Episode Transcript
NFL Week seven market Outlook. I'm your cohost, Brett Matthew with my partner and alt bedding strategist Judah Fort Gang. In our circuit contest, we went three and 2. Now on the season 58%. The top five circa consensus picks are hitting at basically 60% right now. That's easily more than 10% off the average. You look back over the last like counting the super contest, going back all the way to about 2008 and top five consensus picks hit in that 51 50 2% range.
So you're gonna see some reversion to the mean there. It's not super uncharacteristic, if you remember last year, or through the first eight weeks of the season. Favorites were just cashing tickets left and right. Any sort of contrarian better was getting their face ripped off.
And then it kind of topped in about week nine. I posted a chart that demonstrated if you were betting the favorite spreads and favorite money lines. It was the best first nine weeks in 20 years of data.
And then it was all given back in the next four weeks. You would think, if you're just a better, just betting favorites on the spread and money line, like that's not a positive p and l strategy.
Yeah. And if it is a positive p and l strategy for a certain time period, that's an anomaly.
It's also
not as if we've been on market at all. You've had a bunch of weeks really off market. Which, leads to some interesting, strategy angles of like circle you have to pick five games and you can be off market and still have diverging outcomes.
I think it gives us confidence to, to keep pushing with where we're going. We're playing almost a different game and the circa consensus is going to fail. And if we just stay at the course, maybe improve a little bit. We're in, we're sitting pretty.
Yep. And again, 17, 12 and one 58%. And in the six weeks that's been relatively public heavy, successful. So before we jump into week seven, we're gonna do a quick refresh of week. We'll look into some of our consensus market power rankings, see how some of the industry analysts have adjusted their rankings after week six's performance.
Then we'll also touch a little bit on some of our drive quality scores, see if anything sticks out there that is meaningfully different from some of the realized scores. And then, we'll dive into week seven. But before we do, I do also wanna just give a definitely a round of applause to both you, Judah and also R June, who was on last week's episode.
You guys provided some amazing just spot on Chef's Kiss handicaps on both the Jets and the Bengals, both cas. In fact, you were so hot on the jets that you wrote about Jets minus five and a half. Alt line.
again, alt line betting extraordinaire.
That's, that's the specialty. Thank you.
Alright, Week seven, consensus market power rankings. Bills continue to stay at one. Standard deviation, zero. pf 5 38 football. Outsiders in predict all have the bills at one. No change from last week.
I'm generally very skeptical of consensus. I don't know how you can take anyone but the bills right now. Yeah. There's so
much better. Yeah. Basically like default you have no other choice.
But that again, that doesn't mean that they can't lose and they still can't, of course
they're gonna lose the dolphins, like that happens.
They were really shade away from losing to the ravens. And again, if, if Mahomes doesn't throw a pick, I mean, they could potentially have lost that game too.
And then we got the chiefs there coming up in second. Football Outsiders, a little bit off market at seven.
And then to round out the top five, we got Eagles, bucks, Cowboys with a big jump, year to date. And this is also pricing in the expectation of the return of Dak. And then to round out the top 10, we got Bengals and six jumped up three spots. Ravens down two spots. Niners at eight flat.
They were eight last week as well. And then Bikings in Packers. Packers certainly with the most precipitous fall across industry analysts. Down three spots now sitting at 10 the most Bearss football outsiders at 20th. ESPN is continuing to hold onto the Packers as a relative top five team.
Has them still at six and then another big jumper squeaking right outside the top 10 as the patriot at 11. Jumping nine spots, year to date, five spots just last week. And it's some of the Sharper Industry analysts. So PFF 5 38, has them higher there than espn.
ESPN still has them as industry average at 14.
The Bucks that their fourth is insane to me. They're not the same team. At what point are we gonna start actually downgrading them?
Tot had a note out today on ff highlighting something that we've all seen and recognized. Just this broader downfall of offenses this season. He just did some work kind of quantifying that and then made some of bet recommendations and hey, maybe if you're a team with a better defense, maybe that isn't something you should just sweep under the rug like we have the last couple of years.
He highlighted fading the Ravens fading, maybe the Chargers, maybe buying a team like the Broncos. But The Bucks is certainly a team up there. And I'm not as bearish as you are on the box.
We were down on the books from a season day basis and it's playing out. I They're three and three. Yeah. But I don't wanna get too bearish. I think they can start to come around. They've dealt with a lot of injuries already. The wide receivers are in and out, and You can see when you watch the gameplay too, he really misses drop.
Which we talked about. You make a very good point and it's important to clarify. We know with Brady and the bucks that if everything comes back, the ceiling is still intact.
But until that actually manifests they've gotta take a step back in my view, which is we should assume, they have ceiling, right? And they could be the top four team, but they're not playing to the top four team right now.
And until they do, so we shouldn't be power ranking them as such.
Yeah. And what actually is interesting is, the standard deviation for the bucks, so looking at how volatile are industry analysts, perception of the bucks and the volatility is very low.
It's pretty uniform that across industry analysts still ranking this team as a top five team. And I think, yeah, there's certainly not a top five team at this point, and I think everyone's holding on to what they think that they can eventually evolve into.
Yeah, I'll add one more. That's pretty surprising to me. The colds at 17 is pretty shocking. Part of the frustration with the Jag's handicap is that think the Jag side was perfectly right, the cold side was, is wrong.
And that did not see the cults coming out and putting up a terrific offensive performance. But I don't know why we're assuming that's the, gonna be the new norm. Again, consistent public good performances, I'm happy to upgrade the Colts. But like, why isn't this a one off in the same way that we have weird one offs, like the bills losing to the Jags last year.
