Micah Parsons' DPOY Problem; Partying with the Broncos

NFL Week 13 - What fragrance of scented candles do you think Russell Wilson and Ciara light in the 12 bathrooms of their Denver mansion when entertaining guests?

That's the first question Walkthrough would seek to answer in the unlikely event we are ever invited to a Wilson birthday party.

Ciara threw her hubby a birthday party this week and, per Mike Klis of Denver's 9News, "about half the team showed up," despite it being the players' day off. Klis considered the attendance rate proof that Wilson is still respected in the Broncos locker room. Walkthrough knows better: a 50% attendance rate is proof that Wilson is so toxic that he discourages lookie-loos.

Imagine you are some random Broncos backup, possibly living in a luxury condo or a McMansion you have only half furnished, hunkering down for an icy Colorado late autumn. An invitation arrives at your locker from Ciara, probably delivered by a rose-crowned fruit dove wearing a sapphire choker. (Ciara absolutely invited the entire roster; two of her children are school-aged now, so she knows it's imperative to invite the whole class to every birthday party.) It's basically a golden ticket to Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory. How do you say no?

Oh sure, you might waver for a few moments. But then you would realize:

• You will probably meet Ciara;
• You, a strapping twentysomething athlete, might meet one of Ciara's glamorous gal pals;
• If married, your spouse might insist on the opportunity on meeting Ciara and her gal pals;
• The menu probably comes straight from the Amazon rainforest and the endangered species list;
• Marshawn Lynch might be there with samples of his new 100% legal cannabis strains: Beast Mode, Stiff-Arm to Your Cerebellum, and Hahaha, You Won't Even Be Able to Recognize Your Loved Ones Until Tomorrow Afternoon.
• Oh, and while Wilson isn't really your boss, he's pretty much your boss. Do you want to risk not being among the guests?

That last item is the stickler. We have all attended the parties of wealthy, influential acquaintances/employers/relatives out of a sense of obligation or the realities of workplace/family politics. The entire murder-mystery genre is built around that premise. Half of the Broncos who attended the Wilson party may well have been casing the joint to see if there was a Shining-like hedge maze in the backyard they could trap him in.

Also, weird stuff happens at Broncos parties. Brian Griese "fell" in Terrell Davis' driveway and needed seven stitches at the end of a party back in 2002; there were rumors at the time that Griese landed face-first on a teammate's fist.

Then, of course, there was Chad Kelly, who engaged in a little light home invasion after Von Miller's Halloween party in 2018. Kelly was extradited to Canada, where he helped the Toronto Argonauts win a Grey Cup and now has diplomatic immunity for life.

Broncos parties are wild. There was a non-zero chance that Nathaniel Hackett would be ritually sacrificed and slow-cooked into stringy brisket at the Wilson estate. Who would want to miss that?

According to DVOA, at least 80% of Wilson's teammates should have attended his party. Most would cluster in awkward little circles, wolfing down appetizers and scrolling their phones. Some might sneak off to root through a dozen medicine cabinets. But very few would stay home to play Modern Warfare II while their quarterback noodles on the piano and his pop-diva spouse sashays about singing torch songs Fabulous Baker Boys-style. (Which, again, almost certainly happened. For over an hour. With all exits sealed.)

Jalen Hurts would enjoy near 100% birthday party attendance. At least three-quarters of Kirk Cousins' teammates would risk salmonella to choke down his cooking in the name of esprit d'corps. Kyler Murray's birthday parties are on Discord, so there's no reason not to show up (unless you are Patrick Peterson). Justin Herbert's are just cake and ice cream, but Twitter assures us that each one is the event of the season. The Tom Brady joke has been redacted because we don't want to contribute to holiday depression. Oh, and you had better attend Aaron Rodgers' birthday party if invited: Jake Kumerow takes names at the door and sends the list of no-shows straight to Elon Musk.

But back to those 12 bathroom candles. They cannot just be "fresh linen" or "pumpkin spice." Ciara and Russ likely blend their own fragrances out of rare orchids, Dune spice, ambergris, and their own pheromones. It probably doesn't smell delightful, but it's certainly the type of thing that gets talked about on the drive home.

PropWatch: Micah Parsons and the Runaway DPOY Race

Micah Parsons won the Defensive Rookie of the Year award in 2021. He's a -1200 (not a typo) favorite to win the Defensive Player of the Year award in 2022. But Parsons has already won the most coveted trophy of them all: the Most Likable Cowboy Award.

