This NY Giants blog thankfully has many more hits than misses over the years. We wouldn’t be blogging for 16 years if we weren’t adding value to the conversation.
In my day job, I have had a career in the financial markets in various capacities. When it comes to understanding trading, human behavior, market sentiment etc, I don’t have Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hours… I probably have more like 70,000+ hours. That alone does not make me (more) right. It just gives me the ability to comment here when market dynamics overlap with the Giants.
The setup for the 2023 season is really interesting. Two posts ago, we discussed the Over/Under line. The Giants are still at 7.5 wins, although you have to now lay money to take the Over, so it is more like 7.75. Please read the post if you have not yet, but the quick summary is I think Over 7.5 is value.
The incremental driver of this new post is that someone yesterday on Twitter asked how many games the team would win in 2023. I looked at the responses. It was overwhelmingly “Over” with most responses showing 8 or more wins. Well, you say, of course it is. Giants fans are always bullish. Always. Las Vegas is the opposite, as they can only afford to balance the money. Remember, sports betting sites do not want to be right. They want to be hedged with as many buyers as sellers of the win total.
How bullish are Giants fans? I tabulated ~138 replies and 87.5% answered 8 or more games. When you consider that a chunk were thinking 10-12 games won, it makes that response more skewed, because we certainly weren’t seeing a lot of 3-5 win totals from most of the 12.5% naysayers.
Those on Wall Street who trade directionally on price can generally be broken into 2 categories: Trend Followers and Contrarians. Trend followers buy instruments that are rising and sells instruments that are going down. “The trend is your friend” is an old saw on the street. Keep it simple. Respect the money flows. If money is going in, it will continue to come in, raising the price further.
7 out of 8 Giants fans think Vegas is low. Add the fact that the Giants were “Over” last year, and that is a bullish trend. As a former trader, 87% scares the hell out of me. When optimism is too high, typically it makes sense to go the other way. This is called being a contrarian. Contrarians reason that a trend that is too far extended is due for a “pullback” to flush out excess speculative money. In this case, the Giants would come down to earth and not win 7.5 games.
So what is happening here? As we said previously, no one is “giving (money) away.” If we saw only 60-70% of fans who were bullish on the team in 2023, that would actually be more normal (every year there is baseline optimism) and more supportive. Less people would believe, meaning more opportunity.
The argument goes back to coaching. This new Giants trend is only one season long. Daboll and Kafka are still not universally understood. Even professional bettors are not breaking down film. They do not yet understand that the developing trend of Daboll + Kafka (as better coaching minds) needs to be factored into the line. Professional bettors have little respect for Coach of the Year awards carrying forward from one year to next. In fact, they are more inclined to fade that. The last time someone won COY two consecutive years was 40 years ago with Joe Gibbs.
But Daboll does not have to win COY again in 2023 for the Giants to go Over 7.5 wins.
What is the information on the margin? What can Daboll and Kafka do differently in 2023 that they could not do well (/often) last season? They can do T wo things for sure- (1) 12 personnel and (2) vertical attacks downfield. Since Darren Waller factors into both, there is risk that if Waller gets hurt, Kafka and Daboll’s offense will be back to the same components of 2022, and revert to the mean. This is possible. Yet there are other factors as well. If Jalin Hyatt, John Michael Schmitz and Evan Neal can contribute, that will give Kafka so much more opportunity to open things (playcalling) up vertically. Better protection inside means more RB flares. Better protection from Neal will mean more 5 and 7 step drops.
What really gets me excited about the “trend” is 12 personal. Last year, the Giants hit gold with Bellinger. Yet he was a rookie; the eye injury, combined with other factors only meant about a half of a true season in the offensive mix. The only reason Bellinger’s ascent in his second year will not be statistically (think ‘fantasy’) rich is because of the same reasons why Kafka and Daboll will succeed…. too many players to give not enough touches to. That is a really good problem to have. Waller and Bellinger will be in 12 personal, and everyone dreams of the magic of Gronk and Hernandez when they think along those lines. Waller is a receiving option, but he can still block occasionally when asked. If you line him up in the slot, he will be able to block a CB or S. Bellinger can block. So what defense do you put out there versus 12 personnel when both Bellinger and Waller can line up in a varying set of looks? One of them goes in motion, or both go in motion, and the Defense is going to have a lot of matchup problems. The dual nature of Bellinger plus the ability of Bellinger to take the attention of 2 defenders is going to provide Kafka and Daboll all kinds of opportunity to innovate again this year. Considering how well the Offense was able to innovate last year with limited personnel, opposing defenses should be kept on their heels again.
Trend continuation or trend reversal? Giants fans are going to be biased. The team went from 4-13 to 9-7-1. I am not going to read too much into the optimism of the fans. They saw the overachievement of the team nearly every week last year. Because of the dynamic nature of the coaching staff not only in one season but also week to week, this looks like a nascent trend rather than a trend that is long in the tooth. The latter is what happens when aging stars are not replaced, a talented coordinator gets an offer to be the Head Coach elsewhere, and cap problems constrict the GM. Here in 2023, the Giants are a young team getting better, Kafka is just getting started, and Schoen has had more cap room to maneuver signings. That clearly looks like trend continuation. There are so many players who could break out with big years. Last year it was Dexter Lawrence and Daniel Jones. This year, it could be Neal, Thib, Bellinger, and/or Hodgins. And that does not even consider players like McKinney and Ojulari, who can easily explode if they stay healthy. This team only has 2 starters who are 30 years or older, Waller (31) and Glowinski (31).
Early uptrend.