Episode Transcript
NFL Week 8 Betting Market Outlook. I'm Brett Matthew @deepvaluebettor with my co-host Judah Fortgang @throwthedamball. We're live from Dime Square. It's foggy, rainy, dreary. Fall is definitely coming. Reminds me of our week seven performance. We went two and three in our Circa Millions contests.
Lost on the Jags, Dolphins, and brutally lost on the Patriots. And then we got some winners with the Bengals and the Chiefs. We outperformed the market in Circa, something that we were talking about maybe it was last week or the week prior, talking about how the market has just been uncanny really in its outperformance year to date.
And how that was only a matter of time before it came back down to Earth. And that happened in week seven. One in four for the market. Lions was the number one pick followed by the Jags. That was really our only overlap. Our only really on market play Buccaneers was the third most popular pick. Niners, the fourth most popular pick.
So we had a nice fade there. Nice alpha play. And then the only winner for the market was the Jets. So we got that one game of Alpha. Now, on a year to date basis, we are 19, 15 and one. The market is also 19-15-1. So hanging on. Rainy, foggy, dreary week seven in circa, but absolutely crushed it in live betting.
One of our most successful weeks to date. Certainly in the afternoon slate really started to buy hard on the chiefs. We had some pretty sharp pregame plays. The whole thesis there was to fade the sell off, really on the Chiefs once again, big time match up for the chiefs market.
Sell off on the chiefs. Buying the other side, and we were buying some pretty out of the money deep minus six s, minus seven s expecting the chiefs to really erupt offensively and to take advantage of that overpriced niners defense. So we came into the game with those positions in our back pocket already.
Plus three hundreds plus 400 s. And then we leaned even further into the chiefs as they went down three zip as they went down 10 zip. And as we know, they came roaring back scoring touchdowns on the last seven drives of the game, definitively crushed the Niners on the road. And this is one of the things I really wanna pat ourselves on the back for because we see all these charts and all these things that come out on Twitter and stuff like, basically oh, it was so obvious.
Oh it was so obvious that chiefs are gonna come back. Oh, look at Patrick Mahomes record. When they're down a touchdown or more, or even double digits. It was obvious. It's never that obvious in the moment. Otherwise, everyone would've just ripped the faces off the sports books live betting in which we did.
We had the Moy, we had the plan, we had the script, and we timed it. And we timed it. Decisiveness. Yep.
Perfect execution. Your description of New York really fits the scene, which is as it starts to get a little cold, a little cloudy, little dreary and our circum picks felt that way.
The live bedding, I think it's almost representative of what football represents when it's dark and cold and dreary, which is almost the light in the winter.
I know you're also very optimistic, more optimistic than I was when we came into October, the month of Raininess jewelry.
It's fogginess. And since October started, we are six, eight and one in circa, so it's. One of the things that we'll get into, we're releasing for the first time are drive quality power rankings. Again, backwards looking, not necessarily forward looking.
But one of the things that you wanted to point out to Judah was on a back tested base is actually demonstrated predictiveness. So they're backwards looking, but they do have value on a forward looking basis, at least on a back tested perspective. Yeah. Yep.
Like in so far and that has the Bengals, number two, very provocative.
Look, it's provocative, but I think it almost cuts through any sort of narrative and really is just taking strictly performance and how well teams move ball in the field. And it's not saying this is like the definitive capital teacher, but
it's a good base to, to kinda start your analysis from.
So when we think about week seven and we look at. Our drive quality scoreboard. Again, our model of science earned points based on quality of drive. And that's gonna be independent of any scoring outcome or nons scoring outcome.
And the intention here is just to give us a better sense of how these teams really performed. Anything stick out to you on the scoreboard that may have, that may be a bit surprising?
I would say something that sticks out to me is like Washington outperform the packers more so the Texans were closer to the readers than the real scoreboard suggests.
That's a procedural point also that's important, which is when we put a metrics metric quality to measure team efficiency, we're using on a drive by drive metric, right?
Saying per drive, How good is this team drive? Quality is very valuable. One thing it doesn't incorporate as something like a pick six, right? So the Raiders and Cardinals for instance, Cardinals had two pick sixes. The Raiders had one, so their scores gonna show up a little bit lower, but that doesn't necessarily mean, they played worse of the game.
We just have to mindful of the I don't wanna say failure, but like a limitation specifically at the scoreboard, which is something like a pick is not gonna show up. So the text on the score, just by virtue of having more drives, even though they weren't necessarily more efficient for a drive is gonna come show up higher.
Yeah. Although what I would point out is again, we look at our t a metric time weighted average margin can give you a sense of how competitive that team was and indicative of our drive quality score between the Raiders and Texans.
Time weigh the average margin for the Texans was just negative two points. Yeah. For the Lions, just negative one point, which suggests that game was much closer than it was the final score. And we know that because, the Cowboys didn't really pull away really until the end there. Yeah. In fact, what the lines were winning six to three.
Yeah. What halftime? Yep. Certainly early in that game time weighted average win probability even for the Cowboys was just 57%. So certainly not indicative of winning by three touchdowns. Though our drive quality is still suggesting the cowboys certainly outperform the lions on a fundamental perspective, on a drive by drive basis perspective.
Another thing I wanna look at is earn points over realized in totality on a season to day basis for a team like the Giants. Just to quantify the eye test of what everyone knows and we'll see it in our consensus market. Power ranks as well. The giants still aren't meaningfully moving up despite being six and one. But time weighted average margin, again, we saw this last week, negative one. Time weighted average win probability for the Giants.
42%, but we don't want to completely dismiss it as well because the drive quality from an earned points perspective, Giants still did beat the Jags.
Yep.
Browns time weighted average margin negative. Negative one point.
And the chiefs Niners, in my mind, it was like, Ns got off to an O lead and it was just all chiefs. That's not really representative of what happened.
It was like 58% let's see, like 42 for the Niners. That was a pretty cool game until the end. Yeah, it took a while for the chiefs to kinda fall away.
Yeah. I mean it was just 14, 13 even at half. And I remember there were some few plays there in the second half where even the Niners were just still within one score and then, it's just one more huge play by the chiefs that kind of just extended it.
This is one of the reasons why we have our drive quality earned points, the time weigh average margin, and the time average win probability all together cuz it comes at it at different angles. To give you a broader sense, Because they're not all telling you the same thing cuz a huge weakness of the time, average weighted win probability is it bakes in a ton of assumptions around that win probability in itself, which can be totally inaccurate sometimes.
And then the time weigh average margin really totally discounts. Again, a strong team potentially at the end of the game just asserting its will. And we know fourth quarters can be very important and really separating a good team from a bad team and the time weigh average margin is not gonna necessarily take that into consideration.
And then that's why we have the earned points as well take into consideration the strength of each individual drive. And so they all come at it from different angles, and that's why you wanna see all three of these at the same time to really give you a sense of how well that team performed in totality.
Yeah. When we look at our Wheat Gate consensus market power rankings from the market perspective, bill's still there at the top, justifiably so had the week off, so you shouldn't expect to see much movement, although ESPN, from their perspective, did. They're enamored with the chiefs unexpectedly blowing out the niners and so they upgraded them and downgraded the bills.
From the market consensus perspective, you still have bills at number one, chiefs number two, eagles, number three, cowboys force, followed by the Bengal to round out the top five. And then you have bucks, Niners, Ravens, Vikings, Packers to round out the top 10. Why?
