Episode Transcript
NFL Week 5 market outlook. We are 13 and seven, 65%, In our Circa contest. We started off the season four and one and we've been three and two every subsequent week. I think we're sitting pretty, but this is where it starts to get tough.
We were way more attuned to who some of these teams were gonna be.
At least in the beginning of the season. And we were able to capitalize on that. But now the market's caught up to a lot of those things and the margin for actually capturing some of that alpha just gets more and more difficult. Yeah. And then now we're also gonna start to get buys coming up here as well.
So the slate's gonna be shorter, less opportunity, prices are gonna be more accurate. Just really difficult. Yeah. So
I think that's a really great intro of a general framework of the betting season.
To me it's like the first four weeks are, test your off season hypotheses against what the market's saying. And like the next four to six weeks are really bad. How do. Quantify the change, right? And like how are you gonna adjust and build in still like holding onto some off season prior, but also accounting for the new information that's coming in.
Because you can't just be holding onto the off season data and you can't just be diving fully in. And it's like managing that change and seeing what's real, what's built in, what did we actually know from the off season and from the early weeks and know what has like fundamentally shifted, right?
It's a very helpful framework I think going into the next, four, six weeks
thinking about our off season priors and how they played out over the first four weeks and how we may adjust those over the next four weeks is, I can't really think of anything.
That we've been like dramatically wrong about Oh, we need to flip the script on this and we need to do it fast because we're losing money, fading this team, or betting on this team and it's just not playing out properly. Even the Eagles, for instance, like we weren't red hot on the Eagles. But we definitely allowed for that potential outcome to be there. Sure. It just wasn't something that we were necessarily gonna be betting on. Yeah. All right, maybe Jalen hurts is good.
Maybe he's not, We don't know yet. Yeah. And that's something that we need to Yeah. We still don't know. Yeah. And that's the other thing is, yeah. Is the market overshooting on some expectations now. Things that we may wanna take advantage of, or even undershoot.
These are the questions we have to ask, which is like, how is the market pricing gonna change versus how much has fundamentally actually changed?
And that's where you, that's where you get the alpha. And at this point of the.
And to just quickly reflect on that week four, so in our circuit picks as we can show on the screen here, we had the Browns, we're talking about, trying to grade our handicaps here. The one thing that makes me a little bit disappointed in picking the Browns was, I know at the very end of the week you had mentioned you started getting cold feet on this pick.
And that you ended up not even betting it didn't better at all. Yeah. And that's a misstep because I know like at this time last week, we both liked the Browns, for a pretty strong fundamental thesis. Are June liked it.
I loved their handicap. But then, those injuries started to trickle in and that was something that all of us were going back and forth with a little bit around, is this something we still want? Exposure to.
We talked constantly about the two sided dcs, I was certainly on board with the brown side early in the week. And then like once I saw or after Garrett got onto the car crash and cloudy was real bad, I was like, Oh, I'm not so sure now. And the other thing was like, relative to the market, I'm still, I think pretty bullish on the Falcons, right?
I've been beating the drum that I think Arthur Smith's brilliant play designer, I think that actually showed this week and his run designs where he was constantly ripping off trunk gains. I have a little bit of regret, not of leaning into the fact that like I'm still higher on the Falcons than most.
And I truly should have been a ing for that in. A game, that was basically a pick.
I still don't mind the Browns pick, cuz I think the handicap on it was still very sound. And one of the things we'll get into is our drive quality scoreboard. Where we assess game by game, evaluate the quality of each teen's, drive over the course of the game, assign them earned points, and see how that aggregates up and see what the outcome of that is.
And you gotta get a sense of, what was really happening underneath that final score. And it's pretty clear too, the Falcons did not play well No. In that game. A few things here or there, the Browns win this game, cover this game. That's why I don't regret the pick.
From a handicapping perspective, I would grade this as a b plus. My only. Caveat there is just the yellow flags of, all right, the handicap has changed from Wednesday to Friday. Do we wanna account for that? And then on the other side of the ball, yeah, that was a team that we still were bullish on over the over the course of the season, certainly in the front half of the season.
And then one of the things we were talking about last week was the quality of play the quality of competition that the Browns have played this season. Which has been some of the easiest. Yeah. And so I think for those reasons, I think maybe just Oh, is there potentially another opportunity? So I give this a v plus.
Yeah. I give it a B minus for the reasons I'd outlined.
And again, we still only missed it by basically a yard. Exactly. ,
this game could have played out
very differently. Yeah.
Jas plus six and a half was our other loser. I'll still grade this handicap I'm gonna say with a b plus as well, Maybe a little bit too early to lean into the Jags verse a very.
Top quality team still on the road in questionable weather. We knew the weather could potentially be a little bit dicey. It just kept getting worse, the projections, and it turned out to be a pretty sloppy game. But I would bet it again, we were off to a 14, nothing lead there.
Just one of those kind of Trevor Lawrence turnovers just doesn't turn into a turnover. Yeah. They drive the ball a little bit. They were moving the ball. How many turns? They have four or five turnovers and they still yeah. Still within striking distance. And we still only didn't cover this game by a point and a half.
If anything, I am upgrading the Jax Yeah. After
that game. Yeah. I would give this an a minus also. We spoke about this, about wanting to be ahead of the curve, which is like the narrative was eagles are the best team in the nfl and like the Jag's narrative was, Oh, we need one week by our numbers.
This team was every bit as good, if not better than the Eagles, and it wasn't because of the poor competition they faced. I wanna be ahead in a game like that. The eagles are pretty good.
I'm still not ready to call them elite. I would definitely bet this again.
And then we close out with Chiefs, Jets, Chargers. To end that week three and two. Chiefs is an a plus. I was gonna say, you better give me an a plus . Especially again, I think this is like the second week in a road leaning in. To the line, getting smashed down your throat, in the opposite direction and just saying, Give it to me baby.
Keep coming at me. That's right. And the chiefs just sailed, passed the bucks in that game. And covered your alt outline. This is a game like out of all your ALT outlines so far on a season to date basis. This was the one that I still be it . Yeah. But I was like less comfortable about it cause I'm like, Man, it's gonna be tougher.
The chiefs just blow out the books. That was a awesome bet, an awesome
handicap. Yeah, for all the reasons we outlined earlier, like the market was pricing these two teams for what they were last year and what the off season suggested.
And the bucks have taken a huge step back and I think the chiefs have taken a step forward at least relative to the rest of the league. Giving myself an A plus. I'm not sure I'll have another A plus all year.
This was definitely it.
You keep saying that every week, but then you keep getting another A plus, so Okay. Eventually it on that.
Jets plus three. I'll give this one a b plus because the Jets hung tough. , and that's what we expected.
The handicap I think is an eight plus because it actually played out exactly the way that we thought it could potentially play out. Like it's not gonna be easy. Yeah. It's probably gonna be ugly. We're still betting on a bad team here versus another bad team because we don't like to do. Yeah.
But the whole handicap was Zach Wilson's gonna introduce some pretty wild variants. It's gonna increase the distribution of outcomes. And it's gonna increase the ones that would cover plus three. Yeah. In our favor. And what I loved about this as well as in circa Jets was the 30th most popular pick.
I'll take a play out of what I think is your playbook here, which is I wanted to exactly fade the narrative that oh, Zach Wilson was bad in his rookie year.
He's going on the road in his first game against a aggressive defense who generates a lot of turnovers. I really wanted to fade that narrative. I'm ready to say no. Zack Wilson's gonna take a step up in year two, especially with better wide receivers. Garrett Wilson has been absolutely amazing and like I've been fading the Steelers defense from week one. No it's a bunch of luck.
