First we look at Week 2 in the NFL, paying particular attention to how the Baltimore Ravens finally overcame their own demons and also the Kansas City Chiefs. Coach John Harbaugh’s call to go for one more yard on fourth down with just over a minute to play may have shocked the broadcasters, but the math (and the specter of Patrick Mahomes) made it a pretty obvious call. Football still has a ways to go before it catches up to other sports in terms of old-guard attitudes giving way to analytics, but it seems to be making progress. 

Next, we survey the field for the WNBA playoffs and the last-second inclusion of the New York Liberty, who at 12-20 have to be very happy to be sneaking into the first round. We discuss how the Liberty are still waiting on their young draft picks to settle into the league in order to fully capitalize on their potential, much to the disappointment of fans who were hyped for Sabrina Ionescu. We also talk about the structure of the WNBA playoffs, which has helped ensure that the top-seeded teams tend to win it all, and the advantages that the Las Vegas Aces and Connecticut Sun will bring to bear when they enter the mix. 

Finally, in the Rabbit Hole, Neil talks about the incredible year that Salvador Pérez has been having. He hasn’t won the home run chase yet, but he has already broken the record for most home runs by a catcher in a single year, a record that stood since 1970. His numbers from the shortened season in 2020 were perhaps foreshadowing of what we’ve seen from him this year, but Pérez’s success still has to come as a nice end-of-season treat for the Royals. 

What we’re looking at this week: 

• How math won Week 2 of the NFL. 
• The stat that defines each WNBA playoff team. 
• The great home run chase of 2021. 

The WNBA is a collection of the finest basketball talent in the world. Who wins and loses is determined by an almost endless collection of factors, a movable chessboard around a basketball court, skill and intellect and physicality in new and unpredictable permutations.

Accordingly, I am here to boil down each of the league’s eight playoff teams down to a single stat.

First, a refresher on the WNBA playoff format, which I love, frankly. Eight of the 12 teams are playoff-bound, according to record and regardless of conference, and seeded 1-8. The top two seeds have a double bye, and Nos. 3 and 4 each have a single bye. In the first round, which is single-elimination, No. 5 plays No. 8, and No. 6 plays No. 7. The worst remaining seed out of those two games plays No. 3, with the higher seed playing No. 4.

Got it? Perfect — except for a single-game elimination game for the third and fourth seeds in the second round. (We would prefer a three-game series.)

Let’s start from the bottom seed, shall we?

No. 8 New York Liberty: defensive 3-point field-goal percentage

For the Liberty, it’s been a season of highs and lows. An impressive start was followed by a late-season swoon that swept New York from a position of hosting this game to only reaching it thanks to the generous work of the Lynx and Wings, who beat the Mystics and Sparks, respectively, on the season’s final day.

It is easy to focus on New York’s shooting as a primary driver of the team’s success, but that’s not really it. As a matter of fact, the Liberty shot 35.2 percent from three during its eight-game losing streak late in the season, not dramatically different from its season mark of 36.2. Instead, it’s how many easy looks from beyond the arc the Liberty give up that matters most.

There’s a mathematical logic to this. The Liberty have made a massive bet on taking threes, the idea being that they can combine pace with higher-percentage shots — at the rim, sure, but plenty of open threes — to outrun bigger, often stronger opponents.

But during the losing streak, opponents actually outperformed New York from beyond the arc — at 36.2 percent — while taking over 23 threes per game, tied for the most in the league over that span. If you’re getting outrebounded and giving up easy threes in droves, well, you’re going to end up needing help to make the playoffs. In the two losses to Phoenix among that streak, the Mercury shot nearly 40 percent from three. In New York’s lone win against them back in June? 20.8 percent.

No. 5 Phoenix Mercury: minutes played, Diana Taurasi

I don’t mean to oversimplify this, but the Mercury are 12-4 when Taurasi plays, and they’re 7-9 when she doesn’t. There’s a reason she’s in the GOAT conversations, and she was essentially that same player in rate stats and minutes per game before really struggling her last two games, after which a left ankle injury pushed her to the sidelines for the team’s final four games. Phoenix won just one of the four. 

This is not a one-woman team, to be clear: Brittney Griner had another All-Star season in a surefire Hall-of-Fame career full of them, Skylar Diggins-Smith is a dynamic playmaker who can win you some games by herself, and Brianna Turner might be the most underrated post player in the league. But for the Mercury to make the championship run it looked like might be coming during their 10-game winning streak, Taurasi needs to play. 

No. 6 Dallas Wings: Arike Ogunbowale’s offensive efficiency

There’s no doubt that the Dallas Wings are powered by Ogunbowale, one of the most exciting players to watch in the game. But while she’s made it a point of emphasis to get better shots— she’s shooting the highest percentage of her attempts around the rim and beyond the arc of her entire career this season — she can still fall into her old habits of trying to shoot her way out of trouble. 

That’s why she’s taken 102 fewer shots in wins than in losses, even though Dallas was close to sea level on the season at 14-18. Moreover, her efficiency dropped in losses, from an effective field-goal percentage of 49 to 43.9. 

This is a deep, talented Dallas roster. Ogunbowale doesn’t have to win it by herself. Marina Mabrey is finally getting a chance to show everyone she’s a solid pro. Bella Alarie has made tremendous strides this year. Moriah Jefferson is, wonderfully, back and healthy again. And Isabelle Harrison just keeps on posting strong, versatile seasons.

The Wings need all of them, not just Ogunbowale, to make noise this postseason.

No. 7 Chicago Sky: team assist percentage

Sure, you knew Courtney Vandersloot was making history as a passer. But what about the rest of her team?

The Chicago Sky finished the regular season with an assist percentage as a group of 70.7 percent. That not only led the WNBA this year, but it’s the third-highest percentage in league history, behind the 71.6 percent each recorded by the 1999 Charlotte Sting and the 1998 Cleveland Rockers. Chicago is the first team to cross the 70 percent assist percentage threshold since the 2004 Indiana Fever.

It certainly helps when your star big, Candace Parker, posts an assist percentage of 26 herself. It’s not just Vandersloot. 

So what should the winners of these games expect?

No. 4 Seattle Storm: effective field-goal percentage

This is cheating a bit — it’s effective field-goal percentage by way of offensive rebounding percentage. Let me explain.

The Storm lead the league in effective field-goal percentage this season at 51.3. This is a natural consequence of having Sue Bird as your point guard, Jewell Loyd at shooting guard and Breanna Stewart doing her usual everything.

But as Seattle limped to a 5-6 finish, the team’s effective field-goal percentage dropped to 49.4, seventh in the league over that stretch. And the reason that relatively small drop was so significant is that the Storm simply don’t hit the offensive boards very effectively. For the year, only the Liberty, who have a system explicitly built around sacrificing offensive rebounds, and the Sparks, who reached historic levels of futility on the glass this season, sit below them.

The offseason loss of Natasha Howard really hurt them in this area. It created less margin for error whenever the offense struggled, just as losing Alysha Clark did this on the defensive side of the ball. The Storm won’t look beatable when Bird, Loyd and Stewart are playing their typical offensive games. But anything short of that makes Seattle vulnerable in ways they simply weren’t in 2018 and 2020.

No. 3 Minnesota Lynx: Layshia Clarendon’s presence

When the Lynx began the season 0-4, I was pretty sure they would figure it out; Cheryl Reeve has won a game or two in this league. But the signing of Clarendon (who uses he/she/they pronouns) in mid-May after they were waived by New York sure made a massive difference. Reeve can’t be her own point guard, after all — not at this point, anyway.

 The Lynx are 16-5 in Clarendon’s 21 games, 6-5 without her on the season, and he has solidified the Minnesota attack on both ends. Clarendon’s net rating of 10.4 is best on the team among regular contributors, bringing a physicality to the point guard spot and a change of pace from smaller, faster Crystal Dangerfield. The most valuable player on the Lynx is Sylvia Fowles. The most important player after Fowles might just be Clarendon. 

And for the survivors of that round? Here’s what awaits in the WNBA semifinals!

No. 2 Las Vegas Aces: pace

This is what Bill Laimbeer’s Aces teams do: They run you off the court. That’s counterintuitive, given the size of Liz Cambage and A’ja Wilson, even the way we think of Laimbeer teams in places like New York and Detroit — seldom plodding but never atop the league leaders. But he’s turned Las Vegas into the fastest-paced team four years running. It’s hard for other teams to keep up — and that’s before the punishment of fighting against the physicality of Cambage and Wilson takes its toll.

The only team that figured out a way to do it, consistently, was…

No. 1 Connecticut Sun: rebounding

Here’s the way to think about how the Sun rebound: Their total rebound percentage this season was 56.9 percent. No team in league history had ever before topped 55 percent. And everybody does it, not just league leader Jonquel Jones. Nine of the top 12 Sun players in minutes played have double-digit rebounding percentages. And the 12th, Alyssa Thomas, has logged just 37 minutes all season, just back from an Achilles injury. There’s a reason the Sun are everybody’s title favorites. So much for #DisRespect on Twitter.

Check out our latest WNBA predictions.

Among the many welcome returns of MLB playing a full 162-game schedule in 2021, baseball fans have been treated to a particularly interesting home-run leaderboard chase this season.¹

First of all, a pitcher — yes, we cannot state this enough, a pitcher — has led the major leagues in homers for most of the season, with Shohei Ohtani of the Los Angeles Angels blasting 44 bombs and counting. It’s something we haven’t seen anything close to in about 100 years, and even the likes of Babe Ruth and Bullet Rogan are imperfect comparisons for what Ohtani has done in the hyper-specialized modern game.

But after holding the MLB lead for 75 consecutive days, from late June to early September, Ohtani has recently been passed by Toronto’s Vladimir Guerrero Jr., who not only ranks first in homers but also in batting average. (He’s even tied for fourth in the American League in runs batted in, putting him 10 RBI out of position for a triple crown bid.) And as Guerrero and Ohtani have gone back and forth in the last week-plus, yet another challenger — Kansas City’s Salvador Pérez — has made a strong push as a potential spoiler to the Vlad-versus-Shohei battle we were expecting down the stretch.

You can see how the overall home run chase has shaped up throughout the season from the table below, which lists the MLB leaders both within each month and, cumulatively, through each month:

The overall HR lead has changed hands a few times over the course of the season. Ohtani was merely one of five players tied for second behind Boston’s J.D. Martinez through the end of April, and the Angels megastar engaged in a seesaw battle over the top spot with Atlanta’s Ronald Acuña Jr. for most of May, with the surprising Adolis García of the Texas Rangers  jockeying for position as well after hitting 11 homers in the month. A June hot streak by Guerrero briefly vaulted him into the lead over Ohtani and San Diego’s Fernando Tatís Jr., with then-Nationals outfielder Kyle Schwarber also joining the fray after hitting an absurd 16 home runs in the month of June alone.

Unfortunately, Schwarber and Acuña’s season totals would later lose steam because of injuries,² and Ohtani seemed to stake himself to a solid lead with a 22-homer barrage in June and July combined. But a stretch of nearly two weeks without a home run in late July and early August opened the door for Guerrero, who belted three over that span to pull within two homers of the leader. Ohtani quickly expanded his lead back to five over Guerrero, however, which is where things sat as September approached.

Meanwhile, other dark horses were galloping into the race.

Guerrero’s teammate, Blue Jays second baseman Marcus Semien, had smashed 24 home runs by the end of July, and he added eight more in August to pull within four of Tatís for fourth place (and within 10 of Ohtani) on Aug. 31 — and he wasn’t done yet.

And the biggest power-hitting star of August was maybe the most unexpected contender for the home run crown: Pérez, a 31-year-old catcher on a bad team who had never hit more than 27 bombs in a season before 2021. After hitting the equivalent of 30 homers per 162 games last year (11 in 60 team games), Pérez had 10 homers through the end of May 2021 — a respectable total, especially for a catcher. But then he really started pouring it on: nine homers in June, seven in July and an MLB-best 12 (!) in August, helping Pérez leapfrog Tatís into No. 3 on the MLB leaderboard behind only Ohtani and Guerrero. And he wasn’t done yet, either.

With just a pair of home runs so far this month, Ohtani was chased down by Vlad Jr. on Sept. 12 and passed by Pérez on Sept. 16. As the K.C. catcher has hit eight additional homers this month, he eclipsed 40 on the year, becoming just the eighth catcher³ to ever hit that many in a season. A little over two weeks later, Pérez broke Johnny Bench’s all-time single-season catcher record of 45 blasts, which had stood unchallenged for 51 years.

Currently tied with Guerrero for the MLB lead, Pérez could very well be the interloper we never saw coming to crash Ohtani and Vlad Jr.’s summerlong HR party. The same might even be said of Semien, who leads all hitters with nine home runs this month and is six back of the leaders with 13 games left to play. (Tatís remains in the mix, too, though he has fallen behind both Pérez and Semien, in addition to Guerrero and Ohtani.)

After multiple ties and lead changes over the past week and a half, this home run race has saved some of its best for last. Closing in on the finish line is a special group, featuring MLB’s most exciting player, two of its brightest young stars, a great veteran having a career year and one of baseball’s most underrated players. As fans of the sport, what more could we ask for?

Check out our latest MLB predictions.

Ohio Rep. Anthony Gonzalez announced he is retiring from Congress at the end of his term. He is one of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach former President Donald Trump after his supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. In this installment of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast, the crew discusses how the other nine Republicans are faring in their reelection bids and debate whether CNN’s new polling methodology is a good or bad use of polling.