When the Dallas Cowboys are playoff contenders, Philadelphia Eagles and New York Giants fans designate one and only one Cowboys player to be genuinely praiseworthy; the rest are written off as overrated prima donnas or plague rats. Parsons follows in the esteemed footsteps of Roger Staubach, Emmitt Smith, and Jason Witten, Cowboys of the past whom New Jersey Turnpike frequent-flyers grudgingly accepted as admirable.

Parsons earned his Most Likable Cowboy award through reliability (bad games are rare for him), dominance (six two-sack games this season), a willingness to play through minor injuries, and the fact that he's not yet eligible for a humongous contract and the attendant Jerry Jones posturing and hand-wringing that will grate upon the nation's nerves. Being a Penn State alum also helps: Eagles and Giants fans like to pretend that Penn State is a local team, because the alternatives are Temple and Rutgers.

(A quick note: Commanders fans are excluded from this discussion because no one has cared what they think since the mid-1990s.)

Parsons' popularity creates a prop-betting conundrum: he's so well-respected that it's hard to imagine awards voters selecting anyone else. That -1200 moneyline suggests that the handicappers think that the DPOY vote has already occurred, and Parsons is making space on his mantle.

Matt Judon has 13 sacks to Parsons' 12 but is getting a +1700 moneyline. Nick Bosa is just a half-sack behind Parsons, but he's at +1100. Chris Jones has 10 sacks at defensive tackle for a 9-2 team but lists at +2500. Parsons is having the best season of the four, but not an "everyone else is a silly longshot" caliber season.

Judon and Bosa represent excellent values for wagerers. Judon, in particular, just played the first of three-straight prime-time games for a Patriots team with still-flickering playoff aspirations and a high school offense. From a voter-hook perspective, Judon could call Parsons' Most Likable Cowboy status and raise him as the Last Great Patriot.

The trouble is that betting on Judon for DPOY means betting against Parsons. And Parsons is just so damn cool.

You guessed it: Walkthrough is restacking the NFL awards market today in a segment we sometimes call PropWatch.

Most Valuable Player

Patrick Mahomes (-160) leads the NFL in passing yards and touchdowns. Voters can be a little conservative when choosing an MVP, and Mahomes also provides them with safe harbor. The argument against Mahomes is that we're familiar with his greatness and he's not a buzzy/sexy/clickable choice, with makes for a rather weak argument.

Jalen Hurts (+350) deserves consideration, but he lacks the passing numbers of a traditional MVP, and his candidacy is hampered both by the fact that he is unestablished and Teammates are Awesome/Schedule is Awful baggage. Josh Allen (+1400) has probably made enough late-game mistakes to sour voters for the rest of the year.

Tua Tagovailoa has crept up the MVP board to +500. Walkthrough anticipates that the 2022 NFL awards will be highly impacted by the Tua Credit Deflection phenomenon: other Dolphins will win awards as voters overcompensate for snubbing Tua because he's not the rifle-armed platonic ideal of an MVP quarterback.

From a wagering standpoint, Mahomes actually has value in the -160 range; other candidates must step up considerably to pose a threat, while Mahomes can simply keep being himself.

Offensive Player of the Year

Here are the moneylines as of Wednesday:

• Justin Jefferson: +235
• Jalen Hurts: +330
• Tyreek Hill: +350
• Patrick Mahomes: +800
• Travis Kelce: +1600
• Stephon Diggs: +1700

Mahomes won both Offensive Player of the Year and MVP in 2018. It was the last time a quarterback won OPOY, but quarterbacks still earn a handful of votes each year, so Hurts has a reasonable shot. Still, this award is likely to come down to Jefferson (1,232 receiving yards through Week 12) versus Hill (1,233 yards). Hill will deservedly earn deflected Tagovailoa credit. Jefferson made the catch of the year, and voters may believe (with some merit) that the Vikings would be a sub-.500 team without him.

No tight end has ever won OPOY, and Kelce has little chance of pushing past Jefferson and Hill for voter attention.