The sixth or 11 makes no sense to me at all. And that we're still on the books.
You could tell the market's still on the bucks because they're now, they're favorites.
This one genuinely makes no sense to me. And I think it's one of those pricings where We're not gonna see such a fundamental gap between market pricing and my fundamental view of the team.
When we look at the books too. The standard deviation, that is basically gonna give you a sense of how volatile our industry perspective of this team, and we can see it's relatively low. Except our drive quality, which this doesn't take it into consideration.
Our drive quality. As the Bucks rank 19th, a huge separation from how the market is viewing the books. Right now, ESPN has 'EM at seven PFF 4 5 38 eighth Football Outsiders Eighth and In Predict at eighth. Drive Quality 19th.
Huge delta and that could be signal. You definitely had a great game plan coming in. Called out to bet the Panthers money line soon as we started our game trade live stream. Your first trade idea was like, let's lean into the Panthers plus 500 plus 4 75 with the expectation that the bucks are just overrated and that the Panthers can't possibly be as bad. And that, that was the particularly great call. And this is one of the things I really wanna take advantage of from these market rankings as well, is what I wish we would've had the Panthers in.
Plus 13. Cause one of the things we should take advantage of last week, it was unanimous across the board that the Panthers were the worst team. So everyone agrees the Panthers are the worst team. Take advantage of that. Yeah. Cause very, But what that's telling you for all intents and purposes is that the market's likely gonna overshoot to the downside then and how they price the Panthers.
It's gonna be overly aggressive to the downside. And it could have been a two-sided handicap because we wanna fade the bucks on the other side. Yes. True. So that was a whip. That was a whip.
Something that's interesting that we added this week to this chart is of seeing the delta of what in predict is saying aka the actual spreads of the game as opposed to what the general market says.
And do you wanna briefly talk about, again the difference between how, espn, et cetera are coming up with their power rankings and how in predicted,
Okay so ESPN has their model, right? It's fpi, PFF has their model, Pff Green Line 5 38 has theirs.
And football Outsiders is basically taking their kind of qualitative analytical framework in product is just taking the Vegas spreads of the games for all the looka headlines and more specifically waiting the line for this particular week. So it's just using the spread line. It's not using any priors or any other metric as would a ESPN PFF or 5 38.
So that's, Important in understanding what's being priced in games because that's the market of I product as opposed to any ESPN P 5 38. What I find interesting about the delta there is that like in theory, the ESPN PFF 5 38 People, Outsiders as a World are going to represent a more consensus, probably sharper view of what each team actually is.
And in Predict is just the pricing here and now because spreads are taking and this specific match up. This match up Exactly. That's the key point that spreads are not just a fundamental value in the same way that power makings are just a fundamental. Value spreads are accounting for, home to advantage injuries, different match up angles, that's all being baked into a price.
And it's common for people to say, Oh, the spread is a representative of fundamental value, and the two are definitely correlated, but they're not the same thing. I think that's represented by the delta and the differences between are other market indicators and
the . Yeah. And that's why this week for those who are watching on a stream or watching on YouTube post hoc is we have this new column in our week, a consensus market power rankings in predict diff, which is essentially the difference between the in predict ranking and the market consensus ranking.
And that difference should give us a sense of how is the market price of this team for this week's matchup today relative to this broader macro outlook consensus ranking of this team. And that's how you can look at in predict as micro the market consensus power ranking as broader macro. And so we wanna get a sense of how that potentially could be.
Too focused on the short term and ignoring potentially some of the longer term insights. And one of the things we really wanna compare this to as the drive quality power rankings as well. And so we can see some of those biggest changes, some of those biggest differences between in predict, again, looking short term relative to market consensus, power rank long term.
Some of the biggest differences is how they're ranking Titans, giants, sea hawks, cowboys, Saints, Cardinals, Ravens, Colts. This week is some of those
biggest deltas. Yeah. The Titans one, I think is goes to show the market's being about Ryan ten's injury. And it's almost a shame cause I, this is something I think we can take advantage of this delta up, but that the giants and are playing each other is a little unfortunate cause it kind of diminishes the value there.
I love it when people join the game trade, live bedding sessions that we have.
Cuz the bigger community that we have, the more, intelligence, kind of collective intelligence that we can have. And Darnell, I know, you called out when we were trying to angle into some live money line bets on the Chiefs. You called out that bookmaker, had the plus 200, the draft Kings had the plus one 50.
And so obviously we wanna try to get the best prices possible. More eyes we have on the market, the better we can. And you calling out that plus 200 was huge for us especially since it cashed . But also one of the things I wanted to look at too is, the one week change. So what were the biggest one week changers on the market Power rankings?
Giants upgraded five spots. Sounds fair. Especially since they were so low. They were 26th last week. Now there's still only 21st sitting at six and one standard deviation 4.7. So big disagreements across the board. Our drive quality actually has 'em pretty high. Yep. Rank 12, ESPN 19th pff, 21st 5, 38 20th.
Football. Outsiders relatively high at 14th, but the market's still not buying in to the Giants. Bears upgraded just two spots and another flurry of twos and ones. And then from a downgrade perspective, Colts were downgraded Five spots, Lucy, Versa, Titans, and also Matt Ryan.
No longer the starter and that might have a negative connotation at least here in the short term. But I know when I was looking at PF grades as well, I Matt Ryan was like my 33rd. There's only 32
teams. You can't get much worse than Matt Ryan. Yeah. So you can't
get much worse than Matt Ryan.
Now, I guess you, you technically can still get worse. Sure. And er may be worse in the short term, but I know what some of the things people were calling out is, he definitely is a lot more mobile than Matt Ryan. Pretty much anybody would be more mobile than Matt Ryan. Yeah. And so that could mitigate some of the Office of Life weaknesses, et cetera.
But he certainly doesn't have the experience, wisdom, judgment that Matt Ryan does. Chargers downgraded four spots. , our June's chargers downgraded four spots. Falcons downgraded. Four spots. Patriots downgrade. Three. Our Jaguars downgrade. Three. We bet the Jaguars now four weeks out of the seven and I think we're own four betting the Jacks.
Huge disagreement. Is this the biggest disagreement? The biggest disagreement? Standard deviation.
9.3 spots. That's the volatility of the Jags. 9.3 spots. Our drive quality has them at six. No wonder we Blu them so much on a season to day basis, and maybe we've just been early. Maybe we've just been early, so maybe we have to lean into 'em again. ESPN 13 PFF 27 5, 38, 31. Whew. Football outsiders nine. Just massive disagreement there.
Another team that's the market really disagrees on is the Seahawks at 9.2 Standard Deviation. Our dry quality eighth, ESPN 25th, PFF 28th, 5 38, relatively high, 11 and five football Outsiders has been a little bit ahead of this cause I know even weeks ago, football outsiders did have the chaws at rank 10 in Predict 23.
And then some of the unanimous, bills, Eagles chiefs, pretty much market consensus agreement that those are top three teams. Also a big agreement that Washington sucks. Consensus agreement that Washington is like the 25th best team and one of the standard deviation.
Why I think this is important because this is essentially, again, isolating where those most disagreement in the market and how to evaluate these teams. That's where you can get alpha where you can get value. The thing is you have to be directionally right on it Yeah. On that pet. But basically what this says is there's gonna be noise in pricing these teams with high standard deviations and potentially low standard deviations if you think that the market's wrong.
