbers game with Jill Alexander. It is our number two of a numbers game right here at Visa the sports betting network, Gil Alexander Serious x M Channel two oh four, Visa dot Com, the Visa app, Bobos Link Game plus First. This is always a treat. We do this about this

time every year with this gentleman. Uh. You can find him on Twitter at sharp football, but really the sites are great. Sharp football stats dot Com, Sharp football Analysis dot Com puts out a preview guide every year for the National Football League season. But it's the strength of schedule this time of year that we always have him come in on and he is kind enough to do so. Yet again, it's our buddy, Warren Sharp. Good morning, Warren. How are you doing man? I'm doing great. You know

how are you? I'm doing well. We have a beautiful photo of you. I know you get a lot of a lot of flak for the mustache, but I appreciate the fact that you're still rocking it. Still rocking it, um, enjoying it. Uh, you don't see it if I'll leave the house with my map. You don't see it if I leave the house with my mask on. But that's why I don't leave the house. Technically, I'm staying right

here and say, can sound inside? Yeah, I don't know if that mustaches is quality pandemic germ prevention care if you know what I mean. You might have to shave that down. Just yeah, well that's as long as you as long as you keep it under the mask. Um, it's not a factor. But yeah, if you take the mask off, you know it definitely stuff can get get in there and you don't want to have to deal with that. Okay, Well, I'm glad we got that taken care of. Here. Here is we have so much to

get to that I want to get started here, Warren. Uh. And let's just start with the with the statement that we should always start with, which is that you know, for years and years and years, the mainstream media has always done a very lazy hack about strength of schedule. They use the wind lost percentages of teams from projected forward when the schedule comes out, and you have been one of the loudest voices in saying that's crap. It should be done. Perhaps the best barometer is by NFL

season win totals established in the betting market. Uh. And so through that prism, let's just let's just start with your fist overall, let's start there that we'll work our way down. Okay. The toughest schedule by far is the Atlanta Falcons. And there's a couple of interesting quirks for the Atlanta Falcons, but they definitely face the most difficult schedule of opposing teams this year. And it's not easy

at the beginning, it's not easy at the end. At the beginning, they're going up against the four straight teams that are gonna be fighting for wild card contention at worst in the NFC if we're talking about the Seattle Seahawks and Dallas Cowboys, the Chicago Bears and the Green Bay Packers um and in a division as difficult as the NFC South is this year, with both the Saints and the Bucks in a virtual arms race for acquiring talent over the offseason to bring in there, it's gonna

be hard to win that division. Wild card might be the best bet for the Falcons, and you can't take any of these games to start the season lightly because those teams are gonna be buying for the wild card as well. The good news for them as they play the Carolina Panthers a couple of times, but the bad news is Carolina can't be as bad as they were last year without really a quarterback at all. They have

Teddy Bridgewater there this year. They're improved on defense, So I still think that those are winnable games for the Falcons. But other than that, their schedule really is not all that easy at all. No real teams that you can tell all this is a slam dunk terrible team besides Carolina, maybe Detroit throwing them in there. You've got everybody else the seven and a half wins or more most teams are forecasted to be above five hundred that they're going

to face. That's a brutal schedule. Yeah, look at that. It's it's Seattle at Dallas, Chicago at Green Beata start uh New Orleans at the Chargers, the Bucks at the Chiefs at the Bucks to close the West Coast trip throw it in. That is just brutal for the Atlanta Falcons. Who's two through five real quick, we don't have to dive into him. But who's second to fifth toughest by your Yeah, so the second toughest, we're going up to New York and we're hitting the Giants at second toughest,

and the Jet the third toughest. And the interesting nugget here on the Jet is that last year, although it doesn't seem like it because they didn't have a great overall season, part of their wins were probably helped by the fact that they played the fifth easiest schedule. They've got the third toughest schedule this year, so they move the easiest to the worst in terms of shifting ends

of the spectrum. There. Then you've got the fourth toughest is your Las Vegas Raiders making their first season in Las Vegas. They or the fourth toughest and the fifth toughest. Another team from the a f C West, the Denver Broncos. To round it out, tough sledding for all five of those teams, specifically the Falcons Gil Alexander Warren sharp it is a numbers game right here, at least in the

sports betting network. Uh And you make the point often Warren, and it should be stated that when you go through these if if someone says it's the thirteenth toughest schedule versus the seventeenth toughest, not that big a deal. The extremes are what matters, right absolutely, because at the end of the day, any type of strength of schedule this time of the year, with so many unknowns, is not going to be perfect. Right Like last year, I predicted the five easiest schedules, and by the end of the

