Episode Transcript
NFL Week 14, betting market outlook. Week 13 was lukewarm from a live betting performance perspective. Favorites went 10-4-1 ATS. 13-1-1 straight up.
And that's just not the type of volatility that's gonna be conducive to generating a nice, juicy, profitable p and l from live bending. And the outcome was a lot of the teams that we'd bet on to come back or betting on some volatility, a lot of it just didn't materialize.
We were very close and several, which made it very frustrating, . And so it wasn't a bad weekend, but definitely wasn't a good weekend, basically flattish.
Yeah. I bet New Orleans plus three and a half pretty early, which made up for what would've been among the most sour finishes of any game.
The Saints have put me on crazy tilt. I had Saints minus two and a half, and Andy Dalton 220 passing yards, a plus four 50 and the passing yards hit. And I just wrote it off as okay, this is done.
This saint's gonna win this. And then for Britt to come back and Dennis Allen punting on fourth and one from the forties, three the whole way it ended just had me on such tilt.
But that was a tough way to finish. We've almost become so accustomed to life betting success. It's a good reminder that you can't always win. Yeah.
And in fact, I do take away the weekend as generally a w given the fact that favorites performed so well and there wasn't nearly the same volatility that we typically experience on a week to week basis.
The fact that we didn't get our faces ripped off is actually quite a w. I do wanna give you a shout on is, one of the things you post every Sunday morning is these moonshot bets. These super juicy sgs, and you don't brag about them nearly as much as you should. But yet another, plus 1500 SGP cas, you only need like a handful of those to cash and a whole.
To be profitable, assuming you're not like just a raging degenerate elsewhere. Yeah. And you've already cashed like five, six of these on the season. Yeah.
It was plus 1872. It was Hertz 300 passing guards. Sanders under 58 and a half. The Eagles bunny line.
I do wanna take a point here, given the Twitter conversation from this week of that same game, parlay in general. If you approach it as a particular market where you can tell one story, and I outlined very clearly what that story was. The eagles force teams to pass more than anyone else. The eagles are very adaptable in their run pass ratios. They're gonna pass Jalen Hertz's price is for his season long average.
What happens if they just pass the law and the Titans pass defense system particularly good? And I built that story. I said, miles Sanders is not gonna run for as many yards as a season average. Jalen Harz is gonna go over as passing yards and the Eagles are gonna have success. And that was the story and I got it at plus 18 to one.
And that's what same game parlays are valuable for. And Right. It's not just like this money sucking oh, avoid at all costs. No, it has value if you use it for the right purposes.
And that's why, I don't wanna stir up a storm or anything, but it's like those bet stamp.
The hammer, this ancestral group out there. They're the old guard of sports betting and they continue to really hold on to these sports betting, maxims of antiquity that are no longer necessarily relevant in, or maybe not relevant, but certainly don't hold the same strength in its argument in today's betting environment. Just around the pre-game betting too. Yeah. And about CLV and betting early, like regardless like you're making a bet on top of a bet. You're not even just betting on the team. You're betting on which direction the line's gonna move.
You're doing it with low conviction, you're doing it with low information. That is not a long term positive EV bet. Unless you are a pro better and you're looking at all these lines and everything moving on a tick by tick basis, which most people don't. We don't.
No, for sure not. New information comes at us all the time. For a game that is constantly changing you need to adapt and respond to new information. And what was true 10 years ago, what was true five years ago, what was true in week three might be different, right?
Like you always need to build in new information and look for new angles to attack because the only thing that is certain is that what was true in the past won't be true in the future. And I think it's just a certain mindset. That's really what kind of I think the same game parlay represents is like constantly be looking if you wanna be I don't even like the term like plus ev better.
If you wanna find terms like, and ways to make money. Just look for new angles. You have to constantly be adapting. If you just get stuck in the same old ways of thought, whether they're old, they're new, it's not gonna work. You have to constantly be changing and constantly be evaluating your process.
That's why I think we have such an insistence on process. Yeah. Because that's really. It plays out over the long run and allows you to be profitable.
Exactly. And one of the older kind of legacy betters out there, bet Chris, who I'm a big fan of, he was actually posting something similar along these lines.
Maybe this topic wasn't necessarily the catalyst for this commentary, but he was generally saying the same thing as, you have to adjust every single year process needs to change. In fact, again, betting maxims need to evolve in fact over time. And you can't just continue to hold onto those things.
And there's a certain group of influential betters out there with platforms that continue to pound the table on this old school sports betting school of thought, and basically denigrate anybody out there who disagrees with them, bullies them, humiliates them, you're a idiot. if you don't agree with them.
It's something I strongly disagree with. I think I've probably tweeted a few times and then get the cathartic release of posting the tweet and then delete it. And I'm like, yeah that's too mean. Or I'm being an asshole
or . Yeah. No I hear that, but look, I think it's important to always be adapting to new information.
All right. So for those watching the stream or watching on YouTube postmortem. We have our live bets streaming down there in the the ticker. I do wanna just go over a few of these before we move on to our drive quality scoreboard.
Then we'll go into the market consensus rankings and then preview week 14. And some of our mistakes and where we think, we are on target. One of the things, obviously Jaguars is one of our biggest losers. We took Jaguars plus six and a half, plus eight, minus two and a half plus two 50.
Those obviously all blew up. We also took the Jags in circa, once again getting buried by the Jags. And again, they still continue to rank relatively high on drive quality and a bunch of other advanced metrics that say they're clearly a better team. Oh. Trending in the wrong direction.
Trying to suggest but trending in the wrong direction. Yeah, and we do need to take a little bit more of a focus on too, when we're looking at things. Yeah. And I know we do from time, but we haven't been like super consistent in doing it. But yeah, looking at like the rolling last five weeks of performance rolling last three weeks of performance.
This is something we talked a lot about in the off season . Yeah. But we just haven't put into practice as consistent as we should. But the net result is once again, getting buried by the Jags. It's happened probably 10 weeks this season, and I really hope that, there's a way, I don't know, I don't know how to prevent something like that happening in the future.