Also, one last thing I would say is the largest year-to-date change so far in the consensus market power rankings perspective is the Chargers right there with the cols.
The Colts is clearly, everyone's soured on the Colts, but the Chargers are one of those teams that people are holding onto.
I'm curious if you think that's the biggest change? I'm gonna guess no.
Going, going the other way. I was gonna say the Seahawks. I forgot about the Cowboys. True. It's the cowboys rush thing. But I was gonna, I was gonna ask the Seahawks were and we should actually talk about this. This was something I was really thinking part about after watching Seas, maybe I'm overreacting of like really questioning first principles of we must be missing something with the seat.
Where Gino Smith meted off. Ando Smith is throwing dimes to Mark. He's Goodwin in the zone, he's throwing. Dig routes on third and 10 consistently. He's clearly successful, like something's going right in Seattle. And Justin Herbert looked terrible and it's yes, like he was really hurt.
He wasn't playing plenty particularly well, right? And even like his but shouldn't a lot of at 17th he hasn't been overly impressive. It kinda question, what did the c have going on there? We all thought that like Pete Carro was the disaster. Russell was him. And the evidence, this, the exact, that something's going on in Seattle it led me to question like, okay, maybe there is something to like really having a successful run game.
And maybe that does establish certain offenses. It might not be a causal relationship or a Cisco relationship, but there are certain cases where that might be true. You even add questioning things like how much do we know about quarterback evaluation? Like, how certain should we be?
Quarterbacks are necessarily always, a product in the first couple years do you know, Smith coming outta nowhere eight years later. It just had me questioning a lot of different principles about what I thought was true about football, about quarterback play, backport passing game that head coaching.
Also opportunity, Gino Smith, Yeah. He's been in the league, you say eight years or whatever, but I what, six of those years he was just basically sitting on the bench, didn't really get an opportunity
to really, That's what I'm saying, that like how much do certain players need opportunities to show?
How much can we decide? This is, people are talking about. I don't think it's like really comprehending our own fashion this. Jill Smith was the consensus joke of the league coming into the season. Teka was the joke of the league.
I think he was the favorite to lose his job. Was like plus 400. Yeah. Especially with Drew Lock in there, a lot of competition.
Uh, And now instead he's the fourth ranked quarterback on PFF grade.
Yeah. On the season. And that really passes the Smith test. The dude is throwing absolute lasers. It's
unbelievable. If you came in with zero priors, you had no idea who g Smith was at the beginning of the year and you were just watching him.
You would think he is a top five quarterback.
Yep. It's true. And I think there are certain contextual factors and really like understanding how much context plays a role
but I think it plans the seeds of questioning first principles about what are successful team building ways and What actually matters most for success of the NFL in 22.
And it's also speaks to keeping an open mind, especially when you don't have, like a litany of data on a particular player who's like legitimately just finally proven who he is.
Like someone like Mitch Trubisky, I feel like again, he's got, what 40 starts under his belt. Like you have a sufficient amount of data to really understand what type of quarterback this is. He's still relatively young. Could he grow and mature? Maybe. But I, you can feel like your confidence level of trying to handicap Mr.
Bisky in any given game could be like relatively high. Whereas if we thought we knew who Geno Smith was and maybe still is, it's not like we never necessarily
know what we now, But that's, Yeah, that's actually, that's an important and good way of Sharpening the point, which is that we should always build in a tales if any possibility happens.
Yes. That's really the key point. Like
with games, with players. Yes.
I think it really illustrates the point that
we're talking with human beings here at the end of the day, and there are too many things we just can't account for. We have to have some humility and understanding that we can't quantify everything and we should build in a possibility there tails, right?
We need to
build that in always. Darnell's talking about narratives, I think also this is one thing we've talked about numerous times is trying to get a hold on. What's the narrative of this player, of this game, of this matchup? And sometimes narratives are very strong and very loud.
and that can help you get a sense of what's being priced into the efficacy of this player, or the strength of this matchup or which way what and the other. And I don't know if you necessarily just wanna blindly fade narratives, but you wanna understand like, alright, is this narrative being overpriced or underpriced, and trying to evaluate, where to exploit, mispriced risks mispriced evaluations.
And one of the things I lament a little bit is, we talked about this on pasting too, is, we've been right about a lot of, like long term Thesises Seahawks is definitely one that we've not been right about. We haven't really taken advantage of any of these juicy Seahawk spreads on the season.
Another thing I would love to note for like off season research as well is basically what I'm thinking about is this whiplash effect of week one and week two, cause everyone talks about. Week one. Oh, and then week two. Week two over reactions. All right, what about week three?
Whiplash. Which is one of the reasons like week one, Seahawks outperformed, beat the Broncos. They didn't look great doing it, but G Smith did show flashes in that game where people were like whoa. Is this a new quarterback? Is this something we need to take into consideration? And then you have week two, they suck.
They look bad. They get blown out. Verse Niners and every, Oh, okay, no. Week one was the noise, This was the signal. And then that week two, that confirmation, that's what takes hold then. And like a lot of people's minds. And if Geno went back to back good performances, then that would've.
But it's because the next whiplash that second week, then for the next 3, 4, 5 weeks, it's basically I don't believe it. I don't believe it, I don't believe it. Like it can't be this good, and it's like that week two, that whiplash effect hangs on and you need the follow through for that narrative to hold.
And that's something I would really like to look into is this whiplash effect. Let's get in to
Week eight
Thursday night football game, Raven's Buccaneers. This opened Raven's minus one creeped up to Raven's minus one and a half, and now it's flipped over the last 24 hours down to Bucks minus one. We've been selling the bucks hard the last couple weeks, especially last week largely due to you, Judah.
And we can tell from the market consensus power rankings that the market isn't fully selling off on the books. Downgraded only two spots downgraded only four spots on the year to date basis, and they're sitting at three and four. They're not just and looking ugly doing it.
Yeah. You don't accidentally lose Pittsburgh and Carolina, right?
Not as like the other team play their best game, Indianapolis. . That's a key point. Understanding what being priced like the Ravens are at top 10 team for sure. And the more like fifth or sixth, but we're just still hanging on the Tampa narrative that they're like going to kind turn back the clock.
And I think there are really good and legitimate reasons to them and say, No, this team is different. Something that really stood out to me as part of my research, which is looking at perfectly covered place, something we studied at this summer is as much about the offense as it's right. It's scheme plays a huge role in that.
Arizona consistently shows up as a team defense center perfectly covering them. Scheme plays a role and receivers getting open also plays an role, not to mention of course, the actual quality of the you're facing. And there are 50% of the passings are perfectly covered.
B3 is a negative 0.3 epa. That is the Carolina Panthers the worst NFL offense this year. Negative epa, that's twice as bad as the Panthers. That's 50% of the, just as a baseline, right? That's a structural issue that's not being fixed. Not to mention this has been like ad nausea on, people have talked about the early down runs, but just like on drives where the team runs the ball over, expected on early downs.
There, epa, it's negative 0.2. Again, way worse than the Carolina Panther's offense this year when they throw it's 0.06 and like we see the videos of Byron left just being like, No, we're gonna keep executing. He show no willingness to adapt at all. I just don't see what's gonna magically fix and turn around.