year the five easiest schedules. I did nail three of the five teams. In terms of the teams that were the five easiest, But you're going to have a lot of variants in the middle of the pack, and so exactly you said, the difference between thirteenth and nineteenth or sixteenth at the end of the day is relatively meaningless. Um, it's not going to make a difference as to whether these teams actually have good or bad seasons. So it's not really emphasizing that too much. It's definitely the outliers

or the extremes. Yeah, and we're throwing this and we're throwing this up at Visa dot com and the Visa app right now. And this is sort of portending right now when we get into the easiest schedules. But you make the point in one of your tweets here at sharp Football. UH note small differences between teams are irrelevant, just like the example you game. But we talked about Atlanta five games versus teams rejected UH sub five hundred

nine against nine plus win season win total teams. The converse of that the Indianapolis Colts, which I'm guessing will be your easiest schedule. Then they play eight games versus teams projected UH to be sub five meaning win total of less than eight games, a fewer than eight games eight wins rather and only four in the nine plus range. Is Indianapolis your easiest overall schedule. Yes, they are. As you mentioned, they're just very fortunate with some of the

opponents that they face. Who knows what the Jacksonville Jaguars are actually going to be doing this year from a football perspective, but they get to go against them weeks one and week seventeen, So hopefully you get the season started off well and then you host them week seventeen in between the toughest games that you're going to play. Take a look at this, there are three non division games that you're going to play that they're the toughest

on your schedule. Uh, You've got the Minnesota Vike games, the Baltimore Ravens, and the Green Bay Packers. All three of those games are home games for the Indianapoli Cold. So home field, as I'm sure you've discussed before, probably not as big as a factor this season Number one, Number two. As I've studied predicted heading into last year, home field is not as big even regard regardless of the pandemic, it hasn't been as big of a factor

as it once was. Um, but not having to travel to those opponents, Uh, it's just a slight benefit that any team who gets to play at home is going to benefit from. And so you're playing three of the toughest non division opponents and you get to host all of those games. That's a factor here as well, but just in terms of the overall strength of those opponents,

it's definitely looking good for the Indianapolis Colts. Yeah. Look that the single toughest game on that schedule, arguably, maybe maybe not arguably is the home game in week night against the Ravens after a by and a game against the Lions. So like it couldn't even be more favorable than that, right, I mean, they get they catch a break in every single way. It seems like who's two through five of easiest behind the Colts. So number two is another a f C South team that's play the

Jags twice, and that's the Tennessee Titans. Number three the Cleveland Browns. And they're really interesting one at number three because we know they didn't live up to expectations last season. But last season they played the tenth toughest schedule of opposing teams and now they get to play the third easiest schedules. So that's a big uh. It's the largest in fact, moved from hardest to easiest over one off season.

They have a new coaching staff. They're doing things a lot differently with this staff in terms of bringing heavier personnel. They've added an extra tight end, better alignment through the draft. They brought in a fullback in free agency. Uh, They're going to do some things I think that accentuate what Baker Mayfield does well. Baker does so much better when he thinks everything is going to be blocked up. When he is worried about his protection. His passing numbers dropped precipitously.

So they're a big team that's moved up. The Baltimore Ravens are the fourth easiest schedule, one of the best teams in the league, it's not the best, gets to play a much easier schedule this upcoming season. Now, they had the eighth easiest schedule last year, so it's not a big jump in terms of ease of schedule for them, but they do get to face the top five easiest schedule and then the Chargers play the fifth easiest schedule

this upcoming season. M interesting, uh and Cleveland. I think when you go at sharp football stats dot Com, you can see you you break them down and you do it so well and with visual graphics of the units that they're facing, and I think with with Cleveland, you pointed out a third easiest overall, they go from facing a really difficult schedule last year to really easy one this year. But specifically it's the past defenses as well

that I think turn on it said, don't they were? Baker, Mayfield and company get to face a much easier group of those Yes, absolutely, um. Last season they played the number one toughest defenses as a whole, and the number three toughest past defenses virtually by any metric. Where they're gonna look at efficiency, where they're gonna look at yards for pass attempt, whether you're gonna look at these teams

again defending explosive passes, how many explosive passing games? Just looking at that particular metrics, they faced the third toughest schedule in all of those metrics. This year, they get to play the number one easiest schedule of past defenses, and the teams that were the worst against explosive passing in terms of defending big gains of twenty pluss yards, they faced the easiest schedule of those past defenses as well.