On the turnover side. They're probably not gonna be able to do it year over year. This is a bad defense. And for all the reasons you, you outlined about Z Wells and introducing more positive variance I thought this was also a b plus.
This is another angle and betting strategy and positioning strategy that we wanna make sure we continue to lean into. When we're evaluating match ups, it's like we need to make sure we capture what is the narrative driving this game.
If you're betting the Steelers, why are you betting the Steelers? And if you're betting the Jets, why are you betting the Jets? And when we fundamentally disagree with a thesis, cuz, we don't do that all the time. Sometimes you like, Yeah, I understand that. Yeah, I understand that. But when the thesis could just be like so wrong, it's wow.
If that's why you're betting the Steelers, then give me. As much jet exposure as I can get. I think those are the types of things we wanna continue to keep at the top of our head where we're evaluating these matchups and then closed out with chargers. This one turned out to be much more difficult than it otherwise had to be, but still, classic Chargers on our live game trade.
We're sitting there pretty comfortable. I think even when the Texans were out, up to plus 22 and a half or whatever, I was like, ah, maybe should we take a little bit of Texans? I guys don't trust the Chargers. And I was like, Nah, the Texans are bad. Yeah, the Texans are bad, but it's just like the charges just let teams creep.
Yeah, you had the right play there. I was the one be like no. The Texans are bad. Texans are bad. They're not moving the ball. You were definitely right on that one.
And then we ended up having to sweat it in
the end. We had a seven minutes of sweat.
And then again, like the Chargers did the adult thing, which they should do, is we are the better team. Exactly. We are better coached, we have more talent, let's pull away. Yeah. And they did. But that's not really in their DNA to do that. And luckily they were playing a bottom two team. Yeah.
But this is something I wanna continue to be careful about and cautious about betting these chargers especially given that they're more vulnerable today than, they have been in the past with some of the injuries that they're dealing with. I know they have an elite quarterback and I know he mitigates a lot of the injuries that they have, but I think it's just still something you wanna be careful about.
For sure. Betting the charges. And actually I'll give, but I'll give this handicap. Probably a b plus, a minus in that range. The reason I slid Chargers in is cuz I was going back and listening to our handicaps on this stream from last week. And you were pretty clear and defiant that this line is off.
It should be charge seven. Charge seven is fair, five is mispriced. And some of the other games that we had in our preliminary pool that at the end of the week you didn't have the same conviction on. know, And so it's like just the, me being like the portfolio manager here being able to make sure like I'm capitalizing on the research and analysis that, you're providing and making sure that, benefits us both.
Cuz sometimes it's always suck so much when those slip through the cracks. Yeah. That's already happened a few times this season where it's oh, if we just went be went back and listened to ourselves Yeah.
Probably would've had elevated that pick even higher. Yeah. I think this was a very strong handicapping week, despite going three and two. Something just didn't go our way.
I'm also very pumped that we went three and two because one of the things how we framed last week's handicapping was. Man, we're really off market. This week we're like fading a lot of public plays.
Like a lot of people like disagree with the way we're positioning. Like we're taking the other side of a lot of kind of very popular trades. Yeah. And it turned out to be week four was a very public consensus success story week. Yeah. So it was one of the worst weeks for the books usually that if you're a sharper better, that means you probably underperformed.
Yeah. And we can look at our crowded position dashboard, which basically highlights some of those matchups where the public were really leaning in to certain matchups. And right off the bat, right on that early morning Sunday you were on tilt, you were talking about Right, Right away.
Cuz it's like that 50% of the circuit pool had the Vikings. And they squeak out the cover. They were one of the most popular picks in circa one of the most crowded positions according to our dashboard. They're in the number one survivor pick. It was just like everyone was pounding Bikings. None of them deserved the cover, and it would've been so sweet for them to earn their reward with a nice fat juicy L.
But then they got lucky and the public pretty much just went pretty much cruises across the board. Cowboys was another very crowded position. They won and covered easily. And then the same thing with the Cardinals. And pretty much all the way down the line. It was pretty much all public covers.
Yeah. So I'm glad you were able to squeak out. Find a three and two amidst that. Rubble.
That's right.
Also We are trading early NFL games every Sunday. We've been doing really well. One of you can see at the bottom of the screen some of the trades that we made on Sunday.
One of the things I highlighted in our NFL Sunday NFL opening battle newsletter was to look for an opportunity to lean into the quote Colts plus points. That's exactly what we did on the Stream Live. We said, lean in to Titans at the beginning of the game knowing that the Titans have historically over the course of the season start out very hot and one of the hottest teams when it comes to those scripted plays.
Turnover helped that case even more in this game. And so the cols were like very quickly bang down, 14 points. And then, as you can see at the bottom of the screen, we leaned into cold plus seven, which was uncomfortable but ended up getting the push and we also got Colts plus 14, and then we also took advantage of some of those unders.
That was another thing that you highlighted in some of your notes, Judah as well, is, hey, if this game starts out hot, which we think it potentially could be, because again, the titans start off hot with those scripted plays and this total jumps get some exposure to that under, and that played out as well.
Yep.
Not only is it a lot of fun and profitable so far. But I'm sure you'll learn
something. Yeah. It is super fun.
It's fun to engage with folks. Dan's in there pretty much every week one of our Dan r number one fans and RJ Yeah. And our June is in there providing us with ideas and commentary and thoughts and help us better craft our bets and make sure that we're making those, proper live decisions.
And live bedding is one of the toughest skill sets. To have, because you don't have this oh five, six days of handicapping. You need to go in with a plan. You need to be able to execute under pressure and be able to put those plans into practice and have the moxi and the determination to be able to do that and to be able to capitalize, on the handicapping prowess and the IP that we think that we have at our disposal.
And so far, we've been able to do that, all season, and looking forward to, another one this coming Sunday. And then lastly, just a close on last week, here's our drive quality scoreboard. Again, evaluating each team's drive, assigning them some earned points for the quality of that drive, and then aggregating those points into another alternative score.
But we also have some other metrics on here, including time weighted average margin. So looking at what was the team's lead, or what was the team's deficit multiplied by the time that they held that leader deficit which can give you a sense of how much that team was winning or losing by over the course of the game.
It helps flesh out some of those otherwise misleading scores where there's a huge ramp up in scoring, or a team pulls away in the final minutes where there's a pick six that was of meaningless in the end. This kind of can give you a more accurate sense of how competitive that team really was in, in that matchup.
And we also have the time weighted average win probability. Again, taking that same methodology, just using the win probability. These give you a way more accurate sense of how that game played out. So just another alternative statistic that helps give you a sense of how some of these games played out. And this is something that we'll be posting more often on Twitter.
I know Judah, you're gonna talk about it in your weekly reflections note, so everyone checked that out as well. But, kinda looking at this drive quality scoreboard, does anything stick out to you ju to
Yeah, A couple things. First is the Broncos Raiders game, which I think there was a, it was 10 10, the Broncos were driving and there was a 65 yard fumble return which I think shifted the game, but the Raiders won by, what was it, 10, 11. They didn't even cover that eight and a half teaser leg that I know a bunch of people were on. It was like, I heard a podcast basically talking about like the Broncos and it's Okay, are we off board? And everyone unanimously was like, Yeah, I'm ready to sell.
I wouldn't be too jumpy on that. Something also that I think is pretty interesting is the Broncos and Cardinals both didn't play their preseason starters at all. Both got wall up in week one, one, the Cardinals like actually got destroyed by the Chiefs in the second. As the Broncos put up a stinker against Seattle.
All this is to say everyone's ready to jump off the Broncos all an account of this week, and I don't think that's actually reasonable or fair. Especially I would not be using, this past week as evidence to sell.
And our drive quality scoreboard essentially says this game was tied 27 to 27 time weight average margin was just minus two.