Like where you just get tied so much to a particular team, you continue to think there's value. Who knows? Maybe there actually has been value on them and literally we're just getting ridiculously unlucky. But there's some games that they're not even in.
Yeah, this was certainly one of them.
The defense you couldn't get a stop and what's a little frustrating. For me, I actually noticed when I was compiling, some graphs about how teams have performed the last four weeks. I was like most teams look exactly the same, but there are a few exceptions.
And the Jaguars defense was one of them, but I just wrote it off and I didn't actually do much careful analysis there. And then as it's happening, it's like, how did I not take this into consideration? How did I ignore this one piece? Which was like, obviously so important. And that was the story of the game.
They didn't get to stop the entire game.
Yeah. And that's actually what actually prevented us from potentially leaning even further. And once it got out to the plus 14 hundreds, plus 14 and a half, cause plus 14 and a half looks juicy. You would've lost even more money.
But one of the thing that was keeping us off that is, we were looking through the play by play and it's like they have not stopped the lions once and this was like six, seven drives into the game. And it's we need to see at least one stop. We need to see at least they're gonna provide at least some sort of resistance.
Yeah. And yeah, it never materialized. So I think that was a good observation to at least prevent us from losing even more money. Yeah. Another huge brutal loser that I do like this one I like. And I'm 25 losing these jets, minus six and a half plus three 20 plus six and a half, plus 14 and a half plus 100 plus four 40.
On the money line, and I think a smattering of a few others, quarter unit bets and things like that, deep out of the money, they actually did end up cashing, in fact. So all of these didn't even necessarily even lose the six and a half and the 14 and a half all hit. But man, it just would've been a waterfall of profits if the jets would've come back and win that game and we're in position to
multiple times.
The inability to score from within the the red zone was detrimental and unbelievably frustrating. I also was a Garrett Wilson touchdown away from caching another one of those same game. Oh, yep. No, but I'm happy with that process. But the asymmetric risk involved, which is like we put ourselves in a position where we've lost a little, but we would've want a lot more if only one small thing went right.
It's not as if it's like a matter of so many things needed to happen in order to make a lot of money. But it was the opposite, right? They needed to convert on one of those last two drives. At the end. That's what it came down to.
It's like they were clearly in a position to win. And that's good value and the asymmetric risk involved and the output, if they would have converted on those drives would've been enormous. And that's exactly what you're looking for
is better.
Yeah. And that's exactly how you wanna evaluate the efficacy of a bet is not just on the outcome, the result.
Yeah. The process. Yeah. And I will, were you in position?
Yeah. I will add, there was some pushback in, in the chat, which is good. This is exactly what I want, to, to encourage and forces on what do you see in the jets? Yeah. And you almost have to force and articulate exactly the case.
Which as I said I don't trust the Vikings offense to extend. and the jet offense has been moving the ball fine and like historically the Vikings have been brutal with leads.
In fact those three factors are actually the types of factors, even now that you articulate it, is the three factors that I feel like thematically we are always looking for when trying to really push into a live that exactly one, the opponent is vulnerable.
Two, the team that we're trying to bet on is moving the ball, but just not scoring points. Yeah. And the two has shown, has demonstrated an ability to do so in the past. So
That's right. That's the key. It's like building in almost that prior, based on a longer form data and then having your own eyes inform the experience of what's actually happening.
Yeah. Where you almost have a better framework of evaluating a live bit based on what happens before the game and you like see it happening in real time and that's when you can almost have confidence triggering a bit like that.
Yeah. Our game trade, live bedding series every single Sunday. Like Juah mentioned, again, we had some pushback on some of the trades that we made, which again is great cuz it forces us to rethink why we're doing something and maybe back off or, maybe attack it in a different angle and others, again in there contributing ideas.
In fact, I wish we would've had, as I was mentioning to you earlier, I wish we would've had an even more successful. Live betting week because this was one of our biggest audience that we've had over the course of the season, we had over a hundred unique people join. We had 20 plus people in there at a time.
We had 5, 6, 7, 8 active chatters in there. So was super entertaining, super engaging, despite not, again, getting the best p and l. That's right. But
there, I will say, and this is a bit off topic, there is a, like distinct feeling, especially when I was like mostly playing daily fantasy where it was it was like emotionally exhausting after a long Sunday of like ups and downs. But aside from coming to terms and learning with the proper emotional balances, it. You leave the street every Sunday and you're like, man, that was such a fun time. Yeah. I love that. It was awesome. And the sweats are great. The tilts are great. And then at the end of the day, exchanging ideas and watching football together is the best part.
And I, encourage everyone to join us, to trade with us, to pitch ideas. It's so much fun.
Yeah. And we're always gonna be looking for new ways to improve the experience, improve the stream. What we did add as a new element this week was our live scoring bot we had in the chat. That was super cool. And now, thinking about how can we get maybe injuries and turnovers in there. We got some of that feedback from some of our viewers.
Like we're open ears and that's why we'd love people joining too. We are a small platform. We're a small brand. We're at the very beginning stage of our upwards ascent and hey, you're the OGs here. I know, like we already have R June, Dan, Darnell, like some of the faces that are jumping in every single week, appreciate those guys, like immense, right?
That's right.
Okay and then lastly on, on the live be front, just from a recap of the bets that we made and whatnot. The Dolphins was another big loser dolphins minus two and a half, plus two 60 dolphins minus nine and a half plus four 40. So we were leaning into deep outta the money all that were gonna really be lottery ticket plays.
That one fell flat on its face.
I still love that play, which like, given the situation and like it didn't even turn out. The result wasn't great and like too stunk but and that's and again,
even despite the bad game, I mean they're always, they were in position. That's why we were like on our heels the whole time. Yeah.
Because the dolphins were never out of it until the very end.
It's true. And it was like, look to it kept on missing throws. Like Jeff Wilson was wide open for an 80 yard touchdown.
