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

got it easy, Who's got it rough? It's the National Football League strength of schedule analysis right here on today's Beating the Book podcast. Enjoy live from the Visan Studios in the South Point Hotel and Casino. It's Gil Alexander now our number two of the numbers game right here at Visa and we're sports Betting Analytics, live actionable sports betting information. It's Gil alexand Series X and Channel two

A four, Visa dot Com, the Visa app. First, though, it is our pleasure to have back on the show for the first time since football season. When last we spoke with him, he was being whisked off to the Super Bowl between the Rams and the Patriots wind and dined, having a good time, and we're thrilled to have him here to talk about sort of the first level. We'll get to the second level again when the actual chronology of who's playing who in what weeks gets revealed, we'll

have him on again. But the first level of his analysis of strength of schedule, now that we have the first season win totals from CG Technology, it's our friend Warren Sharp. Good morning to you. Warren Hey, good morning Gil. How are you and I'm doing very well. How was the Super Bowl? Man? Was that a great experience for you? Yeah, it's been a whirlwind. The Super Bowl was great, not with a few teams down there, had a lot of fun, came back before the game actually kicked off. I didn't

actually attend the Super Bowl. Uh. Then I went up not long after to Indianapolis for the Combine that with some more teams up there than I had to and my tea conference up at Sloan Sports Analytics Conference up there in Massachusetts. So I was up there for a day and I met with another team up there, And since then I've been back at my home base here cranking away getting ready for the upcoming season. Wow, that is a whirlwind. By the way, how was the Sloan

Sports Analytics Conference panel experience for you? That was your first one ever? Right? It was. It was a lot of fun, um, you know. Unfortunately I was up there because they do the panel right during the middle of the combine, so the teams that wanted to meet with me out in Indy and then and they weren't coming up to Sloan. They typically would, but because it was right during the first couple of days of the combine, like right in the heart of it, they couldn't get

away from there. And then there was other teams who were going up to Sloan, so I was able to. I had to like split my time between the two uh and took a three day trip and spent I guess most of it in Indy and then I was only up in Boston for twenty four hours. So if I would do it again, hopefully they spread it out a little bit. I'm skeptical of that. I love to spend a little bit more time up in Boston because it was a lot of fun, but I love the city.

I loved being able to meet with some people back in the Green room, a lot of the other speakers got to meet with michae Leach, coach of the Washington State football team, and he's a ton of fun and we talked a little bit about game planning and strategy. Uh. And you know this, this a very good experience. But only regret is that it was a little bit short. Man.

What what That's awesome. We're just living through you right there for a second, just daydreaming that we were you for a second before we get to your strength of schedule analysis. Then I'd be remiss if I didn't ask you since you brought it up so many times there, Warren. Uh, do you have any wonderful announcements you'd like to make about any of your meetings with teams or you want

to hold off of that? Uh? No, I actually haven't inked anything still uh receiving uh kind of offers discussing things with teams, and UH haven't made any types of decision yet. So I'm taking the process slow. But it's it's good to see you wanted, so everybody wants. Well, I'd like to have whatever you do, whatever contract you you write, if you could have just the carve out like I still get to do an hour with Gil and crack on on Thursdays on a numberscap if you

could write, if you could write that in there. So just so, the CG technology first, So the first season win totals came out. CG technology first to post them again this year, as they were last year, but this year a little earlier, and we're seeing that throughout the sports betting landscape. We had baseball season win totals earlier than ever in January from Caesar's and now we have CG doing it at the end of March. So let's

start with one of your tweets. This is actually your relabeled graphic if you would, Warren on this one again. All of this at sharp football stats dot com or Sharp football analysis dot com. This is stats, right, yeah, okay, this is Sharp football stats dot Com. Again. Warren has great visuals where you can sort of in a snapshot glean a lot of information. So walk us through briefly. We'll start with this one and then I'll sort of

ask you to steer us how you want to go. Yeah, so, obviously, as you mentioned, you know, they came out with these uh substantially earlier um than last year. I believe last year's win totals, if I'm not mistaken, came up right as the draft was starting. Maybe it was at the first round of the draft. And this year obviously they did them at the last day of March. So, um, you know, I love seeing them earlier, the better we

can analyze until a little bit longer. The only downside of that, of course, is you probably understand I don't know what the limits are on these. I mean, it could just be five dollars, which is worthless to toward. A sort of tip your hand is to and bet these things now if if um, you know, if you