So indicating that this is a very tight game. The final score of the double digit win is misrepresent of 30 20.
The quality of the drives that these team two teams put together. So yeah, the, there's reasons to potentially not be hot on the Broncos, but if you're doing it off this game, that's unjustified.
There's some like other spreading scores here.
I'm not sure too many actual takeaways. Like Packers. Patriots, for instance. 29, 21. I would not have guessed. It seemed like the Patriots were in control there for most of the game. And even the Eagles, Jaguars really looks like a lot more of a blowout,
Just by how that was the biggest surprising one to me.
Yeah. As well. But what I think that's taking in consideration is in both those games you just highlighted, both those teams had pick six s exactly. Which potentially, altered, that score and then they just didn't really put together any meaningfully great offensive drives.
Especially that pick six in the Patriots game totally changed the outcome of that. Probably changed the way the Packers were offensively gonna continue to play. Their game
And then as we talked about earlier, this again, bringing merit to it, this, drive quality scoreboard, showing the Browns winning 23 to 22, but it's still being a close game.
Alrighty, let's get into NFL Week five. So it'd start off with bears Vikings, Bears plus seven. Hard to bet the Vikings. I They continued to overwhelm. Weaken week out.
Didn't look good last week. Versus Saints haven't looked good pretty much all season except for maybe the first half versus the Packers.
I don't think you can take either side here. I think your vi stake is spot on to who betting on Justin Fields and the Bears off. Like it's an adventure to get to 17 points every week.
The fields is passing, prop is being set at 150 every week for good reason. Like even as say what you know about fields, like the surrounding talent is as bad as it gets. The Vikings have done. What the Vikings do, which is just underwhelmed and show flashes of brilliance. And I have no idea if that flash is gonna come this week.
I'm staying away. .
Yeah. It's like the seven could be superficially attractive that I feel like any kind of square, sharp bears out there. A, it's a division game. The Vikings, it's still Kirk Cousins. Kirk Cousins has historically, played clunky games versus the Bears, even with some pretty big spreads.
But I think it's just getting way too cute, trying to take the bears here, plus seven. As, as much as the Vikings have underwhelmed, they at least look like a professional football team. Yeah. A professional offense that can score points and still have the best wide receiver in the game. And it's certainly competent enough quarterback that can show flashes.
Yeah. And the bears have none of them.
I'm looking right now to see what price you can get on an alt line, because this at least is I'd be willing to sprinkle something because there's a real angle of as I just said the Vikings can hit a ceiling game especially against the bad Bear, Steve Defense and I don't know how the bears are scoring reports.
Maybe I would take a little bit of a caution say that's pretty unanimous is that the Bears are a bottom two or three team, if not the worst team.
And the Bears haven't been blown out yet this season. They always kinda hang around in these kind of really ugly games.
Who was their, who were their week two and three opponents? Packers, Packers, and Packers was a bit of a blow.
The ba the Packers pulled away, but the bears were up seven zip.
And then, Fields didn't get the touchdown on like the one yard line. They ended up with no points.
Yeah. Also, like they've played the Texans, the Giants, and the Niners with Lance and the Monsoon.
Yes. So this is why, if anything, if the price is being pushed down on that logic. I had actually faded that.
We just haven't seen like that spark, that optimism that was there after that first game. There's been no follow through. But maybe it circles back. Cause one of the things I wanted to mention too is thinking back to our pre-season previews, is looking at those power rankings and the ups and the downs and the ups and the downs, and the reversions back to some of those initial pre-season expectations that would happen from time to time and people just jumping ship off entire meaningful, substantive narratives of certain teams off just, yeah, two back to back weeks of bad performances and oh, I guess we were wrong and flip the script.
Yeah. I don't have any good reason to think that like Kevin McConnell's actually made meaningful changes, right? It's the same run pass ratios the same like Justin Jefferson, it was a one, one week anomaly of him being lined up on online backers and safeties. That was, at least for me, my take of this fundamentally changed that hasn't actually turned into anything meaningful.
I see the seven is less meaningful in a game at which I think one of the teams is gonna have a very difficult time scoring. But it's hard to back Minnesota considering they really haven't shown anything.
But if you're a better, who is attracted to Minnesota in this match up playing the alt line, it's probably gonna give you the
best bang for your buck.
Yeah. If you have good reason to think Minnesota will hit their ceiling outcome which I think is actually larger this week than it would be any other week. Bet the alt line.
Lions plus three at New England. Detroit still banged up. Patriots now looks like Hoya's probably gonna be out, especially with all the sensitivity around concussions right now and not wanting to make a fool yourself.
So it looks like it's gonna be The rookie quarterback was zappy. He didn't look bad, even looks good in certain flashes. Verse a tough packers defense. Opened two and a half and now it's been pushed to three. Detroit on the road, they played in domes all season, half their games at home.
It's ostensibly the worst defense. Maybe not just in the nfl, but maybe in history of the NFL at this point in time. Ver obviously it's still extremely well coached Patriots team that's gonna wanna run the ball, milk the clock, take advantage and exploit all the weaknesses that Detroit has to offer.
I need to really need to see the lion's injuries here. That's the real answer. But I. I don't think that zappy is the type of quarterback who'll be able to take advantage of the lion's weakness on defense. If there were ever a game where the lion's defense can perform okay, it's against, Zappy and the Patriots.
But there, there's a big question mark on whether or not to buy the offense exactly in this spot for all the reasons you mentioned, like they can playing in domes they're very hurt. Going up against the Patriots is still spooky, even though I think they're probably just like average to maybe slightly below league average.
Yeah, I agree with that. I don't really know. It, it seems a little icky to back to lines in the spot. Like I feel like I'll have better options, but if I find that like the rest of this week is disgusting, I actually really don't mind backing the lines, leaning into our numbers and saying No, this offense is really good and Zappy does not have the capability of taking advantage of the lines defense cause like no matter how you slice it, and even with the injuries, I guess LA last week.
They still put up, 40 points, they're still putting up 40 points every week. So like I'd lean into that and the angle that like zappy iss not be able to take advantage of the lion's defense.
maybe this could be a potentially sneaky attractive under what is it, 46 and a half right now?
Yeah. 45 and a half for exactly what you're talking about. And also I just don't think, be check's even gonna put the ball in Z's hands, for them.
Cause that's what he's been prone to do, especially with the, their younger quarterbacks, is just lean into the run game, lean into the offensive line, milk the clock, try to score just enough points and just get the game over with and get out with a victory. For that reason, maybe three is not attractive. I definitely don't see the lion score another 40 points in the elements. Yeah. Versus the Bill Bell check defense.
That's not a elite, but it's
competent. Yeah. I think this is, and the way you're framing it is a good lion jump out to a lead that lions live basically saying Z's not gonna bring him back, but if they're able to lean on the run, maybe it's a Patriots side. Yeah. And they'll continue to expose the lions and it could be a Patriot side in and under where like they just hold clock and milk the game that
way.
This is another one that looks like it's gonna be a very crowded position so far. Near my kinda, anecdotal market assessment. I haven't heard any handicaps coming out and saying that they like the lions at all. It's all Patriots, really? You? Yeah.
Ooh. I was offline today I missed a
bunch of it.
The dominant narrative off that lion's loss to the Seahawk is, oh my gosh, they lost the Seahawks. Oh my gosh, this defense is absolutely miserable. Now we're gonna go play Bill Belichick and the Patriots just almost beat the backers. I think that's the narrative, and this is a short line, certainly attractive.
Yeah. This is making me like the lines a little more. Okay. I kind of wanna trust our numbers. I need to run what our model says this game should be. But I wanna trust our numbers in a spot like this. . Which is like heavy narrative pushing against it. What does data with a little bit of context say?
