Aaron Schatz does not want you to put a car payment down on the Seattle Seahawks to win the NFC West.
More than likely, you’d be out a car payment.
But an Abe Lincoln wager at +3000 odds, when his Football Outsiders projection model forecasts the Seahawks to win the division 14% of the time?
“That’s value,” Schatz, the Editor-in-Chief of Football Outsiders, told Compare.bet on Tuesday. “Put $5 on it and then go out for a nice dinner if you actually hit. It’s not like you should put $1,000 on it, because the actuality that they do it is small. But oh my god, that’s the best value in the division.”
The Seahawks are 2-3 with a point-differential of negative-27 through five games, so it’s not like they are setting the world on fire.
But there were many who thought this would be the worst team in the NFL after trading Russell Wilson to the Broncos this offseason, and they are decidedly not that.
The Seahawks are No. 10 in Total DVOA through five weeks, as a 31st-ranked defense is being propped up by a surprisingly-fantastic offense.
Seattle is No. 1 in offensive efficiency because it has the best passing attack in the NFL through five games. Quarterback Geno Smith had to beat out the uninspiring Drew Lock in the preseason and had an unremarkable career to this point, but has been fantastic through the first month-plus of the season.
He leads the NFL in completion percentage (75.2) and passer rating (113.2) and is No. 4 in ESPN’s Total QBR.
“I wanted to be skeptical, and I’m still a little skeptical,” Schatz said. “Because I went back and I looked at other teams like this, and in general, the journeyman quarterbacks came back to Earth, and the ones that had young up-and-coming quarterbacks were for real.
“That being said, first of all, everyone who I trust that watches film, says this is absolutely for real. And second, it’s not like he’s doing this with crutches.”
Schatz used the Cowboys’ Cooper Rush as an example of a pedestrian quarterback whose numbers have been propped up by playing from ahead and by the use of play-action.
“There are ways to make a journeyman quarterback’s numbers look better,” Schatz said. “(Smith) is still one of the top quarterbacks in the league if you take play-action out. He’s not particularly playing a lot from ahead, so that’s not doing anything to his numbers. He’s been the best quarterback this year on deep throws, so it’s not like this is a bunch of dink-and-dunk journeyman stuff. There definitely are, not just film study, but statistical indicators, that point to the idea that this could be really real. And if it’s not this real, this could at least be, ‘This is a top-10 offense’ real.”
Despite the early-season optimism, the Seahawks rank just No. 21 in Football Outsiders’ DAVE projection, which marries this season’s performance with preseason projections.
The oddsmakers are even more pessimistic, as Seattle’s win total this season still sits at 5.5 and its odds to make the playoffs are +1000.
Schatz said the preseason projections are still being given more weight than the five games worth of data on display.
“The numbers say to wait,” Schatz said. “It’s gradual. I feel better about them now than I did a week ago, because they did it. And if they do it again this week, I’ll feel even better. It’s all gradual.”
The Seahawks are currently 2.5-point home underdogs to the Arizona Cardinals on Sunday. The Football Outsiders projection model, though, has Seattle superior to Arizona in both DVOA and DAVE.
Schatz thinks the game should be a pick ‘em. If Seattle wins it behind another strong game from Smith, the Seahawks will be a surprising 3-3 after six games.
And what if Smith keeps this up over a full season? The Seahawks’ brass was lambasted for trading Wilson this offseason, but it could get the last laugh.
“If Geno Smith does this the whole year, we owe Pete Carroll an apology,” Schatz said.