Last Thursday, Republican Rep. Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio announced he would not seek reelection in 2022. The 37-year old congressman was one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach then-President Donald Trump after the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol, and he is now the first to call it quits.

Facing fervent opposition from Trump supporters in his district, a Trump-backed primary challenger and a potentially thorny redistricting process — Ohio will lose a congressional district after apportionment — Gonzalez decided there was no future for him in the GOP. It’s early yet, but Gonzalez’s retirement could foreshadow what awaits the other nine House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump; many of them could face a difficult path to reelection. And if they retire like Gonzalez or lose reelection, the outcome will likely be an even Trumpier Republican Party in Washington.

At this point, all but one of these 10 Republicans has received a formal rebuke from their state or local party committees, as the table below shows. Additionally, all 10 now face at least one primary challenger (or faced, in the case of Gonzalez). While not all of these intraparty opponents are real threats, many are shaping up to be roadblocks to renomination. This is particularly true in the four districts where Trump has endorsed a primary challenger, including Gonzalez’s race, where former Trump aide Max Miller has the former president’s backing and, now, no incumbent to run against.

And outside of Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, the 2021-22 redistricting process could be an added complication for these representatives, too.¹ These 10 members can largely be split into two groups: those most endangered by primary challenges and those most endangered by redistricting. Let’s start with those facing the toughest primary hurdles — the three incumbents besides Gonzalez who face a Trump-endorsed challenger.

Trump’s endorsement track record is a bit of a mixed bag in that there is some evidence that he padded his record in 2020 — that is, endorsing candidates who were already likely to win — so it’s unclear how powerful a Trump-endorsement will be in 2022. But at this point, Cheney may be in the most trouble, despite being the strongest fundraiser and the most well-known of the Republicans who backed impeachment.

Earlier this month, former Republican National Committee member Harriet Hageman entered the Wyoming House race, with an endorsement from Trump. Hageman could prove to be a powerful opponent, too, considering her political background and competitive showing in the 2018 GOP primary for Wyoming governor — she won 21 percent in a crowded race, finishing just 12 percentage points behind now-Gov. Mark Gordon. Hageman may also be able to consolidate anti-Cheney sentiment in the state, which would be a blow to the incumbent, who would benefit from a large, fragmented field. Tellingly, three other primary challengers have already withdrawn from the race, two of whom then endorsed Hageman. Just one notable candidate has refused to drop out at this point: state Sen. Anthony Bouchard. But it’s hard to know how much support Bouchard’s candidacy will garner due to the disturbing revelation that he impregnated a 14-year old girl when he was 18 and married her when she was 15.

Also in this category are Reps. Fred Upton of Michigan and Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington. Upton faces Trump-backed state Rep. Steve Carra, who recently introduced legislation to audit Michigan’s 2020 election results. This, in large part, explains his endorsement by the former president, which could help topple Upton, who was also censured by at least five GOP county committees in his district for supporting impeachment. Upton has been around for a long time (he won his first election in 1986), but he might be vulnerable, too, as his lone 2020 primary opponent won 37 percent despite raising almost no money and attracting little notice — and this was before Upton voted to impeach Trump. Meanwhile, Herrera Beutler’s main challenger in Washington is Trump endorsee Joe Kent, a former Special forces officer and husband to a Gold Star recipient. Like Carra, Kent has questioned the 2020 election results, telling CNN in July that “I think Trump won, but I want to prove it.” However, the electoral math might be more complicated in Washington than Michigan because of Washington’s top-two primary system (also used in California), where the top-two vote getters — regardless of party — advance to the November general election. If Democrats consolidate around one candidate, Herrera Beutler could still attract enough backing from some Republicans and independents to finish second and advance. Moreover, the anti-Herrera Beutler vote could be fragmented among Kent and Heidi St. John, a Christian author and home-schooling advocate who has criticized Kent as a carpetbagger who only recently moved to the southwestern Washington district.

While Reps. Tom Rice of South Carolina and Dan Newhouse of Washington don’t yet have Trump-endorsed opponents, they still face more primary woes than redistricting problems. Rice, for instance, has to win a majority of the vote in the Republican primary — or a majority in a runoff if no candidate initially wins more than 50 percent of the vote. This isn’t true of the other Republicans we’ve examined, which means a crowded candidate field could be especially tricky for Rice as he can’t skate by with a plurality win in the primary. Rice currently faces at least three serious-looking GOP opponents in conservative media personality Graham Allen, state Rep. Russell Fry and Horry County school board chair Ken Richardson, along with a host of other Republicans. (Eight Republicans are running against Rice so far.) Newhouse, meanwhile, also has three notable Republican opponents: Loren Culp, a former police officer and Washington’s GOP nominee for governor in 2020, as well as state Rep. Brad Klippert and businessman Jerrod Sessler. Like Herrera Beutler, Newhouse might benefit from Washington’s top-two primary format if he can retain enough base support while the other Republican contenders split the rest of the GOP vote. And Newhouse has performed this feat before in his solidly red district and gone on to win in November against another Republican, so it’s plausible that his impeachment vote could win over some independent and Democratic voters in both the primary and the general. But it would not be a shock to see Trump step in to better help Republicans consolidate around one opposition candidate — perhaps Culp, who made false claims about widespread voter fraud in the state’s 2020 gubernatorial election.

As for the other four other Republican representatives who voted to impeach Trump, they may face more danger from redistricting at this point. Reps. John Katko of New York and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois both hail from states where Democrats could change their district lines to make it harder for the Republicans to win reelection. Katko has held onto his Democratic-leaning district since he first won in 2014, but in an effort to defeat him, New York Democrats could make his seat even bluer and/or draw him in with Republican Rep. Claudia Tenney in the hopes that her more conservative track record would help her best Katko in a GOP primary, perhaps making her easier to defeat in a general election. So far, Katko has only attracted minor primary opposition, but Trump said this summer he would back a high-profile conservative challenger if one could be found. Meanwhile, Kinzinger’s seat in exurban Chicago could be dismantled by Democratic mapmakers in Illinois, potentially forcing him into an uphill race against an incumbent. And if he faces another Republican, he might have a particularly difficult time winning a primary given his criticism of Trump. After all, even if Kinzinger ends up with a decent district to run in, he will still face a primary challenge from former Trump administration official Catalina Lauf.

The two remaining Republicans who voted in favor of impeachment, Reps. David Valadao of California and Peter Meijer of Michigan, don’t have to worry about Democratic state legislators targeting them because their states use independent redistricting commissions. However, Valadao already holds the bluest seat of any Republican in the House, so any shift to the left could cost him reelection. Valadao also has to navigate the top-two primary format, but unlike Herrera Beutler and Newhouse, he doesn’t have much Republican opposition. The only notable Republican to pop up is Chris Mathys, a former Fresno city councilman who actually ran a distant third in a GOP primary for a House seat in New Mexico last year. Meanwhile, the initial draft maps from Michigan’s redistricting commission created a Grand Rapid-based district that Trump would have carried by less than 1 point in 2020. If lines like that hold true for the final map, that could make Meijer’s seat slightly more Democratic than it is right now (Trump +3 in 2020). That area moved to the left during the Trump era, and it could continue to do so. But working in Meijer’s favor is that he lacks a high-profile GOP primary opponent — the most notable name at this point is Tom Norton, who finished a distant third behind Meijer in the 2020 primary.

With Gonzalez already headed for the exits, the departure of some or most of these 10 members could have large consequences for the Republican Party — and democracy itself. Nine of the 10 Republicans who voted for impeachment ranked among the 28 Republican House members who have been most likely to vote in ways to protect electoral democracy, according to FiveThirtyEight’s recent analysis of congressional voting patterns.² In fact, Cheney, Katko and Kinzinger were the likelist members of the House GOP to vote in favor of pro-democracy positions. But those three may be most in danger of losing their seats. And now with Gonzalez’s retirement and the difficult paths to reelection for many of the other Republicans who voted to impeach Trump, it seems there’s not so much an intraparty debate with the GOP about Trump’s position in the party, but rather a one-sided battle where the small minority looks set to get even smaller.

Last Thursday, Ohio Rep. Anthony Gonzalez announced he is retiring from Congress at the end of his term. He is one of the ten House Republicans who voted to impeach President Trump after his supporters attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6th. In this installment of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast, the crew discusses how the other nine Republicans are faring in their bids to win reelection. They also debate whether CNN’s new polling methodology is a good or bad use of polling and give some final takeaways from California’s recall election.

You can listen to the episode by clicking the “play” button in the audio player above or by downloading it in iTunes, the ESPN App or your favorite podcast platform. If you are new to podcasts, learn how to listen.

The FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast is recorded Mondays and Thursdays. Help new listeners discover the show by leaving us a rating and review on iTunes. Have a comment, question or suggestion for “good polling vs. bad polling”? Get in touch by email, on Twitter or in the comments.

sara.ziegler (Sara Ziegler, sports editor): After the first week of the 2021 NFL season delivered pure chaos, Week 2 didn’t let us down. We had furious comebacks, worrisome injuries and a field goal attempt that I think we all knew was going to miss. 

Let’s kick things off with the fantastically entertaining Chiefs-Ravens game on Sunday Night Football, which started with a Baltimore tribute to actor Michael K. Williams and ended with a play that the math types loved: the Ravens refusing to punt.

joshua.hermsmeyer (Josh Hermsmeyer, NFL analyst): “I’m like, ‘Hell, yeah!’” was Lamar Jackson’s response.

Salfino (Michael Salfino, FiveThirtyEight contributor): Like Lamar was gonna say, “Nah.”

This puts Patrick Mahomes in the same category of opposing quarterbacks as Peyton Manning, where you don’t give the ball back to them — like when Bill Belichick similarly went for it on fourth-and-2 on his side of the field in a 2009 Pats-Colts game. The category of “even NFL coaches understand this math.”

joshua.hermsmeyer: Lamar was never going to say no, and the Ravens were never not going for it. Because math.

neil (Neil Paine, senior sportswriter): The Ravens of all teams were never not going. Since 2018, when Lamar took over as QB, they have more successful fourth-down conversions (44) than any other team. They know the math arguably as much as any team, and they have the perfect QB and offense to pick that yard up.

Salfino: The Ravens had no business winning that game, though. Mahomes threw a terrible interception, and Clyde Edwards-Helaire is continuing the recent trend of all first-round RB draft picks (except Christian McCaffrey) being TERRIBLE picks with that fumble when their win probability was about sealed.

Watch: https://abcnews.go.com/fivethirtyeight/video/makes-patrick-mahomes-great-fivethirtyeight-75237605

joshua.hermsmeyer: Each team had two turnovers though, Mike. I mean, Lamar spotted the Chiefs a TD when Sammy Watkins fell down on a pass attempt out of an empty set¹ on his third attempt of the night.

Salfino: Fair!

joshua.hermsmeyer: I think it is very fair to say that the Chiefs were the favorite, but the lucky break stuff doesn’t really fly IMO. 

Salfino: But there was not much game left when Edwards-Helaire lost the ball, so it seems more decisive. 

Jackson was the best player on the field by far after that first quarter, which is really saying something when Mahomes is also on the field.

sara.ziegler: The Ravens had more yards, more first downs, more time of possession. That’s not necessarily what it felt like while watching.

neil: Aside from forcing the various turnovers, neither defense played well. The Ravens got just enough out of their D in the final few sequences — between picking off Mahomes late in the third, forcing a punt and then getting that fumble — to win.

joshua.hermsmeyer: I thought the Ravens’ defense did a very good job shutting down Reek (3-4 for 14 yards).

sara.ziegler: Ooh, yes.

neil: Yeah, but at the expense of everything else. You could tell they were extremely determined to not let him beat them.

Salfino: Excellent point, Neil. That’s what makes their passing game so “pick your poison.”

joshua.hermsmeyer: Mahomes averaged over 11 yards per attempt, which is bananas. There’s no shutting him down, and that was obviously a big part of why going for it at the end of the game up one point was so sharp.

Salfino: Not loving the team around Mahomes one bit. It’s amazing that the Chiefs simply have not been able to manufacture any running game to gain some time of possession and keep that defense at least more rested. Not that that would matter.

sara.ziegler: I guess I’m not sure that the Chiefs’ problem was that they didn’t run it more, Mike. They’re facing a defense that’s strong against the run, and they have Mahomes. One might argue that handing it to Edwards-Helaire at the end there was the biggest mistake they made!

Salfino: Oh, I agree that the handoff was a bad play. But they can’t run it against anyone. It’s just amazing to me that they can’t because RBs fall onto the street like leaves off a tree, and the defense will concede the running game — like when the Patriots’ committee of ham-and-egg RBs would run for 250 when the defense over-committed.

joshua.hermsmeyer: One interesting thing I was looking at was Lamar’s raw vs. defense-adjusted QBR. The raw QBR is 67 (Mahomes’s was 73), but the adjusted Total QBR was 59. Do we think the Chiefs defense is that bad? 

neil: I think they are bad against the run, but that shouldn’t really show up in QBR adjustments. They were 10th in schedule-adjusted EPA per game against the pass last year (including playoffs).

Salfino: (Whispers: The Broncos are winning the West.)

sara.ziegler:

neil: Don’t you DARE sleep on the Raiders, Mike.

joshua.hermsmeyer: How good are the Raiders??

neil: This is their year!