These things happen. I don't know why. We're just like, okay, the cols are kind back like they put five brutal games, consistent, five bad games on offense.
I'm not ready to say, Oh, they're the 17th best team.
Yeah. So jump seven spots. Should they be justifiably upgrade seven spots off that game? First, the Jags, when they were down 14 to three.
We look at the time weighted average margin, it was negative three for the Cols time weighted average win percentage, 44%. So on average they were losing that game and nonetheless still being upgraded seven spots. So I think it's certainly unjustifiable. Yeah. But this means that they were ranked 24th last.
One of the things I wanted to point out and I feel like maybe we overlooked as well, is I think this was the first game where they had Pitman Pierce and Paris Campbell. The defense is getting healthier.
They didn't have Shaq Leonard still, but I feel like they've been the healthiest that they've been all season. And I one of the things we wanted to see to make sure that we continue to felt com to feel comfortable with having exposure on the Jags was that the Jags were gonna get pressure on Matt Ryan, which wasn't materializing.
And if you give Matt Ryan time a clean pocket with, Campbell Pierce and Pittman all at his disposal.
That's not that bad of a setup. Whether they have Jonathan Taylor or not, I think is irrelevant. And that was one thing that you were calling out as we were watching the game and you were like reluctant to hedge our Jags position because we wanted the Jags to win. We wanted the Jags to cover.
I think it was interesting is that like they, they changed their offense, which is, they got the ball out really quick.
Matt Ryan had a like 2.37 time to throw. Like week five against the Broncos, he was 2.79 times to throw 2.71 against the Titans. You get the idea. So I'm curious if it's like a fundamental shift or it was a one off game plan to slow down the jack pass rush, but we'll see.
When we look at the biggest one week movers, so the biggest downgrades we got the Browns down six spots, cards down six spots, saints down four spots, and then a flurry of teams down one or two spots, giants down another two spots. The market does not believe in the giants. No one believes in the giants, so still market ranked 24th just by being five and one.
And it's not just the eye test is telling you that. I think even some of the numbers are telling you that. We called this out last week when, verse the Packers, their time weighted average margin was negative. Their time weighted average when probability was negative. It was negative again this time.
So negative three points, time, weight, average margin, time, weight, average win probability 43%.
Do any of these stick out to you as unjustified justified? As far as down rates?
I would move the packers down more. Same conversation with the box, but their events isn't as good.
And their of offense doesn't have the same ceiling, I don't think. Yeah. But the rest
downgraded just one spot.
Yeah, and the Giants is pretty surprising, but the fact that they were, even with the Ravens, I would think that warrants a little bit of an upgrade.
But I think this is early season noise. We're gonna look back at week seven and it's gonna be ups and downs and ups and downs and ups and downs.
What do you think about Cardinal? So downgraded, six spots, I know your thesis on Cardinals is certainly like a longer term play. Yeah. Our drive quality. They're in the bottom left. Quartile.
At this point you have to demonstrate them, right?
You can't put up no points against a disastrous Seattle defense. But at the same time Geo Hopkins is back. And that's a huge addition.
And we know the on off splits are generally pretty noisy, but. Carla Murray's been a lot better with the, and especially when he can establish the passing game. But I think as it currently stands, the Cardinals moves justified.
When we look at biggest movers to the upside. I mentioned Patriots. Up five Seahawks, Falcons, Bengals, all up, three jets, only up two Consensus market ranks still 21st Rams, Vikings both up two, and then a flurry of a few other teams, just up one. When we look at standard deviation, this is one thing I wanted to call out. So the highest standard deviation, the most disagreement across industry analysts, where way up or way down is the js, Our JS standard deviation of 10 spots.
You got ESPN at 9, 5 38 at 30th PF at 27th. Football outsiders at eighth. So just all over the map. Seahawks continued to be, all over the map. Big upgrade by 5 38 this week. Football outsiders have at 10 last week, upgraded them a spot to ninth.
But ESPN PFF still have them as a bottom four, five team.
These are the teams you'd think are even more volatile and they'll be the most disagreement, which is like by analytical metrics, the jaguars are shining, but they're two and four with some bad losses. Frankly. The Sea OGs guy who knows what's going on with Smith, Do you buy, do you not buy?
Denver is a tale of okay, their defense seems to be legitimately good and Russell Wilson's bad, but even though everyone loves to talk about how bad Russell Wilson is in the back of everyone's head, it's okay, but is he gonna turn around?
Similar story with the Coles to a lesser extent cuz Matt Ryan's not 32, he's 38. The Rams Packers and Bucks, I'm a little surprised and not higher, but they do at least the Packers and Rams are pretty high up on this list.
When you're looking at teams with the largest standard deviation in power rank right now, those are the teams that I think provide potentially the most value betting. Cuz this is basically demonstrating, the market cannot get a grip on how to power rate these teams. 100%. And so I guess it would make sense for us to continue to lead into Jags if we like 'em from a fundamental perspective.
And then from a market perspective, they don't know how to rank this team anyway, or how to price.
That's why I keep coming back to them. I'm trusting the numbers.
Another one just to call out. Lastly here is the Titans. PFF I 38, Top 10 Team ESPN 24th.
Some big disagreements there. Yeah. In perception of the Titans, they just come off a buy week. So it's quiet as far as of sentiment.
I don't think the AFCs as good as everyone thinks.
Yeah. I don't know what's happening this season. And like the titans are, at least in the conversation where they're not so bad.
I think that's emblematic of this season in the sense of, I don't think any team is as good as you think that there are and there's probably no team that's as bad as you think that they are.