Yep.
Seahawks at New Orleans plus five and a half. I think this opened closer to a touchdown. So Seahawks getting bid looks like it's gonna be Andy Dalton again. Saints also still banged up. I think it's gonna be no. Michael Thomas. .
I'm not taking anything from this game, I don't think, only because first off, the market's not like pricing a massive they've moved up on the Seahawks but are not saying this is a three which is of keeping me off the saint side, right?
I also think the five and a half is probably a lot with an offense run by nd Dalton, right? It's just it's going to be hard for them to continue to extend leads, which is the thing you could say about James Winston is that like you could, throw a 60 yard touchdown, pass the Chris o la like that boom, extend the lead for Dalton.
It's gonna be drive after drive, and you need to stack up four or five of those to really build the lead. And I'm still waiting to see, I don't really have a good read on the Seahawks, so I'm not really excited to bet that side. Or bet against them.
Yeah. Cuz is impressive as some of their offensive outings have been.
And then you also have a game like that versus the Niners. Yeah. Where, they essentially scored zero offensive points. Yeah. And
I still think the saints, the events is very good. They're at home. I, I just don't, I don't like, I don't have a good enough read.
Yeah. It's very hard to follow through for a Pete Carro coach team to have some like really good offensive games and that it becomes like a sustainable trend.
Then there's always this dud of a game. Like in between . Yeah. Because he abandons whatever was working. Yeah. That happened throughout the Russell Wilson years all the time. I could definitely see that happening here. I wouldn't betten Saints probably under any circumstance, so just allowing for the possibility.
Maybe we're wrong about the Seahawks, Maybe this offense is coming together a little bit more so than we anticipated. They still have stud by receivers. Yeah. And there's a lot of positive talk about, Seahawks play calling and, oc and maybe P Carroll's, letting him do his thing.
But I don't know if I necessarily wanna bet on that either.
That's exactly right.
Dolphins minus three on the road at our New York Jets. I think we've met twice this season already. . That's right. In the four weeks and one both times.
Obviously this seems like the market is giving a big downgrade to the, with no tu. You talked last week heading into that Bengals game, you thought that was a downgrade? Yeah. Was there anything that you saw in that game that might change that? Or how are you seeing this game? I think
it's a marginal downgrade.
So less of a downgrade than you thought?
Meaning the market's pressing it. A I think this game is six and a half with Tua. Sex with Tua. . That's too big of a move, I think. But I'm also a little bit higher on the Jets than I think the market is. So it evens out. I would be intrigued by the Jets if it was like five and a half, six I don't think I can pull it on three. , right? Like the Dolphins did just beat the bills. They did just beat the Ravens. They hung with the best of the best.
The jets are not that. And for all the reasons we were backing Zach Wilson last week, you can say the exact same thing of why we shouldn't back them this week, which is he introduces so much variance and I like he could just go like eight of 16 with two picks on the first half. And the jets are like falling behind and done.
Yeah.
Also, Jets pit was a two-sided handicap. Yeah. The type of thing that we're looking for. Yeah. It was a play on the Jets and it was a play off the Steelers. Those are the strongest. Yeah.
The fact that the Jets were three and a half point underdogs against the Steelers and now are going against the Dolphins tells me everything I need to know.
Even in, just the Zack Wilson and Variance. There's so many examples of it in that pit game. There was even a point in time on our live stream where I was talking about Oh, this is why we liked the Jets. It was because of the Z Wilson variance that as I was saying it, he throws a pick I was negative on
third, on like third down or whatever it was.
But I think the Jets are gonna be a bet on team. Oh yeah. This
season. Oh yeah. I just wish this line seems sharp to me and I wish it weren't.
The other thing is maybe the Dolphins defense is of like sneaky good.
I think,
Oh, this is actually this. This leads me to, to an interesting point. The thing we've always said about the Dolphins on offense, which is like they're gonna do well in matchups. I do think the jets have a pretty good secondary. And like the Dolphins still play a ton of man coverage and the jets are really good at beating man coverage.
Gary Wilson's probably been the best separater in the league so far. . And like Elijah Moore is still, like his production's not showing up so the fantasy guys aren't happy. He's still really good. Cory Davis is still a really good number three receiver.
And I think they, Offensive coordinator, scheming skiing guys open. Yeah. So this is the type of, this is the type of offense that could be, man. Highly ENT game.
Yeah. It's probably one, two a avoid. We haven't found anything here so far, so we might get, be getting desperate. Falcons plus nine on the road at Tampa off getting blasted by the Chiefs.
The Falcons are now four. Oh Ats. Dan is asking did the Bucks take a step back or did they just play. Better quarterback's.
not
I think they take a step back. But you can talk about that another time.
Did they take enough of a step back to not be able to cover the nine versus Atlanta? No, I think quarter old Patterson is out. They were
still, they were still running the ball easily.
They were still running the ball easily in that game. Yeah. But now you're playing the run the ball. It's defense.
Yeah. And also ch pairs is not just about running the ball. Like he adds like different dimension. They weren't using
fast catcher, that's what's weird.
They weren't using him that way. But he still offers the threat of that. And I think defenses understand that, know that plan for that.
That can open up other opportunities. These running backs are not gonna do that. No, and one of the things we were talking about in off season previews. Oh, this dynamic between Marietta and Patterson, again, it didn't necessarily play out as explosive, but Patterson certainly did put, has put together some really great fantasy games this season.
I think that's a is a meaningful loss. I know normally you don't like to downgrade eh, who cares, like who the running back is. But I think it does matter in this instance. Again, Falcons four and oh, so the, that means the market's been mispricing Falcons, something we expected. At some point.
There's gotta be a correction.
Game's also really tough for me. I think on a fundamentals level, I like the Falcons at nine for sure. For sure. Tampa Bay is still being priced in as the team they were last year, and I have my debts they. But the Falcons really match up terribly with the box, which is the Falcons have really been leading on, chunk plays in the run game and the box for, what is it, three years now.
I've had one of the best run defenses in football. It's not a matchup I'm necessarily willing to bet on. And the falcons are so bad in past defense, especially on like past rush that I can see the bucks given issues. With that said, I don't know if the Bucks have the offense that's capable of, beating a team by 10 easily.
I'm not necessarily sold on the box, being able to build and extended lead. I would've loved this spot had I not watched last, Sunday night football where the receivers are back for the box and the offense looked competent.
I'm not touching Falcons. I think the nine is superficially attractive. It's a four oh team against the spread.
A team that has proven that it can score points, and now you're getting almost double digits verse a team that is led by a 46 year old quarterback who's going through a divorce. They just got blown out by the chiefs. They're dealing with all these injuries, all the things that you just talked about.
Whereas the Bucks just showed that they can score. 25, 30 points. They're only gonna get. There was no meaningful injuries from that game. On the offense perspective. They weren't able to run the ball. And one of the things that we saw, the bucks mature. Maybe it wasn't last year, maybe it was two years ago when they were running the ball at all the inopportune times and then they shifted and now it took the bye week to do that.
Yeah. But Falcon's defense is still not great. Falcons are now on the road. Offensively potent, yes. But now also missing a key star versus a buck defense. Still top five for sure. I wish it trended more closer, like to that seven. This is one that I would like the alt line for the box. Minus 16 and a half. Blowing them, Blowing 'em out. Yeah. We haven't seen that performance yet from the books, but this is as good as any opportunity to do that.
Yeah. I'm not sure I'm ready to chase that, but I hear it.
Otherwise you're saying the Falcons are gonna be five and Oh, ats
Yeah. Tough.
Yeah. Titans minus two and a half on the road verse the coms man.