(As many have said in what feels like every first half of a season in the Carr Era.)

Salfino: Derek Carr deserves apologies from the world and certainly from me. The dude is good. And he came in with a leg injury and salted that game away with a rainbow to Henry Ruggs that had to have Al Davis smiling in his grave.

Both Wests have great overall records, but I like the AFC more.

joshua.hermsmeyer: Before we move on from the Chiefs-Ravens, I wanted to get a sense of what the crew thinks about this claim: The way to beat Kansas City is a strong running game.

neil: The Ravens have one of those and just beat K.C. Case closed! LOL.

Salfino: Well, you do want to limit their possessions, right? Basically a four-corners concept.

joshua.hermsmeyer: I think the running may help at the margins with time of possession, but getting first downs helps even more!

sara.ziegler: Maybe the way to beat them is to have the strongest running game in the league.

Salfino: If you can give Mahomes one or two fewer possessions than he averages, it’s easy plus-expected points for your D, right?

Problem is he could be up 21-0 after three possessions. So on second thought, just score.

neil: To be honest, the real way to beat K.C. is to have a balanced team with a strong defense and a passing game that can keep reasonable pace with them. Essentially, be the 2020 Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

Funny as it is to say when they had 145 yards on the ground, but Tampa’s run game was kind of irrelevant in that Super Bowl — they had negative expected points added in the game.

It was the early passing, the turnovers and generally ferocious defense that won them the title.

joshua.hermsmeyer: I’m always shocked when Mahomes loses. It’s almost unnatural.

Salfino: Dying to see a Broncos-Chiefs matchup when the Broncos have healthy corners, hopefully. I think they have a Mahomes-beating build, at least theoretically.

sara.ziegler: I love me some Teddy Bridgewater, but that seems a little far. But we’ll find out! (Not until December though, sheesh.)

Watch: https://abcnews.go.com/fivethirtyeight/video/chaotic-fictional-football-coach-fivethirtyeight-74531599

One other note about the Baltimore running game: The Ravens have gone through what seems like an entire team of injured running backs, yet through two weeks, they lead the league in rushing. It obviously helps to have Lamar, but if that’s not the perfect example of running backs being interchangeable, I don’t know what is.

joshua.hermsmeyer: Agreed, Sara! But even I was questioning that position when they got to their fourth-string back, LOL.

neil: I’m just glad Latavius Murray found another destination — and is contributing! — after the Saints did him so dirty.

Salfino: One hundred percent, Sara. Peyton Manning said it on the Manning Cast (which is the best thing to happen to televised football since the first-down yellow line, I’m serious).

joshua.hermsmeyer: Wait, what did Manning say?

Salfino: That any RB would be good on the Ravens because of Lamar.

joshua.hermsmeyer: Ah, I thought he said they were interchangeable and I almost fell over.

Salfino: That’s what I understood him to mean.

But maybe only for the Ravens.

sara.ziegler: LOL

joshua.hermsmeyer: I think that it’s hard to overstate how much this win means for Lamar. He did a couple things people say he simply can’t do: rebound from a really rough start, come from behind, and beat the Chiefs. He gave the Steve Young quote about getting the monkey off his back after the game, and I think that’s apt. I’m very happy for Lamar. 

neil: Yes, and they needed that win, too. Their playoff odds would have dipped below 50 percent if they had lost and fallen to 0-2.

Still, I’m not sure it tells us much about the two teams relative to each other. I actually think the Chiefs even plotted out the endgame pretty well: They managed the clock specifically to set up a game-winning field goal with no time left, and expected a run game that has fumbled once every 68 carries over the past three years to take care of the ball. If that happens, they probably win. It didn’t. Truly a toss-up kind of game.

sara.ziegler: Not to get overly sappy about one game, but this was the kind of matchup that keeps me coming back to the NFL. Two young, incredibly talented quarterbacks playing all-out in a “anyone can win” kind of game. I really want to see this again in the playoffs!

Let’s take a quick spin around a few other interesting games. The Saints looked very good in Week 1, and then they just completely laid an egg Sunday against the Panthers. What was that about?

neil: Sam Darnold >>> Aaron Rodgers?

(Kidding.)

joshua.hermsmeyer: I know that seven members of the Saints coaching staff were in COVID-19 quarantine, but I don’t know how much that explains the game.

Salfino: The Panthers right now look like a co-favorite in the NFC South, given how the Bucs are struggling defending the pass (sans Sunday’s pick-sixes).

neil: OK, let’s not get too carried away, Mike. I said I was kidding.

Salfino: The Panthers have no obvious weakness if we stipulate that Darnold is at least average (and maybe he’s better than that). The Saints defense is good, though Darnold caught them at the right time. The Panthers are very tough to defend with McCaffrey and those WRs.

neil: I will say the Panthers’ defense has been good so far. They rank second in defensive EPA through two games, trailing only the Buffalo Bills.

sara.ziegler: And Darnold ranks sixth in QBR. Darnold for MVP!

LOL

Salfino: You can’t hurt me, Sara.

joshua.hermsmeyer: I’m just gonna let Mike have this Darnold moment.

Salfino: I’m numb.

I don’t know what to make of Darnold. Maybe you can take the player out of the Jets and the Jets out of the player?

neil: Does this just mean Zach Wilson will be a breakout for, IDK, the Falcons in like three years?

sara.ziegler: Oooof.

joshua.hermsmeyer: The Falcons would be such a good match, too!

Salfino: You are all horrible people.

neil: Hahaha

sara.ziegler: Moving on, the Titans-Seahawks game gave us something we don’t see very often: Seattle losing a game at home that it led after three quarters. Sunday was only the 25th time that had happened in the 46 seasons the franchise has been around. And it was only the sixth time that the Seahawks had led by at least 8 points after three quarters and then lost. How did that one get away from them?

Salfino: Derrick Henry ate Seattle’s soul is what happened. He flicked the switch. I’ve never seen a guy as fast as Henry after he gets 10 yards down the field. He just runs away from everyone. That the Titans came back down like that with a running game is IN-SANE.

And they did it despite the NFL making one of the worst calls in history by reversing a clear Julio Jones TD (or at least a clear “inconclusive”) that cost the Titans 4 points. 

joshua.hermsmeyer: I fear Pete Carroll will take all the wrong lessons from this game. Russ threw for 11 yards per attempt and they only ran 18 times (including three rushes from Russ) and got beat by a team that ran it 40 times. All his priors were confirmed.

Salfino: Oh, 100 percent.

sara.ziegler: Yeah, that sounds right.

neil: Henry and the Titans might be one of only two teams (the other being the Ravens) who could run their way back from being down big.

In fact, since 2000, that was the second-most rushing yards gained by a team in the 4th quarter of a game while they were trailing (but would ultimately win):

sara.ziegler: Dang.

Also impressive that they came back in a game when A.J. Brown caught only a third of his targets.

Salfino: Brown seems hurt. Two offseason knee surgeries and knee issues this summer in camp.

I have a question about the Cowboys that has broader NFL implications. Ezekiel Elliott is the second-best RB on his team, behind Tony Pollard, so how does that work with his monster contract? Why do teams give RBs big contracts (except Henry)? 

sara.ziegler: I guess, to that first question, the takeaway is to pay Pollard more?

joshua.hermsmeyer:

Salfino: Is Elliott too big to fail with Jerry Jones as involved as he is?

joshua.hermsmeyer: Jerruh will never forget when Emmitt Smith held out and the Cowboy started the season 0-2.

Salfino: That is so true. 

sara.ziegler: I’m gonna need Zeke to pick it up for the good of my fantasy team. That would be helpful, thanks.

Salfino: And Micah Parsons moves from inside linebacker to defensive end and plays like an All-Pro. How does this happen? Did the Cowboys stumble into one of the best values in the NFL draft? And what do they do with him now? Are there other great, big off-ball linebackers who could be moved to DE?

neil: Probably a lesson in playing your best athletes at the most impactful positions …

Salfino: But if you can find these guys at other college positions, that can revolutionize the draft and scouting.

sara.ziegler: Lots of interesting storylines so far this season! You love to see it.

Salfino: Here’s my prediction after two weeks of play: Broncos-Panthers Super Bowl.

Ex-Jets QB Bowl.

sara.ziegler: You heard it here first, folks.

Check out our latest NFL predictions.

Watch: https://abcnews.go.com/fivethirtyeight/video/makes-lebron-james-great-fivethirtyeight-74851925

Watch: https://abcnews.go.com/fivethirtyeight/video/armless-archer-trains-brain-win-olympic-medals-fivethirtyeight-78896104

Most NBA offseasons are defined by change. Trades and free-agent signings. Hirings and firings. Draft picks and retirements. All of these developments result in teams looking different heading into the next season than they did at the end of the year before. And there’s been plenty of change this offseason. Seven teams have new head coaches;¹ more than 80 players have changed teams in free agency; teams have completed at least 24 post-draft trades, and there are more that have been agreed to but not yet executed due to various quirks of the league rules.

But perhaps the most notable transaction of the 2021 offseason is one that has not been made: Philadelphia 76ers star Ben Simmons is still, well, on the 76ers.

In the wake of Simmons’s disastrous performance against the Atlanta Hawks in the second round of the 2021 playoffs — and especially in the wake of scathing comments made by co-star Joel Embiid and head coach Doc Rivers — there was a widespread expectation that Simmons would be dealt this offseason. Obviously, that has not yet happened. But it’s not for lack of trying.  

On a recent Simmons-centric episode of ESPN Daily, ESPN’s Brian Windhorst reported that Simmons requested a trade shortly after the conclusion of the season, and that the Sixers sought out trade offers for him but were unable to find an agreeable deal.

With training camp set to open next week, it’s worth examining why the Sixers have yet to land on a Simmons swap that suits their preferences. In order to glean some insight into this situation, we took a dive into the nearly 1,100 trades that have been completed since the beginning of the 1999-2000 season, as recorded on Pro Sports Transactions, and identified 90 deals that involved at least one All-Star-caliber player — which we defined as a player who made at least one of the two most recent All-Star games² prior to being traded.

From there, we broke down the types of packages the trading team received in exchange for those players. The package types are:

• Pieces and Picks, like when the L.A. Clippers traded Chris Paul to the Houston Rockets for Patrick Beverley, Montrezl Harrell, Lou Williams, Sam Dekker, Darrun Hilliard, DeAndre Liggins, Kyle Wiltjer, cash and a first-round pick.
• Prospects Only, like when the Indiana Pacers traded Paul George to the Oklahoma City Thunder for Victor Oladipo and Domantas Sabonis.
• Non-Star Veterans, like when the Minnesota Timberwolves traded Jimmy Butler to the 76ers for Robert Covington, Dario Šarić, Jerryd Bayless and a second-round pick.
• Star-for-Star, like when the Orlando Magic traded Tracy McGrady, Ty Lue, Reece Gaines and Juwan Howard to the Rockets for Steve Francis, Cuttino Mobley and Kelvin Cato.
• Salary Dump, like when the Pacers traded Roy Hibbert to the L.A. Lakers for a future second-round pick.
• Sign-and-Trade, like when LeBron James moved from the Cleveland Cavaliers to the Miami Heat.

Sign-and-trades involve players who are not under contract and only re-sign with their current team in order to facilitate the trade. The return in those deals is generally far less than equal value. Nobody thinks, for example, that Amar’e Stoudemire was worth only a top-55 protected second-round pick when he left the Phoenix Suns for the New York Knicks in 2010. Removing those deals left us with a total of 73 trades involving at least one All-Star-caliber player: 

More than three-fourths of the trades yielded two types of packages: Pieces and Picks and Salary Dump. Given the 76ers’ situation, it’s easy to see why neither of those deal constructions would be all that appealing to them.³

The thing about Pieces and Picks packages is that they don’t necessarily make teams better on the floor right away. The team acquiring an All-Star-caliber player cobbles together multiple pieces to try to approximate the value of the star player being acquired, with the idea being that asset volume sent to the trading team will make up for asset quality in the long run.

That’s not ideal for the 76ers because they fancy themselves a title contender. And not just a title contender, but one with an uncertain shelf life. Embiid’s various medical issues throughout his career (and his height) make it unlikely that he’ll have an elongated prime; the time for Philly to win is right now, not a few years from now, when whichever prospects and draft picks the Sixers receive in a Simmons trade blossom into quality players.⁴

What the Sixers presumably want is a Star-for-Star type of trade — and that’s reportedly what they’re holding out for. 

“The ask that the Sixers were making for Ben Simmons was akin to some of the trade offers that the Houston Rockets got for James Harden,” Windhorst said on ESPN Daily. “They were asking a huge premium for him — so much so that teams really didn’t feel like they were in trade talks.”

In other words, there appears to be a rather large disconnect between the value the Sixers are seeking in exchange for Simmons and the value that potential trade partners are willing to provide. 

Perhaps that’s unsurprising. Simmons is a terrific all-around player, a two-way talent who is both one of the league’s premier open-court playmakers and one of its most versatile and valuable defenders. But he’s also a player with very obvious weaknesses (namely, shooting and overall offensive aggressiveness) that were on very obvious display throughout a very disappointing playoff run. The wide disparity between his tantalizing upside and the glaring faults that limit it leads to even wider disparities in his valuation around the league. This perennial All-Star may be seen as on a lower tier.

To dig into that distinction, we broke down the list of 73 trades from above into trades involving “mere” All-Stars, meaning players who made at least one of the two most recent All-Star games prior to being dealt, and “perennial” All-Stars, meaning players who — like Simmons — made each of the three most recent All-Star games prior to the trade. 