Although, except for maybe the Panthers. Unanimous ranked 32nd
From our drive quality scoreboard, again, we called out a couple games already. Bills chiefs, We got bills winning by a full touchdown
Chargers beating Broncos by a full touchdown. Despite
not leaving for most of that game.
That is another, yeah. Very interesting. Yeah. Time, weight, average margin, negative three. Time weight, average probability, 43% for the Chargers. . Yeah, interesting distinction there.
Jets decisively beating the Packers, so no asterisk there. Bucks and Steelers, we have essentially tying 22 to 22. And then the last one I would call out is Washington and the Bears. We got Washington beating the Bears, 13 of 10. Whereas most people would say, and the eye test would say, Oh, the Bears should have won that.
Because the bears were, inside the red zone three times, didn't get any points or whatever. And the only touchdown that they ended up getting was off that muff punt was the six yard drive. What actually makes me confident in our numbers and confident in the model, giving us actually insight into this.
As I know Josiah Sharp Clark, I know he had posted something along the lines of, cuz he, he comes at what we're doing here, but more from like a qualitative perspective. Whereas our computer watches every play of every game and he actually watches every play of every game. He scored Washington as having played better in that game from a net perspective.
And I'd rather line up with him than like the average every day kind of dumb muck NFL
player. 100%.
So I like that. Let's get in to NFL Week seven. Two more weeks, and we're halfway through. Won't say that. Thursday night Football, Saints, Cardinals, Saints Plus two. Saw this dip down to one now, back to two.
I think it had opened up around two and a Deandre Hopkins coming back this week. I heard even Robbie Anderson might play, and I don't think that's really moves the needle one way or the other. But no Marquis Brown now. I think he's gonna be out for at least the next couple weeks.
And their offensive line is getting destroyed. And that can be, pretty meaningful. We can see, from an injury perspective, four offensive linemen, either starters or backups are banged up in this game versus Saint Stephen that's healthier.
And then on the defensive side, also banked up, but Saints missing Landry.
Thomas Landry lot more.
I think a lab is the only one who's gonna come back this week a come back.
To strength of the Cardinals defense is their secondary which I think mitigates the depth that New Orleans has a wide receiver.
There are a couple central questions to this game, which is the Saints offense really played well against the Seahawks. Number one because the Seahawk defense, the TROs number two, cuz they brought back Face of Hill, really used them as a weapon. And last week it was like relying on I, his Rashid Shahe happened, a 45 yard run and a combo of Taso Hill and Alvin.
I think almost there's a lot of tape out there which says, Okay, this is what this saints now wanna do. Which is that grind in the run game. And if they're relying on big run plays, like I, that's not a successful offense. Any Delta was not good last week. And of the strength of the Arizona defense lies in their past defense.
Again, you don't wanna coachs your bets, You don't actually know what's gonna happen. I would not be surprised to see the Cardinals kind and try and stop the run. And again, this is a good life angle, which is if they're selling out to stop the run, I think the, you're gonna have a lot of trouble scoring.
If they can get their run game going and it opens up everything and they can kinda play well on offense.
That's kinda, Hopkins coming back this week is gonna really move the needle from an off perspective. Yeah,
It's a great question, which is almost are the Cardinals very similar to what they were last year and are just missing Dere Hopkins and we know their offense is not great without Hopkins, but like they're gonna get back to the 20 20, 20 21 Cardinals.
Or is this no, this is a different offense. And it really have taken a step back even with Hopkins and there's something more fundamental than just the players in the roster.
And the Saints certainly outperformed I think our expectations last week first.
I did wanna point out actually from our dry quality scoreboard in that game versus the Bengals. And again, we know this cuz we washed it, but time weighted average margin for the Saints plus five time weighted average wind probability, 74%. And we were leading into the Bengals when we were live betting, like expecting them to come back.
But you don't wanna put yourself in that position. You don't wanna put yourself in a position to have to come back. You don't wanna rely extending drives on third down. Yeah. So The Saints certainly played better than what even we thought, and now they have a lava at least for this week.
Yeah. And we look at the Cardinals, looking at our kind of drive quality from an offensive and defensive perspective in that bottom tier, that bottom left quadrant. Yeah. But I obviously getting Dondre Hopkins is a huge get back. It's just the question is like, how does he perform in game one?
Maybe they're gonna script some stuff to him. Yep. Good point. Seems exactly like they use for 'em.
Packers at Washington Packers minus four and a half. This was at least at five and a half.
Maybe it even touched six. Been dripping lower over the course of the week. Sentiment is really bad on both these teams but still much worse for Washington. On Draft Kings at least 72% of the handle, 76% of the bets on the Packers as we talked about Packers being downgraded. Three spots this week down three spots.
Year to date, Washington currently power ranked around 28th from a consensus market rankings perspective, pretty much unanimous across the border as well around 25th, 27th, 29th perspective. Still at home.
And now no Carson wins. Now we got high. Nicky,
Would you buy the dip on the package? Do you think? They haven't even been downgraded enough.
Four and a half. Pretty shocking to me. And this is a team that could barely stay with the bears.
I like Washington here. Most people are writing off Washington. Carson went broke his finger or his thumb or whatever in the like first quarter.
This just let me know an interesting play here, which is we talked on our last live stream about particular plays with the intention of selling out.
Yeah. The play here is to be the command. There's money line, grab that 1 75, maybe even actually move it to minus two. I don't know what the all spread is. Minus two and a half. Cause at some point in the game, Rick, just because the Packer's offense is not good enough to extend leads and just because I think that h in both directions introduces variance.
This game he against Packers last year was really close. All which is to say I think there's going to be a point in this game at which the commanders will be favorites and we can grab the Packers at plus money.