So I'm really expecting Kevin's defense. You come in here and make the changes required to make things easier on Baker Mayfield and improve the ceiling of this passing attack. And when you factor in that, he's moving from number three most difficult to number one easiest. Inherently, even if you did nothing, Baker is gonna look better this year based on the from the schedules of teams that he's going to play, and you factor in all these coaching change is that are going to be occurring in player

improvement in terms of protections. It's definitely going to raise the ceiling for Baker Mayfield in and might have some sick fantasy implications for those who are thinking fantasy football right there for a guy like Baker Mayfield as well. UM talking to Warren Sharp of course at sharp Football on Twitter. What's the name of the podcast, Lauren, what's your podcast that you're doing these days? Well, we just

started one up. I actually took a hiatus from all podcasting last year in terms of hosting UM and and was guesting on others. But this year we're doing the Sharp Angles podcast. At least what we're doing for the time being UM to kind of control some of the stuff we get out there, so you can subscribe to

that on virtually any platform. We also have a fantasy only podcast, uh called Priestnap Motion where we've got a couple of fantasy guys talking talking fantasy football and how that relates to real football and that sort of thing. But um, yeah, podcasting is great. I haven't had time an opportunity to do as much as I would have liked to in the in the past couple of years, but um you know when I when I get the opportunity,

I certainly like talking football. So alright, So one of the things that I do now with NFL seasons just from a football betting standform, from his fan standpoint, we all like to know what teams. It's one thing to talk about the overall schedules, but we're all focused in on tough and easy starts as well. I know one of the one of the most fun and I always talk about this through the years on my podcast being the Book Podcast and here on a numbers game at Visa.

One of the greatest betting vehicles I'm ever involved in is this sort of off the grid football stock market things. So for that I love to know the ebbs and flows of the season. Just starting just talking about the starts of NFL seasons, who which teams were in have the toughest scheduling starts, let's say over the first quarter of the season, and then what what teams have the

easiest starts? Yeah, and and look, I love that. I think it's a big factor in terms of figuring out, you know, when quarterbacks, like rookie quarterbacks might be getting to start. I love the fact that you get to see which teams might get off hot, which siems might

get off cold. A team that's really had some changes this offseason was the Houston Texans in terms of like a perineal playoff team that hasn't had any success in the postseason, has hasn't been lucky in some certain situations in terms of, uh, some of the games that they've played, uh,

blowing some leads and whatnot. But if you look at their schedule, they play the number one toughest schedule to start the season and it's number one toughest bike bar and they're doing it without DeAndre Hopkins, now their best wide receiver. They're playing at Kansas City to open the season Week one on Thursday night. Then they have to host the Baltimore Ravens, So you've got the two best teams in the a f C possibly all of football

weeks one and two. Then you have to go on the road to play the Pittsburgh Steelers after you play the Ravens, and then you have to host the Minnesota Vikings,

another very difficult opponent that's certainly stacked. So, I mean, if you look at if you look at one to thirty two, it's pretty much a consistent line that goes down in terms of just looking at how these teams are ranking if you're doing it visually, and then the Texans are off the charts much harder than anybody else, a huge gap between them and number thirty one, So

they're by far the most difficult. And I will know gil that it's really interesting this season as you compare it to prior years with how this season, let's pretend we're starting Week one, but how these teams are going to be able to prepare themselves for the season at this time of the year. Some of the coaches that I speak with their typically working on their pass game. They're doing a lot of seven on seven's, They're perfecting

their pass game right now. And when it gets to pads and you're in training camp, that's when you're working a little bit more on the run game. Well, some of this uh timing and figuring out what you're gonna do from a passing perspective that is being lost. Right you're doing films sessions, you're doing classroom sessions right now on zoom and other poor olds, but you're not being able to work with that passing attack quite as well.

So one of the things I look at is you know which teams are going to come out with the most difficult schedule of run defenses or past defenses, and which teams might have the easiest schedule of run defenses. And like the Baltimore Ravens, for example, are very fortunate they're playing the first five weeks they play the number one easiest schedule of run defenses in the NFL. They literally play five straight opponents that ranked bottom ten in

terms of run defense last year. So I mean, the team that already wants to be able to run the football is getting a really easy slate and should be able to get off to a really good start in

this upcoming season as a result of that. Yeah, Baltimore, which by the way, guys back in the studio, we have a tweet from Ward about Baltimore specifically, easiest run d schedule over the first five weeks, easiest schedule of run defenses is weren't just pointed out Cleveland at Houston, Casey at Washington, Cincinnati as if Lamar Jackson needed that help to start the season, and uh Ravens running attack.