can only get down five on them. So but I believe the graphic that you're probably looking at their UM showcases all the teams from the team that's projected to win the most games to the team that's projected to win the lease games, which is the Arizona Cardinals, and then it compares that with what they did last season with the record last season to show what the forecast

in provement UH is or regression. Maybe in the cases of some teams, like for example, of the Chicago Bears and the l A Rams, who are forecast to lose two and a half more games this year than they did last year. It doesn't necessarily mean that they're going to be a bad team this year. What essentially means is that those teams obviously had twelve and thirteen wins respectively last season. And as you know, but for the listeners,

they don't lie win totals that high. In you know, the start the season, everybody's win totals generally sprinkled right around between eleven ish and uh and down to like five ish. Sometimes there's a little bit above or below that, but it doesn't really go further much further than that. For the vast majority of the teams are kind of bunched together, um, and so they tend to do that

because it's they're difficult to project. You know, a certain teams are only going to win three games or two games, even though every single year there are teams that obviously only win three or two games. So, um, yeah, they're the team that's obviously forecast to win the most games that you can see on the graphic. I don't know, but it's a Francisco in terms of their improvement over

last season. They only won four games last year. Obviously, Jim and Garoppolo got injured, and now they're projected to win eight games in twenty nineteen. Um, I factor juice into this, So I have a little formula that takes into consideration whether it's you know, minus one ten either side that's going to be, you know, just a flat number. But if it's minus one, minus one thirty, obviously they're

shading it a little bit higher. And so that shouldn't be factored into what you're saying that their win total actually is. Another team that's projected to win more games compared to last year would be the Green Day Packers, projected to win three point two more games than they did last year. They won six games last year, right now they're projected to win nine point two. Obviously can't win nine point two, but just factoring in the juice,

that's what it shows. And part of the reason why there is that although they did ei Aaron Rodgers the full sixteen games, they got rid of Mike McCarthy and they only won three out of nine games that ended in one score, you know, one score game, meaning that they either won or lost the game by with in eight points. So once some single score, but the conversion

would get you to at least the tie. Um, they only want three of their nine games, so you would expect typically that they should regret to the meaning in a positive manner in this case and win a little bit more games. So that's why they are showing the second highest improvement compared to what the team did last year. And there is the tweet from Warren at Sharp Football for those watching at Visa dot com, the Visa app,

Foobo TV, or Sling TV. Uh. And then listen, before we get to the point where we know who's playing who what weeks of the season, we can make some general comments about strength of schedule, and you have as well, uh in your tweet about the three teams with the three easiest schedule based on current wind totals and the three teams that have the three hardest. Who are those? Yes, So you know the way that I like to break down UM wind totals obviously is I look at I

use that to forecast strength of schedule. And as you know, still and this is a great point that you're kind of at the forefront of beating the drum along with me about sharing this with people that using prior year win loss record to forecast the team's record for this year, like assuming that they're going to win the exact same number of games last year compared to this year, and so forecasting strength of schedule for this season based on

what the teams did last year is astronomically dumb, and so a lot of media outlets use that methodology. We we don't want to fall into that group led by you know, Shepherd down the wrong path. So we're going in the correct way to look at things, which is, let's look at the forecasted wins for this season. What are the books who are taking bets, willing to stake their own reputation of money on these things going to forecast these teams to do. And then let's an examine

strength of schedule based upon that. And when you do that, what you find is that the three teams with the easiest schedules for nineteen are the Patriots, the jet and the Eagles. And the three teams with the hardest schedules are the Texans, the Broncos, and the Raiders. Now let's talk about that. I'm sure you've got some comments, but the one thing that jumps out to me the most is, of course, a couple of really good teams with really easy schedules, in part helped by the fact they don't

play themselves. You know, the Patriots don't have to play the Patriots twice, so naturally they're not going to be playing the most difficult team. But even so, they still have a extremely easy schedule. They typically are easy, uh have easier schedules most of the season because they played the a FC East. That means they don't play themselves and they play these other terrible teams six games. But

then the other side of it is the Texans. The Texans at this time this last year, Gale, we talked about this, Texans had the easiest schedule in the NFL based on wind totals, the number one easy schedule that I was forecasting, and that's one of the reasons why some people started to look at setting their win total over last season placing that's on the Texan during the

