Week 4 Recap
Week Record: 2-1-0
Season Record: 7-7-0
❌ BUF -6.5 — LOSS
Patriots 29, Bills 26
My Take: We took the Bills -6.5. They lost outright. The Patriots offense looked a lot closer to what we saw last year, while Josh Allen wasn't a literal super hero. New England converted two key 4th downs (both 4 and 3) rather than taking field goals, which directly led to touchdowns.
Av EPA/play: NE 0.160, BUF 0.114
Success rate: NE 52.1%, BUF 44.4%
✅ JAX +2.5 — WIN
Bengals 17, Jaguars 22
My Take: Both offenses struggled. The Jags led 13-3 at the end of the half, their lone touchdown coming off of a Joe Burrow interception. Things got a little spicy in the 4th, but the Jags were able to consistently answer any Bengals score.
The Bengals offensive strategy was apparently to relentlessly target Jarrian Jones (rookie 3rd rounder out of Florida State). In total, Jones was targeted TWENTY times, giving up 14 catches for 170 yards, but 0 touchdowns. He had 4 forced incompletions and a pass breakup. Half of those targets went to Tee Higgins. Burrow had a decent game - one of his two interceptions was not his fault, and he completed 72.2% of his passes and gained 7.9 yards per attempt. The problem with Cincy was the run game, which collectively gained just 1.53 yards per attempt across 15 carries. For the Jags defense, DT Arik Armstead had 5 pressures while Josh Hines-Allan had 4. Travis Hunter played zero snaps on offense and 100% of the snaps on defense - he was targeted 7 times, but gave up just 4 catches for 26 yards and had 2 pass breakups.
On offense, Trevor Lawrence gained 9.90 yards per attempt. TE Brenton Strange had 7 catches (8 targets) for 95 yards (4.13 yards/route run). Bhayshul Tuten had 3.35 yards after contact/attempt.
Average EPA/play - Jags 0.255, Cincy 0.044. The better team won.
✅ SF -3 — WIN
Broncos 14, 49ers 24
My Take: This was a game Bo Nix would like to have back, which was great for me because I was on both his passing under and rushing under. Nix had an average depth of target (aDOT) of just 4.9 yards. He still couldn't complete 60% of his passes (59.5%, 8.5% below expectation). He gained just 5.1 yards per attempt. RB RJ Harvey had the most targets on the team (10) and had an aDOT of -2.6. Brock Purdy wasn't perfect - his completion rate over expectation was -5.00%, but he added 8.3 expected points through the air vs 2.9 for Nix. On the ground, the 49ers rushing attack collectively gained 140 yards on 35 attempts (4.00 average).
Neither offense was great. Final stats:
-Av EPA/play: SF 0.081, DEN 0.053
-Success rate: SF 49.2%, DEN 42.2%
-Av yards per play: SF 5.5, DEN 4.5