These are two teams that the market is way down on. But even still, this is just how far down the market is on the commanders. It was three. So there was some buyback. On Washington, this is one. Maybe you're trying to catch a falling knife on Washington. This might be like that square, sharp play. Now I think Dotson is hurt for Washington. This is not one that I just don't know if you can vet Washington yet. There's just not been like anything positive to see
If we combine their offensive and defensive drive quality metrics, Washington is 32nd best in the league.
And that passes the eye test.
Yeah,
They've been dreadful aside from that week one game where Wence was hitting some deep bombs.
Like we talked about in the preseason preview was talking about if you're gonna play the Jags, you wanna play the Jags Early in Washington got week one. Yeah. And they still almost lost.
Yeah. , they frustrating
As a jag's futures backer in hindsight,
but Oh yeah. I think But we have plenty of opportunities to cover that. Yeah.
I'm not betting this game, but I we're really running up thin in circa
Yeah. Where it's think Titans could be potentially. Cause it's a comfortable line. Minus two and a half under the field goal.
So it could potentially be popular for that just cuz there's so much negative sentiment on Washington in Tennessee's been, I mean they could score points. I mean we know they can score points right on the first drive of the game . So it's like they're basically in a front with a said zero lead. So if I say, all right Tennessee starts off seven zip
then do you like Tennessee? Minus two and a half. I don't like it
cuz camp back, you certainly can't back Washington. But also like the thesis has not changed. I would not be surprised to see Carson, Wes throw, two 60 yard touchdowns this week and like just when everyone is like ready to hop off the winds variance train like it swings right.
Yeah, I think they're gonna be missing Dotson too. So that's the are gonna missing dot They still have Samuel and they still have
Exactly, they still have McLaren. Yeah. And like they use Gibson Will as a receiver. Tennessee's not good enough for me to use the, Okay. Washington has been really bad.
Yeah. You can't bet Tennessee not in the contest. Because worst case scenario is you try to get a little clever with Tennessee and then it turns out to be a popular pick, and then you really feel like a bonehead. Yeah.
I can't think you either side of this, there are better options, but Washington is definitely not gonna be a popular pick, especially if it's at two and a half.
No. And if you wanted Alpha, it's gonna be with Washington. Yeah. You could also feel like a bone head if they just get demolished,
that wins. Yeah. Yeah. Betting on cresent winds, I could possibly go wrong.
Chargers at Cleveland. This was three for a while, and now it's gone under, So Chargers now minus two and a half road favorites.
Two and a half is definitely more attractive than three, of course, but on the road, you can't trust them.
I trust them. You trust them. Especially in a thin week like this there's a huge disparity in quarterbacks huge.
The Browns defense has been really bad. This is also
one I wrote up this week, and they played super easy competition
so far, and they played incredibly easy competition. So far, I'm not exactly sure that it's being priced into the market. I just don't see a Jacobi Brice Brown team in the same series as the Chargers.
Especially if the charters getting healthy okay, Slate and Bo are done. That's bad. That's gonna hurt them. Luckily they still have, Al Mac who will cause disruption. He's gonna be matching up against Dedrick Willis. That's definitely a favorite to Coel Mac. Rashan Slater bad injury.
Justin in Herbert of all quarterbacks, doesn't matter as much. Getting Key and Allen back though, that would be huge. Getting JC Jackson back and a little healthier, also big for their secondary.
Do we know if any of those Browns injuries from last week are still gonna be lingering and creeping into That's, No, that's the
other thing.
That was the other thing. I initially saw Miles G or two to four weeks, but I don't know if that's
That's true. Looking at that car he was in, you think he beat out for the season? I don't know if you saw the picture of the car he was in. I didn't see.
Adam sch reported over the weekend injuries expected to hinder him for the next two to
four weeks. No, Garrett, that's definitely gonna mitigate some of those offensive line weakness.
Yeah. And like their interior is brutal.
, they're allowing like the 30th worst, the, rush epa, the chargers are always gonna be able to pass if you can build in, this is a sticky point. If you can build in that, they'll also be successful running, which takes a lot of pressure I think off of Herber to do everything.
I just like the Chargers, I think are gonna score a ton of points and I don't think Jacob re said it has an in him to stay with the Chargers.
I like that angle also, cuz the narrative I'm hearing on this game right now is we know the Browns are great at running the ball.
They're one of the best teams running the ball. Our junior is out there, been talking about how the Browns are, better from an EPA perspective running the ball than most teams are passing the ball. And all the chargers, that was their Achilles heel last year. They got shredded on the ground and I think that narrative is leaking into this year and all the Browns are gonna meaningfully exploit that.
And I think, moving from three to two and a half, that's a big move.
It's a very big move. It's the biggest half point move
there is. So if we disagree with that narrow is a little bit misaligned and we're saying we're getting the better quarterback actually under a field goal.
Not just a better quarterback. Way better quarterback, way better. There's a huge gap .
, I think also, Yeah. The Ken Allen news is big. If Ken Allen's playing. We know Miles Garrett's not playing. I think that might be the clincher enough for me, especially if it stays under the field goal in a week where so far we haven't found anything to like.
All right. Niners at the Panthers, nine is almost minus a full touchdown. Minus is six and a half. Our friend Joe has been very vocal on Twitter this week, defending his boy Baker Mayfield. He has to do it every week, but he's got some merit. He's, again, I think the, everyone blaming Mayfield for everything that's going wrong with the Panthers is also not a correct narrative.
Joe might have a great point, but. He's modernizing the player here, regardless of how effective he actually is in isolation, is totally irrelevant in trying to predict, the Carolina Panther's production trying to save Baker Mayfield's reputation is nice, but to see if any angles to say that they're gonna produce better.
Like all of the reasons, all the faults that he's saying are not actually baker's are very well attributable to the Carolina offense and there's no reason to think that. Oh, that's automatically gonna just change. Yeah, there's some like really damning stat that I looking at like perfectly covered plays and how actually a lot of it is a function of the offense more so than the defense.
Like Cliff Kingsbury for instance, when I was looking in the off season ranked top three every single year and the Panthers are like facing a perfectly covered play at 60 to 3% of the time. It's a function of three things. One, you're like offensive scheme, two, how good your receivers are, and three, the defenses you play, but they're like 12% more than any other offense.
I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that. Ben Mac do their offensive coordinator. Yeah. That's not changing, right? Baker made feels throwing into tight windows and not having many good options. It's not really changing. There are legitimate reasons to think like the Panther's offense is absolute garbage
One of the reasons why there's this army of, Twitter haters on in Joe's threads nonstop is because that narrative is pretty well accepted by the market. Because I don't think there's anyone out there trying to defend the Panthers or Baker Mayfield besides Joe.
Yeah.
I've been betting, I've Panthers in the off season. I've written up, same game parlays betting on the Panthers each of the last two weeks. I'm every bit on the train. I'm even gonna make a case now for why I don't think they're a terrible bet.
So you're gonna make a case for Panthers plus six and a half?
Yeah. I see this game as like a real defensive struggle. Turnover determines the outcome of the game here. Like I have not seen a thing from the San Francisco offense, and there are two big things that are really holding me back from just like letting myself go to Oh, the Niners are just gonna be the same offense with Jimmy G and Khan, and as they've always been, which is one, I think that, like Mike McDaniel clearly had an thats size effect on that offense.
In terms of play design. It's, he's taken the dolphins to, new heights and I'm not a, I'm not a film guy grinding the film, but it's certainly by, by the results of it. Kyle Shanahan has not had the same magic this year. That's the first thing. The second is like the Trent Williams loss is enormous for them, right?
He's so much of what they want to do on offense, and now they're just like full of weak links on the offensive line. Which I think like the scheme can mitigate that which they did last, last week by like throwing screens on third and 10 in obvious passing downs. But you're only gonna get so far when you're throwing screens on third and 10 every time.
