The Favorites Pick ’Em Contest: NFL Week 5 Tiebreaker Strategy
Photo by Jevone Moore/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images. Pictured: Davante Adams.
With the launch of The Favorites' NFL pick 'em contest, which is free to play, we decided on tiebreaker props to settle the winners of the $3,000 in weekly prizes.
Week 4 was a great one for bettors, with an absurd 700 entrants going 5-for-5 on their spread picks in the contest. For some context on that figure, we only expected 185 entrants to sweep the board given there were 5,928 players who entered picks.
That made the tiebreaker crucial, as there was plenty of competition for the weekly prizes. As expected, the Giants fell somewhere in the 40s in penalty yards, with 77 players nailing the 45-yard total exactly. It probably won't require an exact guess to cash on most weeks — especially Week 5.
That's because this week's tiebreaker question could plausibly be nearly any number, and there's a key injury situation that further impacts it.
Important note: You can sign up for this contest at any point during the season.
Week 5 Tiebreaker: Length of the Raiders' First Drive
The first thing to note about this tiebreaker is that while the answer can't be over the maximum allowable guess of 100 (whereas last week's could), in theory it could be under the minimum guess allowed by our slider. That's because the Raiders could have negative yards on their first drive, in which case every selection of 0 would be the top option.
That makes selecting 0 the intuitive choice, especially if starting quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo is unable to clear concussion protocol by Monday night — though it's fairly likely he'll be back.
Using the drive finder tool from StatHead, I set out to figure out what percentage of NFL drives produced zero or negative net yards — which includes plays and penalties — since the start of last season.
Of the 7,312 total drives since the beginning of 2022, 1,069 of them finished at 0 or fewer yards, or a hair under 15%. That makes 0, by far, the single likeliest answer since it encompasses more than one discrete point.
The average drive in that time frame was 30.8 yards, though the median is considerably lower since there's more drives that go well over that total than well under — 1,509 more than doubled that total, compared to the 1,069 at 0 or fewer.
We can also look at data this year for the Raiders offensively, or Packers defensively, to see if there's a significant difference from the leaguewide results.
On offense, Las Vegas is averaging 30.1 yards per drive, with about 13% producing 0 or fewer yards. Defensively, Green Bay is allowing 31 yards per drive on average, and roughly 14% 0 or negative total yards — both reasonably close to the leaguewide data.
Another factor worth considering is that the Raiders' first drive is more likely than average to start from their own 25 (or thereabouts) given that's it's about a 68% chance to take place following a Packers kickoff.
There's a 50% chance of receiving the opening kick, with around 36% of drives ending in a score and resulting in another kick. We divide that 36% by two because we're looking at the chances of the Packers receiving the kick AND scoring, plus the odds of the Raiders receiving.
Finally, we should note the first drives of the game skew a bit longer, with a mean of 34.0 yards. That's likely from a combination of starting deeper in their own territory on average, as well as slightly more efficient offensive play with teams generally scripting their first 15 or so play calls.
There's also fewer drives of 0 or negative yardage to open games, with a rate of just under 9%.
My Recommendation: 70s
This is another tiebreaker that comes down to optimizing for odds of getting paid anything against maximizing the chance of a unique score. As we saw last week, when a chalky answer hits, the payout (less than $20) generally isn't worth enough to try to solve for.
My intuition is that 0 and single-digit answers will be exceedingly popular here, with the Raiders (1-3) not exactly inspiring confidence on offense. If more than 15% of the field selects 0, that would make it a bad choice relative to the likelihood of it occurring.
On the other hand, we're projecting a roughly 68% chance of the drive starting around the 25-yard line, and a 20.2% chance of a touchdown from there. Ignoring kickoff returns that don't end between the 20 and 30, that gives us over a 13% chance of this drive producing a yardage total in the 70s.
The lower end of that range, or slightly below, likely leaves a bit more room for error — say the Packers get possession first and punt to the Raiders' 33-yard line, or a drive starting with a touchback ends in a red-zone field goal. However, those guesses are likely to be more popular.
The higher end of the range gives a better chance of taking first place by yourself, as there's likely to be very few guesses above this range. I am anticipating a spike in guesses at 75 — since a touchback followed by a touchdown is another intuitive guess.
However, less than 4% of drives were exactly 75 yards since the start of 2022. That means that guessing just above that is probably the best bet if maximizing EV, as you'd be likely to still cash if any longer number hit, and drives of 76 or more yards are roughly equally as likely as drives of exactly 75.
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