course of the year. They were one of the most popular teams last season in part because they're super easy schedule and that was calculated based upon the forecasted win totals is the easiest in the league, and it was another good reason why they were a great spade in the postseason because we knew how easy of the schedule that they played during the season. They got the home field game, and it was largely because they played the

easy schedule. But look what happens twenty nine team. They played the most difficult schedule of any team in the NFL for the upcoming year, complete opposite ends of the spectrum. So naturally it would be wise to expect a little bit more regression from this team is compared to what they did last year. Yeah, and there's the tweet from Warren. The Texans forecast in terms of the bottom five opponents last year, they forecast before the season they were gonna

play five this year it's zero. And then, as it resulted in in Aaron shots is Football Outsiders d v o A, they ended up playing just two top ten teams last year. We shall see what the case is this coming year with the Texans. Warrent, hang out for a second, if you would. Well, before we get to that, one more thing about this, Uh, the Patriots interesting to me again, easiest schedule the rest of the league, and

everybody listening is like, great, you know the Patriots. It is by virtue of their division, right that this happens every year, and there's a Dolphins at the very bottom of the list this year in terms of their season win total. So it's you know, the Patriots get that in their favor. This dip down from what I heard from eleven to ten and a half almost immediately like for me, and I don't care how bearish one can

be on the Patriots. Okay, Tom Brady, the age curve, I get it, uh, you know, but it's Tom Brady. He defies every bit of logic possible. If you're going to bed under on a ten and a half, you're you're hoping the Patriots lose six football games in a sixteen game schedule. Like to me, that's a Listen. I'm not saying I'm rushing to bet the over, but I'm certainly not bending the under on that right. Well, the difficult part, as you mentioned, you know, the Patriots play in the a f C East and the a f

C East. Especially when you look at what the Miami Dolphins are doing this year, you know they're going to be worse than they were last year, and that's intentional. They are not trying to play to win games necessarily this season, and so um, that's a team that in the past had been trying hard and now they're still gonna be trying, but they just don't have the pieces.

They're clearly looking to rebuild for the future. So you you look at that division, right, you look at that division, and of course the Dolphins are projected right now to win the fewest games, and so the Bills and the Jets. Should they be better than last year? Yes, they should. They have got last year they had rookie quarterbacks in there. This year, those guys are in their second season, so theoretically both of those teams should be a little bit better.

But you know, the Patriots are so good at home, right and if you look at their non divisional schedule, we know that they play the Pittsburgh Steelers home, so we already know that. You can go to Shark Football Stats and you can look at the strength of schedule. You can view all the home road opponents and what how strong they are. They play the Steelers at home, which is one of the best teams that they're going

to face this season. They also get the Cleveland Browns at home, so those two teams to get to play them at home, as well as the Dallas Cowboys. They also play the hardest team on their entire schedule at home, the Kansas City Chiefs. So those four teams, they get all of those at home. Who do they have to go on the road and face, Well, they go on the road. Obviously, those are the more difficult games that you're looking for. Where's Tom Brady gonna stumble, where's the

team's gonna have proms? Well, obviously they have to play down at Miami. They tend to struggle sometimes when they go down to Miami. That's gonna happen every single year they play in Miami. They get to go on the road and they play the the Cincinnati Bengals. They also play the Washington Redskins, two of the bottom five teams

sorry for your Skins in the NFL. Terms of the forecast for this upcoming season, they have three difficult games on the road, but they're manageable because you look at the I guess the overall quarterback h uarterback talent that they're going to face. The hardest of the three is going to be the Philadelphiagles, who are really looking strong this upcoming season. Then they go to Baltimore and play

the Baltimore Ravens, obviously Lamar Jackson. If you can get ahead a lead on Lamar Jackson is gonna be difficult for him to get throw the ball and get back in the game, right, So that could That's an interesting type of game, the way that's going to flow. And then you've got to Houston Texans, who we just talked about. They didn't play anybody last season. Going up against Tom Brady in this offense, we go, theyre going to Rob Groomkowski. But it's got a great coach and great quarterbacks, So

