Mike Clay 2020 team projections: Bills

[Beast]

Just now, auburnbillsbacker said:

If the NFC West and AFC West are bad divisions let me know.  They will be good divisions.  The AFC East will be improved.  I dont need to see the entire season played to analyze how good a team is. 

 

I'm we have your analysis. Tell me, will teams suffer injuries that will set them back? Will there be disappointing performances from teams? Will any teams catch the public by surprise and be good?

 

Again, strength of schedule can NOT be determined until after a season has been played.

[Warren Zevon]

1 hour ago, YoloinOhio said:

 

8.5 wins 

 No progression/growth from Allen (very slight completion % increase)

step back in TDs and uptick in INTs

slight uptick in rushing Yards  for Allen, decrease in rushing TDs

everyone coming back on offense, same system, add Stefon Diggs... nada. I think he added like 32 yards/game progression 

 

bills give up 60 more points on D than last year 

 

If you add up all the points scored per his player projections it equals 265. That's less than 17 points per game he predicts we will score on offense. 

 

Someone check my math

[YoloinOhio]

7 minutes ago, Binghamton Beast said:

 

I'm we have your analysis. Tell me, will teams suffer injuries that will set them back? Will there be disappointing performances from teams? Will any teams catch the public by surprise and be good?

 

Again, strength of schedule can NOT be determined until after a season has been played.

Agree. We thought we would plan Ben last year and got a duck caller. Browns were supposed to be great (i know we lost to them but lots of teams didn’t) Everyone had cowboys as a loss. SOS is only a guess. When i project I look at QBs barring injury as the indicator. Even defenses aren’t steady year to year. Bills one of the few that have been good 3 straight years and have same coaches and players 

Edited April 9, 2020 by YoloinOhio

[Warren Zevon]

3 minutes ago, Gary Busey said:

 

If you add up all the points scored per his player projections it equals 265. That's less than 17 points per game he predicts we will score on offense. 

 

Someone check my math

 

Didn't add in Josh's 6 running TDs so that would make it 301 total / 16 to equal 18.8 PPG on offense

[MJS]

Fancy way to make wild guesses. He knows that all you have to do to be taken seriously is to make a spreadsheet. Bonus points if you use conditional formatting.

 

My guess is he is just as accurate as the average fan going down the schedule and predicting "win, loss, loss, win..."

[MJS]

1 minute ago, YoloinOhio said:

Agree. We thought we would plan Ben last year and got a duck caller. Browns were supposed to be great (i know we lost to them but lots of teams didn’t) Everyone had cowboys as a loss. SOS is only a guess. 

Playoff teams and division winners are often very different from year to year (except in the AFC East), but people make assumptions when they make predictions that those teams will remain the same ... well, except for the Bills, of course.

 

For one thing, injuries always throw a wrench into the prediction. And then there's the "Browns effect" where a team has a hyped off-season but ultimately shows their true colors.

[Amaru523]

This is just like all the "experts" who thought the Bills were gonna suck last year.  I remember a show on ESPN where all 4 guys on the panel picked the under 6.5 for win total. I kept telling everyone, "so our roster got significantly better, but we're gonna stay the same or be worse?" Made no sense and I enjoyed telling everyone I told you so.  Next season our roster gets a little better, Josh gets an elite weapon, we still have a top 5 D, AND no more Tom Brady. Guarantee we win AT LEAST 10 games.

[BarleyNY]

57 minutes ago, Buffalo_Stampede said:

Mike Clay has hated our roster since McDermott and Beane took over. He still hates our roster. Not sure if it's mostly just out of spite or what.

He hates it so much that he rates our defense #1 in the league?

[aristocrat]

1 hour ago, YoloinOhio said:

Yes he does do it every year. Trying to find last year’s - here are all teams 

 

https://g.espncdn.com/s/ffldraftkit/Clay Projections 2019.pdf

 

he's got tre as the 45th best cb in the league there? is that right?  mother of god

[C.Biscuit97]

9 wins is winning the division.  The Bills could be a better team than last year and have less wins.  Our schedule was joke last year and we caught every break.  This is the real test of how far the process is.  If they get double digit wins and Allen improves against this schedule (obviously it’s early but it does seem harder), I will be fully invested in the process.  
 

 

[Bleeding Bills Blue]

2 hours ago, YoloinOhio said:

 

8.5 wins 

 No progression/growth from Allen (very slight completion % increase)

step back in TDs and uptick in INTs

slight uptick in rushing Yards  for Allen, decrease in rushing TDs

everyone coming back on offense, same system, add Stefon Diggs... nada. I think he added like 32 yards/game progression 

 

bills give up 60 more points on D than last year 

 

It's a projection.  They dont factor injuries, growth, anything.  They basically just use a computer to figure out who is likely to win games, and how many total points.  The total points would = X TDs.  Divvy up the TDs based on projected offensive output etc.  Then get an expected yardage total and do the same. 

 

Sack totals, all that - its not based on how many sacks the players have had, they are probably basing off of the rotation that McD does.  How many total snaps, how many sacks per snap career.  Etc.  