And that’s where things diverged quite a bit.

Here is the disconnect. Simmons is a perennial All-Star — at least by our definition. He’s been an All-Star in each of the last three seasons, and given his age (25), production (he carries career averages of just around 16 points, eight rebounds and eight assists per game) and enviable defensive versatility, he seems likely to be in the All-Star mix for at least the next several seasons. And the Sixers are valuing him that way, seeking a perennial All-Star type of return. (Note that “mere” All-Stars have been involved in Salary Dumps considerably more often than their perennial All-Star counterparts, but it’s hard to see the Sixers acquiescing to a deal like that.)

There have been rumors of Morey’s interest in players like Damian Lillard and Bradley Beal as part of a Simmons trade, but they just don’t seem to be available to Philadelphia — or anyone else. (At least, not at the moment.) Meanwhile, other teams don’t seem to want to trade their own star-caliber players for Simmons — the Sacramento Kings are reportedly unwilling to include either De’Aaron Fox or Tyrese Haliburton in a Simmons package, for example. 

Further complicating matters is Simmons’s salary. He’s already on a max contract, and Philadelphia is well over the salary cap, so teams trading for him have to figure out a way to send out matching salary.⁵ But the Sixers presumably are not interested in taking on bloated contracts included in the trade solely for matching purposes. They need to get enough on-court value to justify sacrificing what they have in Simmons, so they can capitalize on the remainder of Embiid’s prime.

Simmons’s own contract status also makes trading for him a tougher decision for small-market teams (like the aforementioned Kings) that might be willing to take a risk on the caliber of player whose services they typically wouldn’t be able to secure in free agency. Sure, he has four years of team control left on his deal, but because he’s already on his second contract (as opposed to his rookie deal), he’ll be an unrestricted free agent in a few years’ time. It’s tough to justify giving up the farm for a star-but-not-quite-elite player when you won’t be able to ensure that he sticks around for the long term. That’s especially true because, with his high salary on the books, those teams would have less wiggle room under the cap to build their team around him — a proposition already made fairly tricky by his limitations as a player.

All of these factors combine to make a win-win Simmons trade incredibly hard to find. In that sense, perhaps it’s not surprising that he’s still in Philadelphia.

It’s always an election year if you know where to look. This time, it’s up north: Canada heads to the polls today to decide whether to elect Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to another term. 

Think of this election like a U.S. presidential and congressional election all rolled into one: Under Canada’s parliamentary system, each of Canada’s 338 electoral districts (called “ridings”) will elect a member of Parliament using normal first-past-the-post, plurality rules. (Unlike some other parliamentary democracies, Canada does not use proportional representation.) And the leader of the party that wins control of Parliament will become the new prime minister.

Right now, the election looks like a close race between Trudeau’s center-left Liberal Party and the center-right Conservative Party. But Canada’s many smaller parties could play decisive roles too. Here are five questions we’ll be looking to get answered as the results roll in starting tonight.⁶

1. Did Trudeau end his own political career?

The biggest question, of course, is whether Trudeau will survive as prime minister. And if he is ousted, it could go down as one of the biggest self-owns in political history. That’s because Canada wasn’t originally scheduled to hold a vote this year; Trudeau chose to hold an early election in response to polls showing the Liberals with a solid lead. (Liberals held only 155 seats in the outgoing House of Commons⁷ — shy of a majority of 170, which made it difficult for Trudeau to govern.) The strong polls gave Trudeau hope that Liberals could win a majority in a snap election. But after the election was greenlit in August, the polls immediately tightened, and the Conservatives even briefly took the lead — making Trudeau’s decision look like a huge miscalculation.

Things are looking a bit better for the prime minister now, though. Canada has two prominent, FiveThirtyEight-style election forecasters: Philippe J. Fournier of 338Canada and Éric Grenier, who writes the newsletter The Writ and runs the Poll Tracker for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.⁸ And as of Sunday evening,⁹ they gave Liberals a 68 percent and 75 percent chance of winning the most seats, respectively. However, it looks pretty unlikely that Trudeau will get his coveted majority government: There is only a 15-17 percent chance that Liberals win 170 or more seats. In fact, both the Poll Tracker (154) and 338Canada (147) are estimating that Liberals will win fewer seats than the 155 they had before the election, though of course there is a wide margin of error on those projections. So Trudeau may yet live to regret calling this election.

2. How will the Conservatives do under their new leader?

This is also a high-risk, high-reward election for the Conservative Party’s Erin O’Toole, who was chosen as the Conservative leader just last year. While O’Toole was initially unpopular with the Canadian public, his centrist persona has helped make the party competitive (though he has also had some stumbles). These days, the Poll Tracker gives Conservatives an average seat projection of 118 and a 25 percent chance of winning the most seats, while 338Canada is a little more optimistic for them (127 seats and a 31 percent chance). So while the likeliest outcome is that they will stand pat or make only small gains (they went into the election with 119 seats), they are still only a normal polling error away from becoming the biggest party in the House of Commons. On the flip side, though, there is still a significant chance that they lose seats, which could cost O’Toole his job as party leader.

3. How many seats will the New Democrats gain?

Canada differs from the U.S. in that an analysis of its elections can’t stop with just the two dominant parties. The left-wing New Democratic Party is also a major player; in fact, it could be the biggest beneficiary of this election. The Poll Tracker and 338Canada are forecasting that the NDP will win 34 seats and 32 seats, respectively, up from 24 in the previous Parliament. That’s largely thanks to the charisma of NDP leader Jagmeet Singh, the first person of color to lead a major Canadian party; he consistently earns the highest favorable ratings of any of the party leaders. Nevertheless, the NDP has still struggled to break into the first tier. It trails the Liberals and Conservatives by double digits in the polls, and the forecasters give the party virtually no chance of winning the most seats.

4. Will the nascent right-wing parties be a factor?

Like in the U.S., Canada’s right wing has gotten increasingly vocal in recent years (although it represents a much smaller slice of the population than in the U.S.). A new party called the Maverick Party, which advocates for the secession of conservative parts of Western Canada, is running candidates in 29 ridings, mostly in the rural, inland provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan. And former Conservative cabinet minister Maxime Bernier recently splintered off to form the People’s Party of Canada, which was originally known for its climate-change skepticism and hardline stance against immigration but this year has become a vessel for opposition to coronavirus lockdowns, mask mandates and vaccines. (Bernier himself is not vaccinated against COVID-19 and was arrested in June for refusing to self-quarantine after traveling.) According to a recent poll from Forum Research, 62 percent of PPC supporters were unvaccinated, and 70 percent were “very angry” with the policies of the Canadian government. 

While the Maverick Party is specifically running candidates almost exclusively in solidly Conservative seats, the PPC has a candidate in 312 of the 338 ridings and could very well play spoiler to the Conservatives. Though the PPC is not expected to win any seats of its own, it is averaging around 6-7 percent in the polls,¹⁰ enough to cost the Conservatives a win in some close ridings. And even if it doesn’t, it will be interesting to see how deep anti-establishment grievances run in Trudeau’s Canada.

5. Will we get another counter-majoritarian result?

In the previous Canadian election, in 2019, Trudeau was actually reelected while losing the national popular vote: The Liberals won 33.1 percent of the vote to the Conservatives’ 34.3 percent. But the Liberals won the most seats because, unlike in the U.S., Canadian geography puts the right at a disadvantage. The places in Canada where one party runs up the biggest margins (thus wasting votes) are not liberal cities but conservative rural areas: In 2019, every candidate who got 70 percent of the vote or more was a Conservative.

It’s possible the same thing could happen in 2021: The Liberals and the Conservatives are locked in a virtual tie in the polls at around 31-32 percent. That said, the Liberals are still favored to carry the most seats in that configuration because of the Conservatives’ vote inefficiency. In fact, Grenier recently estimated that the Conservatives will need to win the national popular vote by more than 3 points to be favored to win the most seats.

However, it’s worth noting that the combined vote of the Liberals and the NDP — whose voters generally prefer Trudeau to O’Toole as their second choice — will surely far exceed the Conservative vote (as it did in 2019). So Conservatives winning the most seats with only a plurality of the vote could also be considered a counter-majoritarian outcome. (The possibility of vote-splitting has led to many calls for electoral reform in Canada, but they haven’t gained traction.)

But there’s a twist: Thanks to the quirks of the parliamentary system, it’s possible that Conservatives could win the most seats and Trudeau would remain prime minister. Unlike an American president, Trudeau remains prime minister unless he resigns or is defeated in the House of Commons, and it’s possible that the NDP¹¹ would side with the Liberals to keep Trudeau in power. 

Coalition governments are rare in Canada, though, so Trudeau would probably only try to cling to power in this way if the circumstances were perfect — namely, if Liberals come a very close second to Conservatives in the overall seat count. But it does mean that Trudeau’s chances of staying prime minister are probably higher than the 68-75 percent chance that Liberals have of winning the most seats. Then again, reelection in this way would hardly be a win for Trudeau, as it would put him in a very precarious situation politically — which could lead to more governmental dysfunction and thus, perhaps, another premature election as soon as next year.

The transition to the College Football Playoff era has not been a pleasant one for the Pac-12 Conference. With just two appearances in eight seasons¹ and zero titles to show, the “Conference of Champions” has been anything but in an environment that caters to the richest and most powerful conferences — in other words, conferences like the Pac-12. Last season was the fourth consecutive that the Pac-12 was couch-bound for the playoff. To make matters worse, the final AP Top 25 poll featured half as many Pac-12 teams as it did teams from each of the Mid-American and Sun Belt conferences. 

However, a relatively strong start to the 2021 season — Southern Cal and teams from the state of Washington notwithstanding — has the Pac-12 in an unfamiliar situation: not searching for the reset button. Without two of its best players, the Oregon Ducks toppled No. 3 Ohio State in Columbus for the first win by a Pac-12 team over a top-five opponent in a nonconference game since 2015. Behind “sissy blue” shirts and victories, the UCLA Bruins returned to the national spotlight and are ranked for the first time since 2017. And after back-to-back routs to start the season, Herm Edwards’s Arizona State Sun Devils have now been ranked in the top 20 in two of the past three years.

But what’s inseparable from these teams’ hot starts isn’t exclusive to region or conference or division. These teams are old — a defining characteristic of the 2021 season. 

Since the NCAA approved a blanket waiver to prevent the pandemic-abbreviated 2020 season from counting against player eligibility, college campuses have been flooded with older athletes who don’t count against team scholarship limits. More than 1,000 “super seniors” — players who would have already exhausted their eligibility under ordinary circumstances — are expected to compete in 2021, according to a report by the Associated Press, including a Power Five-leading 105 in the Pac-12. Across the country, The Athletic found 11 seventh-year seniors, who are essentially completing a second complete cycle of NCAA eligibility, and in East Tennessee State linebacker Jared Folks, the first known eighth-year senior in NCAA history. Perhaps coincidentally, the penalty rate through two games is the lowest it’s been since 2012, two years before the introduction of the playoff.

Bill Connelly of ESPN created a metric prior to the 2016 season to tabulate returned production, taking into account key predictive personnel stats, like the percentage of a team’s passing yards returning. From 2016 to 2020, the first five seasons that Connelly tracked the metric, there were a combined 53 instances of a team returning at least 80 percent of its production from the previous season. Connelly has tracked a whopping 53 teams in 2021 alone. The national average for returning production over those first five seasons was 62.6 percent; this season it’s 76.7 percent. 

UCLA and Arizona State — which return 95 and 93 percent of their production, respectively — field deep rosters at every level. “I’ve never been in a position where you have three-deep here,” Edwards said. “We’re three-deep now. We’ve got a third team that can go in there on both sides of the ball.” UCLA saw its number of spring ball participants spike by roughly 64 percent this year, and as Kelly told ESPN, “Getting that competitive depth [matters].” And though Oregon ranks below average in Connelly’s metric for this season, at 70 percent returning production, it was more experienced than the Ohio State team it upset last weekend.

According to college football guru Phil Steele, Oregon, UCLA and Arizona State each returned at least 16 starters,² including their 2020 starting QBs³ and a combined 14 of 15 offensive linemen. And after the first two weeks, each school ranks in the top 50 in the nation in offensive efficiency. Half of the Pac-12 teams rank in the top 40 of Connelly’s returning production metric, and three⁴ are in the top 20. According to Steele, California returned 28 of the 33 players who made starts last season, a list that doesn’t include Luc Bequette, who transferred to Boston College last year after five years at Cal, then transferred back. “I played with Jared Goff, that’s how old I am,” Bequette told The Athletic.

UCLA is a particularly instructive example because the Bruins are off to a 2-0 start for the first time since 2017, and as senior offensive lineman Jon Gaines II told the Los Angeles Times, “We’re all old now.” The Bruins had been one of the three worst teams in the Pac-12 since the arrival in Westwood of Chip Kelly — the consensus best available head coach on the market in after the 2017 season. The team went 7-17 and was outscored by a combined 211 points over Kelly’s first two seasons. A 3-4 record in 2020 was considered a major upgrade. Suffice it to say that the Bruins have exploded in Kelly’s fourth year as coach, with a 2-0 record and double-digit wins over Hawaii and No. 16 LSU.⁵ 

“We were kids out there playing when we were freshmen. We’re grown men now,” quarterback Dorian Thompson-Robinson told the AP. “I’m excited. It is a complete team now.”