I understand. You know, it's different any year that you're betting the over on a New England Patriots, like you tend to end up winning. But it's not like you're going to slam dunk be in the driver's seat like the whole way through. There's times when it's close towards the end of the season. Um, but the schedule definitely is very valuable for them to have so many difficult games at home and games that there should have pretty good success with on the road. Lauren, hang out for

one second. I want to get to a few more of these, just three more of these, one of which has to do with teams who schedule eases up the most from last year based on efficiency to this year forecast strength of schedule based on wind totals. Also want to talk about the New York Giants for Giants fans out there. Warren Sharp at Sharp Football on Twitter right here on a numbers game at Visa. Support for today's show has always comes from book maker dot EU and

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Book Maker dot EU slash Gil. Check it out. You will thank me later. Down back to a numbers game with your host, Gil Alexander, broadcasting live from our Visa in studios in Las Vegas. It is a numbers game right here where sports betting analytics live right here on Visa actionable sports betting information. And again honored to have Warren Sharp on the show once again our special offseason

Warren Sharp Appearances. We'll do it again when the uh, the actual calendar, the schedule comes out where we know who's playing which team in which particular week, and then we can break it down through Warren's lens in terms of what teams start with har schedules, what teams start with these schedules, what teams play tough defenses or are easy past defenses will parse it out unit by unit

at that point. Uh So, Warren, I'm throwing that out there for a later summertime appearance, if you would, because that would be fun to break down. Always good. I like that. Let's let's conclude what we have here though from you. Uh this one also from yesterday again CG Technology putting out our first season win totals of the football season here in Las Vegas. They did so on

March thirty one. Let's let's start with this one here, um, which has to do with comparing actual strength schedule based on efficiency versus forecast strength of schedule based on wind totals. The teams who schedule eases up the most, right. So this is another kind of you know, I'm I'm a I'm a geek about trying to analyze things that other people aren't looking at. Number one, you can find a lot of edges that way, and number two, it's fun to talk about, fun to share the types of revelations.

So one of the things that I definitely like to look at is how does the schedule look at this point heading into ten compared to what the teams faced last year? And we know what their actual strength of schedule was last year, so we're not using forecasted win totals here. We're looking at what are they actually play last year and then what are we forecasting for this upcoming year. And so the teams that who schedule, the top five teams to schedule eases up the most. Number

one is the Cleveland Browns. Number two is the Cincinnati Bengals. Number three the Pittsburgh Steelers. Then you have the Buffalo Bills and the Philadelphia Eagles. So the Cleveland Browns, the Bengals, and the Steelers, those teams obviously are all in the a f C North. So their schedule in terms of a non divisional schedule, the two divisions that you play, because you always play your own division, you play a

division within your conference. That's the total separate division, right, So in this case, instead of the a f C North, you're playing one of the other three divisions in your conference, and then you're playing a division in the other conference over the NFC to all of these teams will play those same opponents, and so that schedule, that non division schedule eases up tremendously for the a f C North

compared to last year. If you look at the five teams with the most difficult scheduling increases, the team that to schedule is going to be much more difficult compared to what it was last season. The Houston Texans are the first. They obviously have the number one overall schedule. Their schedule gets much more difficult compared to what it was last year based upon final end the season Drinker schedule. The Chicago Bears, the Indianapolis called, the Minnesota Vikings, and

the Green Bay Packers. So once again you've got three teams from the NFC North who's opposing divisional schedule from other divisions is going to get substantially more difficult, which is why all three of those teams schedule gets much more difficult for the upcoming season compared to last year. Yeah, so easiest Cleveland, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Philly in terms of

whose schedules is up the most. And his Warren just said, uh, the team's whose schedule gets the hardest compared to last year Houston. There they are Chicago, Indianapolis, Minnesota, and Green Bay. So this has been an off season for the Ages, Warren, for the New York Football Giants, And by that I mean, a horrific off season for the Ages. But you might

have some good news for them here. Well, yeah, the good I mean the good news, uh, respectively, is that they have the fourth easiest schedule and they do face seven bottom ten opponents, which is the second most of any team in the league this upcoming year. The problem, the trouble for the New York Giants, of course, is the fact that while they have the fourth easiest schedule this year, last year they had the seventh schedule and they won only five games, so they still had a

very bad record last season. They're still projected to win based on the pure wind totals the fourth fewest games this year is their win total set at six minus one ten um. And you know they also were with are without Odell Beckham um. In addition, if you look at the team who's playing opponents that are typically better than them, um, you're gonna see, well, maybe we're trailing in the second half. And when Eli last year was trailing in the second half, his success rate on passes