I like that angle. My only caveat there would be is I think, maybe absent last week is the Packers were still up there as far as scripted plays. Still being one of the better teams. So that's what would make me cautious to try to lean into Washington right off the.
Is if the Packers, get up seven zip and then that's done, then they're done scoring .
Maybe the play then is actually to anticipate or double down.
So like this, you have a position now? Yeah.
Position
position later just in case it doesn't come to fruition.
Just in case they throw pick six on the first drive. Like this happened last week. Yeah. Which interesting strategy positioning in addition to the actual handicap, right? Like the dating strategy itself is the
particularly interesting. Yes. This is what I want us to do for the rest of the season. It's a really angle into these types of exotic plays to where you can express, a view.
With precision. Yeah. And because we're very good at being able to not just handicap outcomes of games, but flows of games. And I think that's, this is a great way to do, and
that's where we get the most you can pick off the best lines. Yeah. And this is one flow
of a game. And the best thing about this, best things about the alt lines is, for hedge fund managers, Okay.
Is when you don't need a 50%, you don't need to hit 55%. You could hit 30%, 28% and have a winning positive p and l because you're taking levered positions with like ridiculous, odd, that are mispriced.
I hate to toot my own horn too much, but if you go to the bottom of my, let's say PF article that I posted today, it says that I am 11 and 20 on the year for an ROI of 126%.
Which I think goes to show how wins and losses are totally irrelevant.
If you're implementing a truly sophisticated strategy like you are, whereas most people are just betting sides and totals or props or things with essentially negative ev.
With very high taxes essentially. And from that perspective, yeah. I You have to hit 52.8% just to break even. So much better if you can hit 30% and be up a hundred percent p and l .
But this, that type of stuff we should try to hone in. Yeah. And I know it's hard to do it like through every single one of these gains, especially when we're on streamer maybe going through it for the first time.
But I know like between. In game trade, live betting in the games and Sunday morning and one of these weekends too. I wanna wake up not at 12:45 PM , it'll come, wake you up. Like actually strategize and get some positions. Yeah.
Giants at Jaguars. So I guess you already hinted, we like Jaguars.
But what I would say about the Giants is what it makes me a little bit cautious is because the market hasn't down as an upgrade of the Giants.
So you could try to say Oh, the Giants are five and one, they're not nearly this good, and the Jaguars aren't nearly as bad as being two and four. So let's lean into Jags. But the market, everyone knows Giants aren't good, but, or at least they think that they're not good. Who knows?
Honestly, that's not the thing gives pause. But if you go back to our chart with power rankings the in predict ranking is really what matters for the exact pricing of this game. Because what the in product is doing is taking the market powering power rankings based on this exact one. And think it's 17 it's 24 for the Jags and 26 for the Giants.
Yep. The play is not on the Giants. It's really on the Jags. The market's saying they're 19th. I think they're closer to like 11th or 12th. And in predict or the market, in this case, the actual minus three spread is saying 24. Look, it could be totally noise or that like the Giants are gonna make this a trend and like they're gonna stick around games.
And there's something about the way the team is built. There's something about the way the coaching staff is that we might not necessarily be able to quantify with numbers. That's what gives me pause.
But at the same time, and the Jags are certainly the type of team to let them do that.
That's
true. Although I will say I do trust Doug Peterson and his coaching staff, like their young team for sure. But I do trust Doug Peterson to and this is, as you're talking about, I was speaking with Josiah Clark, Sharp Clark talking about had, Doug Peterson has admitted to some of his mistakes in recent weeks.
about how right, that pitch we saw on the fourth and one, it's like the process was there, it was a bad play call. The results were bad. That was on my fault for calling a bad play, which lead's gonna believe he's not gonna like force situation differently. Exactly that. I think he's taking it from the counter perspective, but to get back to the handicap here, the jas are being priced in as the 24th best team.
Our drag quality has been at, 10th and 11th. Offense, defense. Trevor Lawrence has been very good against the blitz. He's been good against man coverage. The Giants play a ton of both man coverage blitz at the highest rate in the nfl. Right there is a noticeable gap on our charge gear.
And I think the Giants defense is being propped up by some really dreadful opponents, right? Like the EPA ranks of their opponent. 22nd, 32nd, 25th, 24th, 23rd, fourth drive, quality, 22nd, 31st, 25th, 28th, 24th, and then the Ravens fourth tampered. Which leads me to say okay, the Giants defense not really that good.
They haven't really been tested. And I think the Jaguars are exactly the type of match up because of the, man coverage angle, because of the blitz angle. I think they'll have no bottle running the ball. There'll be no issue with, especially if they're leaning into Travis at the end against the Giants run defense, which is allowing the 5.6 yards per carry, which is the most in the nfl.
Yeah. There's a strong fundamental angle and match angle, which leads me onto the Jacks.
According to drive quality, I they're not nearly the 24th rank. That's, I said they're, and basically saying that they're generally an average offense.
Not average, Not even average. Top it's 10th and 11th, 10th on offense, 11th on defense. It's top 10 unit. So
that's saying the market is mispricing the giants and they're mispricing.
The I agree.
I agree. We should actually, we're kinda, we should include a drive quality rankings. Yeah. Keep saying this. I'll actually add it to the script, include a drive quality power rankings.
Yeah. Yes. That would definitely be interesting. In fact, I can add it here as well. And then we can add another column to see Exactly.
That's what I'm saying, what the delta is. I'm not convinced on Jags yet because I feel like we just keep canceling ourselves out here and No, I'm, we'll
I'm stronger on the Jags. I wanna say I recognize the other side, but you gotta trust the massive, It's such a big fundamental gap, right? It's that standard deviation that we talked about earlier.
Yeah, and I'm coming firmly on the other side.