Thompson-Robinson would know; he was the highest-rated recruit of Kelly’s first UCLA recruiting class, and in 2019, he led one of the youngest teams in the country as season-ticket sales plummeted to the lowest figure since 1981. This season, each of the Bruins’ 11 touchdowns have been scored by upperclassmen, who account for more than one-third of the roster. They’ll attempt to lead the Bruins to a first winning season since 2015.

Intuitively, it tracks that teams that return more players from the previous season would be stronger, and that logic can cut both ways: After Oregon lost its entire offensive line and quarterback Justin Herbert from its 2019 team, it averaged its fewest yards per game in more than 10 years; LSU followed up a national title effort without most of its starters and went 5-5.

But that isn’t always the case. Teams like Alabama, Ohio State and Clemson are NFL factories that annually reload with talent and continue to win: Though each program ranked outside the top 85 in Connelly’s metric each of the past two offseasons, all three made the playoff in 2020 and started this season ranked in the top 10. An extreme example is BYU, which entered this season ranked last in Connelly’s metric and has started 2-0, including a win over archrival No. 21 Utah. 

But still, players who have been there before are likely to help — particularly in a conference like the Pac-12. The early returns have been promising: According to ESPN’s playoff predictor, Oregon has a 42 percent probability of reaching the playoff and would be all but assured a spot if it runs the table. UCLA is well on its way to erasing the painful memories of the past few seasons, and Arizona State looks like a plucky upstart with a chance to make noise if it gets past BYU this weekend. In a conference begging for football success, a surplus of experience just might do the trick.

Welcome to The Riddler. Every week, I offer up problems related to the things we hold dear around here: math, logic and probability. Two puzzles are presented each week: the Riddler Express for those of you who want something bite-size and the Riddler Classic for those of you in the slow-puzzle movement. Submit a correct answer for either, win , I need to receive your correct answer before 11:59 p.m. Eastern time on Monday. Have a great weekend!</p> </p>">¹ and you may get a shoutout in the next column. Please wait until Monday to publicly share your answers! If you need a hint or have a favorite puzzle collecting dust in your attic, find me on Twitter.

Riddler Express

I recently came across a rather peculiar recipe for something called Babylonian radish pie. Intrigued, I began to follow the directions, which said I could start with any number of cups of flour.

Any number? I mean, I had to start with some flour, so zero cups wasn’t an option. But according to the recipe, any positive value was fair game. Next, I needed a second amount of flour that was 3 divided by my original number. For example, if I had started with two cups of flour, then the recipe told me I now needed 3 divided by 2, or 1.5, cups at this point.

I was then instructed to combine these amounts of flour and discard half. Apparently, this was my new starting amount of flour. I was to repeat the process, combining this amount with 3 divided by it and then discarding half.

The recipe told me to keep doing this, over and over. Eventually, I’d have the proper number of cups of flour for my radish pie.

How many cups of flour does the recipe ultimately call for?

Submit your answer

Riddler Classic

From Rushabh Mehta comes a highly irregular puzzle:

Lately, Rushabh has been thinking about very large regular polygons — that is, a polygon all of whose sides and angles are congruent. His latest construction is a particular regular 1,000-gon, which has 1,000 sides of length 2. Rushabh picks one of its longest diagonals, which connects two opposite vertices.

Now, this 1,000-gon has many diagonals, but only some are perpendicular to that first diagonal Rushabh picked. If you were to slice the polygon along all these perpendicular diagonals, you’d break the first diagonal into 500 distinct pieces. Rushabh is curious — what is the product of the lengths of all these pieces?

Extra credit: Now suppose you have a regular 1,001-gon, each of whose sides has length 2. You pick a vertex and draw an altitude to the opposite side of the polygon. Again, you slice the polygon along all the perpendicular diagonals, breaking the altitude into 500 distinct pieces. What’s the product of the lengths of all these pieces this time?

Submit your answer

Solution to last week’s Riddler Express

Congratulations to Brian Corrigan of Los Angeles, winner of last week’s Riddler Express.

Earlier this year, Dakota Jones used a crystal key to gain access to a hidden temple, deep in the Riddlerian Jungle. According to an ancient text, the crystal had exactly six edges, five of which were 1 inch long. Also, the key was the largest such polyhedron (by volume) with these edge lengths.

However, after consulting an expert, Jones realized she had the wrong translation. Instead of definitively having five edges that were 1 inch long, the crystal only needed to have four edges that were 1 inch long. In other words, five edges could have been 1 inch (or all six for that matter), but the crystal definitely had at least four edges that were 1 inch long.

The translator confirmed that the key was indeed the largest such polyhedron (by volume) with these edge lengths.

Once again, Jones needed your help. Now what was the volume of the crystal key?

Last time around, when there were five edges that were 1 inch long, you had a tetrahedron with two equilateral faces. To maximize the tetrahedron’s volume, you made sure the faces were perpendicular to each other, giving you an overall volume of 0.125 cubic inches. Now, with only four edges that were 1 inch long, the answer was surely greater.

There were two distinct ways to choose four edges from among the six edges of a tetrahedron. One way was to have three of them all on the same face, forming an equilateral triangular base. To maximize the volume, the fourth edge of length 1 was perpendicular to the base, meaning it was the altitude of the tetrahedron. The volume was therefore 1/3 times the area of the base — √3/4 — times the height of 1. Multiplying this together gave you a volume of √3/12, or about 0.144 cubic inches, which was indeed greater than the 0.125 cubic inches of the previous crystal.

However, as noted by solver Ming Chan, there was another case to check — when the four edges of length 1 were not on the same face. Solver Andy Quick offered a sketch of both cases:

In the second case, two of the tetrahedron’s faces were congruent isosceles triangles that were perpendicular to each other along their common base. If the length of that base was x, Andy found that the volume was x/6 − x³/24. This expression was maximized when x was 2/√3, in which case the volume was 2/(9√3), or about 0.1283. That was made for a larger crystal than the original puzzle, but still not as large as the first case.

Thanks to Riddler Nation, Jones was able to forge (or rather, synthesize) an updated crystal key. With it, she will be able to access the temple’s inner sanctum. Still no word on what’s inside, but I’ll be sure to report back with the details.

Solution to last week’s Riddler Classic

Congratulations to Emily Boyajian of Minneapolis, Minnesota, winner of last week’s Riddler Classic. 

Last week, Phil DeOrsey was playing with his daughter, who loved to cut paper with her safety scissors. She especially liked cutting paper into “strips,” rectangular pieces of paper whose shorter sides were at most 1 inch long.

Whenever Phil gave her a piece of standard printer paper (8.5 inches by 11 inches), she picked one of the four sides at random and then cut a 1-inch wide strip parallel to that side. Next, she discarded the strip and repeated the process, picking another side at random and cutting the strip. Eventually, she was left with nothing but strips.

On average, how many cuts did she make before she was left only with strips?

There was a (relatively) straightforward way to solve this using recursion. Suppose the paper’s current dimensions were m by n, and let’s call the expected number of remaining cuts the function E(m, n).

From here, there was a 50 percent chance that Phil’s daughter would cut along one of the two edges of length m, and a 50 percent chance she’d cut along an edge of length n. Mathematically, this could be written as E(m, n) = 1 + E(m−1, n)/2 + E(m, n−1)/2, with the “1” representing the one cut she needed to make to reach either of the next two rectangular dimensions: m−1 by n, or m by n−1.

You were also told that when she was left with “nothing but strips,” meaning when either m or n was less than or equal to 1, she was done cutting, in which case E(m, n) was equal to 0.

This was enough information to find the expected number of cuts from any given starting dimensions. For example, with E(0, 1) and E(1, 0), you could determine E(1, 1). With E(1, 1) and E(2, 0), you could determine E(2, 1) — and so on. The table below shows the average number of cuts when m and n were at most 12:

The half-inch from the puzzle was a slight wrinkle but was mathematically equivalent to starting with a sheet of paper that was 9 by 11 inches. According to the table, that meant Phil’s daughter needed an average of about 14.3 cuts.

For extra credit, you were asked to tackle the more general case in terms of m and n. Solver Rajeev Pakalapati was among those who found a closed-form expression for E(m, n) using generating functions, as shown below:

Meanwhile, solver Josh Silverman looked more closely at the square (m by m inches) case, finding that E(m, m) grew approximately linearly with m.

As you can see, there many have been many short cuts, but there were really no shortcuts.

Want more riddles?

Well, aren’t you lucky? There’s a whole book full of the best puzzles from this column and some never-before-seen head-scratchers. It’s called “The Riddler,” and it’s in stores now!

Want to submit a riddle?

Email Zach Wissner-Gross at riddlercolumn@gmail.com.

Welcome to Pollapalooza, our weekly polling roundup.

Roughly two weeks ago, a highly restrictive abortion law went into effect in Texas, outlawing abortions once fetal cardiac activity can be detected — usually about six weeks into a pregnancy — which is before most women know they are pregnant.

On Tuesday, the Department of Justice filed an emergency injunction asking a judge to halt the law, and a hearing is set for early next month to consider temporarily blocking it, but, as of today, no one in Texas has brought a suit against an abortion provider in the state; clinics have said they plan to abide by the law.

But that hasn’t stopped abortion from once again being at the forefront of American politics. Beyond the Texas law, there is a law in Mississippi banning most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy that the Supreme Court is expected to take up later this year. This means abortion could reshape next year’s midterm elections. And although abortion has historically animated Republican voters more, it is proving to be a motivation for Democrats, too. During the summer of 2018, shortly after then-President Donald Trump nominated conservative judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, Democrats were increasingly likely to say abortion was an important factor in how they would vote that year. So it’s likely that this year and next, as Roe’s legal status is up in the air and more states move to pass restrictive abortion bills, the issue will be a top concern for many Democratic voters.

A recent Morning Consult poll of registered voters suggests that Democratic women are already prioritizing the issue more than they were prior to Texas’s law taking effect. Per their survey, 14 percent of Democratic women said issues like abortion, contraception and equal pay are their top voting concerns — up 6 percentage points from before the Texas law took effect. To be sure, though, abortion isn’t the top voting issue for Democratic women. The survey notes that the economy (25 percent) and health care (18 percent) each ranked as higher priorities.

Meanwhile, among Democrats overall, 10 percent said that abortion, contraception and equal pay were top of mind when voting — up from 5 points from before Texas’s law. Independents seemed to care about these issues, too. The share of independent women who listed these issues as top concerns jumped from 7 percent before the law went into effect, to 10 percent after. (Among all independents, the increase was smaller: 4 percent then to 6 percent now.) Republicans, however, didn’t really budge on the issue. Among Republican women, the percentage who said the issues of abortion, contraception and equal pay were top of mind increased from only 2 percent to 3 percent — the same numbers as for Republicans overall.

Majorities of voters have also said they don’t want the high court to overturn Roe. According to a September Data for Progress survey, which was fielded after the Texas law took effect, 60 percent of likely voters said the Supreme Court should keep Roe intact. This was up 3 points from a similar Data for Progress poll fielded in May. Meanwhile, a September survey from The Economist/YouGov found that 50 percent of U.S. adults did not want Roe overturned, versus 28 percent who did; this aligns with a separate YouGov poll from last year, which found that 49 percent of adults wanted Roe to remain, while only a quarter wanted it overturned. And earlier this month, The Economist/YouGov found that half of Americans (50 percent) disapproved of the Texas abortion law, while just 36 percent were in favor of it.

Of course, it’s still early, and even if abortion rights energizes Democrats now, it’s hard to know whether it will be top of mind for them heading into the 2022 midterms. It’s also possible that this issue will also energize anti-abortion Republican voters, as Kavanaugh’s nomination seems to have done in 2018. Back then, GOP voters saw Trump — and the appointment of Kavanaugh — as a way to have a solidly anti-abortion Supreme Court majority, and Republicans began attacking certain Democratic candidates who supported abortion rights or had received funding from Planned Parenthood. Some Republican senators running in red states also used Kavanaugh and his fight for Senate confirmation to energize voters in states Trump had won in 2016. This was less true in House races — after all, 2018 was a “blue wave” for Democrats — but in the Senate, it meant some staunch, anti-abortion conservatives like Sens. Josh Hawley in Missouri and Mike Braun in Indiana were able to defeat incumbent Democrat senators who had voted against Kavanaugh’s nomination.

It’s possible, then, that abortion will once again energize conservative voters, turning their focus to opportunities to ban abortion elsewhere — not just in the nation’s most conservative states. Which is why we’ll be watching whether other red states move to mirror Texas’s laws — as some have already promised to do — and how that might animate GOP voters, as well as the extent to which Democratic voters continue to prioritize abortion rights while Roe’s legal status remains in limbo.