was thirty one out of thirty four qualifying quarterbacks. The only three quarterbacks that were worse than him. We're all rookies. Josh Rose and Josh Allen and Sam Donald. The other thing that I will say that I haven't put up on Twitter yet but I've been working on this morning is a depiction looking at games that a team will face this upcoming season, where they are better than their

opponent based upon just the pure forecasted wind total. They're forecasted to be a stronger team, not looking at power rankings, look at what the oddsmakers put out here is stronger team, and then comparing that to last year based upon what the spreads were in the actual games. What was the spread on these games, and how many games were they

lined as a better team than their opponent. Obviously, that means you could still be an underdog, but if you're one point underdog on the road, you're technically better than that other team because you're on the road, and so you're obviously the superior team at one point underdog. So I'm backing all that in and what we find there is that the New York Giants last year was forecast to be better than their opponent in just two games. This year better than their opponent in just two games.

So the only good part is they play an easier schedule, But the bad part is they play the easy schedule last year and the only fake two teams that's their forecasts to be better than. So there's that basically New York Giants fans, that's not fun. As again one of the more strange offseasons, and strange is being kind one of the most perplexing off seasons you will ever find. With the NFL Draft now later this month, can finally say that later this month the NFL Draft coming. Last

one here, Warren. I guess we've kind of covered this one in different ways, but the last one here is two teams that face just one top five opponent, two teams that face four top five opponents last one here. So the Philadelphia Eagles in the New England Patriots are

both fortunate in that. Like you can, the way I look at these things is you look at each game individually, and you can find the teams that play the top five or top ten teams, the teams that are supposed to be the best in the NFL this season, and teams that are supposed to be the worst. And that's one of the things the strength of schedule that's useful. As you probably know, Gil, it's not about evaluating all this team is eleventh versus seventeenth, and so, oh my god,

you know this team's got much easier schedule. No, it's looking at the extremes. Look at the extremes of the schedule. Which are the teams that have the five easiest schedules, What are the teams that have the five most difficult schedules, And which are the best, five, best or worst teams based upon these wind totals, and those are the ones

that we should feel pretty confident about. The Patriots and the Eagles both face just one top five team this year, but they get to play five games against bottom five opponents, the worst of the worst of the NFL. But there are five games that they should win. Um, then you go to the team teams that face strong opponents, strong top five opponents. There's two teams to play four of those top five opponents, and they play none of the worst teams, none of the bottom five opponents. Those two

teams are the Texans and the Broncos. So Patriots and Eagles justifiably and easy scheduled, large part made much easier by the fact play very few top teams, a lot of bottom teams, and the Texans the Broncos, the two most difficult schedules in the NFL play some of the most difficult opponents, very two easy opponents, very many very

difficult opponents. And the interesting court here is that looking back at I went back and looked at those schedules, there was not a single team at this point in the season that had the same type of benefit where they play a lot of easy teams at the top and no hard teams, or a lot of hard teams and no easy team. There wasn't a team that fell into those categories last year, and here this season we got two teams on the easy end and two teams on the hard end. All of this can be seen

on Warren's Twitter at sharp Football. Just an absolutely great follow. By the way, again, if you want to watch the if you want to look at the Seawan Taylor montage that I talked about yesterday on the what would have been Sean Taylor's thirty six birthday, you can check that out of chart Football as well. But all those stats that we talked about not only at chart Football, they're

also at Shart football stats dot com. Warren, we'll talk to you again this summer again when the schedule comes out week one, week two, week three, and that in that fashion. Uh. In the meantime, crack and I miss you a lot on Thursdays. Are you gonna have a Pro Football guide this year? Like? Do you have time to do a preview guide anymore? I? I am. That's the current plan. I'm looking forward to doing that, really excited. Actually left my engineering job officially, so I'm gonna be

able to pursue some of these other things. Uh three up a little bit more time. So the guide is on. I'm working on it as we speaking. That tends tends to come out right at the very end of June, right at the very end of June. We look forward to it. Warren Sharp's Pro Football Preview Guide Warren, thank you man, appreciate it and congratulations on all. Thanks Warren Sharp, best in the biz, football analytics. His future Jeff to say, the least, as bright as could be.