And then the easiest overall schedule over the last five weeks Dallas at Cleveland on eleven days, rest Jacksonville, the Giants at Cincinnati. Back to the to the Texans who have the easiest excuse me, the hardest start, the toughest start at Casey, Baltimore at Pittsburgh Minnesota. I mean, that's brutal. And you point out thirty one, which is the Redskins not even close, Like the next toughest start is not even close to a start as to as tough as

the Texans start. Is. Just to give people a sense if you look at those first four games and you do the whole win loss, win lost thing, all right, let's give the Texans a win there in some in in one of those four games. Let's say they go one in three, which is you know, realistic when you have that tough of a start uh eight dot com. You start the season one in three Warren fourteen percent of teams that start one in three get into the postseason.

That's why that matters so much. Yeah. Absolutely, I think a lot of people overall overlook UH schedule. You know, it's it's so crazy because in in college football we talk about schedule all the time late this season because we're trying to pick the four most qualified teams to make the playoffs. Right, But in the NFL, since everything's done automatically and automated based upon you know, how you fall out in tiebreakers and whatnot, we never really discussed

strength of schedule in pro football. But as we know, these schedules are determined except for two games, they're determined years in advance, and they vary between one year to the next in terms of team a versus team being a different conference. In those limitsed opponents you're playing in those sixteen games, there's a wide disparity in terms of what your strength of schedule is actually going to be

from one year to the next. Um and then you throw in the fact that the fourth place team plays a fourth place schedule in the first place team two more games against most difficult opponents that they could play in those respective divisions. Strength of schedule is a factor when you're playing these teams is a factor, um, and it definitely doesn't get the airtime that it deserves. UH. And you also point out another tweet that we have

the Raiders face. If you were to extended out to the first eleven weeks, they've got the toughest schedule first eleven weeks, but then that turns on its head, second easiest from weeks twelve through seventeen. So it varies obviously depending on what range of games you're talking about. So no gifts for the Las Vegas Raiders there, um. Just to wrap this up, the easiest start to a schedule

would be, UH. Number one is the Arizona Cardinals. And then you've got the Indianapolis Cold to have another easy schedule. We talked about them before their whole season isn't isn't tough. Um. You've got the Buffalo Bills clocking in at number three, the Jacksonville Jaguars number four, and the Chicago Bears at number five. And one note on the Chicago Bears, Uh, they had the I think it's the eighth toughest schedule

last year. They have the sixth easiest this year, so we didn't get a chance to mention them after the l A Chargers, but they do fall in there as the sixth easiest. So they have the second easiest swing from twenty of any team, and they have the fifth easiest in the first month of the year. So interesting. And and again, since we did this with Houston and the toughest start, UH, let's take Arizona, which you said had the easiest start first five weeks at San Francisco,

So that's difficult. No one's saying that's not. But then after that Redskins at home, Lions at home, at Panthers at Jets. Uh, don't get much easier than that. So going back to the five dot com stats, if you go four in one, and I'm not saying Arizona is, but let's just say they do because they have winnable games. If you go four and one to start a season, seventy of those teams get in the playoffs, per dot Com.

So you know, the starts matter, and they matter for so many reasons, some just team unity, psychological reasons, um. But it's all very fascinating. The there's so many little tidbits that you have here, Warren that will go through um because I want to after the break, we'll squeeze in a break here, but afterwards, I want to get into this notion of West coast travel to play early

games on the East coast. Conventional wisdom wise, that's been this thing that people who UH talk handicapping have always said, Oh, that's the that's the worst thing in the world. You have a team that debunks that, and you actually have a situation, uh in modern day NFL history that is

far worse than that. Actually, we'll get into that. We'll get into this notion of teams that play and the teams that this applies to three consecutive road games without a buy and how they fare a TS in weeks one, two, and three, uh in that situation. And then there's this notion of just playing teams two out of three weeks this year. Really interesting scheduling quirks, and I mentioned the Jets earlier who played the Dolphins, have a buy and

play the Dolphins again. We'll get into all that with a great Warren sharp at sharp football coming back right after the break right here exclusively on a numbers game at Visa these Sports Betting Network. Welcome back to a Numbers game with Jill Alexander, back on a numbers game, Gil Alexander, just like the man said, Warren Sharp kind enough to join us this morning. We were talking off

air about these quirks again. The Jets playing the Dolphins back to back but with a buy in between, but they don't play another team before playing the Dolphins consecutively. The Falcons, as mentioned earlier, they play the Saints two out of three weeks late in the season and then turn around and play the Bucks two out of three weeks late in the season. Just really interesting scheduling quirks, Warren.