Other polling bites

• Earlier this month, President Biden announced vaccine and testing requirements for both federal employees and private businesses with more than 100 employees. As my colleague Maggie Koerth reported last week, vaccine mandates do work — and recent polling suggests that Americans are largely on board with the federal government issuing the mandates. Per the latest Axios/Ipsos Coronavirus Index, 60 percent of Americans supported Biden’s vaccine mandates. Similarly, 57 percent of Americans supported their own employer requiring vaccines in the workplace. Of course, though, there was a partisan divide. Republicans, who are generally more wary about getting the jab, were less likely to support Biden’s policies, according to the poll. Only around one-third of Republicans said they backed Biden’s new requirement on federal employees and his mandate on private businesses. Among Democrats, however, 84 percent supported both mandates.
• Most Americans feel that democracy in the U.S. is under attack or at least being tested, according to a CNN/SSRS poll. In total, 93 percent of Americans said democracy was either under attack (56 percent) or being tested but not necessarily under attack (37 percent). Republicans were the most likely to say that democracy is under attack (75 percent), compared with just 46 percent of Democrats. This might have something to do with how both self-described conservatives (71 percent) and Americans who disapproved of President Biden (71 percent) were the most likely to believe democracy was under attack .
• On Tuesday, the Pew Research Center published a far-reaching study into the concerns around climate change among residents in some of the world’s most economically developed countries. Among U.S. adults, 60 percent said they were worried about the personal impacts of climate change, whereas, across the 17 nations surveyed, a median of 72 percent of adults shared this sentiment. Notably, an overwhelming majority of people (a median of 80 percent) in these 17 nations — which included places like South Korea, Italy, Japan and Australia — said they’d be willing to make at least some changes to their personal and work lives to help mitigate climate change. Seventy-four percent of Americans said they’d be open to making some changes, too.
• Tailgates, face paint and packed stadiums are back as the 2021 NFL and NCAA football seasons have kicked off while the coronavirus pandemic continues. Week one of the NFL season has wrapped up, and four of the league’s 32 teams — the Buffalo Bills, Las Vegas Raiders, New Orleans Saints and Seattle Seahawks — have a vaccination or testing policy in place for fans. And according to a Harris/Sportico poll, 66 percent of Americans were in favor of a vaccine mandate for fans. But despite 93 percent of NFL players being vaccinated, no team in the NFL has mandated its players to get vaccinated, although the same poll showed that 69 percent of Americans supported such a mandate for coaches and players.
• Most Americans support letting at least some Afghans resettle in the U.S. Per an NPR/Ipsos poll, 74 percent of Americans supported admitting Afghans who had worked with the U.S. government, 73 percent supported admitting Afghans who had served in the Afghan special forces and 65 percent supported admitting Afghans who feared oppression from the Taliban. But as FiveThirtyEight contributor Michael Tesler wrote recently, past polling data shows that Americans have a history of opposing refugees, so it’s possible public opinion on this question could eventually fall, although it hasn’t yet.
• Last year, to cope with the stress of the COVID-19 pandemic, most Americans turned to alcohol. But now many are at least trying to curb their drinking, according to a recent Cutback Coach/Ipsos poll (Cutback Coach, who sponsored the poll, aims to help people who drink implement healthier habits). Per their survey, 50 percent of Americans said they’d made an effort to drink less or implement healthier drinking habits over the last three months, though just 20 percent said they drank less in that timeframe. On the other hand, 55 percent said their personal drinking habits stayed the same over the last three months, while 26 percent said they were drinking more now than three months ago.

Biden approval

According to FiveThirtyEight’s presidential approval tracker,¹ 45.9 percent of Americans approve of the job Biden is doing as president, while 48.6 percent disapprove (a net approval rating of -2.6 points). At this time last week, 45 percent approved and 47.8 percent disapproved (a net approval rating of -2.8 points). One month ago, Biden had an approval rating of 49.8 percent and a disapproval rating of 44 percent (a net approval rating of +5.7 points).

Generic ballot

In our average of polls of the generic congressional ballot,² Democrats currently lead Republicans by 2.6 percentage points (43.8 percent to 41.2 percent, respectively). A week ago, Democrats led Republicans by 2.5 points (43.7 percent to 41.1 percent). At this time last month, voters preferred Democrats over Republicans by 3.4 points (43.9 percent to 40.5 percent).

Additional research by Mackenzie Wilkes.

Anyone who follows football and can fog a mirror knows that winning the turnover battle is important. Games often hinge on a team getting an extra possession, and when analysts have tried to quantify the edge, they’ve found that it’s large: Teams win around 78 percent of the games in which they have a positive turnover differential.

What’s less well-known is the size of the edge that play-action and pre-snap motion provides.³ It turns out it’s also considerable: Since 2017, if all you know after a game ends is each team’s share of offensive plays that featured play-action and the share of plays that had some form of pre-snap motion, you can correctly guess the winner around 65 percent of the time.⁴ This is fairly impressive, since neither metric directly measures the volume of yards gained or points scored. Instead, these are play design choices made before the ball is snapped and the play’s outcome is determined. And, unlike turnovers, both pre-snap motion and play-action rate are completely under a coach’s control.

While the league has been slow to aggressively exploit these edges, it’s clear they aren’t unknown to San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan. Shanahan’s offenses have featured large helpings of pre-snap motion and play-action fakes each year of his tenure with the Niners. Since taking over in 2017, Shanahan’s teams have led the league every year in pre-snap motion rate —  a rate that’s grown each season he’s been in San Francisco. During that same span, the 49ers have hovered around 10th in play-action percentage, peaking at second in fake handoffs in 2019, the season they lost to Kansas City in the Super Bowl.

As we enter a new season, these rates are ones we should expect to continue. The year-to-year correlation for play-action rate is robust for a football stat (0.62), and that correlation is even higher for motion (0.75).⁵ And if Week 1 is any indication, Shanahan intends to take things to an entirely new level in 2021. On Sunday versus the Detroit Lions, the 49ers registered their highest rate of pre-snap motion in a single game since Shanahan became head coach and notched the second highest share of play-action in a game during his tenure, running fakes on over half of the Niners’ offensive plays. Both marks were far and away the highest of the week in the NFL, with the play-action rate (51.9 percent of plays) more than double the league average (24) and the motion rate (87.3) nearly double the league average (45.3). 

Yet what elevates Shanahan’s play design is that he isn’t just concerned with the deception offered by play-action or the hesitation that motion can create in defenders. Instead, he integrates the edges they provide into a cohesive whole that completely disguises the offense's intent.

Two plays from Sunday illustrate Shanahan’s ability to design plays that look nearly identical. Called back-to-back in the red zone, both plays feature the same formation, the same pre-snap motion, the same offensive line movement, a similar path for the running back and identical bootleg action from quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo.  

Defenders who were forced to flow to their left to rally and tackle rookie running back Elijah Mitchell in the first play are caught off guard when, on the following play, Garoppolo fakes the handoff and throws to the flat on the opposite side of the field for a first down. Shanahan designs and calls play sequences like this multiple times a game.

Not everything is roses in the city by the bay, though. San Francisco nearly let the Lions game slip away from them in the last three minutes, ceding 16 unanswered points. And the win was a costly one: The Niners lost Jason Verrett, their best cornerback, as well as starting running back Raheem Mostert for the year. The entire NFC West is undefeated through one week of play, and our NFL Elo ratings have the Niners ranked third in the division based on overall team strength. 

Still, so long as Shanahan continues calling innovative and effective plays on offense, it’s not hard to imagine San Francisco faking out the league once again and rallying for a playoff berth.

Check out our latest NFL predictions.

Week 1 of the 2021 NFL season was deeply strange. Whether it was the Saints thrashing the Packers to start the post-Drew Brees era, the Steelers upending the ballyhooed Bills in Buffalo or the Cardinals stomping the Titans on the road, there were a lot of season-opening results that had us furiously adjusting what we thought we knew about each team in preseason.

As a matter of fact, according to our Elo ratings, it’s hard to find an opening set of games more historically bizarre than what we all just witnessed.

The average Week 1 winner went into its game as an underdog, with just a 49.8 percent chance at the victory — only the fourth time that’s happened in the opening week of a season since the 1970 AFL-NFL merger. And if we flip that around to look at Elo’s favorites, those teams went a mere 6-10 in Week 1, good for a success rate of just 37.5 percent. Since 1970, only one other season’s opening week was tougher on higher-rated squads: 1983, when 10 of 14 favorites fell (including three teams with at least a 69.5 percent chance of winning):

The start of 1983 might have had a good excuse for the chaos. Because of a 57-day players’ strike, the 1982 regular season was cut to nine games per team, and the postseason was also expanded from 10 to 16 teams. These unusual circumstances helped make the final, post-Super Bowl Elo ratings of 1982 among the most tightly bunched since the merger. Only the 1988 and 1981 seasons ended with a smaller standard deviation of team Elo ratings than 1982 did — which, in turn, helped set an uncertain tone for 1983 that didn’t let up all season. Across the entire regular season that year, Elo’s favorites ended up going 125-98-1, giving them their worst single-season winning percentage (56.0 percent) in any season since 1950, when our QB-adjusted Elo rating data begins.

We might be inclined to view 2021 through a similar lens, since the COVID-19 pandemic has us coming off one of the strangest years in sports history. Among 2020’s many peculiarities, NFL scoring was off the charts last year, and home-field advantage completely disappeared with reduced or eliminated crowds of fans for practically all season. NFL home teams actually lost more often than they won in the 2020 regular season — just the fourth time that’s ever happened in pro football history — going 127-128-1 on the year. Add in an eventful offseason, and you could see teams going into this year more scattered than usual.

Then again, most of the noise surrounding the NFL in 2020 didn’t actually seem to affect our model’s predictions. Looking back on our forecast data, we found that 2020 was (surprisingly) the model’s most accurate season since 2015, whether by judging how far off pregame predictions were or by how often Elo favorites won. Teams weren’t especially bunched-up in their ratings by season’s end, either, and the average team’s eventual end-of-season Elo was within +/- 68.8 rating points of where it started, which made 2020 roughly as predictable as any post-merger season (where the average error was +/- 67.2 Elo points). So some of 1983’s more unsettled elements are not necessarily repeating themselves now, in 2021.

Besides, not every shocking Week 1 portends a tumultuous season. In the other years when Week 1 saw favorites win less than half of their games — 1972, 1980 and 1999 — the most highly regarded teams rebounded just fine. Each of those seasons ultimately saw favorites win at least 64 percent of their games over the full schedule, which is pretty close to the 65.6 percent success rate for favorites overall since 1970.

It is true that Week 1 of a season can have bigger implications on the rest of the year than we might think, since its games carry a lot of information — both in terms of affecting the standings and giving us a first glimpse at how new rosters stack up relative to each other. And in that sense, the unexpected results of Week 1 did throw some teams’ playoff odds for a loop. The Football Team (down 29 percentage points), Packers (-19), Titans (-18), Falcons (-18), Ravens (-16), Bills (-13) and Browns (-10) all saw their chance of making the postseason drop by double-digits in the opening week,¹ while the Saints (+25), Eagles (+22), Cardinals (+19), Steelers (+16), Dolphins (+14), Broncos (+14) and Seahawks (+10) all gained at least 10 percentage points of playoff odds.

Chances are that at least some of those teams will look back at the chaos of Week 1 as a sign of what was yet to come, for both good and bad. But with a larger sample of regular-season games to work with this year than ever before, which should (theoretically) help filter out fluke performances, it’s too early to say whether 2021 as a whole will be historically topsy-turvy — even if its opening salvo was nothing if not that.

Check out our latest NFL predictions.

As it is every two years, control of the House and Senate will once again be at stake in the November 2022 midterm elections, and one of the best tools we have for predicting those election results is polling of the generic congressional ballot. The generic congressional ballot question typically asks respondents which party they intend to vote for in the upcoming congressional election, without naming specific candidates¹ — allowing the question to be asked nationally to gauge the overall political environment. And for several years now, we at FiveThirtyEight have been collecting these polls and calculating a weighted average for them, and we’re excited today to publish our generic ballot average for the 2022 election cycle. 

As of Thursday, Sept. 16, Democrats lead Republicans in our polling average by 2.7 percentage points (43.8 percent to 41.1 percent). This average is calculated much the same way as our presidential approval-rating average, with a couple of differences. First, the lines we draw for the generic-ballot averages are more aggressively smoothed;² in other words, they are slower to respond to new data. (Because generic-ballot polls are less common than presidential-approval polls, we’ve found that, to filter out noise, the generic-ballot average needs to incorporate a larger sample of polls stretching further back in time than the presidential-approval average.) Second, while our presidential-approval average prefers the versions of polls that survey the widest universe (i.e., all adults over registered voters, and registered voters over likely voters), our generic-ballot average does the opposite. This is because, while we’re interested in knowing what all Americans think about the president, generic-ballot polls are fundamentally election polls — and we’re interested only in how actual voters are going to vote in the midterms.

Historically, a generic-ballot polling average calculated in this way has been very good at predicting the national popular vote for the U.S. House. Using our polling database, we’re able to calculate a retroactive generic-ballot polling average³ for congressional elections going back to 1980. On average, across those 21 election cycles, our generic-ballot polling average on Election Day missed the House popular vote by only 3.0 points.

Yes, as you might recall, generic-ballot polls misled in the 2020 election: They gave Democrats an average lead of 7.3 points on Nov. 3, but the party won the House popular vote by only 3.0 points. But that was an unusually large polling error by recent historical standards. In fact, from 2008 to 2018, the average error of our retroactive Election Day generic-ballot polling averages was just 1.3 points. So, 2020 aside, final generic-ballot polls have been remarkably accurate in recent years.

Of course, that’s only an argument to pay attention to our generic-ballot average on Nov. 8, 2022 — not necessarily today. But it turns out that early generic-ballot polls can be predictive too — if you know how to interpret them. Specifically, for midterm elections, you have to take into account which party holds the White House, since that party is at a natural disadvantage in midterm elections.