Tampa offense, the fact that his name is Tom Brady. As if we didn't have price end that like he wasn't as good with that. Antonio O Brown is gonna miss Robowski, just Hobb. And by the way, the entire defense really hurt Tom on things out. It can't stop the run. The Panthers run all over them last week.
The Ravens are finally getting their run game back and I just don't get this pricing at all.
I think Antoine Winfield is also banged up.
The whole defense is hurt.
Yeah. The defense was the only saving grace for this team.
One of the things I wanted to point out, this cool graphic from Establi, the run. A guy that I've worked with, Michael Huy, he put this one together. And one of the things that stuck out to me here is this is looking at Pass right Over Expected.
And it's highlighting Bengals, Falcons. But for the purpose of this matchup is there's this in, everyone knows like all the bucks keep running the ball on first down at inopportune times. And it's setting up them, behind the sticks. But on a p e perspective, the Bucks are still fourth and this kind of Yeah.
And they're still not being successful. It's true. But there's a narrative the Bucks just need to pass it more. And maybe they do need to pass more on verse down specifically. But we can see this gives you a sense to a time series of it. And the Bucks have been in the top five, top 10 and pass rate over expectation.
For the last four weeks in a row. Yep. So it's not necessarily a solution to say the bucks just need to pass more to your point. I Their why decisions aren't getting open, not getting
any separation. If you're passing it to perfect coverage, it's a disaster. You're doomed to fail.
It's So does that mean we're betting the Ravens?
We are putting them in circa.
So that means we gotta get it in, We gotta basically finalize
this. You're right. I'm just realizing this now. I can look like an absolute fool and Tampa can turn back the clock.
But based on everything I know in all of my handicapping skills, but again, sports is random. Anything happened? Yes. This is such a slam dunk.
Also, the bucks have been downgraded. Four spots again, on a year to day basis. The Ravens have been downgraded. Five spots. On a year to date basis, the market has lost more romance for the Ravens than they have the bucks.
In fact, again, looking at the standard deviation, the box is a pretty unanimous, like 1.7 standard deviation. So just 1.7 spots of disagreement across industry analysts, Raven Standard Deviations four. So it's wider disagreement on how good the Ravens are, and I think all, both those numbers should be flipped.
Our drive quality has the Ravens ranked fifth, again, Bucks 19th.
So this would certainly justify a bet
on the Ravens at plus one.
Let's say, we'll look back at this and say The Ravens are like the seventh best team in the Bucks for 20, right? We just don't see Mispricings like that. That's huge. It's like the Imagine like Thengs being one point underdogs against the commanders right now.
That's almost the equivalent.
You loved the Chiefs pounding the table on the Chiefs versus the Bucks a couple weeks ago. Yeah. And the market was buying the Bucks then too. Yeah.
And
you said basically you were just absorbing the line.
This seems to Oh, I love it. I love this. I love it when I can source exactly what's being priced in and I know what's being priced in, right?
I have good data points. This is just the exact opposite. Like the wheels are really gonna come off if they lose to the ribbons this week.
I think in the chiefs box too, we knew there was like an influential better who is Yeah.
Giving that line movement so momentum. Are you aware of any of that in this instance? I
haven't seen, I haven't seen any of that.
I haven't seen that as well either.
Yeah. I Again, it's the nfl. Let's, 30 seconds. 30 seconds here before we close on this game is again, we know this is the nfl.
The bears just destroy the Patriots by three touchdowns. In New England, anything can happen . Exactly. So how do the bus win this game? Has to be more like raven's mistakes. Like they don't something great around Lamar Jackson.
There's always just like the random variance camp, but that's a cop out of an answer.
The way they win this game is like they turn back to clock, all of a sudden they're not throwing its perfect coverage. All this Brady looks good and he was spiking through his left and right. The Ravens are banked up. And
Raven Secondary has been exploitable.
It's exploitable and like it's still Tom Brady. And we talked about this last week like you can always price in a sea link even if their floors really low right now. So like the key for why they win is they play like the 20 20, 20 20 team, which the market is pricing in as an assumption, as opposed to, I'm saying has a tail.
Like a left tail possibility. That's a key. That's the key difference.
And pf grades perspective, they, PFS still has Tom Brady's
top six and I just posted a graph. I'm like, he's playing very well despite his circumstances. Circumstances are so bad there's only so much you can do. .
And so we're saying basically when he's not really passing the eye test and he's not helping the team win games by being still a top six quarterback and we're saying it's largely an outcome of play calling, running predictably, and the wide receivers aren't getting any separation.
Yeah. Maybe they do get separation versus the ravens. Yeah. And maybe they change up the play calling.
more than just separation and more than just play calling. It's play design. That's really incorporating the perfect coverage stuff.
And so the, Can they just fix that on a short week?
Yeah. Given Byron left, which is commentary. I don't think so. He's very adamant. That's inflexibility, right? They're like, Nah, this is how we do it. We're the football guys and we won't execute our game plan.
Yeah. For those who aren't aware, Byron Leftwich press conference a couple days ago, or maybe it was last week but it seemed like he wasn't aware of what EPA was
and Ian suggested that he does not care at all about how their running of ball.
All right. Broncos at the Jags, our favorite team under a field goal. Now it was three, I think, maybe even three and a half or a little bit. Now, Russell Wilson is gonna play
in London. In
London, Yep. Huge X factor there and the Broncos defense continues to play Elite.
From a market perspective. Broncos are way down there, 24th, downgrade just one spot from last week. Downgrade 10 spots on a year to day basis, Standard deviation, 5.7 spots, even drive quality has 'em at 22.
Which is driven almost entirely by the defense.
Offensively their 31st best. But defensively,
our number one,
Sorry. You bet the jags again. I think so. Are you gonna take a
break? You're gonna take a break. It's hard. Yeah. I'm not sure whether. To like really just lean in or there's something we're missing in the Jaguar circumstance. My gut says to, to lean in here to the Jags. There're just
so mistake
laden, it's so mistake, but it's in the kind that you don't think will continue.
It doesn't seem repeatable. That's what's so frustrating. There was one bad penalty. Penalty seemed like something that's more repeatable. It's like a lack of discipline. I just don't like, I don't think Travis at The's gonna fumble on the five yard line again. I don't think they're gonna continue to fail another court and one.
One of these charts that I really liked from Anthony Reinhardt. He puts out some good stuff, but basically he was looking at EPA gained and lost due to penalties is, you can give you a sense of, teams that are shooting themselves in the foot, they're either poorly coached or whatnot, and they're committing a lot of penalties.
The way I interpret this is then who have gotten lucky on a week to week basis and penalties have actually helped them, from the other side. Cause I don't think you can really necessarily do anything to make the other side commit penalties. So the Broncos are one. The most penalized teams from a perspective of actually it damaging them the most. So that's another reason, like not to lean in to a team like the Broncos, Saints are also there.
Seahawks also one of the most penalized teams and jets. And then the Jags are relatively average.
A game on the margins like this, like below three head coaching I think really makes a difference, especially with a low total in defenses. I trust Doug Peterson way more to manage the clock well.
And I manage game situation more than I do with Hackett.
Oh sure. I saw some odds how, who's the next coach would be fired. I think Daniel, Nathan Hackett is the Yeah,
I think you'll lean into the numbers.
And I'd rather bet on a better offense beating a defense than vice versa. Defense is fragile.