All right. Bucks at Carolina. Minus 11, another double digit spread for the box, another road game. Now they're playing the consensus, worst team in the league.
First off, I just wanna say I rep, rep in the the Panthers and Rodney Smith, but that does not mean that I'm backing. That does not mean I'm backing Panthers.
10 for 16, for 60 yards in an NFL game. You talk about like fat left tails. You talk about offenses that are not competent, that you can't back, this is example number one. Does that mean that they won't necessarily be able to figure it out by week 15? No idea what it's gonna be week 15, but at the current price point, at the current point in time, there is No way I can back the Panthers.
On Draft Kings. At least 51% of the bets coming in. On the Panthers. Yeah, so there's a lot of selling of the books there, especially at the double digits. Another thing I was reading from David Perham from ESPN last week was, sports books had a great week and that Buck Steelers game was the biggest decision that they've had season to date. Just rip the face off of public betters. And so now you can make the argument that the broader public is butt hurt on the bucks, even though we're not seeing a huge downgrade from them in the consensus market power rankings, at least on a one week perspective, everyone just lost a bunch of money cause everyone was piling into the Bucks thinking it was free money and now the bucks are back with another double digit spread.
From a market perspective, purely, I could see how it could potentially be attractive. We just saw the Rams beat and not pretty fashion, but because the Panthers was placed so poorly, still ended up beating 'em by double digits.
The worry I have, and it's a weak angle granted, but it's one, one fluky fumble that gives the Panthers a touchdown, one fluky interception that gives the panthers the ball, one big punt return and it's okay, I don't trust that the fucking year's offense is gonna put up 24, 28 points to cover. And in which case the Panther score, they earn six points, but get seven points handed to them.
And we have a like 24 14 type of game.
And the Panther's defense Has been sufficient.
Yeah.
Lions Plus seven at Dallas with the return of Dak Prescott. 49 total lines have scored well for us on our drive. Quality metrics. Put up a massive stinker. Definitely my biggest kind of net loss p and l perspective on a single game season to date.
Just trying to buy the dip on that Patriots game and just not getting any bounce. We know Jared Goff struggles under pressure and now is gonna be playing a team that excels in pressure on the road coming off the by.
I'm not sure to express this necessarily in this game, but the long term handicap on the Cowboys. I actually think for all teams, they're one I've upgraded like not even relative to the rest of the league, but just like relative to how good I thought they would be.
Which is that like the biggest question marks are always been taken care of, which is like Michael Gallup's back healthy as a secondary receiver. C a is as good as advertised. And like Tyler Smith has done an admirable job on the offensive line where the preseason, I had three main concerns, which was like, okay, the defense is not gonna be able to sustain the same rate of pressure that they had last year.
That seems to not really be true. The defensive line is really good. And that looks like it's continuing too. The offensive line lost some real key pieces, but they've had guys step up. Jason Peters, Tyler Smith have really come in and done a great job, not so concerned about that. And to a lesser extent, there's still a bit of a concern cause no one's really stepped out outside of Gallop and Lamb.
The secondary weapons would be an issue, but all in all, like the team is still better than had them in the off season and has addressed those needs, which is why they're being power nights fifth. Yeah. And I think if you take a look at the NFC landscape, that Prescott might be the best quarterback, there's certainly an argument for it.
And in this spot, the guys, as you said, I just, I don't trust the lines defense to stop a notice blade.
The thing is like you don't, how much do you wanna get hyper focused on one game?
If you remove the Patriots game, I feel like you would say you're getting seven points with alliances team. That's like a perfect backdoor cover number, right?
This is seeming like another life betting strategy play, which is if you
think at some point, but now I'm scared to buy the dip on the Lions live betting
There you go. Maybe the play is to make the, that the cowboys are going to jump out to a 10 point 14 point lead, get some plus money outs there, and then take the other side live.
And you mean maybe that's the expression, which is we know there's potential for the cowboys to really blow 'em out. And you can hedge a little bit of like lion's money line if that doesn't happen the other way.
I don't have a good grasp of lines. Maybe I'm filtering in too much of the Patriots scheme. But I'm high in the cowboys and I think they present a difficult match up for guys. You said golf who like really struggles under pressure and if the defensive line can overwhelm the line.
So offensive line, I don't know if the lines can get anything
going.
Falcons at Bengals. Falcons, still being priced generously, plus six and a half, almost full touchdown. I think it opened plus seven. And I was talking to Cory, he said he had bet some plus seven already. Then it dripped down to five and a half.
Now it's bounced back to six and a half. AJ Terrell went down. One of their better quarterbacks Falcons, one of the handicaps last week for the Bengal Saints was that the Saints, are one of the worst teams in the league at generating pressure on the quarterback and they still sacked barrel three times.
Yeah. And now you can make the same criticism in this matchup, which is the Falcons are one of the worst teams at generating pressure on the quarterback as well. But it seems like everyone's generating pressure on the Bengals right now. And the Bengals, again, time, weight, average margin was negative versus the Saints last week.
But now they come home, Falcons six and oh ats and it's very well known that the Falcons are six and oh. At. I pretty much hear it sight on every, anecdotally, every single podcast that I've listen to.
I like thes on the I think the defense is good enough to slow down the falcons, meaning the defense is good enough to meaningfully create downgrades. I think last week was a fluke off of like a bunch of long rushes. I don't think that's happening again. And I don't see, especially without AJ throughout, and this is something we spoke about in the preseason preview, which is actually the Falcon Secondary looks okay on the surface, but like once one or two guys go down, like all shit's gonna break loose, and like they're really locked up.
