2020 NFL Picks Week 21: Super Bowl 55
Another .500 week, and we’re on the precipice of a winning season! It may not be exciting, but at least Sunday’s game should be!
All DVOA figures are pulled from Football Outsiders, a fantastic site for advanced statistics and football commentary.
Kansas City Chiefs -3.5 vs. Tampa Bay Buccaneers
Advanced statistics still have a long way to go before they’re fully embraced by the NFL, but their influence can be seen more and more each season. Announcers are willing to consider passing more than you run, “taking the points” isn’t considered immutable law, and 4th downs are for more than just punting. If you go to the NFL.com or ESPN.com standings pages, both now display point differential, a simple statistic that is still a better measurement of a team than win-loss record. And this is where things get interesting for our Super Bowl prediction.
Tampa Bay finished the season 11-5 (8th) with a point differential of +137 (4th). Kansas City finished 14-2 (1st) with a point differential of +111 (6th). Basically, both teams were very good, and much closer to each other than win-loss record or playoff seeding would suggest. In fact, the Buccaneers finished ahead of the Chiefs in DVOA and weighted DVOA, our stat of choice here at Questionably Qualified.
One key takeaway from expanded research on point differential is that it’s a better predictor of future performance than win-loss record. The details are messy, but in short, teams who stomp mediocre or bad teams and lose a handful of close ones perform better in the playoffs than teams who only lose once or twice but rarely blow opponents out. The Buccaneers are the team with the blowouts here, as the Chiefs routinely allowed teams to keep games close in the second half of the season. Their big win over the Bills was their first win by more than 6 points since they trounced the Jets way back in Week 8. Tampa Bay, on the other hand, has now won seven straight games, four by double digits and another by 8 points.
So Tampa Bay has a solid argument on their side in terms of point differential, and they’re the better-rounded team with a top-5 offense (3rd) and defense (5th) compared to Kansas City’s offensively-skewed squad (2nd in offense, 22nd in defense). Hang on a second…that sounds familiar. From last year’s Super Bowl preview:
I’ve found myself tempted to pick the best player in games like this before, and the best player logic points to the Chiefs. San Francisco is a deeper and more well-balanced team, though. Both offenses can look unstoppable, but only one has the benefit of going against a defense ranked 29th against the run. I’ll be cheering for the Chiefs and hoping for a Patrick Mahomes Super Bowl MVP, but I’ll take the better team and the points for these purposes.
So, is the pick this year purely because there are startling similarities to last season’s miss on my part? Of course not! I think Kansas City has a few important edges that will make the difference in Super Bowl 55.
Patrick Mahomes is better than Tom Brady
This has nothing to do with their legacies or all-time standings, but Mahomes is in his third season as a starter and still hasn’t lost a game by more than one possession. Tom Brady is great, but he’s also 43 years old and currently has a postseason statline of 60-109 (55%) for 860 yards (286.7 ypg), 7 TDs, and 3 INTs. Those are good numbers, but you can’t afford to lose possessions when you’re going against the Mahomes-Reid Chiefs. Unfortunately, the combination of this version of Tom Brady and the Bruce Arians offense needs to operate perfectly to rack up points and keep Mahomes off the field. To do so, they should be aggressive on both first- and fourth-downs, not risking third-and-long or punts. Through three playoff games, Tampa Bay has had 85 1st down situations outside of kneeldowns, and they’ve run the ball 55 times. They’ve faced 6 first downs with 3 or fewer yards to go, and gone for it once, kicked field goals three times, and punted twice. I enjoy a lot about Bruce Arians as a head coach, but he isn’t going to be pushing the envelope and maximizing his team’s win probability in some of the most critical situations unless he changes what he’s been doing the last three games.
Tom Brady is facing two major obstacles
Steve Spagnuolo is the Chiefs’ Defensive Coordinator, and he made his first big splash by shutting down the high-flying offense of the 2007 Patriots. Brady is smart and talented enough to put up numbers against anyone, but Spagnuolo at least has ideas of how to make things difficult. One key element for this game is going to be Chris Jones, Kansas City’s enormous (6’6”, 311 lbs) defensive tackle. For many years now, Brady has gotten rid of the ball quickly to avoid taking unnecessary hits and eliminate big negative plays like sacks or fumbles. He’s never been comfortable managing interior pressure, and Jones can get push up the middle while being tall enough to obstruct passing lanes. The Chiefs’ defensive weakness is against the run, and I don’t think Tampa Bay is good enough or patient enough to grind them into dust and play keep-away like Belichick teams of old might.
The matchups favor Kansas City’s offense
Tampa Bay has a lot of weapons, but the Chiefs have a solid secondary looking to make plays with Tyrann Mathieu (7 INT, 4 TFL) and L’Jarius Sneed (3 INT, 4 sacks in 11 games) punishing teams with splash plays. The Buccaneers have more talented players on their defense, but facing Mahomes is a much bigger challenge, and the Chiefs punish mistakes more harshly. Tyreek Hill went off for nearly 300 yards in their meeting earlier this season, and Travis Kelce is waiting to wreak havoc underneath. The matchup I’m most keen to see is Kelce against Devin White. White is a freak athlete, but he looks lost on occasion, and no one makes people disappear in coverage like Kelce and the Chiefs.
The one major disclaimer here is the condition of the Kansas City offensive line. With Eric Fisher, Mitchell Schwartz, and Laurent Duvernay-Tardif all out of this game, the offensive line is hardly what they’d hoped for coming into the season. That doesn’t bode well against Tampa Bay’s 8th-ranked pass rush, so I’m really counting on the mobility of Mahomes and the game-planning of Andy Reid with two weeks to mitigate their disadvantage there.
Chiefs -3.5
UNDER 57
That's all for this week! Kick back, grab a drink, and feel free to blame me if you put money on these picks and come out behind. I won't compensate you, but maybe your significant others will send their wrath in my direction instead of yours.