Looks very different. Brock Purdy made an unbelievable throw. On third and 11, seeing the Blit, it was the third quickest pass. I saw this. It was the third quickest time to throw of any pass in the NFL season. , he got rid of it in 1.6 seconds. It was a dime like credit to him.
Like you would assume that Mr. Relevant's not gonna be throwing dimes on third and 12. But that's the life of a better, I think you, you stick to your guns like it's gonna happen even if the results there don't show for it.
And at the end of the day, the beauty of beddings that you put your money where your mouth is and like you'll be dead. If you're wrong, you'll be ahead of money.
You put your money where your mouth is and if you're successful, that speaks for itself.
Yeah. And then I do wanna close on successful bet that we had over the course of the day was the chief spans game. Took some chiefs plus three that ended up pushing but really leaned into the Chiefs plus seven.
So a little bit early to the trade again, but no harm, no foul. Took a little bit of chief's money line as actually as well that ended up losing.
I
had bang's money line also. Yeah. But yeah, also came back on the other side and was able to hedge some of that. I got Bengals plus three, plus 1 0 7 that we threw in there.
So really threaded the needle on that one. And I was articulating this kind of live, which was like betting the chief's money line. I felt like a little bit uneasy on it. And I know cause we were saying like, oh, we could look back on this and say, oh, this was like such a slam dunk.
It was so easy. And like in the moment we're like, this does not feel easy. Not easy. Even the chiefs plus three, like they didn't feel easy, but when the chief seven showed up, that was like, no, boom. Gotta hammer that. And in fact, that was the biggest single trade, net dollar risk. Yeah.
That I know I had out there. So that was nice. And that was, one of the most successful trades and covered, again, a lot of those losses. And as we've talked about before, again, we didn't hit 50% this week, but we never hit 50% and almost any week. And even in the bets that I articulated, we lost a ton and only won a few.
But those few make up for almost all the rest That's right through to the plus money elements and other aspects of it. And we can skate by with 35%, 40%.
And that's why even sometimes when we have really good weekends, it's like at the end of it I feel like, ah, that wow wasn't that good.
And then you wait for you do
the accounting and you're, oh my God, I, yeah.
Its like, wow, that was like a plus 10 unit. I felt like I lost every other bet.
Okay, so let's move on to our week 13 drive quality. Anything stick out to your, I posted this couple days ago, some of the stuff that, stick out to me was, some of the big rallies that we saw.
Yeah. And there was only a handful of them as we talked about. Cause there really wasn't that much volatil. This week. But one of them that there was in fact that we didn't make money on, we missed a little bit snoozed on it a bit, was Bears Packers. So Packers time weighted average margin right, was negative five points.
Time weighted average win probability was 33%. And yet nonetheless, came back, won the game. And winning it in our drive quality scoreboard tells 'em, tells us that they did justifiably win that game.
28 earned points to bears 24 earned points.
Yeah, no, that's a good one. A couple more really interesting. The Cowboys scored a bunch of defensive touchdowns and they still had 48 earned points. That was very surprising to me. And also the Bengals winning by seven against the Chiefs.
Like they had their way and then the Raiders Chargers game looks like a blowout, even though the Chargers were driving with, three minutes left in position to possibly tie or win that game. But the fundamentals certainly tell a different story.
In fact, this drive quality scoreboard from the Raiders chargers, again, Raiders 30, chargers 14. That actually does reflect how I felt about that game. Oh, we did lean into some chargers, but it felt man, like they're constantly in third and long. They're constantly in bad positions. The Raiders is just like shredding them on the ground.
And it ended up coming down to a one possession game. But that is, that should not be your takeaway from the game. Like the Chargers have some serious issues here. Yeah. And so we look at the earn points over realized negative 5.6 points. They actually scored almost a full touchdown more than they actually earned in this game.
Actually the only other one that I would call out is Browns, Texans. Texans. 1700 points. The Browns 10.
Did they have, I don't think they had an offensive touchdown. No.
And just another further metric to flesh out how this game played out, which was, the final score says the Browns blew 'em out.
The Browns covered the seven and a half point spread. But the time, weight, average margin was still just three points. The time, weight, average win probability was just 58% for the Browns. Yeah, the Browns were losing this game for a meaningful amount of the game and we were hesitant to even try to get in and actually bet any browns.
I felt bad about that cuz I felt like there was gonna be at a certain point in time for one reason or another that just do the futility of the Texans, that the Browns, and we saw Watson make some bad mistakes, some bad throws, some hesitation taking some bad sacks.
Just typical Watson even probably compounded. But he did make some good plays and I think that was enough to open the door to say, Hey, we're getting the Browns went all the way down to essentially like minus one. Yeah. At that risk profile, it was worth rolling the dice on some browns. And so I think we left, some money on
the.
Yeah that's fair.
Washington and the Giants went to OT and tied from our drive quality scoreboard perspective would say that we give the dub to the Giants barely giants. Yeah. Barely. 23 earn points to the Washington's 22 also had a plus one time weighted average margin as well, and time weight, average win probability of 64%.
So the Giants were in better position to really win that game. And probably a little bit more positives to take away for the Giants from that matchup.
So let's go into our week 14 consensus market power rankings. Top five bills. Cowboys up to number two, up one spot chiefs down one spot now to three eagles, four Bengals, five.
And then to round out the top 10, we got Niners, dolphins, bucks, Vikings, Ravens. And then the Browns up. One spot to number 11, just barely not sneaking in to the top 10. How are you thinking about this?
I still, with the cheaps at number one I am surprised a bit by the dolphins not being downgraded. I assume the market would react to that especially like the offense didn't look particularly good. Yeah, I guess it's surprising because again, when you look at the top 10 and then you look at the 11 through 15, it's yeah, who else is gonna replace 'em?
There are just so few good teams.
Yeah. We look at the bottom Texans.
