The DPB Signal

One number for how much history is behind a prop.

Every row on the board already carries the counts: how often he has cleared the number, by how much, against whom, in what kind of game. The Signal reads all of them at once and puts the props with the most clean evidence at the top. It is a summary of what has happened. It is not a prediction of what will.

Six counts go in

1. 1Hit rate

   How often he has cleared tonight's number in his last ten, with this season's games counting for more than last season's.

   e.g. 9 of 10 · 2 of 2 this season

2. 2Margin

   How far past the number he usually lands. Nine of ten by a hair and nine of ten by forty yards are not the same fact.

   e.g. +2.1 receptions on average

3. 3Opponent

   What tonight's defence has allowed to his position in this stat, this season, ranked across the league.

   e.g. DET allows the 6th-most to receivers

4. 4Game

   The spread and total the books have posted, and the points they imply for his team, ranked among every team on the slate.

   e.g. BUF implied 27.3 · 2nd of 30

5. 5Usage

   His share of his team's targets or carries in the last three games against the last ten. A rate goes stale when the role changes.

   e.g. target share up 3 points

6. 6The line

   Which way the number has moved since it opened, and whether this book's number sits friendlier than the others'.

   e.g. opened 1.5 · unmoved

One number comes out

The six are weighed together and pointed at the side his history leans, then sized to the sample: a perfect two-for-two in September is real, but it is two games, and the Signal stays low until there are eight. The result is a number from 0 to 100. How much each count weighs starts as our own recipe. Every night, every prop that has settled is replayed against the counts it carried, and a fit is judged on a week it did not see; the night that fit beats a coin, and the props it rates higher land more often than the rest, its weights replace the recipe for that board. Until then the number is a measure of evidence — how much clean history points one way — and says so when you open the row.

The same prop, two weeks apart

The counts behind both: 9 of 10 cleared · +2.1 on average · DET allows the 6th-most to receivers · BUF implied 27.3, 2nd on the slate · target share up · line unmoved. Illustrative numbers.

On a ticket

Two or more props read as one thing: each leg's Signal multiplied, then scaled by how often those legs have actually landed together. The same three steps behind every duo, trio and Quick Pick ticket. How the Signal reads a ticket →

What it is not

• Not a probability. An 82 does not mean 82 percent. It means more clean history points the same way than for a 40.
• Not a pick. It orders the board. What to do with the order is yours.
• Not a black box. Every count it reads is on the row, in the open, and any one of them can be disagreed with.
• Not unchecked. If the props with a high Signal stop landing more often than the props with a low one, the number comes off the board until it earns its place back.