Daily Spin – NFL Turkey Day Edition

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you out there this week! It’s always a holiday that I enjoy as there is a lot of great food, football and even a few family members I enjoy spending some time with (hi dad). It’s always the first day of a four day break and a nice way to start winding down the year. It’s been a great week for Team FGI as we nailed Austin Cook last week as a core play and despite a tournament full of landmines that hurt us at every which point along the way, we found a way to be profitable and I was amazing at some of the screenshots we received where lineups of 3/6 and even a 2/6 with Cook managed to win some money. I only had a couple of disappointments about last week.

First, Jeff took another brutal beat at PGA as his improbably 6/6 lineup in the $400 GPP (there were only 2 of 277 that had 6/6) had its heart ripped out on Saturday with a withdrawal just prior to the third round. He had a very clear path to the top, but losing Webb Simpson was too much to overcome and pushed him back down. It was eerie since I had a sense of dread on Friday about his team….as if it was lining up just too perfectly. Our wins in PGA never come easily so whenever it looks too good, we each start to think about how it could go wrong. However, the process was good, the golfers performed well in the first two rounds so after that, you just have to hope it works out. As long as the process is solid, over time, you just have to trust that things will work out. The other regret is that now our cover is blown with Austin Cook. We’ve been watching him for the last couple of years and he flashed considerable talent in limited appearances on tour in 2015. It took extra time to make it back, but from watching him on the Web.com Tour onward this summer, we sensed that he was back on top of his game and rode him throughout the fall. Just to give you a reminder of how good Jeff is when it comes to being on top of these types of player before they hit it big, you can read back to his preview that he posted before the fall season kicked off.

Fortunately, for Jeff, the pain of having the big GPP prize snapped away from him was eased fairly quickly as he played in a small dollar buy-in for the qualifier for the Live NFL Final in Miami next month. He played the exact core that he rolled out for you in his column last week and ended up hitting the winner and is headed to the Finals next month to represent the FGI team. He will have one of 200 entries and is playing for a shot at a $2 million first place prize. It’s a big step for us as we’ve had great success with our NFL coverage this fall and hope that you’ve been able to profit off of it as well.

As a part of Thanksgiving tradition, there is a three game slate available with some amped up GPP contests with some decent prize pools available. The games this week are a mixed bag. Normally, I like to see the games improve as the day unwinds with the night game being a marquee matchup to end the day. Unfortunately, we have the opposite this year with the biggest game of the day (and season for Vikings fans) taking place first with the Vikings heading to Detroit for the second year in a row on Thanksgiving Day. I am not sure who the Vikes pissed off to get a schedule that includes this game and an equally frustrating late season game in the cold at Lambeau, but it should be a fun game. The second game is do or die for both the Cowboys, who are sinking fast with Zeke suspended and the Chargers, who are suddenly surging and now just two games back of the struggling Chiefs. We’ll be monitoring Geoff Fienberg throughout the afternoon to make sure he does not get too excited one way or another. Finally, in the nightcap, the Giants take on their division rival, the Redskins in what looked like a great game six months ago after the schedule dropped. Now, it looks like a bust as both teams have been done in by injuries and poor play.

Taking things from the top, let’s look at a few key numbers for the Vikings and the Lions. I always like to look at DVOA for my research on team defense. It’s a great, next generation type of stat that has come along in recent years. DVOA measures a team’s efficiency by comparing success on every single play to a league average based on situation and opponent. It’s similar to the strokes gained stats that we use in golf and helps us to cut through a lot of the noise that the numbers alone present. If you want to read up on this, here’s the link to Football Outsiders who do a great job of tracking these numbers.

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