 

This is solely a projection based on quantifiable data that they have.  It helps - but its a football game, not a baseball game.  Batting projections work because of trends - and the fact that its a 1x1 with batter and pitcher.  The Hitters goal is to get a hit and get on base.  The pitchers goal is to get outs, limit baserunners.  Simple. 

 

Everything about football makes data collection hard, as well as hard to use.  You give up a 45 yard TD as a corner because mahomes broke contain and scrambled for like 8 seconds.  You eat the TD there even though it's likely a defensive ends fault.  Without knowing the play calls, the assignments, etc. you never really know what you were supposed to do there.  Same goes for offense - RB could get 80 yards and its truly just a blown assignment by a safety or something.  How do you factor that into a projection a year later?  

Just now, C.Biscuit97 said:

9 wins is winning the division.  The Bills could be a better team than last year and have less wins.  Our schedule was joke last year and we caught every break.  This is the real test of how far the process is.  If they get double digit wins and Allen improves against this schedule (obviously it’s early but it does seem harder), I will be fully invested in the process.  
 

 

 

I'm hoping McD starts coaching like a winner.  Not saying he needs to go nuts here, but don't be afraid to win by like 10... or even more! lol

[BarleyNY]

1 hour ago, auburnbillsbacker said:

The Bills will be a better team but the schedule is much more difficult than last year's.  I think most of his projections are reasonable.

Yeah, I agree.  Fans usually think best case scenario while modeling tries to hit the middle of the bell curve.  Id wager that there are three big things negatively impacting the projected win total:  1) Relative strength of schedule between last season and this season, 2) Pythagorean Wins estimates (or something similar) which uses points for and points against to calculate expected wins.  (It’s a better indicator of a team’s record than that team’s record from the last season.)  In 2019 the Bills didn’t fare nearly as well in that metric as they did in the W-L columns.  And 3) Health. The Bills definitely had some issues there, but they we still comfortably better than average in that regard.

 

So it’s not to say that we won’t beat the averages again.  Every SB winner has some luck.  We’re almost certainly getting better this season, but so are two of the three other teams in our division.  The vast majority of teams would say the same even if some of them will be proven wrong.

 

The real takeaway for me is that his expected numbers indirectly show how a jump forward from Allen would impact the team.  Moving lots of those important stats that are middling into the good to great territory would make the Bills quite the powerhouse.  That’s not something we all don’t already know of course, but he gives us a pretty good indication of what to expect if it doesn’t happen. 

[Buffalo_Stampede]

20 minutes ago, BarleyNY said:

He hates it so much that he rates our defense #1 in the league?

Says 6th and offense 23rd. 

[BarleyNY]

2 minutes ago, Buffalo_Stampede said:

Says 6th and offense 23rd. 

Crap. You’re correct.  I thought a pew poster said they were first and I didn’t check.  My bad. 

[Buffalo_Stampede]

1 minute ago, BarleyNY said:

Crap. You’re correct.  I thought a pew poster said they were first and I didn’t check.  My bad. 

Clay just doesn't like our team very much. Very much an Allen hater. He's slowly coming around, very slow. Still ranks us the 19th best roster overall.

Edited April 9, 2020 by Buffalo_Stampede

[bigK14094]

3 hours ago, Not at the table Karlos said:

So we regress everywhere. Some reason I don’t see that happening.

 

Does he do this every year. Would be interesting to see how accurate he is. 

Bills had a creampuf schedule last y ear.  tougher this year, so staying even is growth to some extent.

[aristocrat]

3 minutes ago, bigK14094 said:

Bills had a creampuf schedule last y ear.  tougher this year, so staying even is growth to some extent.

 

nobody said our schedule was creampuff going into last year. it's the same thing every year. 

[ny33]

3 hours ago, YoloinOhio said:

 

8.5 wins 

 No progression/growth from Allen (very slight completion % increase)

step back in TDs and uptick in INTs

slight uptick in rushing Yards  for Allen, decrease in rushing TDs

everyone coming back on offense, same system, add Stefon Diggs... nada. I think he added like 32 yards/game progression 

 

bills give up 60 more points on D than last year 

Other than the fact that doing this before the draft is insane, his WR numbers are absurdly concentrated on the top 3 with regard to catches/yardage. 

[DCOrange]

2 hours ago, Gary Busey said:

 

If you add up all the points scored per his player projections it equals 265. That's less than 17 points per game he predicts we will score on offense. 

 

Someone check my math

This doesn't really work because of rounding. At any rate, he includes a total point projection on the right hand side: 328 points or 20.5 points per game. 21st out of the 28 teams he's released so far, which is basically exactly where we were a year ago.

58 minutes ago, ny33 said:

Other than the fact that doing this before the draft is insane, his WR numbers are absurdly concentrated on the top 3 with regard to catches/yardage. 

 

Last year, our top 3 were responsible for 64% of the team's passing yards. Clay projects they'll be responsible for 65% this year.

2 hours ago, aristocrat said:

 

he's got tre as the 45th best cb in the league there? is that right?  mother of god

No, that's for fantasy football.

[DCOrange]

2 hours ago, Buffalo_Stampede said:

Says 6th and offense 23rd. 

 

2 hours ago, BarleyNY said:

Crap. You’re correct.  I thought a pew poster said they were first and I didn’t check.  My bad. 

 

He has Buffalo #1 in projected points allowed