Patriots minus two and a half on the road at the Jets. I'm actually very surprised by this line movement.
Patriots was minus one before the game, so I bet the Patriots on a look ahead. And this line's moved up from one to two and a half, despite the Patriots looking like crap versus the Bears. Looks like they're going back to Mack Jones. You had predicted when we live betting that game that you thought they were gonna go back between Zappy and Jones.
And actually, from what I read, that was actually Bill EK's intention. Yeah. But they ended up not doing that. Yeah.
But I think they're definitely going with Jones Zap was definitively that,
To pull a plug there. Yeah. Outside of those first two drives this
game. It's true. If you held the same handicap that you did against the Bears, for the Patriots that is state prone quarterback, I don't see why you should jump off shift just cause it failed there. Especially when factoring in it's well documented at this point that be check defense is really struggling against quarterbacks who can scramble. I think it's almost the same situation we had last.
Zach Wilson really prone to mistakes. I'd run it back here with the Patriots, right? The take with the Packers game was partially sell the Packers and also buying Zach Wilson.
He played okay in his first couple games back. He's been dreadful since then, or I have nothing to say. He's gonna be a good quarterback there. Bruce Hall's out. And you wanna attack to Patriots on the ground? I'm not sure James Robinson's gonna be caught up to speed, and if it is, it's not the same.
I just, I don't see, We're getting two and a half points here. We're getting eight and a half in Chicago. I think it's a very similar handicap, and I think that was a sharp handicap too. It just didn't come to.
Yeah. I wonder from a props perspective, we really like Mike Leor as an oc. True. I wonder if they've seen how Lamar Jackson played against the Patriots defense, how Justin Fields's played against it. Wilson's got legs. Yeah. I mean he can certainly run the ball if they try to scheme some intended run designs for Wilson.
And if some like Wilson rushing props
Yeah, that's something the moderate life.
Also, I forgot who tweeted this out, but it was one of those blatant observations of. Which makes me feel a little stupid. Abetting the Patriots at minus eight versus the Bears is the Patriots were plus 10 versus the Packers just a couple weeks ago, and then their minus eight versus the Bears.
Now both those games may have been mispriced, like the Patriots probably should never have been, plus 10 and a half that was mispriced, right? And that was another thing again, like trying to take advantage of how we're observing how these teams are moving in these consensus market power rankings.
One of the things we mentioned last week was like, Oh, and now the Patriots like snuck into the top 10. Like this has been a massive climbing the ladder over the course of the season and maybe feeling a little toppy now. That's my only part. Again, I don't really, I still don't hate the bet because again, like Bailey's happy through that one second touchdown, Patriots went up 14, 10.
We wanted to get more patriot. That was you, They're about to run away
with it. Exactly. And I think, again, the room for error with bad offenses is very high. Especially without the ground game going, I just don't see the jets being able to put up a ton of points.
, which leaves room for error, leaves room for some stalled drives. I was gonna say also like you look at the bear's numbers, they're not so bad. Reputation is far worse than they're actually playing. That's another key thing that's not being sourced in.
They're like 19th in, in epa, 21st in drive quality on offense. They're not that bad. They're not a train wreck, which I thought they were early in the season.
That's a good point in the sense of, again, this is why I was, I think I was talking about this a couple weeks ago when our June was on, was, so many people post some really great charts, but very few times do I see somebody post a time series of something.
Yeah. And to see how something is evolving over time instead of just points in time Oh, this is just the most recent state of affairs. And the Bears, to your point, just keep inching up, even when they've lost games, and now it's coming through.
Yeah.
Okay. Steelers. Plus 10 and a half at the Eagles. We're going into one of the first big lines for this week. One of the things I wanted to lament from last week as well is there were some big lines, and something we've been talking about is the parity of this league this year.
And I think you were talking about how you don't even anticipate there really to be any big lines Yeah. This year, because they're not gonna be justified. Yeah. And so we got a couple this week
And Steelers plus 10, and they have interstate rivalry. The Steelers are another one of those teams who, again, they're not good. But besides that Bill's game where they clearly played the best team in the world, they're not getting blown out. Yeah.
You took the two things I was gonna highlight the battle, Pennsylvania and these big spreads and also the eagles have a tendency to let teams back in.
Something we've capitalized on all year. The angle gives me pause here and what makes me uncomfortable from a perspective. Is like Kenny Pickens throwing way too many interceptions and they're not fluky tip balls or whatever where like the eagles might walk their way.
It's say extending leads just cause Kenny pick a certain em all over so much.
You definitely can't bet the eagle though, that's for sure. Yeah. Not this year. The, I think the only teams you could possibly bet over 10 is it's actually maybe just one team. It's just the Bills.
Bills. And
You can't even do it. You can't even do the chiefs. Yeah. I can't bet the chiefs not minus double
digits.
The eagles are not the team that can consistently cover 10 and a half when it spreads.
Dolphins. At the Lions. Dolphins minus three and a half. This was minus three. I know on the look ahead because I bet. Dolphins minus three. I was surprised that this hasn't crept up. One of the reasons why I bet that look a headline at minus three was cuz I was anticipating this to creep up maybe by six, by kickoff.
Especially if the Dolphins looked good, which they didn't, so that was part of it that missed, But the lines didn't necessarily look good either was terrible. They did hang around.
I was a factor. The Cowboys, that was a fact. The cowboys not getting going on offense. The lines look dreadful.
I haven't gotten an offense going in the last three weeks. Granted, Deandro back and I'm Brown was apparently taken out for a concussion even though we didn't network concussion. But there are some clear match angles in this one that really have me on dolphins, which is, you talk about man coverage a lot and how the dolphins are particularly sensitive to it.
The lines by the highest rate of man coverage. Their corners are. A disaster. Biometric I've built called successful coverage over expected their free starting corners are all in the bottom 10 percentile of corners, not a recipe for success. Going up against Ty and I, as we've said numerous times men coverage really reflects the talent that is exactly right there.
Now, I was going to suggest building our favorite set in the game. Parlay with Hill Waddle and Tua which almost cash for me on something. I looked good in the first quarter and a half. So I think the main coverage does not allow allows with talent to play out, which clearly Miami has to talent bath here.
And the other thing is that Jared Golf is an absolute trade wreck against the Blitz. I've posted this graph earlier tonight. And the dolphins blitz 40% of the time forth in the nfl. Where I think it almost continues the trend of. The line's really struggling on offense and we can start to see this is what makes it very attractive on the alt line is dolphins can really extend just by virtue of how bad the Detroit defense is.
And some like pretty clear match in their favor I going up against the Detroit offense.
The total in this is 51 and a half, so this is the biggest total on the board this week. So definitely leaving, leaning into an SGP like that with to a hill wa definitely makes sense. And obviously verses one of the worst defenses in the nfl, if not the worst, but the dolphins defense, you mentioned this a couple weeks ago, was the market wasn't necessarily taking into consideration, it wasn't appreciating the injury status.
Yeah. And the depth of the injuries for the dolphins and the defense is banged up.
It's extremely banged up. Basically just have SA Howard. But the good news is they're going up against the lion team that has one good wide receiver. And again, we're playing man coverage here.
Man coverage is gonna let the town play out.
Yeah. And the pressure on goth. That was one of the reasons why we didn't even flirt with, taking lions last week. Again, lions was the number one pick in circa, wasn't even something we even thought about. And it was primarily almost a single angle handicap, which was goth plays historically bad under pressure, and the cowboys get pressure.
