It doesn’t take a football expert or statistical genius to recognize how much more productive the Patriots’ Laurence Maroney has been over the past 5 games.  Maroney missed Weeks 4-6 and in the 12 games he did play he averaged just 12.6 carries, 53 yards and 4.2 ypc.  He only had 2 rushing touchdowns in 13 games.  However, when the weather started becoming a big issue Maroney stepped up and has averaged 21.2 carries, 110 yards (5.2 ypc) over the past 5 games with 6 rushing TDs in 5 games.

AccuScore’s NFL simulations use over 20 different factors to compare upcoming game conditions against past games for each player.  Laurence Maroney has played 32 games in his NFL career (regular season and post-season) and AccuScore uses all statistics from every game he has played, properly weights past stats along these 20+ different factors to create a mathematical formula which describes Maroney’s production in simulations.

The Baseline Simulation where the Patriots win 75% of simulations have Maroney averaging 21 carries, 89 yards (4.1 ypc) and 0.71 rushing touchdowns. These numbers are good, but not great.  The Giants defense held the red-hot Ryan Grant to just 29 yards on 13 carries, limited Marion Barber to just 28 yards in the 2nd half, and Earnest Graham to just 3.5 ypc (63 total yards).  In Week 17, Maroney only had 46 yards on 19 carries, his one sub-par performance over the past 5 weeks.  So the Giants defense is not expected to allow Maroney to have a huge game.

Out of curiosity I ran two alternative simulations involving Maroney. In the first scenario AccuScore only used Maroney’s past 5 games to create the “virtual Maroney”.  In the second scenario, I limited Maroney’s statistical sample to just the 10 games he played from Weeks 1-14. 

If Maroney continues his hot streak the Patriots are nearly a 2 touchdown favorite winning over 80% of the time.  This season AccuScore has had 68 games where a team was winning by 10+ points per simulation and the heavy favorite these teams amassed a 60-8 record (88%).

In simulations where only the first 14 weeks are factored the Patriots only win by 7 points per simulation (69% of the time).  Where teams favored by 10+ in simulations won nearly 90% of the time, teams that were winning by 7 to 9 points in simulations were just 24-13 (64.8%).

So while the difference between the strongest Maroney performance (81% win) and the weakest Maroney performance (69% win) may not seem that big, the actual results between a team winning 80%+ of simulations vs winning 65 to 79% of simulations is much larger (88% vs. 65%).

The reason why the Patriots are still winning nearly 70% of simulations even if Maroney is not productive, is because it will likely be sunny, over 65 degrees, and winds around 5 mph in Arizona for the game.  The Patriots passing game should be better under these environmental conditions and an ineffective running game does not negatively impact the team as much as it would in recent games played in the wind and cold.