The upstart Washington Commanders and rookie QB Jayden Daniels shocked the NFL with an upset win at Detroit last week. Can they pull off the same trick at Philadelphia in the NFC championship game?
My member model that makes NFL spread predictions relies predominantly on passing metrics, and there is a good reason for this. Let’s look at the NFL averages for yards per play this season:
- Passing: 6.22 yards per pass attempt.
- Rushing: 4.61 yards per carry.
Even though passing includes negative plays from sacks, it is more efficient to throw than run in the NFL. But do I need to make an exception for Philadelphia running back Saquon Barkley? We’ll get to him soon.
At The Power Rank, I take these raw passing metrics and adjust for opposing defense with my algorithms. After these calculations, here are the expected yards per pass attempt against an average NFL defense:
- Philadelphia, Jalen Hurts: 5.94 yards per pass attempt.
- Washington, Jayden Daniels: 6.47 yards per pass attempt.
Even though he has better receivers, Hurts has not been as efficient at the rookie Daniels this season. It should be noted that Hurts has posted better numbers the past two seasons.
Philadelphia has a big edge on pass defense though, as they rank 2nd in my adjusted yards per pass attempt. This much better than the 26th for Washington.
In their last meeting, Daniels led Washington to a 36-33 win over Philadelphia. While he did lead a game winning drive, Daniels only had slightly above average numbers for the game (6.54 yards per pass attempt, 43.6% passing success rate compared to the 43.2% NFL average). Don’t take too much from this one game.
But what about Saquon Barkley?
Barkley has been incredible this season, as he has averaged 5.9 yards per carry. Against Washington this season, he had touchdown runs of 39 and 68 yards behind an excellent offensive line. Barkley was even better with touchdown runs of 62 and 78 yards against the Rams last week.
But how sustainable are these explosive runs?
NFL analyst Clevta notes that Washington has held Barkley to two or fewer yards on 47% of rushes in those two games this season. Washington’s defense had a 37% rate against all other teams.
In addition, there is a large random component for explosive plays. To show this, consider the idea of isolate explosiveness from Bill Connelly, the excellent college football analyst. To isolate explosiveness, he looked at yards per carry only on successful plays.
A few years ago, I looked at this isolated explosiveness for NFL teams from 2011 to 2020. I split up the season into an early and late period, and I found an R-squared value of 0.08. This means randomness plays a huge role in explosive runs in the NFL.
It would be much better if I had looked at individuals players. That will have to wait for this off season. And maybe Saquon Barkley is an exception.
Let’s get back to making a prediction: my best member model based mostly on passing metrics likes Philadelphia by 5.1 points over Washington. Given the uncertainty with Barkley’s explosive plays, this seems about right, as the market has Philadelphia -6.
Football betting with a PhD edge
This article was sent to The Power Rank’s email newsletter on Friday, January 24, 2025. This newsletter is a free service that strives to be:
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