Yeah. But I wish we would've taken the Cowboys then, although actually I'm glad we
love better cowboys. That's fine. The cowboys stacked for stand back from injury. That's
fine. Yeah. No, and exactly how you want it. To exploit the Cowboys was them starting off slow and betting them live, which, we did. Which I totally actually forgot about that one probably cuz it took so long for it to come around. Like we were leaning into the Cowboys, when they were down, getting a med, attractive prices. But then I mentally started to write them off because I was also betting cowboys alt lines, like deep out of the money alt lines minus seven and a half, minus nine and a half again and minus 13 and a half.
I bet. The Cowboys. Yeah. And all those cast actually in fact until you reminded me now, was like, that was actually a big winner of ours. That's true. It's because the whole game I was eh, fuck this game's
fun. If this can happen and that thing can happen.
Yeah. And then it all happened
Yeah, that's right, right there at the end.
Cardinals plus three and a. At Minnesota. This was six on the look ahead. Again, I don't know all the look ahead lines, but I know the Cardinals were six on the look ahead cuz I bet the Cardinals plus six and this has come all the way down to plus three and a half.
I don't know if that's necessarily justified, that big of a movement. Obviously the Cardinals went big on Thursday night, football half, 10 days rest. Minnesota was on the by, right? Yeah. So they haven't played for a long time. Kinda outta sight, outta mind. Yeah, what do you think about this one?
Yeah, this is my one I wrote up for PFF as one of my higher conviction plays of the week. We talk all the time about sourcing information and sourcing market pricing. And I think this is a good example of something that I should be priced in but is not priced in the cardinal.
But a disaster unscripted place. We've taken advantage of that many times. Yeah. Last year, Deandre Hopkins had the highest yards per that run on scripted place and the highest PFF grade on scripted place. Which makes sense considering the chemistry and plays design specifically for Hopkins to get open.
Sure. So it is right if Deandre Hopkins comes back to a team like the Chiefs They're diminishing returns cause they're already so good. But we have increasing returns here because they're so bad on the scripted place, which is they'll be fine and they've been fine after the script, but they just need to get better on scripted place for their offenses start working.
And I think Hopkins aside for making their whole offense better really has this kinda increase in returns effect early on in the game. Not to mention if you look at our drive quality stuff, you look at epa, if you look at a general team efficiency, the Vikings are. I think 15 16th everything's league average on their front.
I think the colonels are also like that. Yet the market, and this is again going back to we were saying earlier about is pricing. It's the ninth best team and Thes, the six team, they're trending in opposite directions. Also, not to mention that play, no one could, Their only good opponent was that the Eagles team, they lost 23 7 to, maybe they did Packers 23 7.
They got blown out by the Eagles on a Monday night Football. But like all of a sudden they're win against the Packers. Doesn't seem so impressive. No. Like barely squeaked by against the Teddy Bridgewater, Star Thompson Dolphins. All their wins are one score against, There's the Will Lux London game.
They barely hung out to beat the Bears. Like they don't have any impressive wins. They haven't done anything to impress. The same angle we had for golf and alliance team. Third and blitz percentage in the NFL is the Cardinals. One of the only quarterbacks worse than Jared Golf against the Blitz is Craig is EPA against the blitz is negative 0.21.
Again, far worse than the Carolina Panthers offense. That's a 40% of the place. That's a huge percentage of the place. There are master angles. I think there are fundamental angles and I don't think the market's fully pricing in the return of Hopkins in the way they should
I like that. And there was some speculation around, or skepticism really around how much the Cardinals would try to use Hopkins and game one.
And already there were fortune. Yeah. Oh,
I forgot. In the ball. Yeah, I forgot one key part here, which is that Hopkins was using the slot 27. On Thursday night football, which was 17 more than any other game he's played against the Cardinals, the slot quarterback for the vikings hundred third outta hundred 12th and grade allowing the highest ever target, whether it's a quarterback, whoever's covering it's disaster for.
And we know that Kyle or Murray has a tendency if he needs to just book onto one target, Andrew Hopkins at a 48% target share last week. He can continue to press that advantage and hokinson get 15 extremely efficient targets
on this game.
So what were your bets? I
bet minus five and a half.
I just love. The balls it taste to bet. Something like, Cause I was, I think I was even laughing when we were on the game trade livestream and I'm like, Oh, like Jesus. Chiefs are out to plus six and a half. Like what about minus six?
A full two touchdowns away?
Just wait to see the receipts on the, I hope on the Ravens bucks game.
Yeah. Oh no. But again, betting these deep out of the money bats, these huge plus money bets. This is how at the end of last Sunday, again, we went two and three in circa we lost a lot of bets on a percentage basis.
We probably lost way more bets than we won. Yeah. From a L perspective, we crushed. because we have all these, moon shots. So you only need to win a fourth or a third of your bets because you're playing into the volatility that we all know is very apparent in the nfl. And this is the benefit of, leveraging this betting strategy is you don't need to hit 55%, you don't need to hit 52%, You don't need to hit 40% sometimes.
Maybe you don't even need to hit 30%. What's your per, what was your percentage? I thought it was like what, 22%
I was like 10 21 for 126% roi . That's a disastrous percentage.
Yeah. That's why I'm saying like, it felt bad. Cause it's man, we're losing a lot.
But the ones that you win, just. Blow all the losses out of the water. Yeah.
Like what I just outlined is 33% win rate for an or I have a six. So that speaks to the kinds of bets that I make and the value of
all, and this is the details, this is the new way of betting.
The things that we're doing, the things that we're talking about, our strategies. Again, it's not even applicable to somebody who doesn't live bet. Really. Also doesn't have the risk tolerance or the foresight. The broader macro view and to feel comfortable with that type of risk profile.
Yeah. This is the future though.
Bears at cowboys bears plus nine and a half. This was 10 and a half. So it's come through that 10 notable. Obviously the Bears looked awesome versus the Patriots Cowboys looked kinda like a wet blanket versus the Lions as we've talked about. What are your thoughts on this one?
Are the bears still
priced? I bet it like betting this game live. Yeah. Something I saw last Monday was that plays where fields would generally take sacks. He was scrambling out of them. Consistently. Now I'm not sure if that was a one off. It's lucky and they certainly were designing more runs, two fields.
But I wanna see is he taking sacks as the a one's gonna stall like it has for basically the first year and a half of his starting tenure or did something click last Monday where there are telling fields, look for the runs as much as possible. We're gonna design runs for you and this will be a different offense.
So I wanna monitor that spot. If Fields is running well, I do think this is fundamentally mispriced, but at the same time, the Cowboys are so good at getting pressure, right? They're third of the NFL pressure rate and Fields was so bad under pressure and against the Blit career. And definitely not bending it before the game actually plays.
And you can start to have some, data
points.
I wonder what fields props are gonna look like this week, given that he's had a couple games in a row now of some pretty impressive rushing prowess.
Yeah. The Bears have not been playing as bad as their reputation would suggest.
I think Fields, Rush Yards could still be too low because, I was very familiar with it last week cuz you know, we were talking, we bet Bears first quarter given that they were really good, in the upper echelon of scripted plays. By the way,
same thing this week. They're much better than the cowboy scripted.
So for I would recommend first quarter. A first quarter bet.