And then a lot of weak links, like if AJ three L's not playing in this game all of a sudden looks like a week secondary unit. And I think AJ made a really strong point last week when we talked about, even though the Bengals lost and that sound a football game to the ribbons, they showed a willingness to play to the two I structure and just take what's there.
Which leads me to believe that the angles are gonna take what they have. The Falcon's defense is not good. They'll be able to score at wheel and the defense is good enough to slow down the Falcons
And a flurry of injuries elsewhere on the defense as well banged up
I wish it was cheaper though. So that's just the thing is like at six and a half. But this is,
especially if we're talking circa here, I want that hook. Sure.
Bengals upgrade three spots to that sixth now. And drive quality
by the way,
as them at two loves the Bengals angles.
If we took a strictly 50 50 split then the Falcons would be 21st.
59% of the bets coming in on the Falcons. Again, when you're six and oh and now you're getting six points versus a team that I feel like, the Bengals feel like a wet blanket to most people.
Like they're just not coming through the way everyone wanted them to. They're not as flashy as they have been. , they've had some big plays, but not like last year. Maybe it does come together this time. And two, the Bengals are now coming back home . Falcons being a dome team now outdoors.
I like it for sure.
Browns at Ravens Browns plus six and a half. Another juicy number here. I feel like this should be lower. I'm glad I talked about and looked at like it saw that we're ow to because I feel but hurt on the Browns and now I can quantify why we're butt hurt, or at least why I'm butt hurt on the Browns cause we haven't made any money on 'em.
I don't feel butt hurt yet about, about the Browns, even though you
were, you rarely feel but hurt. That's true.
With that
aside when you feel, but it's probably a huge buy signal. Huge.
Yeah. Exactly. But I think this plays out similar to Green Bay Washington.
The Browns are good enough on offense and the Ravens have struggled enough on defense.
I think at some point the Browns are gonna lead during this game, but I wanna buy into the two 30 now and then go grab the other side. When that becomes available. Cause I don't like the six and a half and I don't wanna stay off this game cause I think there's gonna be a lot of volatility with that.
But like the Ravens are explosive enough on offense and everything's working right. That I see a bunch of angles that like I'll cover this six and half.
We have them general, I they're in the same quadrant,
same cluster, definitely the same cluster.
So if we had any sort of implied point differential, certainly wouldn't be six and a half.
I can run that quickly. I forgot that we need to run those.
We have a lot of things like on the back burner that aren't necessarily being fully leveraged and yet we're still 17 and 12. That's right. With a lot of fire power still yet to be put to use.
And now also that Ravens type of performance, it is like not even outliers now it's becoming like a habit.
And it lines up with Rashad, Bateman being out. I They simply just do not have, they no
one field and no one stretch field. It's Mark Andrews and that's it.
When I was disaster Tasn r Junes taking the points. R June was comparing that game to Ravens Dolphins last year, that Thursday night football disaster.
Yep. That was one of the very kind of first games that popped up that season where it was like head scratching, like ravens Oh man, they got, They might have some problems there.
It's true.
Colts plus two and a half at Tennessee. I've seen some threes pop up already. It's on Draft Kings. It's plus two and a half reduced juice, 42 and a half to total.
In my anecdotal experience listening to podcasts, et cetera. I've pretty much only heard Colts love for this.
Everyone wants the Colts to be good. Everyone thought the Cols were gonna be good and now you got a little bit of a glimmer. Oh, that's what I expected the Kohls to be. They're back.
I don't really know what, these are two bad teams, as we see on our graph right here. There are a lot of moving parts. I wanna fade the cols, but I don't wanna buy the Titans, and I'm trying to stick to two side handicaps.
I'm
actually, this could be a great setup for cult Start Slow, tighten, start
hot. Oh, I forgot to this goes to that saying, and certainly if you follow my Twitter, it will be on there. Titans Drive. Quality scripted place number one after that. Number 32 in drive. Quality.
Always a play. It's a live bet, the team under, and depending on how the game's going, in the same way we did when these teams played earlier this year, when we bet the the live under right until the market is pricing in which they're not going to, cuz they don't have the ability to team adjust until they're pressing in at the Titans are number one, its scripted plays.
And number 32 after that take advantage.
all right. Tennessee first quarter, first half, that's the bet to make.
Jets down to plus one at Denver opened three and a half.
I bet the three and a half right away. Now Russell Wilson might not play and it might be Brett ripping. But in any case, my worry here is one of the graphs that we are of honing in on last week and why we're so strongly lenient to the Jets versus the Packers was, Zach Wilson plays really well from a clean pocket, but then he plays terribly from, under pressure.
And the Broncos are one of the best teams that generate pressure right now. And now it's gonna be on the road as well off a big win. Back to back road games and now being priced aggressively. Now everyone's upgrading the Jets. Everyone's excited about the Jets.
I liked it at three and a half, but at one, I, I can't, this, it seems too late.
I thought I'd be on the Jets here, or I'm not. This would be the spot where he addresses facing a tough defense in altitude gets pressure who can create good coverage.
This does seem like the spot where if I'm really gonna upgrade Zach Wilson, I wanna see him play well in Denver, right? I don't wanna project him playing well in Denver. I wanna see him play well in Denver. that doesn't mean I'm back in the Bronco. Certainly not. I think everything we can say about the Jets, you can say, but the Brongo, which is the Jets do a really great job generating pressure also with us.
One's taking way too many sacks or it's same thing, whatever. They're missing gars, right? He's out for the year. And like you gotta see the Broncos before you actually back them.
This was the chart we were leaning into last week, which is, Yeah, Zach Wilson down here, Clean pocket efficiency, one of the best in the league.
Yeah. But then one of the worst under pressure.