Again, a consensus. 32nd worst team Bear's 31st Panther's 30th Rams, 29th Colts 28th. From a drive quality perspective, we got the bills, Eagles Chiefs, Cowboys, Bengals, top five. We've been super hot on the Bengals. And now again, this is one of those things where it's oh, now it seems so obvious.
Joe Burs the top five quarter, but he got so much better this year. Something that you were calling out explicitly pounding the table. It was in our pre-season previews around how Joe Burl could take a massive leap from year two to year three. And the Bengals really probably bottomed, I would say probably week two, because that would, seems like it was like absolutely
lost.
The, lost the Steelers, lost of the Cowboys, lost of the Cooper Rush Cowboys. It speaks the, I short term volatility exists in.
And also again, keeping your outlook on the longer term. That's exactly. Cause we actually made a lot of good money betting on the Bengals, bending on the Bengals coming down.
In fact, I think, in the off season we do some reverse engineering and look at attribution analysis around what drove a lot of our best live bets. I guarantee it's probably bans. Yeah. Potentially chiefs as well, but Bengals the market sells off on them even in game.
Yeah. And you can get them at amazing prices. Yeah. And we've been doing that a lot this season.
I think the Bengals also, it's important to recognize, right? You shouldn't just categorize all change and saying I'm gonna abandon my thesis here, or I won't abandon my thesis here. It's like a matter of you came in with a prior right?
That was like developed and when the Bengal start oh two, was it because the offensive line was really struggling and Joe Burrow was taking sacks as if that wasn't already built in. It's like you have to do like a thorough analysis to break down what went wrong and is that actually new information or not?
And the Bengals are a great example because something we specifically highlighted was that the offensive line is going to take weeks because it's so new and they lack the continuity. It's going to take weeks if it's gonna come together and it might come together later on in the season, right?
And Joe Burrow's going to take sack. That's part of the picture. If Joe Burrow like regressed, that's a different story.
But if you pay attention to the long term outlook and realize that like things can happen in the short term don't lose sight of that long term vision, it's essential. And like it's been extremely profitable here. And in many cases
again, the Bengals have been dealing with a plethora of injuries as well. Yeah. And nonetheless overcome. And yeah, I think that's a huge, a great call out around the efficacy of the offensive line this season. So coming into the season, alright, the ceiling scenario, the best case outcome is, wow, this offensive line comes in, it's a rejuvenated offensive line.
Much better players, much higher ceiling, and they perform awesome right off the bat. Yeah. That's the best case scenario. That's not the base case scenario. Yeah. And a lot of the markets and a lot of handicaps and certainly all of fans. Base case scenario that didn't materialize.
So it's whoa, something else is wrong here. Maybe it's Joe Bur, or maybe the offensive line's just not ever gonna come together, not gonna have the right chemistry.
Players are not Madden grades where you sign a 92 and they all of a sudden start playing like an 92 in week one.
It's a lot more complex than that.
And now also though too, I'm getting a little bit cautious. On Bangals now, cuz now the red hot sky high, the markets fully appreciated it.
I wanna call out Zach Taylor's done a terrific job this year. I think
that he's not done a bad job, I'll say that. No, he's done,
I think he's done a terrific job.
Okay. And really what's holded for me is that third and 11 was the final straw of just like aggressive play call. Yeah. Okay. Okay. It's like this team is, I don't know
if I necessarily wanna attribute to Zach Taylor though.
I don't care. I don't care if it's not Taylor the of offense, a coordinator I care about.
What's gonna happen now and whatever it is, I don't feel hampered by the coaching decisions of the Bengals. Like I wouldn't
any other team. That's true. That, that, that's fair cuz Yeah. Regardless of what the source of that decision making was. Yeah. This is going to be the outcomes. If this is how decisions are gonna be made within the organization, then that's a plus.
Exactly.
I don't like, I don't care who's actually the operative, I care about what's gonna happen.
Trying to think about is the market getting a little bit too hot on the Bengals now? Because basically everyone's riding 'em now is, something that I saw Timo Post was, future strength of schedule for passing offenses over the final five weeks of the season.
And we see Bengal some of the more, prolific offenses that we've seen, dolphins, Bengals, bills, Seahawks, Raiders, all having much more difficult strengths of schedule for the passing game over the next couple weeks. So that could also be, a headwind at minimum, for the bank goals.
So elsewhere some of the biggest changes this week, again not a lot of changes, not a lot of movements.
It.
It's week 14, right? Yeah. That's the thing. It's like the bedding season works in three seasons where it's first three to four weeks are like a matter of like really testing your off season priors. And like I can get really crazy next year in doing that.
And then the Middle East of the season five to weeks 12, it's like you have a good sense of who the teams are, how good they are but it's still like a push and pull where it's oh, was this because of match up? Like it's a small sample size, we don't really know who's good. And like by week 13, week 14, like we know who's good, we know who the good past the defenses are.
We know what the good run defenses are. We know the good run games are. That's why we're not gonna have as many changes. And we saw that last week. With fewer week to week changes and now it's just a matter of executing and I think the focus should be less on fundamentals almost cuz there's less edge and more okay, what particular matchup, what particular angle within how these two teams play?
And that's the biggest source of value.
And also, like we mentioned earlier was trying to look. Recent performance. So how these, yeah, recent performance. But again, you wanna balance the two, and this is when you think about priors as well.
Like you have to also think about evaluating team and we've mentioned this in different ways, shapes or form, but especially when I think about, in, in my day job, working in investments and how we structure our trades and the positionings that we have in our broader portfolio, alright, it's angled from strategic and tactical, right?
So you have your strategic views, right? Your longer term macro views that you think will play out over time. And there's gonna be some noise here and there and in between, but you think there's one general direction of a particular asset.
And then there's tactical views, right? So views that I think this is gonna work for the next two weeks. For the next two days, maybe the next month. And then after that, like my visibility ends and I just know I wanna take advantage of it for this short period of time. Yeah. Relative to this longer term view that I have.
Yeah. And balancing those two things. But I think that's something, it's a nuance that I feel like most handicaps out there, certainly most sports betting commentators out there, miss when they're talking about, betting priors and how that's playing into power records.