The table below compares our retroactive generic-ballot polling averages as of Sept. 16 the year before a midterm election with the eventual House popular vote margin in the 1982-2018 midterms. It shows that the president’s party usually loses ground between this point in the cycle and the actual election.

Specifically, the generic-ballot polling average the previous September overestimates the president’s party’s vote margin by an average of 3.5 points.⁴ This is the manifestation of one of the most ironclad rules in politics: The party that holds the White House almost always performs poorly in the midterms.

Sure, there have been some exceptions. Most notable is the 2002 cycle, when then-President George W. Bush’s Republicans trailed in early generic-ballot polls by 6.7 points but wound up winning the House popular vote by 4.6 points. But that year was, well, exceptional: A rally-around-the-flag effect in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks made Bush incredibly popular, and those good feelings rubbed off on his party. The 2006 and 2018 cycles were also exceptions in that the president’s party neither lost nor gained significant ground between the polls and actual results; early generic-ballot polls nailed the final margin almost exactly. But in both those years, the early polls already pointed toward a bad year for the president’s party, showing Bush’s and then-President Donald Trump’s Republicans down by 8.0 and 8.3 points, respectively.

In years when the president’s party leads the generic-ballot polling average the September before the midterms, the party underperforms those polls by an average of 9.3 points. And that, in a nutshell, is why Democrats should be concerned about the 2022 elections despite their current lead on the generic ballot. This cycle so far looks a lot like former President Barack Obama’s two midterms (2010 and 2014) did for Democrats in that they lead generic-ballot polls by a few points in the September of the year before the election. But in both those years, Republicans eventually moved ahead in our generic-ballot polling average and won the election handily.

So, if Republicans outperform their early polling to a similar degree as they did in 2010 and 2014, they could win the House popular vote by 5 to 7 percentage points, which would very likely hand them control of the House (and probably the Senate too, since almost everyone votes a straight party-line ticket these days). Of course, though, that’s a big if; there has been a lot of variability in these historical trends, so a wide range of outcomes is still possible. But even if Republicans only improve their standing a little bit — something that is likely to happen, if history is any guide — it would probably still be enough to flip the House, considering that their control of the redistricting process in a plurality of states is likely to reinforce the GOP’s structural advantage in House races. Past trends don’t always hold true, but the smart money, at this point, remains on the president’s party losing control of Congress next year.

Mary Radcliffe and Aaron Bycoffe contributed research.

Dearica Hamby and Kelsey Plum have created a problem.

They’ve both been vital cogs in the Las Vegas Aces machine this season, disrupting opponents off the bench all year. Plum, a 5-foot-8, 145-pound ball of energy, is a sparkplug who offers a change of pace at point guard of a deadly perimeter threat. And Hamby, deceptively strong at 6-foot-3 and 189 pounds, can bang with the league’s bigs or stretch the floor, whatever her team needs.

But neither one has started a game all season. Despite this, Hamby and Plum rank 54th and 47th in minutes per game,⁵ the lone players in the WNBA’s top 80 this season who haven’t made a single start.

Hamby is no stranger to this role, a two-time Sixth Woman of the Year winner. But Plum started 80 of her first 96 games in the league before Aces head coach Bill Laimbeer put her in this supersub role this season.

And so here’s the problem: The WNBA confirmed that award voters — and full disclosure, I am one — can vote for only one Sixth Woman of the Year.

But Hamby and Plum, who describe each other as best friends, and Laimbeer all think us media folks ought to pair up and make sure votes go to one or the other in equal measure, something I also confirmed with the league is entirely within bounds. (Slide into my DMs, as the kids say. Do the kids say that?)

“As her best friend? I got the All-Star nod,” Hamby said, referring to her overdue appearance in this year’s WNBA All-Star Game. “So if she was Sixth Woman of the Year, I would not complain — I would cheer her on.”

The argument for Hamby is not dramatically different than it was in her successful 2019 and 2020 campaigns. But she’s refined a few elements of her game. Her strength plays up even more this season; her average shot distance is the closest to the basket it’s ever been, and she’s making 65.3 percent of her chances at the rim. But given the need to space the floor on a team with both A’ja Wilson and Liz Cambage, she’s also shooting well on her attempts from 3 to 10 feet and 10 to 16.

“I’m a driver,” Hamby said. “I think that’s what people play me for, as a rim-runner. … I think it catches a lot of people off guard because I don’t look the strongest, just because I’m super slender. … So I think my strength does kind of catch people off guard.”

Hamby said she’s even surprised her teammates, who have seen her grab the second-most rebounds per 100 possessions of her career this season.

Even so, Plum is the one an opposing assistant spoke about recently with weariness at having to game-plan against her, pointing out that “she just keeps on coming.”

And it’s true — Plum is taking more shots around the rim and hitting 69.4 percent of them. But she hasn’t forsaken the long-range shooting that’s made her so successful in the WNBA, either, hitting 38.2 percent of her 3-point attempts.

Her defense has also reached another level. The Aces sport a defensive rating of 95.8 when she’s on the floor, right in line with Las Vegas’ overall defensive rating (which is second in the league) despite being given, frequently, the most difficult opposing guard as her assignment more this season.

“I don’t know, defensive statistic-wise, I probably will never lead the league in steals or blocked shots or anything like that,” Plum said. “But I know that I’m giving up nothing easy, I know that I’m physical, and I’m just tough — I’m just going to be annoying, and I hope people feel that.”

The result has been, among true bench players,⁶ that Hamby and Plum are lapping the field.

By win shares, Hamby is first, at 3.1, and Plum is second, at 2.8, among players without a WNBA start this season. No other player has as many as 1 win share in that role this season — Beatrice Mompremier of the Connecticut Sun is third, at 0.6.

But this is nothing new for a Laimbeer team. Of the top 20 player seasons with the highest win shares recorded among players without a start, eight of them happened on a Laimbeer team:

Hamby had to play herself into Laimbeer’s rotation through the 2018 season — as she put it, “Initially, it was not in Bill’s plans to play me. And then we went back and forth a lot that year. And I was like, “Look like I deserve to play. And I mean, obviously the year after, it showed.” But Plum’s new bench role came from a conversation between player and coach.

“Kelsey is a starter on many, many teams,” Laimbeer said. “… I asked her, [as we] began the year, very clearly … to please come off the bench for us, and to sacrifice for the good of the whole. And she embraced it. No player likes to do that, they have ambitions of being starters. … She accepted it, she’s thrived in it.”

The same is true of Hamby, who acknowledged the truth of what Laimbeer said.

“Do I want more sometimes? Yes,” Hamby said, “But I understand the way this league is set up and also, I mean, I want to win a championship. So, I’m sticking around.”

Like I said up top, fellow voters: Slide into my DMs.

Check out our latest WNBA predictions.

After Aaron Rodgers spent much of the offseason in a power struggle with Green Bay Packers management, he suggested his play this fall would make all the drama worthwhile. Packers fans had many clues indicating he could skip OTAs (or organized team activities), sit all preseason and still make big plays while avoiding mistakes: For the past 16 seasons, he’s been in a category by himself.

Between Rodgers’s return, Pro Bowl running back Aaron Jones signing a four-year extension and general manager Brian Gutekunst drafting a well-regarded rookie class, the Packers’ roster was a potpourri of talent, perfect for what could be Rodgers’ final year in Titletown. How much had Gutekunst wagered on his quarterback’s ability to capitalize? Everything.

Instead, on the day he surpassed Bart Starr and Brett Favre as the longest-tenured quarterback in Green Bay Packers history, it looked like Aaron Rodgers’s time was up.

His passer rating was 36.8. His total QBR was 13.4. The NFL’s all-time leader in interception rate, he threw two picks, and despite being the eighth-ranked all-time passer in touchdown rate, he didn’t get it in the end zone. The thousands of Packers fans present for the away game had to be reaching for the potent potables. Rodgers has only been less efficient twice in his career:¹ Once was in 2014, when the Packers went on the road to Buffalo in December in wet, windy, 38-degree weather. The other was Week 6 of last season, in a road loss to the eventual Super Bowl champs.

On Sunday, there were no excuses. Thanks to Hurricane Ida, he was playing in front of a thin, neutral-site Jacksonville crowd. It was 86 degrees on the TIAA Bank Stadium grass. He was playing against a New Orleans Saints team that had lost multiple key contributors at every level of the defense, accounting for 33 percent of their defensive starts in 2020. And yet, Rodgers has never been less effective:²

Rodgers completed just 54 percent of his passes and averaged just 4.75 yards per attempt on Sunday. He earned Pro Football Focus’s second-worst Week 1 quarterback grade, 43.3 out of 100. Randall Cobb, who was reacquired by the team because Rodgers wanted him back, had one catch on one target.³

Last year, Rodgers was named MVP partially on the strength of his red-zone play; the Packers’ 80 percent touchdown rate inside the 20-yard line was the highest mark since the NFL began tracking the statistic in 1999. Sunday, Rodgers’s red-zone interception to open the second half largely killed the Packers’ chances of getting back into the game.

After one week, the Packers rank dead last in the NFL in points scored, yards gained, and offensive expected points added. Defensively, they’re 30th in points allowed, 24th in yards allowed, and 29th in expected points added. They’re 32nd in Football Outsiders’ total Defense-adjusted Value Over Average (DVOA), with a stunning -94.6 percent rate — as in, they produced 94.6 percent less value than the average NFL team in Week 1. As in, they produced almost zero value.⁴ Rodgers and the Packers not only failed to establish themselves as the team to beat in the NFC on Sunday, they played like they couldn’t beat anybody in the NFL.

All these answers prompt us to buzz in with the question: Who is Aaron Rodgers?

Recent history has taught us that when NFL quarterbacks who have defied Father Time for years finally lose that fight, they tend to lose it all at once. See Peyton Manning getting benched for Brock Osweiler in 2015, or Favre’s injury-ravaged, 69.9-rated 2010 finale in Minnesota. Even FiveThirtyEight’s 2017 attempt to model who will hold the all-time NFL passing crown by 2025 predicted that Rodgers would have retired by now.

But unlike Manning, Rodgers hasn’t visibly lost his fastball, nor is he staggering around the field between plays like Favre did. Whatever was wrong with Rodgers in Week 1, his resume suggests he’s more likely to light up the Detroit Lions during Week 2’s Monday Night Football than double Sunday’s awful performance. Rodgers followed up that 2014 Buffalo stinker by going 31-of-40 for 318 yards and a score in a 20-3 stomping of Tampa Bay. The Bucs were also involved in the only other game Rodgers has played anywhere near this badly: last year’s Week 6 drubbing. But of course, Rodgers responded by earning the Packers a playoff rematch.

Statistical models augur well for Rodgers, before and after Week 1. Football Outsiders’ DAVE metric, which is DVOA that builds in preseason expectations over the seasons’ early weeks, still has Green Bay as the eighth-most efficient team, at +8.2 percent. FiveThirtyEight’s own Elo projections still rank them the sixth-strongest NFC team; they forecast a 9-8 finish, with better-than-even odds to make the playoffs.

But for a team that hosted the NFC Championship Game in 2020, and is facing the end of a 14-year Rodgers Era with just one Super Bowl appearance, just sneaking into the playoffs isn’t good enough.

In August, Rodgers admitted it’s “championship or disappointment” for himself and the Packers. But after starting the year with the worst game of his life, what was supposed to be his last dance has turned into his final jeopardy.

Check out our latest NFL predictions.

In this late-night edition of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast, the crew discusses the results of the California gubernatorial recall election. Votes are still being counted, but it’s looking like the recall effort is going to fail by a sizable margin.

After sweeping the San Diego Padres over the weekend, the Los Angeles Dodgers are on pace to win 103 games this season — the fourth time in the past five seasons that they have produced at least 100 wins per 162 games.¹ If that trend holds steady over the next few weeks, L.A. would become only the 28th franchise in NL or AL history to pull off that kind of five-year run — and just the second since the 1954-58 New York Yankees did it. (The Atlanta Braves also accomplished the feat from 1995 to 1999.)

If all you knew about the 2021 Dodgers was the ongoing excellence of their record, you would think it was a season of business as usual for MLB’s most reliable winning machine. In reality, however, it’s been anything but.

Most notably, the team’s marquee offseason acquisition, pitcher Trevor Bauer, is getting paid $38 million not to pitch after being accused of sexual assault by multiple women during the summer. Just last week, his administrative leave was extended by MLB through the end of the season, and it is unclear if he’ll ever play again. In retrospect, the decision to (temporarily) make Bauer MLB’s highest-paid player looks like an unmitigated disaster in every conceivable way.

No fellow Dodger comes close to the moral and professional catastrophe of Bauer this season. But others have also produced below their usual levels on the field. All five of L.A.’s best returning players (and 10 of its best 14) by wins above replacement² per 162 games in 2020 — when, it should be noted, the Dodgers had one of the best teams in history — have played worse in 2021. Mookie Betts, Corey Seager, Clayton Kershaw, Chris Taylor and Tony Gonsolin all generated in excess of 4.5 WAR per 162 last season, putting up the full-season equivalent of 28.2 combined wins. This year, only Betts is above 4.5 (if barely — he has 4.8, a relative down year by his lofty standards), and the quintet has combined for just 14.7 WAR per 162.³

Meanwhile, center fielder Cody Bellinger has taken a complete and total nosedive in performance over the past few seasons. Just two years ago, Bellinger won the NL MVP with an absurd season — hitting .305 with a .406 OBP, a 1.035 OPS and 8.2 WAR per 162 in 2019. This year, he’s hitting .161 with a .237 OBP, a .535 OPS and is on pace for -1.2 WAR. While Bellinger has battled through a fractured fibula and hamstring issues for much of the season, the deterioration in his output remains startling. Going back to 1950, only two players have ever had three consecutive seasons in which they logged at least 3 percent of team playing time⁴ each season and declined by more total WAR per 162 over that span than Bellinger’s 9.4-WAR drop-off from 2019 to 2021:

What’s even more notable is that all of the players around Bellinger on that list were in their 30s, often very late in their careers. That makes sense, given what we know about the aging curves of MLB players. But we’ve practically never seen a player in his early to mid-20s like Bellinger suffer a similar fate, at least not while maintaining the playing time criteria to qualify for the list in the first place.

