Week 9 was a banner week for whatever the opposite of "the cream always rises to the top" is. It was a good week to be bad. The Texans, Falcons, and Giants all picked up rare victories. Meanwhile the Cowboys, Jets, and Jaguars each nearly pulled off miracles of their own, losing last second decisions. You only might get a handful of 7+ point underdogs pulling off upsets per season, but we were this close to getting three in one week.
It is interesting as a Jets fan, as I was wildly rooting for the Patriots huge 4th quarter comeback. It really is like bizarro world cheering for the evil empire, but it's for the greater good. The Jets played their best game of the season and lead 27-17 with 6 minutes left, but somehow found a way to hold the ball for merely 1:24 in the 4th quarter and gifted a victory to New England. I was terrified that The Jets had too much time to get a field goal when they got the ball back with 1:57 left. Literally 10 seconds later, they were punting it back. I cannot stress this enough, but this was a good game for the 2020 Jets.
Here are the updated Trevor-thon 5000 forecast numbers:
The race has been trending towards the Jets vs. the Jaguars for several weeks, but the Giants and Texans wins this past weekend solidified it. The teams now combine for an 88.4% possibility of landing Lawrence. The Jets have a loss in hand, but they are on bye this week so that would be removed with another Jaguars loss. The strength of schedule tiebreaker is looming potentially large. As of now, the Jaguars would have it, but SOS is a moving target that shifts throughout the season. The Jaguars are projected to have a tougher schedule to finish the year, so the tiebreaker could shift back to the Jets when all is said and done. I want to do a formal analysis of this at a later date.
There is not much meat on the bone past the top two. As I prophesized a few weeks ago, the NFC East teams would largely just trade wins and likely prevent each other from landing the number one pick. The three NFC East teams are now combined for 10%. With the Giants, Washington, and Cowboys now all at 2 wins, they are most likely now fighting for the second pick at best. Per Trevor-thon, the winner of the first pick will finish 2-14 just 31% of the time and that's for all teams. Consider what the NFC East teams would need at this point: to lose out, have the Jets to win at least twice, the Jags to win once, AND still win the tiebreaker. Pretty unlikely to get all of those events.
As for the NFC East, the Eagles are still projected for just 6.7 wins this season. Remember, no playoff team has ever advanced with under 7 wins, yet I am still forecasting about a 40% chance that the 2020 Eagles will be the first. Here is an updated look at the expected wins by division winner chart that I posted a few weeks ago:
Finally, here is The Lawrence Index for Week 10. Not much action with the Jets and Cowboys on bye, so all eyes are on Jacksonville, who have about 23 points at stake. However, they open the week as 13.5 point underdogs at the Green Bay Packers, so I am not expecting this to be the week where they sneak in a second win.
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