Tail Outcomes: What Is Packers QB Malik Willis Worth To The Spread Vs. Colts Week 2?

The goal of this weekly column is to filter through much of the noise of stats and data to highlight those stats that matter as a framework for NFL Week 2 picks that betting apps in the market might not capture well. This week, I’m looking at a matchup between Colts quarterback Anthony Richardson and Packers back-up QB Malik Willis. As always in my work, I will try to orient my research towards tail outcomes, more difficult for sports betting sites to price.

These tail outcomes orient risk on a bettor’s side while not needing to win your NFL picks more than half the time in order to profit.

Odds For NFL Week 2 Picks: Colts At Packers

Sports Bettors Debate: How Many Points Is Drop From Love To Willis Worth?

It is exceedingly rare for me to start an article with a meme, but I think it captures how I see this game, or better yet, the frame that matters most for the outcome of this game.

Perhaps I am the donkey on the left tail here, but we can let the data and argument do most of the work in lett you decide that.

Where Does Malik Willis Rank In QB Disruption Rate?

What we have charted below is a statistic called disruption. It essentially captures when either a QB is thrown off his rhythm by pressure or when a QB faces perfect coverage. But what is most compelling in this research is that, like many stats in the NFL, a QB has heavy influence over the rates of disruption.

As shorthand evidence for this, consider how many QBs who played on the same teams that have very different disruption rates. In effect, then, this stat serves as a very useful proxy for QB processing, whereby a QB can anticipate pressure and coverage (and avoid those poor outcomes). 

Malik Willis is in a tier of his own in terms of disrupted plays. Now granted this is a relatively small sample from a 2022 rookie, but the clustering of QBs in the middle and Willis so far on the bottom illustrates just how much of an outlier Willis is in these categories.

Now, that isn’t to say it can’t get better, but even if Willis improves pretty dramatically from two years ago, he is still working from an extremely low base. And let’s take a minute to focus on not just where Willis is relative to the rest of the QBs in the NFL but the rates themselves.

Even if Willis improves 20% in his disruption rate to around 50%, that would still mean around half of the dropbacks are plays that lose nearly half a point in expected production. Even if Willis drops back 25 times, assuming these rates, that’s nearly a touchdown the team is losing in expectancy.  

Has Malik Willis Been Good When Protected?

Willis has not been strong when not facing disruption, either. He is a massive outlier in the graph below, with one of the worst EPA/play in the NFL on plays with no disruption. 

This would suggest that even if he is in a great LaFleur offense, at least in his limited 2022 production, Willis would be unable to overcome even a good system. Look at the delta between Willis and Tannehill playing in the same offense.

Malik Willis 2024 Preseason And Training Camp Casualty

Let us also not forget that Willis only arrived in Green Bay three weeks ago, making it even more difficult to pick up the offense. The Titans traded him for a seventh-round pick after failing to beat out Mason Rudolph for the backup job.

This should at least discount the counter to this case that LaFleur will be able to hide Willis well, and the Green Bay structure will raise the base rates of success for Willis. No matter which metric you choose to evaluate dropback efficiency, the point remains the same: Willis is not just bad but is an outlier in how bad he is. 

NFL Picks Week 2 Debate

This Colts at Packers spread is the most debated topic in the sports betting world this week. Is Jordan Love to Malik Willis worth six points? Eight points? More? Judah laid out the argument for the Colts at current prices here. TheLines.com’s Eli Hershkovich laid out his arguments for the other side as well in his NFL Week 2 Bets column.

Tell us where you fall in the debate. Join TheLines.com’s free sports betting Discord — with over 4,000 community members and our staff sharing betting ideas daily.

Editor’s Note

Tail Outcomes: NFL Picks For COlts at Packers

Click on the odds below if you’d like to bet now.

• Colts -5.5 (+130)
• Colts -9.5 (+262)

The point is not to say that everything above is what is most likely to happen– we’re not betting on the spread (a median outcome).

Rather, my goal is to make the case that there is plenty of mass on the left tail of the distribution, which suggests that if Willis performs at the levels we’ve seen, he is not just bad, but the single worst starting QB in the NFL.

It is certainly possible that this was only a small sample for a rookie QB a few years ago. But it is also possible, I’d argue more likely, that this is who Malik Willis is as a QB. And no system will be able to prop him up and no injuries on defense will allow him to flourish.

To tie us full circle with our curves, according to the data we have, Willis is so far down on the left tail of QB play, that the circumstances around him matter less than they would a different QB. His weakness processing and throwing are the dispositive factors in success that little else matters. 

In this case, the game is likely massively mispriced. Not only because from a fundamentals perspective the market did not downgrade the Packers enough, but also because points reflect real points in real games. And if Willis is as bad as his previous data appears, it will be an uphill battle for the Packers to score even a few TDs.

This would make the Colts alternate spreads exceptionally appealing as their offensive floor is high enough to score at least at a league average clip. This would mean a win by large margin.