Yeah. Which under pressure is generally less stable than I kept clean. I just wanna give him a shout to it to Kevin Cole for that graphic. Does a terrific job there. But in a spot against Denver, I granted that Jeff's offense minds getting healthier, I still think Wilson's gonna be under pressure.
And that can cause some real issues.
What's the total on
this? It's 38. So low.
very low, but 38 is not even close to low enough. If this is gonna be a 2022 low scoring game, which
by the way, if we do get some early scoring. Oh yeah. Live. This is the perfect time. Perfect time, really.
I I'm excited to re-listen to this episode and actually take down notes of all the things I'm saying now and then actually live bending that.
Yes.
Executing a trade plan. Executing the trade plan.
Texans at Las Vegas. Off their buy, off their buys.
Both teams coming off their buy. Yeah. Houston plus seven. Oh, total at 45 and a half. 57% of the bets coming in on the Raiders. We got the Raiders at Marketing Consensus Power ranking 16th Texans 30th.
A lot of disagreement on the Raiders actually. So one of the bigger standard deviations that we see. ESPN has an eighth, certainly a square kind of power ranking. PFF at 18th, 5 38 at 22nd, Football outsiders at 24th.
Certainly one of the better offices according to hard drive quality metrics, but certainly one of the worst defense next to the lions. So does that mean the Texans can cover a full touchdown?
If you'll look at the weighted drive quality, we've got Vegas 20th, Houston, 20. So our model's definitely gonna suggest slightly lean on Texans. And we've seen the Texans are very plucky, another lot betting, right?
Yeah, true. I would say, I think maybe this could be like a sneaky 45 if this game starts pretty slow.
I wouldn't mind you over on this one. Yeah. Yeah,
me too.
Chiefs at 49ers in San Francisco. Chiefs. Minus two and a half. I saw I hit a three already. Probably gonna end up right around that three. Niners obviously dealing with a bunch of injuries. The Niners show up well in our drive quality.
But that has to account for the injuries then. Exactly.
It doesn't account for the injuries on the defense. Not that really matter in the first place against the chiefs. They're gonna beat a good defense anywhere.
But I think they're almost two questions here, which is one, is the Niners defense good enough in their current juncture to at least slow down the chiefs? And two, which Niners offense is gonna show up?
I have no idea that the Niners have had pretty, varying they dominated the Panthers. 37 on the Panthers. It's not like the Panthers are a train wreck on defense. Yeah. Who cares. But they didn't show up against the Falcons last week. They didn't show up against the Broncos.
They didn't show up against the Bears, showed up against the Seahawks. They gonna show up against the Chiefs. I don't know. As we said on the live stream last week, chiefs jump out to a lead. I don't wanna be back in Jimmy g down chief score. Yeah.
Yes. That's, and that's why you are very reluctant to gain any Niners exposure once they're down 14 zip.
Yeah. It's just not the offense necessarily built to really come back. And I
think the Chiefs can really hammer, especially if they're being. Downgraded a bit on their offense, on account of the Niners defensive production in the first five weeks of healthy players. Essentially just saying though, like the market is not accounting enough for the injuries , which I think is how you get to a two and a half point
spread. Yep. I haven't heard two. And Dan, I'd be curious to hear what you're, what you,
since I know you're on top of a lot of what the market is saying, podcasts, other sports betters and things like that, I haven't heard a case for the Niners yet, so Sounds pretty imbalanced.
And it's such a short spread, makes me nervous. Again, the chiefs too are not outside of that first game versus the Cardinals. And the books and the box. Yeah.
Which is a good defense. Which is a good defense. Yeah. But yeah, at the end of the day, they're still occupying the number two spot on every offensive efficiency metric.
This is so this is a perfect summary of yeah, what we've talked about, but what is the handicap on this game?
It's all kc. The nines are too banged up. Oh, you're gonna get under a field goal Potentially. It's all,
but that's, But then I, the line move, it's surprising we're going from three, two and a half and I think my clothes at three, but I don't think that's necessarily the guaranteed handicap.
Yeah, I think it's definitely gonna enlo at three.
In fact, what is 89% chiefs on draftings? Interesting. Again, the skew square. So yeah, lines up exactly with what we're talking about.
But I wanna make a, there's, that's an important distinction to make because meaning we can tell where the pricing is coming from, right?
I care more about the fact that I handicap a square when I'm unsure what the, baked into the line I can say with pretty good certainty. Now it's baked into this line, is that the Niners defense will do enough to slow down the chiefs if that's what's being priced in. And I know that with relative certainty and as much certainty as we can have then yes, I do wanna be, I don't care if it's like square cake.
Cause if that's what's being priced in and I wanna fade that angle, like I'm gonna bet the.
Yeah, but we don't know that is. Of course. That's a great, that's a great example of why you were leaning into Chief's Box, why you were leaning into chiefs versus the box. Cuz you knew what the handicap was and And that's what you wanted to fade.
I think we're seeing the same thing here, which is why the total's not 51 and a
Like that. I like that. I like that. Yeah.
That is a really great observation that this total Yeah. Should be higher. And this could potentially be pricing in, Oh, the Niners defense is gonna surprise at home. Yeah. And if that's the angle you wanna fade, then that is definitely a good reason to lean into Chiefs.
All right chaws plus six at the Chargers. I think this was seven.
For a while I saw seven, I even saw seven and a half
before. Okay. Saw some Seahawks buying on drafting, 72% on the Seahawks.
Obviously the Chargers did not put on a great game for the eye test on national tv. Going to OT versus the Broncos could not move the ball at all. And obviously they're banged up too and their office line is getting just torn up. And if they didn't have Justin Herbert, man, the Chargers might be one of the worst teams in that nfl.