That's a good call out is actually something I'm gonna focus in on the note I'll come out tomorrow about balancing those few things.
So some of the biggest changes on the week 14 basis, the lions change the most. Upgraded three spots to a market rank of 21st look at drive
quality. Yeah. I keep on noticing this, by the way.
Yeah. Oh, they've been moving up fast, fast, fast, up the power rankings and I've seen a lot of tweets and whatnot, and I responded to some of 'em this week around how are the lions favorites over the Vikings?
When we look at our drive quality power rankings, the lions are ninth, the Vikings are 10th. Yep. The lions are at home. So I mean it's this seems like actually Yeah. Okay. Exactly. Press Yeah, it sounds about right.
Yeah. And this is such a huge off market view as well cuz drive quality ninth again, broader market power rank for the lions is 21st. And in fact, no one's really even close to us.
Football outsiders has the lions ranked 13th. That's a market high. Yeah. Outside again
of, and I do. Yeah. Another thing I wanted to ask, soft season to see which of which model or brands most closely resembles draft quality. And I think based on, just from what I've seen, doing these kind of recaps as football outsides.
Yeah. That's been my anecdotal experience as well.
Although like they're. They're included outliers, like the licks football 20, draft quality
10. Yeah. Yeah. And I would give them the benefit of the doubt for as well is, they were very early to riding the Seahawk success.
Yep. Which again, we were have been resistant to writing early on at least. Yeah. But again, that wasn't something that we held onto very long was we were very quick
to, to adapt. That's what I was gonna say. I was gonna use that as I thought I was going on for too long about Theves, but it's not just oh, you're saying that because you have the benefit of the D in hindsight and like you just stick to your priors?
No, it changed really quickly on the cx. I'm like, I went out and said my favorite bed of the season now, it's still my favorite bed of the season was Seahawk's Box. Yeah. Which is funny the way it turned
out. Yeah. Also, that's always like sometimes, and again, this is just anecdotal as well, but sometimes when I feel like just like crazy confidence on something, like anytime I would ever frame something as this is my, like my favorite bet of the entire year, especially pregame.
Especially pregame Yeah. Is I might be missing something. Yeah. Because like usually I don't have that sort of conviction. Yeah.
Yeah.
I've been fitting the books successfully. Yes. That's such success that I think the thesis just happened to not materialize that one week. And that's also a good reminder of didn't break the bank. I didn't bet you know that much more than I usually do.
Bet sizing anything. That's a situation where you have two options. You can either scale your bet, you can say I usually bet a hundred dollars, but now I'm gonna bet a thousand.
Or you could like, Move the lines and get crazy on the alternate side. And so I'm looking at the same amount, but I'm confident this outcome will happen. So I'll move the price. Exactly. That's a totally different way of approaching it.
Yeah.
No, again all you're doing it sounds and that's actually a good way to put it, is if you actually have a lot of convict. Doesn't mean, yeah, you wanna then increase your risk. All you likely do is you actually narrow the outcome of what you're looking for because you have such high conviction and a very particular outcome.
Yeah. That in fact you'll scale most of your bets into that outcome specifically.
Yeah, exactly. Like Jalen Hart's perfect example, right? If I was right, the more right I was, the more money I make.
You're minimizing risk. When you have high conviction, you want to maintain that same upside and minimize risk. It's like investing 1 0 1.
And that's why in order for you to capitalize on a view on a particular forecasted game script materializing, yeah.
You could bet the spread and then you win a bet just like you win any other bet, but then you've left a ton of money on the table, especially if the game materializes exactly as forecast. dude, like there's only, that's only gonna happen so many times in the season and you need to make sure you squeeze as much genius out of it as possible, out of that as possible.
And you don't leave any money on the table. I was mad that I ended up taking Ravens live plus five and a. Which ended up doing nothing for me. Like in the last like drive or two, you could already see the five and a half wasn't gonna do anything. I should have just taken the money lie. It was like plus one 40.
I saw a little bit of safety in the plus five and half, but again, it was a relatively low conviction. But that's the type of thing that you wanna position yourself. If you're gonna be right, make sure you're getting as much money out of it as possible. Especially the best that we take, again, the win percentage is low and so you need to make sure that the return is high for the ones that you do win.
Yep. Last thing on the market Power rankings. Biggest divers of the week Titans downgraded three spots, chargers downgrade three spots now to a market rank of 22nd really in free fall. Jets down a little bit down two spots to 17th Jaguars also in free. Fall down another two spots, now down to a market rank of 24th.
Drive quality still hanging on 13th. We're still a market high on the Jags.
And again, draft quality has been carrying the warning signs of a collapsing defense.
One of the things I did wanna call out was drive quality has been super sour on the Bucks all season. All season. We continue to be, so we got the Bucks ranked 18th by far a market low. The next closest brand to us is FF and Football Outsiders at 11th. So a material difference there. Yep. And this is one of the things that's kept us from Lose, not only not losing any money on the Bucks, but taking advantage actually been fading the Bucks a lot this season.
Alrighty. So let's move on to NFL week 14. Thursday night game, Raiders, Rams.
Raiders minus six and a half on the road. 43 and a half the total. It's it's still unclear who's gonna be the starting quarterback for the Rams. think, I know Wafford is banged up. He's questionable. Obviously they signed Baker Mayfield. Can imagine you'd see him. He's not flying.
He's not flying. Yeah. And then Bryce Perkins. I think there's a big difference between Perkins and Wafford especially. Obviously their style of play. I, yeah, I, if it's Perkins I'm just laying off. I have no opinion, but if it is Wafford, I think there's some value on the Rams at 60.
Yes.
No. Alfred's
terrible. You didn't like what you saw verse He was dreadful. No, but I'm saying from the team in general versus Seahawks on the.
Very plucky. I'll give 'em credit for that. I don't know. I had a feeling in my bad knee that they were gonna show up for that game. I have no good reason why which is like, why I didn't really lean into to the Seahawks.