Interestingly, Josh Jacobs was not on the board at press time. It wasn't just an out-of-contention situation: Raiders teammate Davante Adams was on the board at +13000. The house has no doubt taken note of Jacobs' calf injury and figured he's not even worth posting. Jacobs could push his way into dark horse consideration if he leads the Raiders on a late run to dignity with a few more 100- to 300-yard games. He'll eventually settle for one of those sponsored Air and Ground Fantasy League Champion awards that no sane person would ever wager upon.

Offensive Rookie of the Year

F*ckin' Houston Texans.

Dameon Pierce was on his way to Offensive Rookie of the Year honors with 357 rushing yards, 4.8 yards per carry, and lots of Beast Mode highlights in October. All the Texans had to do was stink a little less in every conceivable way. But the Texans insist on stinking as noxiously as possible, and they have left Pierce with nowhere to run and few rushing opportunities in lopsided losses. Pierce has averaged just 36.7 rushing yards per game and 3.4 yards per carry over his last four games. He's now +1100 for OROY, and there's no meat on that bone for Pierce's trio of pitbull fur babies to gnaw upon.

Kenneth Walker is at -150 despite 43 rushing yards on 24 carries over his last two games. He's a bad value with that recent production at that moneyline, despite nine touchdowns and some receiving highlights. Chris Olave (+600) may be the most deserving candidate right now, but it will be hard for him to get voter attention when the Saints are getting shut out.

With six touchdowns in his last two games, one of them from Jordan Love, Christian Watson (+700) is the best value on the board. Garrett Wilson (+600), by contrast, is tied to the Jets quarterback merry-go-round; Mike White is better than Zach Wilson, but that doesn't mean he's good enough to keep a receiver in the OROY race.

Defensive Rookie of the Year

It's going to be Sauce Gardner (-330).

In addition to having an excellent rookie season, Sauce is in an unfalsifiable situation. An edge rusher could lose Defensive Rookie of the Year with a sack drought. A cornerback can seal up the award with zero stats so long as he doesn't give up many high-profile touchdowns. And Sauce will probably be forgiven if Jefferson or Diggs tag him once or twice over the next two weeks.

Comeback Player of the Year

Walkthrough grabbed Geno Smith at +2000 on October 12 (we placed the bet LIVE on our Monday livestream) and couldn't be happier right now. Geno's moneyline is now a pointless-to-wager -300. Saquon Barkley (+190) has lost momentum with just 61 rushing yards in his last two games. Derrick Henry (+2000) and Christian McCaffrey (+2800) lack the right combination of legs for the stretch run and narrative satisfaction to win a narrative-based award.

Smith's comeback tale is essentially slump-proof. The Seahawks could go on a losing streak down the stretch and miss the playoffs, yet Smith still pulled himself off the scrap heap, proved himself a viable starter, made the Seahawks relevant, and also helped make Russell Wilson look a little more silly to boot. And while Geno no longer looks like a mobile version of Drew Brees like he did in early October, he's settling in to a high-enough level of play to win CPOY on cruise control.

Coach of the Year

Nick Sirianni is getting a -135 moneyline. The last head coach to win COY in his second year with a team was Bruce Arians for the 2014 Arizona Cardinals. Arians also won COY for his interim stint with the Indianapolis Colts in 2012, making him something of an outlier. The last person to win in his second NFL head coaching season was Lovie Smith for the 2005 Chicago Bears. So there's a lot of history working against Sirianni.

Brian Daboll appeared to be a money-printing machine back in October. He's now at +2200. The Giants face the Commanders and Eagles twice down the stretch, plus the Colts and Vikings. Daboll could remain in COY contention if he can find three wins on that slate, but he does not control his own fate.

Mike McDaniel is getting a +500 moneyline, his team is 8-3 and surging, and he's likely to benefit from the Tua Credit Deflection phenomenon. Voters may shun McDaniel for his handling of Tagovailoa's concussion, but voters shrugged at Aaron Rodgers' anti-vax crusade last season. If the Dolphins are 10-4 at the end of their upcoming three-game road trip, McDaniel's moneyline will probably drop toward even odds.

Incidentally, Walkthrough grabbed Mike McDaniel for Coach of the Year on July 11 at +1600, anticipating a reasonable probability that the Dolphins season would turn out more or less the way it has. Doubt our PropWatch instincts at your own peril!

Robert Saleh is getting +500 odds. Let's see how things go once opponents get a little more film on Mike White.

