Batting Practice #4: Ewers, Purdy, Russ, and the end of the LeBron era
The weekly sport analytics review and criticism from Wolohan Analytics
You can listen to the fourth episode of Batting Practice here:
Week number one of the NFL has come and gone, and another week brings another episode of Batting Practice. This week, we’re covering:
Texas is back! After Quinn Ewers put on an impressive show against Alabama, Phil Steele’s Vegas Power rankings have Texas favored by a touchdown or more in every remaining game on their schedule. The sky looks to be the limit for this Texas team.
Brock Purdy lives up to his tier 1 hype. The sample size for Purdy is small, but with each new outing, we get more and more evidence that the Cyclone alumni is for real. We put him in our top tier of QBs with Mahomes and Rodgers ahead of the season before Vegas even listed Brock Purdy props.
Russ is cooked. The former Super Bowl champ looks to be in full on game manager mode, continuing his poor performances from last year. Russ was bottom 10 in the league in both Expected Points Added over Expectation and Expected Points Added over Expectation per Completion, showing a reluctance to push the football down the field. He was one of 11 quarterbacks to fail to produce a completion worth at least a field goal in week 1.
LeBron is committing to play in the Paris Olympics, but the LeBron era is officially over. For the first time since the beginning of his career, LeBron is no longer considered good enough to lead his team to an NBA title according to our Manalytics Scoring system.
