Week 14 Was Pretty Weird

by Chase Stuart on December 10, 2018

Entering week 14, the top of the 2019 NFL Draft order was San Francisco at 1, Oakland at 2, and the New York Jets at 3. All three teams promptly won in week 14. The Los Angeles Rams were 11-1, and promptly got embarrassed by the Chicago Bears; Jared Goff, who had never thrown more than 2 interceptions in a game, threw 4 interceptions against a punishing Bears defense. The Oakland Raiders won as 10.5-point underdogs against Pittsburgh, but depending on when you measure it, there was en even more shocking result. The Miami Dolphins were 9.5-point underdogs against the Patriots, trailed by 5 points with 7 seconds left and 69 yards to go, and still won.

In a week like this one, the Texans seeing their 9-game winning streak end at home against the Colts doesn’t quite register as surprising. And the Browns beating anyone, let alone the Panthers? Well, that’s not even a top-5 upset. The table below shows each upset this season, based upon the — as of right now — SRS ratings of each team this year. Here’s how to read it: in week 14, Oakland beat Pittsburgh, 24-21. Oakland has an SRS of -9.1, while the Steelers have an SRS of +5.1. That’s a difference of -14.2 points. There were 6 upsets this week, and a Minnesota upset in Seattle tonight would bring that total to 7.

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Week	Winning Team	Losing Team	PF	PA	Win Tm SRS	Los Tm SRS	SRS Diff
14	Oakland Raiders	Pittsburgh Steelers	24	21	-9.1	5.1	-14.2
14	Miami Dolphins	New England Patriots	34	33	-5.9	4.5	-10.4
14	San Francisco 49ers	Denver Broncos	20	14	-6	2.3	-8.3
14	Chicago Bears	Los Angeles Rams	15	6	6.6	10.2	-3.6
14	Indianapolis Colts	Houston Texans	24	21	1.1	3.5	-2.4
14	Cleveland Browns	Carolina Panthers	26	20	-1.6	-0.9	-0.7
13	Dallas Cowboys	New Orleans Saints	13	10	1.9	12.3	-10.4
13	Arizona Cardinals	Green Bay Packers	20	17	-10.8	-0.6	-10.2
13	New York Giants	Chicago Bears	30	27	-1.9	6.6	-8.5
13	Jacksonville Jaguars	Indianapolis Colts	6	0	-4.3	1.1	-5.4

Showing 1 to 10 of 60 entries

How does that compare to other weeks? Six upsets are the most since week 2, but the magnitude is also notable. I calculated the “difference” column — that is, how many points the underdog was worse than the favorite, by SRS — for each week. So in week 14, you had the Raiders winning with a difference of -14, the Dolphins winning at -10, the 49ers at -8, the Bears at -4, the Colts at -2, and the Browns at -1. That’s a total of -39 points, which makes this the wildest week of the season since opening week.

Wk	#Games	Upset Points	Upsets
1	16	-49	9
2	16	-30	7
3	16	-28	5
4	15	-9	2
5	15	-33	5
6	15	-28	4
7	14	-10	4
8	14	-16	4
9	13	-4	2
10	14	-8	3
11	13	-6	2
12	15	-7	2
13	16	-37	5
14	15	-39	6

What happened week 1? Well, the Bucs beat the Saints (-15), the Packers beat the Bears (-7), the Dolphins beat the Titans (-6), the Bengals beat the Colts (-6), the Broncos beat the Seahawks (-4), the Jets beat the Lions (-3), the Panthers beat the Cowboys (-3), and the Jaguars beat the Giants (-2). Yeah, that was a pretty crazy week… in retrospect.

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