And you are limiting your offensive capabilities if the entire goal is just to not have Jimmy Golo get sacked. Okay? So the cas against the Panthers is they've had really good defense for years now. I don't see them as moving the ball at ease, and I just see this as a real ugly game.
A 1714, if Baker can hit DJ Moore for a long play or if they're on the right side of turnover. I can see them covering the six and a half. Six and a half is too much in a game with a total of 39.
.
Oh yeah. I like it. I especially like it if SCA gets a little generous with us, tilt this and in an anticipatory fashion to this full seven we'll find out tomorrow when the contest lines get released. But in reality, I wouldn't be surprised if this gets to seven, seven and a half by kickoff because this is a one way train.
The other thing is, again, because I'm a big market guy, big narrative guy, trying to assess what's driving pricing. Yeah. And this is one of the reasons why too, I think we make such a good partnership and good combos cause we compliment the way that we handicap and evaluate these games. You do a great job of doing a lot of the fundamental research, but one of the things was there was like very little.
Confidence to be pounding the table on the Niners versus the Rams at home, minus one. All I saw was Rams. Rams Rams, rams. Some of the injuries there near the end of the week, soured a little bit of that enthusiasm, but I saw very little niners of support out there. One of our buddies, Josiah Sharp Clark, was like, I feel like one of the only real vocal handicaps out there who was like really pounding the table on the Niners.
You didn't like the Niners no. Last week, or you didn't want, you didn't want exposure to it game. I liked the Niners last week. I ended up betting the alt line on that one as well, which ended up, covering nicely. And now every sudden everyone likes the Niners. In one week, Like this whole narrative flipped.
They weren't, Oh, Jimmy G sucks. Oh, he's just as bad as we thought he was. Oh, maybe it doesn't matter. Oh, maybe it's just Shannon Oh, Shannon has you just so smart. And the defense looks really good. This game
is really easy to boil. Or like that last game, Deebo Samuel actually caught the 70 yard touchdown, which she had.
So you're
saying where's Debo Samuel so far this year? Yeah,
that's what I was saying before. Where's Debo saying, Okay, you caught the one touchdown and like they gotta pick six. It wasn't a dominant offensive showing by any means.
And there was multiple Jimmy G throws in classic Jimmy G fashion that were near pick six as themselves.
Yeah,
that's what I'm betting on in the Panthers game here, which is like the market is pricing a meaningful upgrade over the Niners and it's like nothing's changed. If anything like this offense has shown very little, and it's like they're totally reliant on Debo Samuel to score a 70 yard touchdown.
Sure that might happen. But if the answer is like just fading that singular outcome, I kinda like
the Panthers. One of the things I like to take into consideration too when we're evaluating handicaps, is you don't wanna just take the points again. What you'd like to talk about a lot is the alt outlines.
And what I was gonna say was can we see this team? Do we see a plausible scenario where this team wins the game? Cause if you're only just trying to squeak out a spread victory and that's where you see the value, that's not enough. We need more. Yeah. We need multiple scenarios that have viable, propensity to, to play out.
Yeah. Can we see the Panthers winning this game? Would you bet Panthers minus three, alt.
No, I would only bet the money one . True. I think that's a great call out. That's a great call out. And it's like particularly unlike me to give a spread pick cause I almost never actually just bet spreads.
Yeah. Yeah. Look, the case I think is this game is extremely low. Scoring turnovers are gonna be the name of the game here and Carolina ends up on the right side of a 50 50 coin flip
there. Yeah. And in a tough week where we're not finding, again, a lot of Yeah. of Mispriced risk right now and ugly matchups, this might sneak its way in.
Yeah. If we get that seven, that does definitely make it more palatable.
It is a good reminder, number one, that this is not just for the purposes of sergo and number two, what I'd given the same handicap if we did it first. Probably not.
Yeah. That's good to know. Eagles minus five and a half at Arizona. Arizona sneaks out another ugly win.
Yeah. I like the Cardinals. They're getting healthy. Ronda Moore's back. Maybe there's a little bit of projection. Hoping that like Ronda Moore takes the Christian Kirk role in the offense. I'm def I'm definitely bullish on the Cardinals long term. Definitely bullish already.
Bet them 10 to ones win the division. Just bet them 70 to ones win the Super Bowl. Separate discussion though.
The defense was the expectation that they're gonna get healthier? No, just like
is gonna come back and like it's mostly the long term plays are just a sell of the nfc. That all of Tampa Bay, Green Bay, Dallas, San Francisco, LA all got meaningfully worse from last year.
And I think the Colonel's probably better on offense. . . And have great depth there.
And their defense has gotten, it's played better every single week since playing the Jeep. Just top
five, excluding week one. Obviously you can't exclude week one, but like playing passion homes is a different animal than playing everyone else.
And he not top five an EPA week two through four.
Here was my hesitation for the Cardinals. I'm, I've always been bullish on the offense. Despite that, I think Hansbury is not the best, play call or getting scheming guys open, whatever it is.
Tyler Murray himself can carry the offense. But if the defense is not a train wreck, and my fear was like, oh actually this might be the 32nd defense in the league cuz they like really got destroyed by Mahomes.
But if this defense can return to like half of what it was last year, the offense is still really good by our like, drive quality metrics. They're the best of any playoff team from last year and I'm not ready to buy the Lions and Seahawks. Seahawks, and Falcons are the only three NFC teams ahead of them and the Eagles.
No, I think there's edge there. If the Cardinal's defense is being priced like a bottom three, four unit, and in fact it's maybe a potentially even top 15 unit, that's an material miss pricing, then.
Yeah. But like the five and a half doesn't scream. I'm pretty surprised by it. Honestly. I expect this to be six and a half, seven.
Yeah, which means there's a little bit of underlying support there, and it's certainly not public betters because no one wants to get in front of the Eagles. No, no
one get in front of the Eagles, but I don't think they're the same dominant as, Chiefs 2018. Whatever, pick your team, which is relatively speaking, especially because the NFC is so bad and like all of the best teams took meaningful downgrades.
It's Oh, the Eagles have to be the best team kind of thing. ,
Eagles have not performed pretty much in the second half of any game. Even verse the Jags, they basically stormed back there even like before half after for easy second
quarter, crazy second quarter.
Terrific. There I don't think they're that good.
You could maybe get like a backdoor cover from Arizona on this five and a half as well, down 10.
Yeah. This is, this to me plays the two sided handicap. I'm certainly willing to be it on the money line and the cardinal salt line. I'm just, everyone's.
As like crystallized in their head. Okay. Eagles number one. Let's move on. We can debate, the rest of the league. I'm not at a whole there yet. I think the Cardinals are really being undersold on defense and even on offense especially with Ron Delmore healthy now.
Okay, Cowboys plus five and a half at the LA Rams. I'm surprised this one hasn't moved a little bit more off the slacking from the Niners. The Rams looked like they got some serious, I think it offensive line problems. Yeah, it went
from six to four to five and a half.
Okay, so a little bit of a sell off and then a little dead cap bounce here.
You just outlined it though. Dialysis maybe the best pass rush in the league and the Rams have a serious issue on the
offensive line.
I don't hate cowboys in this instance. I think, the cowboys continue to play admirably. Yeah. Weaken and week out. They're not impressing, but they don't look dysfunctional.
Their biggest question marks from beginning of the season are actually turning into be like not such huge question marks, which is like Michael Gallup is back and healthy.
They have the secondary receiving options. And tyler Smith, whichever one they just drafted has been terrific. Terrific. At left tackle, which was a huge question mark. It's like the offense line isn't that big of a question mark anymore.