And is Kenan Allen coming
back? Exactly. I think he is coming back. I believe I read he slid for a full a week of full practices,
this is the big spread, one of the things I've talked about too on a week to week basis. Yeah, he
certainly does. Very tough. Yeah. I think the defense is so bad that the chargers will be able to move ball well, and something I'm looking at is that I think the Charger's defense has played a lot better in recent weeks.
Granted it could be a function of playing the Broncos.
Look at this too. We got Chargers and Seahawks, same quadrant, very close to one another.
I mean what's Juno Smith? Is he the We're gonna look back at this and say, Okay. Didn't do that much against the Broncos.
Did nothing against a good niners defense did well against a great Falcons defense at home was unbelievable against a ro defense against the lines in a dome. Yeah. Was really good against a bad Saints defense in a dome didn't play so well against the Cardinals at home, at the Chargers. Now, I don't know.
I'm not willing to buy
Gina Smith. That could be fair. But I also, I don't think I can buy chargers at such a big.
No, I don, I don't like the spread. The charters have shown no ability, especially if Ken
Allen's not bad. Yeah. And especially if Ken Allen is out, if Ken Allen is out, then could you lean Seahawks?
This line dripping lower is probably pricing in and increasing probability that Ken Allen's not gonna play. That's another way I'm not back in sea.
No. I'm not buying the Seahawks.
Pittsburgh plus seven at Miami
I wanna go to that Kevin Col chart.
Let's see where two is. And we see where Skylar Thompson. Teddy Bridgewater. R
I think.
Wow. I think I think the Dolphins want Tobe.
Yeah. Wow. That's decisive.
In our way to drive quality number 32 team is the Pittsburgh Steelers.
I think the Dolphins are buy here at seven. At seven, even hoping it's seven for circa.
Especially coming off a win for the Steelers at home. Yep. Pee the box. No one's gonna, they might take the plus seven.
And I love the Dolphins here, which is, I don't think it's being properly priced in. How good, how much better to it is at least right now. In that offense. The thesis that didn't manifest last week, which I think is a product of poor scheming on the Bucks part. Which is the Steeler seconds are still awful.
I think the Bucks failure to capitalize on that is product, in fact, that like teams are perfectly covering them at 52%, which is like a dysfunction on their offensive coordinator, offensive scheme, and the wide receiver's ability to get open. I don't think that's true of the Dolphins. And as we said, the Dolphins team are going to be especially prone to the match ups and like they should be able to walk all over the steel secondary.
And I think too is exactly the quarterback will take advantage and I think they can put up a bunch of points. And I think that if we're adding a little bit of flavor from the narrative angle, I think Mike McDaniel's hungry to get the dolphins back into the conversation as a top team like there were after week three.
And we also have the, according to our drive quality scoreboard. I That game between the Dolphins and Vikings was closer. Sky
Thompson doesn't get hurt. I think they win that game.
Yeah, I agree with that. I It's still, even Waddle and Tyreek both blew up. One of the same game parlays that we're leaning into was Thompson Tyreek model.
Yep. And Thompson had 90 yards passing in the first quarter. Man, that was setting up gonna be, was that was gonna cash for sure.
I like this. First Dolphins, I like the buy and the Dolphins and the sell of the Steelers.
Two side.
Great too. Side
handicap there and especially as Dan points out too, that Steeler secondary is still banged up. I mean they're start's still starting people off the practice squad.
Last game of the week, Monday night football to doozy the bears at the Patriots. Old school Patriots bully ball is back.
The Patriots are continuing to surprise and when they have you on the mat, I mean it's like you're done. A couple weeks in a row. Now again, some big upgrades in the market. Almost a top 10 team now. Up 10 spots, year to date up five spots. Just last week ff has 'em as 12. And again, it's more the analytics heavy industry analysts are higher, in fact, on the Patriots than something squarer like espn.
So I know we've been cold on the Patriots. How are you thinking about them now?
I won't avoid Patriots at all costs cause I don't have a good take on them.
So it's not necessarily that you still want to sell them, it's just you don't have a signal? No, I have no
signal.
Yeah. I thought I was on them la I was on them last year. I timed them perfectly last year, which I really was onto their rise early and very quick to jump off the train. I don't have a good sense this year. I also, Cause I don't think I have a good sense of zappy. It's played really well, but I have no idea whether to think that will continue or not.
I don't think there's anything to suggest that it isn't. Yeah. It goes back to just Bill Beek putting young quarterbacks in. Good positions, and also not to make mistakes unless you're just a bad quarterback and you just make those mistakes. Yeah. And he's not, Yeah. We're looking also at our drive quality.
They're in that top right quadrant. With those handful of teams like Eagles, like Bengals, like Bills.
By our way to drive qualities number six, Uhhuh.
The Bears are the exact type of team that can be bullied, are susceptible to be bullying.
Susceptible to being buried.
I like the alt spot more.
I like that too. Yeah. Patriots Alt spread. I'm gonna
give it an absolute blowout. They run all over them. Gimme a nice same game. Parlay with dandre Stevenson Rushing yards. A game scenario in which the Patriots just run and dominate the bears and force a bunch of
turnovers?
Yep. And this is already creeping up. It was at seven, now it's at eight. Probably trying to protect against some of those teasers. Is there probably gonna be a very popular teaser leg? Yep. Certainly not one of the more, more popular bets though, as far as what we've talked about. So using draftings as a proxy, 71% of the bets on Patriots.
There's more tickets on the Seahawks than the Patriots. So that eight, that seven, that full touchdown. Could be scaring more of the market off.
All right. That's our NFL week seven market outlook. Thanks everyone for joining. Thanks everyone for listening.
