*** OFFICIAL 10/21/07 NFL SNF GAME THREAD (PIT @ DEN) ***

[theclock]

Denver would be in bad shape even if they were healthy

[thelyingthief]

two weeks to prepare, at home, in desperation mode, national spotlight, and underdogged. hard to like this team otherwise, but those are big pluses in their favor.

this is the second away game lost by Pitt.

tlt.

[iggymcfly]

I hate to past-post analysis, and usually the people who do that are the squarest and giving the worst analysis of all, but I did at least say that I was betting Denver in the other thread, so let me just point out really quickly the key to the game:

Turnovers. Going into the game, Pittsburgh was +4 in TO margin on the season and Denver was -5. If you figure that each turnover costs 4 points, then that's a net difference of 7.2 points per game due to a factor that's 90% luck and over a sample size of occurence so small that you couldn't determine which team forced turnovers better anyway. Due to these extra points they'd gotten off turnovers, Pitt was extremely overrated and Denver was extremely underrated going into the SNF game.

At kickoff, Pittsburgh was exactly 13 points better according to the Sagarin ratings. However, subtract 7.2 points for turnovers, then subtract maybe just over 4 points for home advantage on a night game at the high elevation in Denver and all of a sudden, you're left with a line of Pit -1.5. I'm guessing the books shaded the line a point and a half to account for the public action coming in on Pittsburgh and then as the squares continued to hammer it throughout the week, ended up moving the line another point toward the Steelers late in the week where it finally finished at 4. Pittsburgh still probably would have won the game > 50% of the time, but Denver forced one extra turnover (variance, remember?) and ended up winning by 3 instead of maybe losing by 1.

[silentbob]

[ QUOTE ]
If you figure that each turnover costs 4 points, then that's a net difference of 7.2 points per game due to a factor that's 90% luck and over a sample size of occurence so small that you couldn't determine which team forced turnovers better anyway.

[/ QUOTE ]
I remember reading somewhere that only lost fumbles are turnovers attributable to luck, not interceptions. Can someone confirm one way or the other?

[iggymcfly]

Fumbles are more likely to be luck than interceptions, but INTs still have a huge luck factor involved. I think the key is to find a baseline, based largely on QB play and work from there. For instance, Indianapolis is on average about +0.8 turnovers per game over the last three years due to Peyton Manning. So, if they're +7 this year over 5 games, you can guess that they're about +3 turnovers or 2.4 PPG over expectation.