But again, this is the team. So devoid of talent. I can't bet on them. I just,
So that doesn't mean I guess, that you're gonna, that you're interested in the Raiders.
No, I think I'm gonna play another one of these same game parlays, only because the matchup against the Rams is really perfect.
I think considering that Josh Jacobs has had enormous run, he's hurt. It's a short week. The ramps have a really good run defense not a particularly good past defense. I I'll take a little bit of like Derek Carr to hit his passing props and the Raiders to cover two and a half. I can probably get that up.
Plus 1 30, 1 40, something like that.
Yeah, I really like Trying to find for these standalone games, some like juicy bets to make the game fun, especially when it's not even really a good matchup. But we know Yeah. A lot of us just love football and we'll watch if there's a game, we'll watch it.
They'll be Yeah,
I also
bet. So there will be bets. Yeah. And so we might as well try to help make at least, some fun ones and hopefully some
profitable ones. Yeah. I'll be playing that to call her car to hit his pass with Raiders to get. Most of the way to cover just because of the match up, but it's betting on the rams not sexy right now.
definitely not sexy and no one else is doing it, in fact. According to, again, there's some questions around betting splits. I looked at betting splits across like various brands today, and it's just like a specific example. I looked at PFSs, I looked at pre-games, I looked at action networks, I looked at Draft Kings.
I looked at some kind of private, pick pools that I looked at to see how people were allocating their picks. And pretty much all the percentages are different, but the direction of them is typically the same. So that's why like the percentages aren't really. Important and don't necessarily give you a lot of insight there.
But for those who like completely dismiss betting splits as if the direction of it is useless, I totally disagree with that. I find a lot of insight in it. And so basically what we can take from this is the people making bets on this game are pretty decisively on the Raiders side.
68% of bets, 79% of the handle on draft Kings on the Raiders side and kinda looking at a host of others, again, the clearly leaning on the Raiders side as well for exactly some of the reasons that you probably talked about, which is the Rams are just so unpalatable. They're one of those teams that if you're gonna bet the Rams, you really have to hold your nose Yeah.
On this, which doesn't, it's not gonna be fun.
Yeah. I'm not betting the spread. I'm taking a totally different approach,
so Makes sense. Jets at Buffalo Jets minus nine and a half, total 44. I really like the Jets here. Me too. I don't know if I'm missing something. On first blush, this is, this seems three points too high.
I agree with you. Especially I like to talk about points existing in two spheres. One is like a reflection of a fundamental value and two is like points in an actual game. Like the Jets defense is still good, they're healthy and the Bill's offense has not been the same.
Since Josh Allen's injury . And they're still lacking in secondary weapons. The jets are built to stop the bills. They can get pressure and they can play good coverage. Mike White's competent enough, the Bill's defense, especially now with Von Miller after the season with the torn acl, it's very beautiful.
We've seen that past couple of weeks. I think it's spreads way too
high.
According to pf, again, 82% of the cash on the bills, 61% of the tickets on the jet. What are you looking at from a live perspective?
I, it's gonna be Josh Allen, right? Does the Bills offense have the rhythm, the downfield passing game going, like when Josh Allen through Deep Against Jet the first time, it was a disaster.
And I mean the jets have typically gotten off to, to slow starts, so I'd definitely be looking if the bill score early to hop on. That's when you can get the 10 and a like lines for big favorites. Love to move in their direction early. This line can go to 13 and a half if the bill get the ball first and square a touchdown.
Yeah, that's a buy.
If the jets get the ball first and go, not even just three and out, but just don't score. It's gonna go to 10 and a half. Yeah, exactly. Yeah I think this is gonna be critical. What I'm gonna be looking for is, are the jets playing competently? Because the types of mistakes, bad play calling in the red zone that they did, verse the Vikings.
They can get away with it and still potentially be competitive. You're not gonna be able to like dick around with the bills in that way.
You'll get buried. But I also I have faith in the offensive staff.
Okay. Browns minus plus six on the road at the Red Hots, Santa Bengals over under 47 and a half. Deshaun Watson looked, really bad, but,
That should be almost priced in. Like we knew he'd be rusty then. That's another reason why I don't wanna touch the camera. If
there's, and I think he's gonna be rusty again.
Multiple games.
Yeah. So then I would, then you should probably be betting the Bengals.
I'm cautious on the Bengals as well, just because I know the market is sky high in them right now. And I know the last time the Bengal and. I don't wanna tie too much into the last time they played and use that as the lone signal, but the Bengals did not look good versus the Browns, when they played earlier this season. That was a terrible game.
It was probably one of the worst games that they play all season.
I just I think that Sean Watson is way too much of a question mark.
It wouldn't be totally shocking to see him play well. It also wouldn't be shocking to see like the SS performance that was last week. And again, if we see that the same sort of lack of rhythm, lack of timing, which was what was plating him. And it's like holding the ball too long in the pocket.
Then I think I would definitely jump on the Bengals Live again, Bengals are a team that starts slow.
Yeah. Just looking at, on the screen here, just how bad Watson played, verse the Texans. Negative five. Epa negative 0.2 EPA per play. Again, my forecast would be that Watson's gonna stink again and be just good enough to to put together a good throw here or there.
To keep the optimist's blood pumping, but beyond that, it's gonna be, it's gonna be bad.
Texans 17 at Dallas. I've seen it breach the 17 down to 16 and a half on Draft Kings right now. 45 and a half.
The only thing I'll add just as is contextual notes is that as we saw on Sunday night Football, Dallas does, pour it on or at least stays aggressive, latent games.
So even though they are a run first team at this point. They pass Bunty Litten games. They're aggressive. So I wouldn't be too worried off the 17. But I don't really wanna be betting games with the 17 point
spread.
If you wanna bet the Cowboys, then you bet the Cowboys alt line minus 23 and a half.
Yeah.
Like even get a nice plus two 50 or something. I think the Cowboys gonna blow 'em out. They're gonna blow 'em out.
