The New York Jets are riding the hype train heading into the 2023 season.

The Jets acquired QB Aaron Rodgers to complement a defense that killed it last season. With a win total of 9.5, the market expects the Jets to make the playoffs and possibly push Buffalo for the AFC East division title. 

However, there are some warning signs about this team. 

First, there are questions about Aaron Rodgers. He will turn 40 years old this season, and his play fell off in Green Bay last season. 

In my research, I’ve found success rate on passing plays as the most predictive metric for an offense. While there are multiple definitions of success rate, I use a simple criteria based on the yards the offense gains towards the next first down.

A play is a success if the offense gains the following fraction of these necessary yards:

• 50% on 1st down
• 70% on 2nd down
• 100% on 3rd, 4th down

The Power Rank specializes in taking this success rate for a QB and adjusting for opposing defenses. Based on this calculation, Rodgers with the Packers last season was predicted to have a passing success rate of 42.3% against an average NFL defense. This is below the NFL average of 42.8%. 

Rodgers might have struggled because of a thumb injury that never seemed to heal last season. In addition, Green Bay had injuries at wide receiver.

With the Jets, Aaron Rogers will now have the services of WR Garrett Wilson. The second-year player out of Ohio State had 1.85 yards per route run last season compared to an NFL average of 1.5 for wide receivers. 

In addition, Wilson put up these numbers with the QB incompetence of Zach Wilson, Joe Flacco and Mike White. 

After Wilson, Rodgers will throw to his old buddies from Green Bay. Alan Lazard and Randall Cobb both rate roughly NFL average by yards per route run. 

The Jets offense projects as NFL average. While this might seem like a knock on Aaron Rodgers, it’s actually a massive improvement from last season. 

On defense, the Jets excelled in 2022. In my passing success rate adjusted for opposing QBs, the Jets ranked 3rd. 

A huge reason was cornerback Sauce Gardner. The rookie out of Cincinnati had a PFF coverage grade of 90, an elite number on a scale of zero to a 100.

However, the defense had the good fortune of having the lowest negative impact due to injuries. This comes from a Football Outsiders metric that gives more weight to starters than backups. 

In addition, the top three cornerbacks for the Jets did not miss a single game. This includes DJ Reed and Michael Carter in addition to Sauce Gardner. With the randomness inherent in injuries, the Jets are unlikely to have the same health and hence performance in 2023.

In addition, the Jets have a difficult schedule. In addition to two games against Buffalo and Miami, they also play the following teams:

• At Dallas, Week 2
• Kansas City, Week 4
• Philadelphia, Week 6
• Los Angeles Chargers, Week 9

I like the Jets under 9.5 wins (+110 at most sports books).

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In the 2nd quarter of the Super Bowl, Philadelphia QB Jalen Hurts throws the ball deep down the left sideline. In a tie game, Hurts was looking for a big gain to AJ Brown against Kansas City.  

However, Brown was double covered, and Kansas City’s Juan Thornhill got his hands on the ball. In one possible world, the ball drops into the hands of Trent McDuffie, the other defender in coverage. Maybe he finds a seam down the sideline and scores a touchdown. 

Instead, the ball fell harmlessly to the turf. While interceptions can have a massive impact on a football game, this play shows the random element in picks.

To put some numbers behind this, consider a quarterback’s interception rate, or interceptions divided by pass attempts. An NFL quarterback’s interception rate one season has little ability to predict interception rate the following season (R-squared value of 7%). 

However, you can make better predictions for interceptions by expanding the set of events. As suggested earlier, the key idea is looking at plays in which a defender gets a hand on a pass.

The NFL play by play data tracks passes defended, or incomplete passes in which a defender gets a hand on the ball or jars it loose with a hit. To predict interceptions, consider bad balls, or the sum of interceptions and passes defended. These are the plays in which the QB put the ball in a dangerous position.

Bad ball rate is bad balls divided by pass attempts. From one season to the next, bad ball rate has an R-squared of 27%, about as predictive as QB metrics get.

In addition, the fraction of bad balls that turn into interceptions is random from one season to the next. There is strong regression to the NFL average of 19.7%.

If you are going to remember one thing, it should be this: quarterbacks have control over putting the football into dangerous situations. However, once they put the ball in danger, they have no control over whether the play ends as an interception.

To see the implications for the 2023 season, let’s look at New York Giants QB Daniel Jones and compare his rates with NFL averages (interception rate of 2.3%, bad ball rate of 11.6% over the past three seasons).

• 2020: interception 2.2%, bad ball 13.4%.
• 2021: interception 1.9%, bad ball 10.5%.
• 2022: interception 1.1%, bad ball 10.7%.

First, note that Jones did not excel at interception prevention because new head coach Brian Daboll showed up in 2022. Despite an injury riddled season in 2021, Jones had a better than NFL average bad ball rate.

Second, Jones will not be able to sustain a remarkable 2022 in which he only threw six interceptions. I’ve found that a three year average of bad ball rate is optimal for predicting the next season.

Over the past three seasons, Jones has had a 11.6% bad ball rate, right at NFL average. He will not be able to sustain his excellent turnover prevention in 2023.

To put this in a different way, Jones had 11.7% of his bad balls in 2022 end up as interceptions. This rate will regress to the NFL average of 19.7% in 2023.

My calculations based on bad ball rate give 10.8 interceptions for Daniel Jones this season. Although an injury can lower this estimate, it suggests value in over 8.5 interceptions (-110 available at DraftKings).

Smarter sports betting in less than 5 minutes

This article was sent to The Power Rank’s email newsletter at 5pm Eastern on Wednesday, August 23. This newsletter is a free service that strives to be:

• Valuable
• Concise
• Entertaining

Every week, I send out 5-Nugget Saturday, my curated list of sports betting tips, analytics and humor. This is the newsletter for those looking for action on any given weekend.

To get this free service delivered straight into your inbox, enter your best email address and click on “Sign up now!”