Week 9 N.F.L. Game Probabilities, Including Patriots vs. Giants

This Sunday’s game between the Giants and the Patriots will be the first meaningful game between the two franchises since Super Bowl XLII. This time around, the Giants have just as high-flying a passing attack as the Patriots. The big difference between them is the ground attack; the advantage clearly belongs to New England.

Although both teams enter Week 9 with virtually identical net passing yards per attempt, the Patriots are averaging 4.5 yards per carry (9th in the league) compared with the Giants’ average of 3.2 YPC (31st in the league). More important, the Patriots’ run Success Rate (SR) is 49 percent (2nd in the league) compared with 37 percent (29th in the league). I like to rely on Run SR; it happens to be far more predictive of team success than YPC.

The Patriots have a very slight edge in stopping the run too, but the big statistical difference between the defenses is in net passing efficiency. The Giants are solidly above average, ranked 11th, while the Patriots are ranked 31st.

Some analysts have suggested that the Patriots’ defensive stats are misleading. In several games their offense was able to generate such a large lead that the defense  needed to focus only on the deepest routes and keep opposing receivers in bounds to keep the clock moving. I looked at this issue recently, and it turns out that the Patriots’ defense performs almost equally well in high-leverage and low-leverage parts of games. In other words, they perform as poorly in garbage time as they do when the game is still on the line.

Put all the numbers through the wash, and the two teams come out surprisingly equal. The real difference in this game is home field advantage, which belongs to New England. Ultimately, although the Patriots are clear favorites, the efficiency stats give the Giants a much better chance than the conventional wisdom gives them.

Here are the game probabilities for Week 9.
(For more on the prediction model and its accuracy, see this post.)

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.