Let's let's throw these up rapid fire. And let's start with what I teased before the break about the notion of teams from the Pacific time zone playing early games in the Eastern time zone. And there is a team that here's all that talk and just scoffs at it, isn't there? Yeah, the Seattle Sea Hawks. Since they drafted Russell Wilson, they have a league best nineteen and six record on the road in the Eastern time zone. They just do not seem to get rattled by having to

play games. And most of these games on the Eastern time zone are of course the early one pm kickoff games um, and they do extremely well with Russell Wilson uh in that time slot. And you were saying, the situation that is much more difficult is what is it Eastern time zone teams playing prime time West Coast games? Is that it yea absolutely And we actually have that several times this year because you know, our team like the forty Diners and the Rams both are doing well

and so they've got a lot of primetime games. And when these teams host teams from the Eastern time zone, it's actually from a Circadian bi rhythm issue actually a much bigger deal uh than than people think, um in terms of it's more difficult for an East Coast team to play a prime time team in the West Coast than it is for West Coast team to go to the East Coast and play a one pm kickoff. So it used to be reversed, but that that East Coast

playing West Coast is super super difficult. So example week for Philadelphia at San Francisco on a Sunday night, like those are the real difficulty. Uh, those are the real difficult games. Historically. By the way, a lot of what we're talking about is going to be baked into lines already, but it's little nuggets like that one right there that might not exactly be baked in. Because people are so concerned about the West Coast teams going to the East

Coast early. Everybody knows about that, and that's baked in. It's those reverse ones that might not be baked into the lines. What about the notion of travel miles. We always hear all these people talking about, Oh, this team has the most travel miles. You have a cautionary note about that, Yeah, because nowadays it's probably happened the last

couple of years. UH, teams are allowed to request us from the schedule makers that if they do have to play a couple of teams in the same location, like whether they're going to the East Coast or whether they're going to the West Coast, that they want to be able to play those games back to back so they don't have to come all the way back across the country. And a number of teams have actually requested that of the league, and the league has granted it. I think

almost in every single one of the cases. So there's a number of teams, but a couple of examples occur between weeks two and three. UH, team like the Rams comes out east, a team like the forty comes out East. They're playing back to back opponents. In one case, they're playing at the same exact stadium. They play the Giants and the Jet in back to back weeks. The two teams share a stadium, so they're just staying out on

the East Coast. So if you're looking at data and numbers, just like looking at travel miles of where teams located, where their opponents are, and just doing the map on that, that's not always going to account for the way these teams are scheduling their travel. Wait warrant, teams can request that. I have never heard that. Yes, that's true, up team, it's a true. Teams are able to request that now

and the league has been pretty much granting it. And so there's been teams from the East Coast that has to go to the West Coast and play a couple of teams out there, like including the Seahawks that this season are being allowed to do those in back to back weeks and stay out West so um, it's it's definitely a thing that's started to happen. Yeah, alright, last thing, we got sixty seconds here, Warren U. Four teams play three straight row games without a bye this year, Arizona,

New Orleans, New England, and Washington. Here are your numbers. Tell us the A T S on games one, two, and three of that subset. Well, just so you know, A T S in general of teams on the road cover the spread. Here, we've got fifty six percent cover in the first game, but in games two and three it drops well below the forty six. So what we're noting is that that first game, teams know they've got

a tough road ahead three straight road games. Maybe the coach is getting them better mentally prepared, maybe they're doing good prep heading into that first road game. They do a little bit better in terms of performance. And this is over years and years. This isn't just a couple of years, so there's good data behind this. But when you go to games two and three, that's when it does take a toll. Prep falls off a little bit, focus in some cases falls off a little bit, and

these teams end up doing worse than average. Yeah, dips from and then fort in weeks two and three. Of that's upset, Warren, appreciate it has always been best to you in the family, to your little girl at Sharp football. Thank you Warrant so much. Hey, thanks for having me. De'll take care. Two