Week 12 EPA Power Rankings: Cowboys win improves stock

The allure of the “tank for draft position” mindset has been a perhaps surprising and unwelcome visitor this Dallas Cowboys’ season, but even with that aura surrounding the team right now, it sure feels good in the moment to get a win. And against a team that had crept up from 21st to the top-10 over the last four weeks to boot!

How much difference did beating the Vikings do for the Cowboys in this week’s EPA Power Rankings? Let’s take a look, after a brief overview of the definitions of EPA used in this article.

EPA stands for Expected Points Added. Expected Points, the foundation of many analytical arguments, uses data from previous NFL seasons to determine how many points a team is likely to come away with on a given play based on down, distance, time remaining, and field position. The difference in expected points at the start of a play and expected points at the end is referred to as expected points added, or EPA.

Taking the difference between each team’s offensive EPA and their defensive EPA allowed gives us something not unlike point differential, with a bit more context included. For these rankings, we’ve adjusted each team’s EPA based on the strength of their opponent.

Dallas moved above 30th for the first time since Week 7, but still only managed to get up one spot this week. Even so, moving up sure feels a hell of a lot better than getting closer to the Jets. Also, Andy Dalton looked much better than he has all year, approaching more of what we might’ve expected when he signed as the backup.

Per nflfastR’s EPA and CPOE* models, Dalton was the most average quarterback in the NFL this past week, a huge improvement from what Dallas has had at the position since Dak Prescott went down.

*CPOE: Completion Percentage Over Expected, based on depth of target and area of the field

There are a couple names on this plot that are perhaps more noticeable than that of Dalton that we should talk about as well. Carson Wentz again has struggled to put his team in a better position to score (the base driver of EPA) and it has once again thrown the division into a near 4-way tie if it weren’t for that one tie in the Eagles’ record. But the other name that jumped out to me at least is Tua Tagovailoa.

Tua had the first really bad game of his career, and it led to the Dolphins taking the worst hit in our power rankings this week. They dropped nine spots, from a top-10 team to below average. Miami finishing the year as a top-10 team was likely always a pipe dream for Dolphins fans, so the fact that they were playing that well after 10 weeks is a testament to what the rebuild down there has already accomplished.

The other big drop in the ranks was the Minnesota Vikings because, well, losing to an NFC East opponent has a tendency to hurt your opponent-adjusted statistics.

Let’s move on towards the top of the list now where, while we don’t have a new top team, we do see the Pittsburgh Steelers climb above the 3-spot for the first time this season. It might seem weird at first that the Bucs didn’t drop after losing on Monday Night Football, but that says more about how good the Rams have been this year than anything else. Losing a close one to LA just won’t hurt you like losing a close one to a bad opponent.

Back to the Steelers, let’s take a look at how they got here.

Pittsburgh is the only remaining unbeaten team, and they’ve got a decent path to 16-0 if they get past the Ravens this Thursday. So why have they not been ranked #1 at all this year? The answer in these ranks lies in the opponent adjustments. No team this season has been hit harder by opponent adjustments than Pittsburgh, meaning they’ve played arguably the easiest schedule. They’ve got two quality wins over Tennessee and Baltimore, but after that the best team they’ve played so far is the 19th-ranked Cleveland Browns.

However, you can’t control who you play, just how you play. And the Steelers are playing as good as anyone right now. They’ve managed to maintain an elite defense from last season while drastically improving their offense with a healthy Ben Roethlisberger starting rather than Duck Hodges. And by dominating the Jaguars on Sunday, it’s nearly time to recognize them as the best team in the NFL regardless of who they’ve played.

Using these opponent adjustments, we can also compute some line predictions for the coming week. Please note, however, that this is strictly based on team strength as a whole so far this year, and does not take into account any injury sustained recently. What I’m saying is don’t take this at face value that the Joe Burrow-less Bengals are going to win this week. But, if they do…there’s suddenly a very attainable path to the Cowboys taking the division lead this week.

List

Cowboys thwart modern wisdom as run game powers club to victory, not passing

Like this article?

Sign up for the Cowboys Wire email newsletter to get our top stories in your inbox every morning

An error has occured

Please re-enter your email address.

Thanks for signing up!

You'll now receive the top Cowboys Wire stories each day directly in your inbox.