December football and freezing temperatures are nearing, and while it's not entirely true, some old sayings have it that the war in the trenches becomes only more important during these times. So, how will things play out up front in Week 11?
With the kickoff to Thursday Night Football just hours away, it's time for us to analyze every contest's trench matchups by predicting the survival curves for the offensive line and projecting how often a quarterback will be pressured at a given time after the snap.
Going into each game, a machine-learning model incorporates several features in order to come up with a prediction:
- The survival curve of the offensive line in previous games (or from last year)
- The survival curve of the defensive line in previous games (or from last year)
- The PFF pass-blocking grades of the five offensive linemen
- The PFF pass-rush grades of the pass-rushers and the positions they are projected to line up in
- How the blend of individual grades and team-level survival curves from the past are weighted toward predicting the cervical curve depends on continuity and how far in the past the information lies.