Super Bowl Newsletter and Picks
For the second week in a row, the Orb fell victim to Patrick Mahomes. After picking the Bills to beat the Chiefs at home, our models doubled down on the Ravens but were not able to factor in January Mahomes. I looked back at the metrics for each team, and even though it didn’t play out that way on the field this was one where I stand by why our models predicted what they did. On paper, Baltimore’s offense was primed to run all over the Chiefs’ defense and control the game. After falling behind early, the Ravens looked panicked and abandoned the game plan, handing the ball off to their running backs just six times the entire game (via @espngreeny on Twitter). Baltimore’s defense held their own in the second half and gave the offense a change to get back into the game. I am a huge fan of Lamar and need to be fair since I was critical of Josh Allen last week. It wouldn’t have been easy, but this game was winnable for Lamar. He unfortunately was not able to come through and the Chiefs are once again playing in the Superbowl. In the NFC, the 49ers win another close one looking shaky once again. The Lions came up swinging and went up big early. This game was potentially Detroit's for the taking but through some questionable coaching decisions and unlucky bounces, it went the way of the favorites. A lot has been made of Dan Campell’s 4th down decisions. Although I disagreed with some of them at the moment, and the results afterward, that is who the Lions have been this season and why they were in this game. I can respect dancing with the one who brought you. If you had asked any Detroit fan at the beginning of the season if they would be happy with a season that ended in the conference championship I think 100% of them would say yes. They have a lot to be excited about next season in Detroit. But the final result is we have a Super Bowl rematch between the 49ers and the Chiefs. Here is how the Orb performed over the two games:
Spread:
Ravens -3.5 ❌
Moneyline:
Ravens ❌
49ers ✅
Overall a -1.722 unit performance from the Orb in the Conference Championship weekend.
Before we get into the Orb’s Super Bowl picks, it's time for our ‘Moneyline Madness’ giveaway! This is something new that we are trying to give back to a member of the community. Here are the rules:
We are going to post a story where you can predict the winner on Saturday so it will be up for a full day before kickoff. The pinned post that #3 is referring to will also be on our Instagram. One lucky person who correctly predicts the winner and tags three friends will win!
Now to our final pick of the season. The Orb is finally bending the knee. Our models saw what has happened the last two weeks and aren’t making the same mistake of picking against Mahomes and the Chiefs as underdogs. The 49ers are probably a better overall team, but so were the Bills and Ravens. The Chiefs have also looked like a completely different team in the playoffs. Their offense struggled for parts of the regular season but now looks as sharp as ever. Their defense was good for most of the year and has turned things up even more in the postseason. On the flip side, San Francisco has not been convincing in their last two games. They have started slow, and needed to come back against two good quarterbacks but now face a great one. Similar to Baltimore, their running attack centered around CMC could cause concern for a good Chiefs defense that is better against the pass than they are the run. We’ll see if, unlike the Ravens, they decide to actually try and exploit this option. Here is what the Orb predicts will happen in the big game:
Our models did not have a consensus on the outright winner, as Models A and B like the 49ers to win while Model C predicts a third Superbowl for Mahomes. However, they all are taking the Chiefs plus the points.
A look ahead to this offseason and next year:
The playoffs did not go our way overall, but this season realistically couldn’t have gone better. This was all because of the decisions we made and the work we put in last offseason. This time around is no different. We have a lot of data to dive into and are always looking to improve our model performance. We have some content ideas for the offseason and I want to run some fantasy football analysis, comparing fantasy projections to gambling lines set by the sportsbooks. We also are working in the background on a potential surprise for you that we should know more about soon. But the main focus on my end of course will be the models.
I always like to be transparent about my modeling decisions, so here is what I am currently working on. I want to replace Model C. It is by far our most complex model type and also our worst performer this season. More so than just judging it by the results, I am not as confident in its decision-making process as I am in Models A and B. For anyone new to the analytics world, there seems to be a belief that more complex is always better. Models A and B are plenty complex but are more straightforward for what I am trying to get them to do. Instead, I am leaning the other way and want to look into simplifying things. I wanted to see if I could write a formula that combines our highest weighted metrics into a singular number that quantifies which team has a statistical advantage in the game. For now, I am calling it our ‘Golden Metric.’ Something that I intentionally moved away from this season was having any form of a confidence scale for our picks. Since we switched to a binary approach I didn’t think it would be useful. But this new calculation might just allow us to reintroduce the confidence value of each pick which could open up a lot of possibilities. For weeks 2-16, I calculated the golden metric for each pick that the Orb gave out and then created cutoffs for low, medium, and high confidence intervals. Of course, analyzing what would have happened is asking for a lot of blind trust and isn’t nearly as meaningful as real-time performance. But with no games being played in the offseason, this is all we are left with as data analysts. Here is how each category of confidence would have performed over the 103 spread picks:
Low Confidence: 24-27, 47.1%
Medium Confidence: 24-11, 68.6%
High Confidence: 12-4, 75%
We don’t want to get too carried away by these results, but you can start to see how, if repeatable, calculating the confidence or value of each pick could be useful. Our picks that would have been classified as low confidence this season actually hurt our performance while medium and high-value picks performed above our 58.2% record against the spread. Although losing weeks are still unavoidable, looking only at medium/high-value picks would have resulted in 11/15 weeks being +unit. Weeks 11-14 were our worst performance this year and where we lost a good chunk of our unit profit. However, medium/high-value picks were 10-6, 62.5% over this stretch. Past performance is not a guarantee of future results, but even after a winning season, there is plenty to be excited about improving for next year.
For now, thank you again for an incredible NFL season. Let’s hope the Super Bowl is a great game and fun to watch. Good luck to everyone entering our Moneyline Madness sweepstakes!
- Team Orb Analytics
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Thanks for a fun season Orb Team! Really excited to see what the future holds. Love the ideas of simplifying and adding cibfidrbce bands. There is already a lot to be proud of that can built upon at this stage in the game- congrats again!