And one of the things also that we did which was a unique strategy, something that I think we should continue to look into and to try to leverage at every opportunity was the Bear's first quarter money line was like, what?
Like plus two 20. Yeah, two 20. But if you switched on Draft King switched the same game, parlay on it, boosted it to like plus three. So all you had to do was just match it with something that you felt, very confident in. And I combined it with three different bets.
One of the high conviction bets didn't cash, which was Patriot's minus one and a half.
That's what
I did too. That makes it feel better, but that pushed it out plus five 50. Yeah. And then, but the other ones that I combined it with was Fields, Rush Yards, which pushed that out to about five plus five 50.
Yeah. And then I combined it with Bears over nine and a half points. , which was like plus four 70.
Also if you wanted to, you could ratio it to get the actual odds to two 60 and take both sides. Like you just took like Patriot's money line, Bears Money Line along with the first quarter bed.
You can grab both sides. Yeah. That's something that's getting Keeps be higher than two 20.
But this is just something to look into, especially if you have draft King's Count is if you like a bet and you just flip the same game parley on and try to match it up with something very high conviction.
You can get a demonstrably better bet going from essentially plus two 10 to three 10. That's huge. Huge, and that's insane premium to be captured there. Yeah. So again, being creative with your bet. Construction.
Raiders at the Saints Raiders minus one and a half over under 49 and a half.
This is another one of the larger totals on the board. The Saints defense continues just to give up points and points and points and the Raiders often, certainly looking better over time. Definitely leveraging Josh Jacobs spin a re Renaissance. Ran all over the Texans. I Texans could not stop him.
5, 6, 10, 15 yard chunks over and over.
And the Raiders are third in our drive. They're top 10 in both passing and rushing. Your PS you said they're finding multiple ways to kind win on offense. They're defenses atrocious though.
Market Power Rank has the Raiders 14th. Our drive quality has 'em is 11th.
The
public is hot on them though. ESPN has the Raiders ranked sixth. That is too hot.
Much too hot. I dunno. It's not, I get my own bed.
Is it gonna be Andy Dalton still?
Yeah. They needed to start third FF grade. By the way, so far he's playing well,
Don't injuries in that Thursday night game. They were just gushing over how good Andy Dalton had played until those two pick six s.
But according to our dry quality scoreboard, Saints on a earned points basis outperform the Cardinals. And if Dalton doesn't throw those two pick six s, Saints probably win. And then the narrative around these teams change. True.
But probably not a game you wanna necessarily pregame. No, that.
Panthers. At the Falcons.
Panthers plus four. This was plus six. Plus six and a half, which seemed, yeah, a little bit too long for a Panthers team. That's obviously one of, still one of the worst teams in the league. Definitely have a reputable defense, something that we already knew, still being led by PJ Walker, who is known to put in a good performance from time to time.
I had talked about on the previous dreams, double digit underdogs to the Cardinals last year, just like they were double digit underdogs to the bucks and the Panthers. Steam rolled the Cardinals by 20, 30 points just like they did versus. And then they came back the next week. They were re-priced at three, four point favorites and they ended up losing straight up.
But Republicans are now a favorite. That's not necessarily, at least historically this season, the place where they're, racking up these ATS wins. Yeah. And there's a lot of noise across Twitter. Really disappointed ourselves included around how the Falcons mismanaged that massive deficit to the Bengals.
Yeah. Not throwing the ball, not taking advantage of Kyle Pits, Drake, London, and the other weapons at their disposal. And it said running the ball at a 60% clip. We bet Mariota overpass attempts when they had that big deficit with the anticipation that they would throw the ball more.
It makes sense. And you love Arthur Smith. You've talked about how you like to Arthur Smith. I like
his very narrowly play.
I like,
Yeah. This strikes me as one of those spots that I would say accustom earlier in the season of just ugly teams. I don't wanna get myself involved here.
And the Falcons defense we talked about they're okay until the injuries start coming. And then the weekly's really start to by law. And we saw that come really to fruition last week. And that's new. So I'm not ready to back the Falcons on those grounds and I'm certainly not packing the Panthers with PJ Walker at quarterback, and a four point
spread.
Yeah. And this is still a team who. It's pretty demonstrably trying to tank. Now of course there's players in the field still playing for contracts. They're still playing for their own reputations. They're still playing to justify their existence in the league. So they themselves aren't tanking on the field.
But the Panthers cannot blow this team up this year and then end up going, six and 11 and end up getting like the 12 pick or something. True. But yeah, I agree. At the same time, one of the things we don't wanna do is bad teams are bad teams. Not especially in a secondary that's banged up that we called out is something that we don't wanna lean into.
Yeah.
Speaking of spots, I don't wanna lean. Titans Texans, so I don't even know. This's my quarterback Titans. You're, it's
T hill from what
I've heard, ihi, but the factor of this went from four to two is a bit surprising, especially considering the general market has downgraded ints to basically unanimous 32nd F, which I don't agree with.
True at the send division 1.5. Not a lot.
Oh yeah, you're right. I mean it's 31, 29, 29, 30, 30 second, 32nd. Yeah. It's pretty much across the board. Yeah. And I don't think downgraded two spots last week when they hung around with the Raiders for three-fourths of that game.
Yep. We talked about the time weighted average winning, the time weighted average
margin was negative. One point on the live stream. I was talking about how I thought it was coin of finish and which is why I wasn't getting off my bet. The Titans, they don't have the ability to pull away.
They're good scripted. Always. The first quarter bed is in play in the live unders, in play is in Titans, but I don't see them being able to pull away. And the thetans are pesky. They're very pesky
Sounds like a perfect live bent of waiting for the Titans to get a lead, because they're very, they're elite at scripted plays those first two drives, taking that early lead, but the Texans hang around and the Titans actually play, Not only do they really play really well on the scripted plays, but then on the opposite side, as some of your charts have demonstrated, but like one of the worst teams after that
Yeah,
I think that's definitely the spot to tell Lee Nancy rather than been anything before the
game. I don't wanna, I don't wanna touch this game from a pregame perspective, but that's the game plan for this. Tightens up seven zip tightens up, 10 zip bet the Texans plus double digits potentially, and just wait for the Titans lead to bleed over the course of the game.
Giants plus three in Seattle, two teams blowing away market expectations. The market's starting to believe in the Seahawks, still not believing in the Giants, mostly because the Giants aren't doing it in any pretty way. The Seahawks kind of look good as they're doing. It defies the eyes , but the Giants are like confirming the eye test.
They don't look good, but they keeps taking out these.
Yeah, it's an interesting crim. I think this is the first time I've had this where my handicap is, I don't wanna bet against either of the teams. And
it's in Seattle. In Seattle. We're in
Seattle.
Histor a tough place to play and I don't wanna be going up against the Giants are doing something funky, which I think is better than the market. She know playing at a top five level, we have to like kind of price in that. I don't wanna bet against the c and I don't wanna bet against the giants.
High standard deviations, especially the, Yeah. And like our direct quality has this 12 and eight.
And to my point just to quantify, the Seahawks had been upgraded 13 spots from our market perspective on a year to day basis.
The Giants Just five. Yeah. Despite the Giants being six and one. The Chaws are not 6 0 1. Chaws are what? Four. Four and three. Yeah.
Commanders plus two and a half at the Cols plus two and a half plus 100.
