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Broncos DeskThe Verdict

Broncos beat Panthers 26-21 in a game the snaps gave to Carolina

Denver won at Carolina on a fourth-quarter strip sack, but the snaps gave the Broncos a 21% chance, and the season sheet shows a pattern.

The VerdictDefenseLuckyDeserved 21% · Week 9
By Broncos Desk, Pigskin NightlyNov 10, 10:01 AM ET2 min read

The verdict

The snaps gave the Broncos a 21% chance in Carolina. Played like that, they win one time in five. They won 26-21, so the result was lucky.

The Panthers played like a 4.4-point better team. A team that plays like that wins 79% of the time, and Carolina lost anyway.

What the score hid

Denver averaged 0.03 EPA per snap. EPA is expected points added, the points a play is worth over what the down and distance predicted. Carolina averaged 0.10, so the Panthers got more out of an average snap.

Success rate said the same thing. The Broncos were successful on 43% of plays and the Panthers on 47%.

Luck points put a number on the gap: 4.5 for Denver and -2.9 for Carolina. The Broncos got the breaks and the Panthers paid for them.

The swing play came with 1:24 left in the fourth quarter. Linebacker N.Bonitto sacked B.Young at the Denver 44 for a loss of 8 yards, forced a fumble and recovered it himself. Replay review upheld the ruling on the field. The play moved win probability 33 percentage points, the biggest swing of the game. It was a real play by the Denver defense, and it came in a game Denver had otherwise lost on the snaps.

The calls

The flags leaned Denver's way. Of the four heaviest, three went against Carolina. A defensive pass interference call in the first quarter at 14:47 gave Denver 27 yards and moved win probability 10 points. Illegal use of hands on the Panthers at 0:16 of the third quarter was worth 6 points, and a second pass interference call at 7:17 of the fourth added 5 more. The one flag that hurt Denver was roughing the passer at 3:18 of the fourth, which cost 7 points of win probability.

On fourth down, head coach Sean Payton matched the model all three times. He kicked a field goal on fourth-and-8 from the 8-yard line in the first quarter. He punted on fourth-and-6 from his own side of midfield, which the model rated a tossup. He punted on fourth-and-18 in the third quarter. The model lost no expected points on any of them. Nobody can fault those calls.

The trend

The Broncos are 7-2, and their snaps say 4.1 deserved wins. That is a gap of 2.9 wins, the biggest in the league, first among the 32 teams. Denver is 6-0 in one-score games and has won three games while lucky. Opponent kicking luck is 6.7 points, fumble recovery luck is 2.5, and total luck is 15.5 points. Season net EPA per snap is -0.021, 20th in the league.

The fourth-down record under Payton explains why close games keep coming. His Chicken Index is 79%, third most timid in the league. The model recommended going on 14 fourth downs this season, and Denver went on 3 of them. Across 46 graded fourth downs, the Broncos have lost 9.5 expected points, and 7 of those decisions were clear misses. This week was clean, but the season is not.

Luck on this scale tends to even out. The next test is the Las Vegas Raiders at home on Sunday, Nov 22, at 4:25 PM ET on CBS, in Week 11.

How this was reported. Every number in this piece comes from the play-by-play, drive, injury and snap data Pigskin Nightly collects for every game. EPA (expected points added) is from the open nflverse model. We do not use anonymous sources or invent quotes. Read how we write; spotted an error? Tell us and we will correct it in the open.