Bellinger’s decline has coincided with a pronounced increase in his rate of hitting the ball in the air, to the point that nearly 50 percent of his contact has been for fly balls — a share that would rank him sixth in MLB if he had qualified for FanGraphs’ leaderboards — despite a career-low 9 percent of them going for home runs (and a near-career-high 14 percent failing to leave the infield). But that’s just one of the stylistic markers amiss for Bellinger this season. A virtually across-the-board collapse in Bellinger’s Statcast percentile indicators illustrates a swing that once ranked among the sweetest in baseball but is all kinds of messed-up right now:

Bellinger is the biggest outlier, but given the fact that the Dodgers have multiple MVP and Cy Young candidates playing well below their usual norms (or not even playing at all), it is somewhat incredible that Los Angeles didn’t collapse completely, much less that they’re still on a trajectory for the second-best record in baseball behind only the archrival San Francisco Giants. (Even if they are more likely than not to require a wild-card win to make the Division Series.)

Then again, it wasn’t as though the Dodgers had nobody left to rely on if their best players from 2020 suddenly lapsed. This year, L.A. has gotten a borderline MVP season out of infielder Max Muncy, who himself had a down year in 2020 and was picked up by his teammates’ outstanding play. (He’s now returning the favor.) The team has also received great performances from Julio Urías, in his first full-length season as a starter, and catcher Will Smith, following up on his postseason heroics from his first year as the Dodgers’ starting catcher. And veteran third baseman Justin Turner keeps churning out great years, producing one of his best in 2021 at the age of 36.

Even more importantly, starting pitcher Walker Buehler has unlocked another level of play this year. The 27-year-old righty ranks third among starters in ERA and is on pace for 6.5 WAR, fourth-best among pitchers and seventh among all players in 2021. And the team’s trade-deadline haul — which included starter Max Scherzer and middle-infielder Trea Turner — has already been the stuff of legends.

(It’s also not as though the likes of Betts and Kershaw have been bad, despite each missing time with injury. Even an injury-plagued partial season from a Hall of Famer still equates to a year that would be the best of most players’ careers.)

The upshot is that Los Angeles currently leads our forecast model’s World Series odds — with a 31 percent probability, more than double that of any other team — despite all of the potential stumbling blocks (some of which, like with the Bauer debacle, were self-inflicted). One of the main points of methodically building an expensive championship juggernaut like the one the Dodgers have is to weather these kinds of years, when things are far from perfect but the topline results are indistinguishable from any other of the franchise’s extremely successful recent seasons. And by that standard, the 2021 Dodgers are perhaps the ultimate testament to the process this team has followed over the past decade.

Check out our latest MLB predictions.

California’s recall election has understandably dominated headlines, but there are two other gubernatorial elections this November that might tell us more about the national environment: Virginia and New Jersey.

To be sure, President Joe Biden carried both of these states by double-digit margins in 2020, and neither state has been terribly hospitable to Republicans since former President Trump won the 2016 election. But in recent weeks, Biden’s approval rating has taken a sizable hit as the situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated and the delta variant of COVID-19 has complicated his efforts to steer the country out of the pandemic. In fact, Biden’s approval rating has fallen to about its lowest point (about 46 percent), while his disapproval rating is up to 49 percent, according to FiveThirtyEight’s presidential approval tracker. The upshot is that Biden’s worsening ratings could improve the GOP’s chances of winning these gubernatorial races, particularly in Virginia, which is a more competitive state than New Jersey and doesn’t have an incumbent seeking reelection. Here is the state of play in these two elections a little less than two months before November:

Virginia

Virginia has looked like a blue state recently because Biden won the state by 10 percentage points and Democrats have won 13 consecutive statewide races dating back to 2012,¹ but it’s really more of a purple state with a bluish hue. In 2017, Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam won the state by 9 points in a Democratic-leaning political environment with an unpopular Republican president in office. But now with a somewhat unpopular Democrat in the White House, the pendulum could swing back enough to give Virginia Republicans a real chance at victory.

Virginia prohibits elected governors from seeking consecutive terms, meaning Northam can’t run again this year, but Democrats may have a slight incumbency advantage with nominee Terry McAuliffe: He previously won the governorship in 2013 when Barack Obama was president — breaking a streak dating back to 1977 whereby the party in the White House lost the Virginia governor’s race. However, Republican nominee Glenn Youngkin has been able to use his personal wealth to stay even in the fundraising race with McAuliffe, who has a track record of raising huge sums. This means that the biggest challenge for Youngkin is not whether he can match McAuliffe in fundraising, but whether he can balance appealing to the GOP base without repelling suburban voters in the state’s metropolitan areas, which he’ll need to win statewide in November.

And the polls at this point suggest the race is pretty close. While McAuliffe has led every nonpartisan survey so far, his edge among likely voters has ranged from very competitive to not so competitive (anywhere from 2 to 9 points) since early August. Unfortunately, there hasn’t been much polling released since Biden’s approval rating dropped sharply in mid-to-late August, so it’s hard to know how much of a factor that might be, but we do have one high-quality poll from late August by Monmouth University that found McAuliffe ahead by just 5 points, 47 percent to 42 percent, among registered voters. Monmouth’s poll also showed how much turnout could matter in November, as its likely voter results had McAuliffe leading by 2 to 7 points. Our most recent poll, though, is an early-September survey conducted by WPA Intelligence on behalf of Youngkin’s campaign, and this survey found the race tied and Youngkin ahead by 2 points when progressive third-party candidate Princess Blanding was included as a choice. To be sure, internal polls should be taken with a grain of salt, but given Biden’s recent drop in approval, it wouldn’t be a shock if Youngkin were, in fact, running neck-and-neck with McAuliffe.

It’s unclear whether Biden’s drop in approval will stick, but another reason this race is a good proxy for the 2022 midterms is that the race has featured many of the same issues we’ve seen pop up lately in national politics. For instance, there have already been a number of conflicts over how best to combat the coronavirus, with McAuliffe backing vaccine and mask mandates and Youngkin opposed to such mandates even though he has said he wants people to get vaccinated and that those who want to wear masks should do so. Monmouth’s poll suggests, though, that most Virginians approve of the state requiring students, teachers and staff to wear masks at schools (67 percent), and a slim majority also backed vaccine mandates for children of all ages to attend school in person (52 percent), so this will be an early test of how much the different parties’ stances on handling the pandemic affects voters’ choices.

This election will also serve as an indication of how toxic Trump’s brand remains in Virginia. Trump garnered only about 44 percent of Virginia’s vote in both 2016 and 2020 — the lowest presidential vote shares for a Republican in the once-red state since 1968. Unsurprisingly, McAuliffe has repeatedly tried to connect Youngkin to the former president, including by attacking Youngkin over the Republican nominee’s calls for more voting restrictions following Trump’s unfounded claims of election fraud, and by arguing that, like Trump, Youngkin isn’t taking the coronavirus seriously.

Meanwhile, Youngkin has tried to hone in on critical race theory — a decades-old academic concept that asserts the existence of systemic racism — which has become a favorite boogeyman of conservatives. As such, Youngkin has promised to ban the teaching of critical race theory from Virginia schools (despite little evidence it’s actually being taught), which he hopes will hurt Democrats’ support in key suburban communities like Loudoun County, where there have been high-profile anti-critical race theory protests at school board meetings, though the county denies teaching the theory. And a Roanoke College poll from early August suggests that Virginian voters might be concerned about critical race theory. The poll found that slightly more Virginian voters (47 percent) familiar with critical race theory had an unfavorable view of it than a favorable view (40 percent). Youngkin has also argued that McAuliffe did a poor job of handling crime as governor and that the Democratic nominee has the support of groups that want to defund the police amid a national environment where violent crime rose in 2020. And it seems as if McAuliffe may view this as a potential weakness, as he’s already run an ad featuring endorsements from law enforcement officials, who attacked Youngkin over proposed budget cuts that could reduce funding for public safety.

Ultimately, what happens in Virginia come November will be a test of just how blue the state is, with possible repercussions for the 2022 midterms. Should McAuliffe win despite Biden’s sliding approval rating, that could signal that the Old Dominion really is the Blue Dominion. But if Youngkin wins, that would be evidence that Virginia remains competitive enough that, under favorable conditions, Republicans can still win statewide.

New Jersey

Meanwhile, in New Jersey, incumbent Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy is seeking a second term, but at this point, it seems that Murphy’s Republican opponent, former state Assemblyman Jack Ciattarelli, will need a lot more help from the national environment in order to defeat Murphy. New Jersey is a bluer state than Virginia — Biden won it by about 16 points in 2020 — and Murphy is a relatively popular incumbent.

Here, too, the most recent nonpartisan poll of the race comes from Monmouth University (in the school’s home state), which found Murphy ahead of Ciattarelli by 16 points among registered voters in mid-August. In its two different likely voter scenarios, Monmouth gave Murphy a lead of 11 or 19 points. Moreover, the survey also found 54 percent of voters approved of Murphy’s job performance compared with only 36 percent who disapproved. But this poll was conducted before Biden’s sharp downturn in approval, so it’s possible conditions may have shifted somewhat, although still probably not as much as in Virginia. 

The only other recent poll we’ve seen comes from Republican outfit Fabrizio, Lee & Associates, which found Murphy ahead only by 1 to 2 points in a survey on behalf of the conservative Club for Growth PAC. And while the same caveats about internal polls in Virginia apply here, the result is far afield from nonpartisan polling, suggesting further polling is needed to see if the race has changed. (For instance, a June poll from Fairleigh Dickinson University found Murphy up 15 points.) In fact, a better indication that this race is competitive will be whether Club for Growth spends on behalf of Ciattarelli in the coming weeks.

And Ciattarelli could use some outside financial support, too. We haven’t seen new fundraising numbers since before the June primary, but Murphy led Ciattarelli by nearly $2 million and he also had a massive edge in fundraising by outside groups, as Murphy’s allies at New Direction for New Jersey raised $13.6 million, far more than the nearly $250,000 raised by Ciattarelli’s ally Fix NJ Now. Murphy might have had an even bigger financial advantage if he could self-fund, but he’s accepted public financing for his campaign, which greatly limits personal spending. Still, Republicans are hoping to portray the wealthy former Goldman Sachs executive as an out-of-touch elite. Last month, for instance, the Republican Governors Association ran an ad criticizing Murphy for going on vacation at his Italian villa despite a surge in the delta variant of COVID-19. Meanwhile, Ciattarelli is a lifelong resident of the state, which he has tried to use to his advantage, arguing that he’s the “real” New Jerseyan, since Murphy grew up in Massachusetts. As such, Ciattarelli’s first general-election ad attacked Murphy for a 2019 comment in which the governor said that if “you’re a one-issue voter and the tax rate is your issue, we’re probably not your state,” which Ciattarelli argues is a sign Murphy is “too rich to care” about the state. Taxes could be an opening for Ciattarelli, too, as 32 percent of voters named property taxes as a key issue facing New Jersey in Monmouth’s poll. 

Yet the same Monmouth poll found 41 percent of voters were especially concerned about COVID-19 — their top issue in a list of more than 20 — and Murphy’s handling of the pandemic has received positive reviews. The poll found 61 percent of voters felt he had done a good job of dealing with the coronavirus, while only 28 percent said he’d done a bad job. Additionally, 46 percent of voters said they trusted Murphy more than Ciattarelli to handle the pandemic, compared with just 21 percent who preferred Ciattarelli on the issue (17 percent said they’d handle it equally well). Ciattarelli, for his part, has tried to dampen Murphy’s edge on handling COVID-19 by attacking the governor over nursing home deaths due to the disease.

But for Ciattarelli to have a real chance, he will have to win over a large chunk of the 37 percent of New Jerseyans who are independent voters, compared with the 39 percent who are Democrats and the 22 percent who are Republicans. And at this point, Murphy leads with independents, per Monmouth. Whether Ciattarelli will be able to make inroads with this group is unclear, too. The plurality of independent voters (37 percent) named COVID-19 as a top issue, which Murphy polls well on, and Ciattarelli, who once had a reputation as an old-school Republican in the state legislature, may alienate independent voters by doubling down on his party’s Trumpist base. For instance, Ciattarelli opposes Murphy’s mask mandate for children in schools and has falsely stated that masks hinder children’s development, although Monmouth’s poll found 67 percent of New Jersey voters support their state’s mask mandate.

Of the two gubernatorial elections this fall, New Jersey is definitely the undercard event. Yet, while New Jersey is a bluer state than Virginia, Murphy would be the first Democratic governor to win reelection since Brendan Byrne in 1977. To stop Murphy from pulling this off, Ciattarelli likely needs Biden’s standing to worsen and some of his attacks against Murphy to stick.