The secondary weapons or just like players on the Cowboy's offense have been. I think Cooper Rush is probably overachieved a little bit. He's played really well under pressure, which is unstable.
When people are trying to talk about Cooper Rush's potentially trade material or another, or potential starting quarterback, maybe it's a little bit too hot.
You could still like the Cowboys this week and also say Cooper Rush is still not an NFL start quarterback. Yeah.
Cause it looks like he's a legitimate backup quarterback though. And that's good enough to cover five and a half.
Exactly. Especially when like the Rams get killed by turnovers and ss and that's what the Cowboys do best.
Usually I chalk up that kind of stuff to, to mostly variants and bounces and whatnot. But like the cowboys are going to generate more sack fumbles cause they get great pressure. There's good reasons to think Trevon digs is going to generate interceptions.
And Matthew Stafford is extremely prone to being sacked. and getting picked off. , that's it's been happening for years and years. That I'm always willing to lean into that projection of the defense is actually going to help out the offense a lot in this spot that I don't hate five and a half, but look, it gives me pause that Matthew Stafford, far superior quarterback from Cooper Rush and that should mean something.
Staffer's a far superior quarterback Exhibit G too. Yeah. But I Ram's also, Yeah. At home. And again, some negative sentiments swirling around them as well. I wouldn't be interested in embedding the Rams here particularly cuz you're going to the banged up offensive line versus a great pass rush, if not the best pass rush versus still pretty elevated number. So that's, for me, it's probably cowboys or bust.
Colts at the Broncos. Plus three and a half. I saw this move down to three, so it looks like it got bumped back up to three and a half. This is from Draft Kings. Some news swirling around potential banged up. Russell Wilson, I don't think there's any question that he's gonna actually not play.
Looks like Jonathan Taylor's out. I'm not betting that LeBron goes out at three and a half. Probably not even at three.
No, I see this as an online or nothing bro. Online. Yeah. The bro line is they hit on the deep plays you call offense is still terrible. Bronco's defense is good.
It's at home. They have an outsized home field advantage playing an altitude. But He hits Judy and Sutton for a big play. That's that's all it means. Also I love betting alt outlines on teams like the bears, like the cults where their offense could score 10 points and I wouldn't surprise you at all.
And opposing offense doesn't need to do that much. It's like you build in an expectation with Okay. Offenses or just like anything that's like competent. That's what I'm looking for. Like competent offenses generally score between 17, 21, 24, right? That like alt lines require one team to really explode.
I don't think that's true for the proco skulls. Like it wouldn't have piece rising like 24 to 10. Yeah. But yeah, three and a half is a lot for a team that's really underperformed.
Yeah. And two, and maybe we don't know how bad the cols are because if the cols are really bad, we're doing our 2023 preseason preview and we're looking back at look how long the market's held on that col narrative game against, didn't know really how bad they were. Yeah. They had a
game against chiefs.
They're 32nd in an offensive draft quality and certainly looked apart and it's not like they're playing dominant defenses here.
And as far as much as, I talked about how I didn't like Russell Wilson this year. I could see, him really underperforming.
He's not underperforming as bad as I thought he potentially could. And I so many people had such high expectations for him, and he's definitely not meeting those. And because he is not meeting those very high expectations, everyone's Oh man. People are now trying to adopt the narrative. I was touting preseason when in fact, I don't even necessarily buy my own tout of it right now, because it hasn't even fully come to fruition.
Like he's playing okay, he's not playing bad. And Dan's talking about Shaq Leonards out again. Shaq Leonard's out again. He is,
is,
yeah. And Dan also brings out like golds are having their own offensive line issues.
I, the
gold offenses got awful and they're actually playing a good defense.
Like one of the defenses that generally limits, offensive production, like relative to, expectation.
I still don't know if I would wanna bet Broncos three and a half for not playing bro
and a half definitely betting the
alt line. Alt lines. Yeah. I like. Broncos online
Giants at the Packers plus eight.
Yuck. It was nine. Seems like a lot of points. If there's no Daniel Jones, cause even a banged up Daniels, I probably can't touch, Probably can't touch Giants.
Can't touch Giants. I don't think you touched Packers either
because in the past when no. Danny Dimes, The Future Giants offense became even morere and really couldn't do anything.
Yeah. And even a hobbled Danny Dimes, it became really bad because his mobility is key. Not just does it actually add a benefit and a new angle to the offense, but it helps him get out of the inevitable, nasty positions he's gonna get himself in. Yeah. And if he loses the mobility, then that happens even more often.
Yeah. Where Sean Gary is looking like a defensive
defense player of the year. Yeah, 100%. Yeah, definitely not taking the Giants for sure. Not again, same idea about betting on really bad offenses, right? It's like that tier of offense that you don't wanna bet on.
Packer side's also a little difficult. Like the Giants events has been surprisingly good. They're blitzing a ton. And despite not actually generating turnovers, they're playing at a top 10 rate. Credit to Wink Martin Del there. But who
have the Giants also played? So Titans Bears.
Panthers bad.
Cowboys.
Yeah. Not great. The Packers are not put instilling any sphere in their offense
at this point. I was gonna say, I think the Packers are in the same tier of offense.
I would say this is the best offense they've still played.
I could see the packers often getting better as, I could see it getting better in the Patriots game as Rogers like continues to develop real game experience, chemistry, trust with these young, wide receivers. Yeah.
This framing asked me actually liking the Packers, like Giants offense can't really can't score.
and Rogers is getting more comfortable with Dobbs and if he takes a big step, I think that's all the packers need to return back to where they were. The running backs are still great. He has las artists, the wide receiver too. It wouldn't shock me to see them put it all together in this game in the same way.
It's like the Bears opponent and like the giant sea events doesn't scare me.
The one concern here is Packers run defense and the Giants effectively utilizing, vintage barky what
we're seeing. But this is where gets, there's no way Daniel Jones is a hundred percent.
There's no way. No, In which case, like they are going to be like loading the box to the N degree that you'd like to think they could slow em down. But who knows?
You can't bet the Giants the eight is not attractive. Yeah.
My main takeaway is from the last few years, ever since the, in the Danny Dimes era, you do not bet the giants. If Danny Dime, First of all, you probably should not bet the giants, but you definitely don't bet the giants if Danny Dimes banged up.
Pit Berg Steelers plus 14 on the road at your Buffalo Bills
is this enough points to bet rookie quarterback who's gonna din and dunk versus Bill's defense that is vulnerable to the dinin dunk. You're not gonna take the top off the bills. , but I don't think he's gonna even be trying to do that. Good
luck thinking and dunking your way to covering 14 against the bills.
I think it's like a more similar to the 28. Nothing style against the dolphins from a couple years back. , I don't think I bet either side though. My 14 is just huge margin there.
But Bill's al outline.
This is another one that could be attractive. Yeah.
Bill's outline's attractive. I wonder even at what price? I think we're actually be an online starting at 14. I don't even know if anything good there.
mean if you could get like 21 and a half plus two 80.
I like that. I don't like that. I almost, maybe bill's minus 14. Because this is a line that's trying to scare you with a lot of points.
Yeah. And the book trying to say how many points do we need to give the Steelers to make sure that people don't vet the bills? Bills in this? Yeah. Cause this could unwind fast. Yeah. Also
like the sealers defense can't stop a nose blue.
I think there's like the handicap from last week from those that we heard.
There's this illusion still that like Pittsburgh has no, they have an opportunistic defense.
That's a good point. Also another but it's not a good defense. Significant thing to know is that Gabe Davis practice for the first time fully. He's back healthy. He often should be at full strength.
Yeah. Why am I, what are we scared about The 14 year? If I like him at 21, I like him at 20, 28. I should like him at 14 too. I guess the,
the only wrinkle is maybe pick it is gonna there's not a lot of film on him, this type of stuff. And this just is like one of those games, the bills just don't push it.