Final Walkthrough Prop Bet Tally

We're grabbing Judon at +1700: the juice is worth a little squeeze. We also grabbed Christian Watson +700 because the Pierce Rookie of the Year campaign is over. If you are seeking a diversified portfolio, consider Mahomes as a low-risk option. Season with Tyreek or Jefferson to taste. Walkthrough promises to check back after the awards are announced to gloat see how everyone did!

Ineligible Man Downfield Penalties

If you think you are seeing far more ineligible man downfield penalties than ever in 2022, it's not your imagination. And you are probably an Eagles, Steelers, or Dolphins fan.

There have been 64 ineligible man downfield (IMD) penalties through 12 weeks, by far the highest total on record for even a full season. Check out the recent figures, per NFLPenalties.com. Remember, the 2022 totals are not projected or prorated in any way: it's raw 11-/12-game data being compared to raw 16-/17-game data from past years.

2022: 64 penalties, 2.00 per team so far.
2021: 46 penalties, 1.44 per team.
2020: 25 penalties, 0.78 per team
2019: 39 penalties, 1.19 per team
2018: 16 penalties, 0.50 per team
2017: 14 penalties, 0.44 per team
2016: 20 penalties, 0.63 per team

If you guessed that the rise in IMD penalties is directly tied the rise of the run/pass option, then you are correct. Offensive linemen block as if it's a running play for most RPO concepts. That means they can venture as far downfield as they please. Most RPO passes are quick and short, so it's unlikely that a lineman will end up more than 1 yard downfield. But if the quarterback double-clutches or scrambles before throwing, a blocker may be out at the second level or pile-driving his defender a few yards downfield, resulting in a flag.

Here are the most penalized teams for having ineligible linemen downfield in 2022:

Pittsburgh Steelers: 6 IMD penalties;
Miami Dolphins: 5
Philadelphia Eagles: 5
Indianapolis Colts: 5
Carolina Panthers: 4
New York Giants: 4
Kansas City Chiefs: 4

The Eagles, Dolphins, Panthers, and Chiefs are among the most RPO-heavy offenses in the NFL. The Steelers are the only team on the list above that doesn't use the RPO all that frequently, but they do use lots of screen concepts which require offensive linemen to slip downfield, and also their offense just stinks.

Keep in mind as you look at those penalty totals just how rare the IMD penalty used to be. In 2017, the Chiefs led the NFL with just three total fouls.

The ineligible man downfield penalty dates back to the early days of organized American football at the start of the 20th century, when the forward pass was just being legalized in an effort to prevent literal deaths on the field. The founding fathers of modern football, including folks such as John Heisman, didn't want 10 players racing around the field trying to catch passes, so they placed tight strictures on everyone along the line of scrimmage but the two ends. Not only could interior linemen not catch a pass, but they weren't even allowed to roam downfield on passing plays!

Other rules to limit forward passing—the quarterback could only throw from 5 yards behind the line of scrimmage; an incomplete pass was a turnover—were scrapped long ago. But the rules about eligible receivers became part of the DNA of American football.

Watch any college game, and you may notice that officials are rather lenient when calling IMD. College linemen often charge several yards downfield toward the boundaries to block for slip-screens while the quarterback is still winding up. NFL officials, by contrast, have become sticklers. On many IMD fouls, the lineman has just strayed a step or two downfield while blocking and is nowhere near the flow of the play. Sometimes, the blocker gets flagged just for "finishing:" driving his defender back so conclusively that his own momentum forces him to take an extra stride forward.

No one wants to see offensive linemen racing 10 yards downfield before the throw to create a wall for Tyreek Hill. (Or do we?) But the current enforcement of the IMD penalties is essentially a "gotcha." The NFL should advise officials to handle linemen who get a little lost during RPOs the way they treat quarterbacks who call for the snap just as the play clock reaches zero. No one wants extra delay of game penalties for their own sake. And no one really wants what are usually routine short gains turned into 5-yard penalties and clock stoppages because of strict interpretations of a rule designed to prevent guards from catching passes in 1906.

Quick Note No. 1: Steelers guard James Daniels appears to lead the NFL in ineligible man downfield penalties with three. The data is hand-sifted, so we may have missed someone.

Quick Note No. 2: The Minnesota Vikings have benefited from an NFL-high six ineligible man downfield penalties. If there's some random, tiny, not-really-earned advantage anywhere in a 2022 NFL data set, chances are the Vikings are benefitting from it.