Does Lack of Free Agency Spending Equal more Losses?
Last week I wrote about how the top spenders in free agency are buying a win, and that got me thing about the other side of that coin. If a team doesn’t spend in free agency, will they lose more games than the prior year? It was a question I needed to answer, so I turned to my Free Agency Spending dashboard once again to see what jumps out at me.
While in last weeks article I focused on the 12 teams highlighted in dark gray, this week I’m turning to the other end of those charts, and focusing on the number of red dots that I see. I know this means the team lost more games than last year, so seeing clusters of red dots is very telling. If you look at the dashboard results in the picture above, there is a consistent cluster of red dots at the far right of the chart. After closer review, I noted that the bottom 10 spenders were the teams most impacted the following season.
Using the chart to the left, we can see this is in fact true. The bottom 10 spending teams in free agency lost an average of 1 additional game the next year.
Some years were clearly more impactful than others, and the fact that the bottom-10 increased average wins in 2021 was because of 2 teams, Dallas and Philadelphia. The NFC East must have had the more favorable matchups from the other divisions they faced. That is a great example of why you can’t just use this technic by itself, but rather as a piece of information used to make your decisions on future bets. The greatest reason for NFL parity is the scheduling, so don’t overlook this seasons opponents either.
Current season spending
Now that we know that the bottom-10 spending teams should have worse performance in the upcoming season. We can use the same free agent spending chart, layered with prior season wins (dots) and current season win totals (lines), to find opportunities to bet UNDER the season win total.
The above chart shows identifies 4 of those 10 bottom spending teams that have win totals higher than last years wins. We just learned that those 10 teams should have 1 more loss than last year on average, so why would these teams have win totals higher than last years wins? Well maybe it’s the case of Dallas and Philly from 2021 again, but none of those 4 teams play in the same division.
The 4 teams are Miami, Arizona, Jacksonville and LA Rams. I could see justification for Jacksonville since they are in AFC South and potentially could face a rookie QB starting for all 6 division games. I could also justify the higher win rate for the LA Rams, I know they lost a lot of star power the last 2 seasons, but they were depleted by injuries last year. Better injury luck could be 1 or 2 wins alone.
What about Miami and Arizona? Didn’t the NY Jets just take a big step forward with Aaron Rodgers at qb? And shouldn’t New England be more competitive with a competent offensive minded person in charge of the offense this year? I’m not sure about that Miami number. Arizona is a team heading down the drain fast, and still dealing with injuries from last year. They have new coaches/schemes and lost more star power. Why would they do better than last year?
I think UNDER bets on regular season wins for both Miami and Arizona would be solid plays.