They don't wanna put a lot of stuff on tape or something. They know they're gonna be, they know they're the better team.
They're at the point where they don't want to push film. That's that's an argument why they're not gonna go up 35, 3 or whatever, but 14 I should still cover.
And even in the short period of time, we saw a picket throw three picks. Yeah. Versus the
Jets. It's like he didn't do, He came in with the lead against the jets.
think what we have to admit is prob is probably an upgrade, or at least it, again, it provides like that Zack Wilson effect of it's gonna increase the variance.
There's more unknown unknowns, more uncertainty, which can skew the potential of if this was Trubisky, then I think it's attractive. The 14. Yeah. Cause then it's like a more known, known. Oh, for sure. For
sure. Yeah. But I think it worked both side against the equality defense. Yeah.
All right.
Houston Texans plus seven on the road at the Jags. Can the Jags rebound and demolish a bad team similar to what they did? Versus Chargers.
I feel like the Jags are certainly comfortable really putting, like blowing the doors off a team if they can't. Yeah, I mean they beat
the Chargers 38 10,
That's also like in Peterson's DNA as well. Yeah.
Especially coming off a game like that,
right? Where they Oh yeah. He's feeling probably very, but hurt.
I'm sure he really wanted to be the
Eagles. Yeah. Yeah. We're obviously very high in the Jags. We know what the Texans are, right? There's the certainty of what the Texans are, which I think is comforting. They're like, they're not gonna be better than a top three team.
They're plucky, but they're also like not gonna be able to continually sustain drives to give the Jaguar any damage and Jaguars are good offensively and are not afraid to be aggressive late. .
I like the seven. I think I like the seven Texans need a good ass whooping themselves. True.
Bengals, Ravens. Bengals on the road at Ravens plus three. I'm very interested to hear your take on this one actually.
I know you're definitely higher on the Ravens than I have been. But I also know you like trying to buy the Bengals cheap. Yeah,
I'm of torn. I see this has a perfect badge for the Bengal statement or the Ravens, like receivers who are in a room free against the Raven Secondary, which is like what's been giving them issue.
Whereas Dolphins Games fans says example number one of that.
And even still to date, we've seen opportunities where we're thinking like, Oh, here's the time for the Bengals. Blow the top off this defense. Really take advantage of it. Yeah. And they've won some games and there's been a little flashes here, but it hasn't really come to life yet.
No
it hasn't. Their points last week were off those big plays, but it wasn't the same kind of dynamic. Jamar Chase 70 yard touchdown. I'm sure you can tell me exactly why I have a lot of applause. Betting this game, a three point game between the Bengals and the Ravens head coach.
Yes.
Even if
I have a slight fundamentals lean towards the Bengals here. Ooh. Cannot bat against Zach Taylor. Especially against John Harbaugh. No. Cause you're
ba if you're betting the three, unless you're looking for a push, you're basically saying cause I think the Bengals are gonna win this game.
Yeah.
And what didn't the Bengals sweep the Ravens last year? That was like the Bengals coming out party right. Last year was when they torched the Ravens.
I feel like I've been hearing that being cited a lot as ammunition for how Ravens have a week secondary, everyone's taken advantage of the Ravens events. That's the market angle again, you've been pretty on target on both these teams from a fundamental perspective. When to buy them and when to sell them. This is a weekend I'm holding off.
Raiders but plus seven right now at kc. We've been down on the Raiders, been pounding the table on their under all off season. They're one in three, but I will admit, I mean they're probably better than what one in three suggests they are.
Yeah. And we weren't necessarily pricing in them starting O and three and one in three. This is. Best case scenario happening right here. Yeah. And very likely they're probably gonna beat one in four, obviously at seven point underdogs, but minus like last year, like those Gu Bradley defenses that got taken advantage of the two years ago.
Remember the ra the Raiders, beat the chiefs and then almost beat 'em twice.
Again, different team, so say different teams, coach. But
I'm a little torn here only because the sevenths the lot, especially for competent offense, the Raiders are certainly competent offense. And which chiefs are we gonna get? Are we gonna get the 44 point teams or the kind of clunky. Against the Chargers.
I can see them blowing 'em out. And also like we have a lot of data off. The chiefs are like, let teams back for the covers.
And that's the thing that I talked about a lot.
This just doesn't strike me as the spot to be all over them. I'll never be upset. Better get betting on the Chiefs. But seven seems like the right number. And I like, don't I think we can, hold in our heads both that they're gonna be spots for chief's explosions and like understanding, like last week was about a market price, right?
The why I was all in on the Chiefs had everything to do with the fact that the bucks were favored in the game. It wasn't like a take on the Chiefs per se. It was all about relative to context.
And also that was a two sided
handicap.
Two sided handicap. Exactly. It was a two sided. And I just like, hearing this like how could you possibly say like which chief's offense are you gonna get when you came out so strongly last week saying Oh, they're gonna be this. It's all relative to expectation. Yeah. And I think it's caught up.
Yeah. Seven seems like the right number.
Yeah. We're always looking for two sided handicaps and I feel like we're straining to find one sided handicaps. Yeah. Certainly five of them.
I think we like Chargers.
Yes. Chargers. That's
one. And I was selling the Browns. Oh, the Maybe Jaguar's. Texans.
Yeah. I would say Jaguar's. Texans is a top five at this point. What?
And the bills.
Yeah. If we wanna get cute, We're doing panthers.
Yeah. If wanna get cute panthers or cardinals, I think is the way to
get cute. I feel way more comfortable with cardinals. Me too.
Me too. I couldn't even articulate a great case for the Panthers. Yeah I'm, I would much prefer the Cardinals here, like bidding on bad teams versus bidding on not bad teams.
Totally different ballgame.
It is just tough cuz we know the Panther's offense is struggling with at minimum execution because there's certainly talent on the family. What happened to Christian McCaffery for instance? I Just Yeah, Jesus. We know Caroline's bad coaching, bad execution, verse a good defense. I just don't know that's a, that's the time for them to maybe break out of the slump.
I had to give five right now, I'd go Packers, bills. Chargers. Jaguars. Cardinals. And then six would probably be, I don't hate lions and I don't hate cowboys.
Lions is definitely contrarian. Yeah, but I agree. I probably would rather do lions than panthers. Oh, for sure. At this point, unless, like if there's a weather element in Niners panthers, because basically what if you're betting the panthers, you need it to be like ugly.
This is what I realized. I'm more confident in the handicap than I am Carolina coming out on top of it. Which leads you to leave the under the supply. Or just like props of turnovers.
What is the total right now? 40, 39. That's so low. Only one of the lowest on the board.
But what we've seen this season, if a game is gonna go under, it's gonna go 1739 is very high. Yeah,
There's a lot of tough handicaps. Yeah, like New Orleans, Seattle don't think it's gonna be so ugly. It's just tough handicap. Jets, dolphins don't think it's gonna be so ugly. Tough handicap.
Still a lot of time gonna be injury news and stuff, but we'll close tonight with essentially leaning probably the five that you just articulate.
Yep. So that wraps up our recap week four and preview of NFL week five. I've gotten a few dms and say, Hey, what happened to the Sunday Night Tilt?
I think we'll be doing the Sunday night tilt this. This week? No, we, no, we won't be doing . Maybe we'll find a way to, to get a sub for Judah for the Sunday night tilt this week. Again, 13 and seven in circa on the right track, but now we're getting to some of the toughest parts of the season.
The month of October buys coming up. Slate is gonna start to compress. Lines are getting tighter. Gotta sharp in those pencils. That's right. Thanks everyone for listening. And that's closing bell.
