PIT @ HOU +3
I’m here to see what more CJ Stroud can do this early in his career against a Steelers’ team that currently doesn’t deserve any credit offensively.
Stroud has been solid the first three weeks of the season and his career, especially last week, earning him a 91.1 clean-pocket PFF grade and ranking first amongst his QB rookie class in PFF rookie grades. He’s earned the accolades, ranking 3rd in most passing yards in his first 3 career games at 906 yards, behind Cam Newton and Justin Herbert, and he leads the league in pass attempts 10-plus yards downfield with 58.8% completion percentage, zero interceptions, and 2 touchdowns. Simply put, he’s been impressive.
Pittsburgh could be the right matchup this week to get Houston back-to-back wins and sit at 2-2. As PFF’s, Arjun Menon points out, the Steelers are winning games they shouldn’t be winning.
Against the Browns, Kenny Pickett somehow played worse than a very bad performance by Deshaun Watson. Much of this due to a strip-sack returned for a Steelers’ defensive touchdown, which increased their win probability from 28% to 67% as a result of the play, per Next Gen Stats.
Against the Raiders, Pickett played better and moved the sticks on 84.6% of his series that started with a pass, but they still had 4 three-and-outs. They beat the Raiders by 5 points, and Jimmy G threw 3 interceptions.
MIN -4 @ CAR
I'm not going to mention the whole “one-score loss” stat here, because I think it's finally been overused, and there’s probably more interesting things going on—like Kirk Cousins being incredibly unlucky.
Kirk is having a pretty successful year if you ask any fantasy managers. He currently leads the league in QB fantasy points with 1,075 passing yards and 9 passing TDs. That puts him on pace for 6,091 passing yards this season, and the record is Peyton Manning’s 5,477. We’ve been gawking at Tua Tagovailoa throwing monster passes downfield to Tyreek, while Kirk has 25 more passing yards and Justin Jefferson has 45 more receiving yards. Yet, the Vikings are 0-3.
Although Kirk Cousins has Justin Jefferson, his success hasn’t transferred to his receivers, entirely. In three games, two receivers have fumbled in the red zone and two balls have resulted in interceptions, due to dropped passes by the receiver. Kirk is a very accurate passer, leading the league in accurate passes within the frame of receiver and out-in-front, which causes more yards after catch, per PFF. Within this dataset, his receivers have 5 drops (also the most), and his turnover-worthy plays to actual turnovers is 2-to-5, screaming bad luck.
The Vikings are by far the best 0-3 team, and CAR is the perfect match to give them their desperate win. If Kirk keeps doing his thing, the universe will correct itself. If their defense blitzes CAR as much as they did LAC, they could remove some pressure from the offense in crunch-time.
MIN blitzed Justin Herbert 40 times last week—the second highest blitz rate of all-time, per Next Gen Stats. However, Justin Herbert is good and had a time-to-throw of 2.26 seconds and +16% CPOE. Per ourlads.com, Bryce Young will be the starting quarterback for CAR. Their offensive line has seen blitz the 4th-least amount, but Young was pressured 40 times the first two weeks of the season, resulting in 7 sacks and 44.8% completion percentage. They rank 2nd-worst in pressures allowed, and they’ve given up more sacks than the 49ers, who see blitz the most in the league.
TB @ NO -3
With Derek Carr spraining his AC joint last week, he’s unlikely going to play against the Bucs. That means, Jameis Winston will face his old team. I don’t expect Jameis Winston to be the hero, but I do expect their defense to absolutely put Baker Mayfield’s offense in shambles.
The Saints’ defense has allowed 16.7 points per game and 3 total touchdowns on 35 drives. Their secondary has dominated, leading the league in forced incompletion percentage—6 more incompletions forced than the next team, per PFF. This makes three of their defensive backs league leaders in defended passes.
Teams can’t get in the end zone against the Saints, but their problem is they’ve allowed a lot of field goals. Thankfully, the Bucs punt on 45.5% of their drives, ranking 6th-worst, and they’ve scored on just 32.4% of their 31 total drives. The Broncos have scored on 40% of their 30 drives, for reference. If the Bucs are going to have problems passing the ball against this secondary, I don’t know how they do it on the ground.
Against the Eagles last week, the Bucs had 25% success rate when running the ball at -0.42 EPA per play without fumbling. They rank 12th in rushing attempts and 2nd-last in rushing yards per attempt at 2.8 yards. 81.1% of their rushing yards come after contact, the 6th highest, and they rank 6th-worst in rushing yards after contact because they average point of contact at 0.4 yards. The Bucs appear to like to run the ball, but they’re very bad at doing it.