Yeah. I prefer to build particular game stories here. This just seems like a good standing game part. Like that game. Yeah. Tony Power, breaks off a couple big runs or they like ride Z in the spot.
It's just I'd rather approach it that way.
Minnesota plus two and a half on the road versus Troy again, this one, one of those games generating some of the most buzz of any game this week.
Everyone, again, scratching their heads, why is Detroit minus two and a half? Drive quality has Detroit ninth, Minnesota 10th makes perfect sense to us. Yep. I probably like the lions here. I think it's probably a game that you could probably lie bet and probably get the lines at even a better price.
Oh.
Oh. It's definitely a live be game. Also, just like explosive offenses, bad defenses. The lines are healthy now. I'm Ross Brown is just a machine, especially on lay downs and in key spots. I posted a chart about it on I think last week just about like how his production on third dance, it's like third nine I Ross Brown, 15 yards every time.
But, and he was hurt and that's really when their struggled. Jameson Williams is back. DJ Turcas back. DJ Char adds a vertical threat that they did not have Yeah. Earlier in the season. And Deandre Swift has like some insane splits on or off the injury report and he was finally off the injury report last week.
With that said I think the Vikings have almost, from a market standpoint, have almost it's gotten outta control, but oh, they're 10 and two, but they're frauds type thing. Yeah. The vi gangs are exactly who we thought they were and we've been one of the most stable teams. We've been talking about
this of
the whole season.
I've been think it for weeks and that's good enough in the in this NFC environment to sneak out with a 10 and two. But like they're still stable. They're still good. And like we know it's the same team that in spots in the past four years.
Like we've seen this script so many times. I just I think I have a pretty good sense of what the Vikings are how that like manifests week to week is a totally different question.
People are bidding on the Vikings, despite the line moving in the opposite direction. 72% of the bets, 60% of the handle on the Vikings according to Draft Kings betting splits. But I looked at, again, the betting splits across various vendors and platforms all have most of the bats coming in on the Vikings.
Ravens plus two and a half at Pittsburgh. 37 is the total. Very low. Obviously no Lamar Jackson.
We don't like Pittsburgh, but we've been warming up. Yep.
I've been super cold on a team like the Rav.
Squeaked it out verse the Broncos on one of the final plays of the game. Obviously much tougher defense.
This is gonna be another good live bet game
The Steeler's offense isn't great. Their defense is not as dreadful as they were without DJ Wat it's just, it's ugly.
The Steelers play well, like that's their forte is to win these like ugly games and especially at home.
The line's plummeted as it's become clear that, Lamar Jackson was definitely not gonna play in this game, and they already had, a very hampered offense.
As many kinda anti superlatives that you wanna bring to the table on the Steeler's offense, they've certainly been getting better. And they do just enough. And Kenny Picket is gonna continue to mature, just like you would expect from any rookie quarterback on a game by game basis.
You can't have very static perspective. And in this offense I would potentially be looking into, this is probably not like a super sharp observation. It's probably actually probably pretty square. But, George Pickens shooting his mouth off this week, I was observing it and documenting it and talking about it pretty much all Sunday when we looking at props that George Pickens, wasn't getting any targets and wasn't getting any catches even.
Yeah. And he has been very vocal this week that happened. And he doesn't want that to happen anymore. Yeah. Yeah. Actually, look at, are they gonna potentially try to force the ball to him in some way? The squeaky wheel.
Chiefs minus eight and a half. At Denver always struggle. Verse Denver. On a season by season basis. 44 and a half. The total very high total for a Broncos game.
They're missing court and Sutton they're so bad right now. I just, I don't see, I think the chiefs are gonna get there, 27 points or whatever, and I don't see the Broncos keeping up with more than 14 or so. I like the chiefs here.
. I don't see what, like what angle is there to buy the Bronco. So they'll throw your hands up and say they can't possibly be this bad. Like our draft quality has 'em as the worst offense in the league.
82% of the batts, 79% of the handle according to Draft Kings on the Chiefs.
No one wants to touch the Broncos. Just lean into a potential alt, if the Broncos are really going to just be putrid, right? The offense is not gonna do anything. And if there's gonna be any team that breaks the back of the Broncos defense in the sense of a true, throw your hands up like f this, it could be the Chiefs this week.
And so leaning in to a Chief's minus 16 and a.
The Muslims passing props. I mean it might be at such a premium, but I'm gonna guess if it's nine, eight and a half, it's projecting a downgrade cuz of the Broncos defense and I wanna sell that angle.
Yeah. Although again, like I think the total at 44 again, especially for a Broncos game that is pricing in a lot of a chief's offensive premium scoring there. But again, that's also pricing and then essentially what that the Broncos are still gonna put on the board two touchdowns.
Leaning into chiefs alts chiefs, yeah. Props is the way to play this one.
My panthers. At Seattle, minus four and a half. 44 and a half, Sam, darn off the by rejuvenated, refreshed, healthy as ever. First a vulnerable offense again in a difficult environment. This is another one that I would probably like to lean in. The alt, I'd rather take Panthers minus two and a half, or Seahawks minus nine and a half.
This is also kind a game where the wheels can come off for Arnold. Think, yeah, just like in the, in that environment
it's a bad environment, but it's not necessarily like an opportunistic. So
The Seahawks,
the defense is gonna be good if they can generate some pressure. If they can't, they're very beatable. But Gino's also still playing in a pretty good, he slowed down a bit, but been terrific.
He was awesome on Sunday. Like it's well documented at this point that it's like relatively sustainable.
Yeah. You can't still be arguing it against it here in 14.
Exactly. But there's still this hesitancy to buy the Seahawks and I think they, they clearly have the better offense.
Clearly have the better offense. Sure. But
I also wonder if Kenneth Walker's not playing, how much that tilts him to the. This is an interesting conversation of how the run past ratios, look, there are a lot of question marks in this game. And I think fewer answers that pregame.
