Week 5 N.F.L. Game Probabilities, Including Jets-Patriots

This Sunday features an A.F.C. East showdown when the Jets travel to Foxborough to take on the Patriots. I looked at my write-up for this same matchup from Week 13 last season, and much of what I wrote a year ago could be cut and pasted for this week, complete with the unstoppable force-immovable object cliché.

Again, New England leads the league in offense, and not just by a little. The Patriots top the league with 9.0 net Yards per Attempt (YPA). In their historic 2007 season, they averaged 7.8 net YPA. It’s likely that  they’ll regress toward the league mean over the remaining 12 games of the regular season, but 9.0 net YPA is a very high perch from which to regress.

The Jets’ defense is No. 1 according to my efficiency model, with near-league-leading efficiencies in pass defense, run defense and defensive interceptions. It’s going to be fun watching the matchup when the Patriots have the ball.

The other half of the game will feature a mediocre Jets offense against a league-worst Patriots defense. At 8.6 net YPA allowed, New England’s pass defense is almost as dreadful as their pass offense numbers are amazing. So despite Rex Ryan’s re-commitment to his ground-and-pound strategy, it’s probably best for the Jets to take to the air at New England. Center Nick Mangold is expected to return to the lineup, and the Patriots haven’t been able to effectively pressure quarterbacks. We might finally see what the tandem of Plaxico Burress and Santonio Holmes can do given the chance.

Unfortunately for Jets fans, the Patriots are going to be favored in this one because of  a couple of factors. First and most obvious is home-field advantage. And the second factor is that great offenses tend to be greater than great defenses. The distribution of offensive performance is significantly wider than that of defenses. In other words, defenses tend to be bunched nearer the league average. Offenses tend to drive game outcomes more than defenses.

I believe this phenomenon is due to the pre-eminent importance of the quarterback. You may have noticed that in solo sports, players can regularly dominate the field. In sports like golf and tennis, greats like Tiger Woods or Roger Federer are favored against a field of dozens throughout a majority of their careers. In a sport like basketball, where there are relatively few players, one competitor with outlier skills like Michael Jordan can still rule an entire league. But when team talent levels are averaged out over 11 players on the field, their distribution is naturally going to be bunched tighter.

Defensive team talent levels are like that. More or less, all 11 guys are equally important. In contrast, the offense places unique burdens on the quarterback. From reading defenses, to audibles, to in-play decisions, to actually throwing the ball, the quarterback carries far more than one-eleventh of the  responsibility for his team’s success. In this way, offenses are a hybrid of the solo type of sports and a large team sport, which is why we see teams like Peyton Manning’s Colts (until this season) and Tom Brady’s Patriots dominate the conference for nearly a decade.

With that, here are the game probabilities for Week 5:

Brian Burke, a former Navy pilot who has taken up the less dangerous hobby of N.F.L. statistical analysis, operates Advanced NFL Stats, a blog about football, math and human behavior.