Give me an angle to that in one way or
another. Yeah. Pete Carroll surprised me this year and I know there's been a lot of positive things said about their OC this year as well, being responsible for some of the rejuvenation in the offensive game and not being as stubborn about forcing the run game like a Pete Carroll offense typically has done.
And that was one of the reasons why I've been off and wrong early on the Seahawks was because. I thought that there was gonna be more of that. Carol led stubbornness in forcing the run, no matter the situation, no matter the context. Yeah. But in any case, the Panther's defense is awesome. 81% of the bets on the Seahawks.
Everyone loves the Seahawks super easy case to be made. At 44, this actually could be quite high in fact, especially if you think that Sam Darnell could potentially struggle even versus bad defense, unless he's giving up fune fumble sixes and pick sixes under 44, potentially alt under playing this game is something I think could be potentially
attractive.
Yeah, no, I like that.
Bucks at San Francisco, minus three and a half. Niners over under 37, led by again Brock party. Are we gonna get. A similar performance or is that kind of a one off came in, Diva's gonna adjust.
As much as I hate the buck. So I don't think the Niners are a buy here. And also there's almost like this assumption that the Niners are gonna slow down the bucks, but I like because of how bad the buck, they can't get much worse on offense. , I don't think the match is actually so much of a downgrade relative to what their offense has been performing like, and the market's almost pricing that.
Brock pretty introduces a lot of question marks. We've seen a rookie come in spot, like in one spot where the defense didn't prepare for him. I'm not sure he'll be able to have the same success, and I'm like, it's three and a half. It's not a pick line here.
The Niners are clearly the better team. But I, it's not enough to trigger a be here.
I would lean on the buck side in this one, especially over the field goal. I think pretty coming in verse a vulnerable defense, like the dolphins unprepared for him, have no real meaningful tape on him, and now the bucks have a full game, essentially tape on him.
And it's a better defense that I think can create some, cause basically that whole game, we were waiting for Purdy to make a game changing mistake, which he didn't do. So props to him. But I think he's gonna look a lot different versus the Bucks defense.
Another way to attack this game, especially too, would be looking at all unders.
I love all unders. I understand it's already rock bottom 37.
Yeah. Those have been this fast to catch for the 20 sixes. You've been doing that all year.
You discount 10 points off that total. You're out to like plus 400. As long as you're tactical and strategic and you're doing it live, especially you've already seen some of those game strip start to materialize. That gives you a lot of edge. Yeah. To really be able to take advantage of some of those. And so that's something I would definitely be looking at this, especially if you get a very generous early score that kind of pushes this up above some of those kind of traditional key numbers.
40, 41, 42. Ah, that would be a chef's kiss, slam dunk. All unders like 35 and a half.
Dolphins minus three at Chargers at ar, June's Chargers. Arju been dragging the Chargers through the mud this week. Rightfully yep. Is this like by the bounce back from the dolphins here and continue to sell spiraling chargers?
I just I like to think that the two again was an aberration and I recognize my language there is very revealing.
I'd like to think. Yeah. Which says It's an angle. I'll have to be live, but I can't really pull the trigger beforehand.
Tua was arguably playing the best defense in the nfl or maybe the top three defense for sure.
Yeah. And the NFL on the road and Yes. And he missed players, but those players were open. Yeah. That he was
And they were still competitive.
The chargers are weird in these spots.
It's like they show up on Sunday night football and play a great game against the chiefs. I don't know if the good chargers or bad chargers are gonna show up. I do know their defense is dreadful, passing, running. They can get a pass rush. Like I think the thes will be able to score. But Do we have the two of, from the first, it's just again, I'd like to think it's an aberration, but the fact that I'd like to think it is not enough for to trigger a bit.
Yeah. And remember we looked at our market consensus power rings, the fact we were surprised that the dolphins weren't downgraded at all. And that does make a lot of sense why the dolphins would be minus three on the road verse, a Justin Herbert led yeah. And cross country on the other side.
This is the Sunday night game too, so does mitigate some of that element as well.
Lastly, Monday night football, Patriots essentially pick 'em at the Cardinals Drive quality, hates the cardinals, has hated them all season.
Now they're finally have the full roster back.
They've got Hollywood back, they've got De Andree Hopkins back. And what's been the kryptonite of the Patriots defense scrambling quarterbacks. , if Kyle's running. Good point. I just I was bullish on the Cardinals long term, and this is exactly the spot I was bullish on them which is I was waiting for it to happen.
And I think this is the spot where I might come to fruition.
I like it. Huge coaching mismatch. But the market definitely leaning into the Patriots.
According to ff 75% of the tickets, 70% of the cash leaning in to the Patriots. And the Patriots, yeah. Have been wishy-washy. Sometimes they look good, sometimes they look great, sometimes they look terrible. And as you pointed out, specifically against quarterbacks that are inclined to run
. I definitely like that angle. Again, I think the coaching mismatch still makes me a little bit hesitant. Yeah. Although I
think that's schematic more so than decision making which, Perfectly covered plays against, this is the classic sta like they, they cardinals for 20 19, 20 20, and 2021.
All worse than the league ER is constantly coming coverage. I think that's a symptom of what you point out as Cliff Kingsbury being a a poor coordinator. I don't think he's been so terrible in the decision making and be like, actually hasn't been particularly good. How that how the game plans work obviously is up for question.
And that's where I think the coaching difference would mostly manifest. But that's why we bet
life.
And this is gonna be a difficult week. Gonna be, a shorter slight than typical with six teams on by Falcons, bears, Packers, Colts, saints, and Washington.
All on by. So definitely this is one of those weeks that we've talked about like a compressed. Schedule
all right. Good stuff. Thanks everyone for listening. Please come join us on our live beddings game, trade stream on Sunday, come with ideas. We're gonna jump on at noon Eastern. And if we don't, it's, it's my fault since June. Wakes up at like 7:00 AM .
That's right. The adrenaline of a fall Sunday morning. There's nothing like
it. Yes. All right. Thanks everyone. That's closing bell.