Taylor Heineke verse, Sam Elger
Another spot I laying off for pre-game stuff only because two ugly teams, we don't have a lot of data on them either with Heke and Allinger. Interesting scripted angle though. Both these teams among the absolutely worst non-scripted plays get a little better closer to the 2022 range after the scripted place, which lends itself to a good game over.
But why would I bet two and a half so many unknowns with two
teams and despite the commanders, the Washington football team beating the Packers, it was mostly on the ground. It was not a Taylor Heineke. Feel like he's getting a lot of the credit, but negative 0.03 EPA per play, 5.6 a.
Negative 3% CPO E, like he did not play well. This was all on the running game
and hes gonna chuck a bunch of balls up to turn McLaren a couple times a game and one of them's gonna hit.
Niners minus one and a half in LA gonna be a lot of Nirs fans, if not all Nirs fans. Nirs have owned the Ram. Definitely recently, except for the playoffs. Still gonna gimme nightmares.
Everyone was leaning into the Rams last time. These teams met in San Francisco. Nirs ended up blowing 'em out.
Really took advantage of the Rams, banged up offensive line. The Rams offensive line is getting healthier, but still not good, even if it is healthy or, and the min's defense is getting healthier. I wanna buy the Niners. Keep leaning in to this trend. Maybe here's the signal is the, as the Rams continue to be ranked
way too high. Yeah that's what I was about to get at. And this is something I highlighted in the reflection note in week four. And it's gonna that's coming out tomorrow, this unbelievably slow to downgrade the NSC teams from last year.
The bucks, the Packers. The Rams, even bad. Something that's like deeply troubling for the ram size that on plays when they're like expected to throw shouldn't say expect to throw, and there's 70% expectations of them throwing, almost break the scale of being bad at a negative 0.4 EPA just, they can't throw.
Can't protect is bad. It's just like we're hanging onto the Super Bowl prior drive quality and 16th, not 11. What was the spread last week against Kansas City?
Yeah. I Niners or Mines won. Like it
wasn't as if the Niners played terribly, Especially offensively.
The Chiefs of the Chiefs, they're gonna put up 45. That's what happens. We're gonna react to that and say the Rams are the same quality of team. That's crazy. That's crazy. It's a bad pricing add in the fact that the deniers have owned the Rams, the Shanahan failures.
. Yeah. No, I think the, and also you'd think that McCaffrey's gonna be looped into the game plan. Way more so true. He even showed a few flashes basically just going out there and playing backyard football. It's Oh, run that way. Here's the football and just do something.
Yeah. And there's a kinda bias of Oh, we didn't see the Rams last week and we're grading everyone else.
Cause it's just an season downgrading. And Thes didn't play, so we don't have,
So basically, yeah, they moved up two spots basically just on a relative basis because everyone else was done.
So you're the diagram. Yeah.
I like miners.
Packers plus 11 at the Bills. Wow. We, But it is the Bills. Bills coming off of Buy and the Packers. One of the things we had been talking about on a week to week basis, cause the Packers have not been downgraded enough.
And they're still top 10. Your date base is still only down three spots
and it predicts still predicting the MS itself. Best team.
And they're definitely a bottom 15 team right now. Yeah,
It would be a bold, ballsy circuit play. I think the packers are gonna be very popular.
I don't think, I'm not sure.
Do you like the bills? I'm a slightly lean towards the bills.
I think I like the Bills eleven's a lot,
but they can get pressure with four. Rogers has really been sensitive to pressure this year. BRE is not all Yeah. I can get buying
the. Again, when you look at drive quality two again, cause a lot of people are gonna site, they were about 14 to three again, one of which was a pick six.
So like I hear a lot of people citing like, Oh, the package were a 14 to three and they just they've been playing poorly so they let it slip away and one of those touchdowns was a pick six, so it was seven three. Yeah. And then boom, right away Washington came and did a drive for their own touchdown.
Yeah. So it was pretty, and that's why the time weight, average margin is Packard just plus one. So at minimum, even from a time weight, average margin perspective, it was essentially a flat game. But then from the earn points perspective, Washington decisively beat Green Bay.
Speaks to potentially how bad Green Bay is. You're right to point
Exactly. And you're right to point out that the market has not done very Green Bay.
Still at home there, no weird wonky travel or, weird stuff that happens on the road. They're coming off a buy. , they're getting healthier and the bills are pretty much the only team the bills are pretty much the only team that you can feel comfortable betting as a double digit favorite in this season.
Monday night Football last game on the slate. Bes at on the road Division fo in Cleveland versus the Browns currently minus three and a half.
This was minus three, moved up a half point. People buying into the Bengals, people talking on Twitter, All the Bengals should be, aren't being appreciated properly. We have the right rank too. I think maybe we're appreciating them more so than anyone is right now. . Yeah, no, it's true. Ha. Having the Bengals ranked number two is probably like giving a June, like goosebumps.
The negative kind. I can't bet the beng minus three and a half on the road here. You can. No
I think I can, I think I can lay the alt line here.
With that's always different. That's always different.
Yeah. But I was using that as a proxy, as like a convicted allt line, which makes me think that I like the three and a half.
I'd rather the six and half and a three and half. Not cause of particular game angle cause I'm like they're a lot better. Brands have really struggled the, we were talking about the last week about the like magic of being up and what's driving to number two ranking for the dangle system defense, which has been really terrific.
And
Logan Wilson didn't even play. Is he gonna be back to you?
It's hard to know at the Wednesday. I haven't learned my lesson. Yeah. With the Wednesday injury reports. And the brands have been leading explosive plays on defense. They allow an extremely high ado I just see Burrow as exactly the quarterback team manager in the spot, especially with his offense healthy and clicking.
It looks like Trey Hendrickson who left last week's game against the Falcons dealing with a stinger doesn't appear to be a serious injury. He could be back, obviously. That would be big. Yeah. And it looks like Logan Wilson is optimistic to be on the field soon. ,
no idea what that means. Yeah.
And, but
I think the percent wheels have come. I think they'll continue to fall off. And this the bangles off sets up perfectly for a match of the brain defense. Exactly. Able to exploit the areas for the weakest.
Who's done this to the,
haven't played anyone good except for the Ravens last week.
Yeah. Murdered by the Patriots. Charges don't look all that impressive. And Falcons, Steelers, Jets, Panthers like rape.
Yeah. The thing is, worries me here is all these scores, regardless of the merit of the.
Still pro football team. True. That can then any team can win on any given Sunday as we're already seeing. They hang they're not being decisively beat X that Patriots game. Yeah. So they're lost by two. They're lost by three. They're lost by three. They're lost by one.
I see the angles as being a fundamentally different tier.
Especially cause the RAVs are not, we're not gonna fit.
I wouldn't be too worried about the rush defense
In a game that could potentially be closed where the Browns are playing close games, that hook could be everything. It's still a division game. Yeah. Still on the road, it's still Zach Taylor. True. In fact, one of the reasons why we've met the Browns of the past is citing the coaching mismatch.
The scripted stuff, the brands are great once the fan has input and the Daniels are terrible when Taylor has input. So it wouldn't be all that shocking to see the brands kinda jump out to a lead. In which case, if you like the Daniels, I'd probably fit them.
Or on the t? Yeah, or both rather than, See I like that game plan also. This is one of those standalone games. Oh yeah. So this is where you could start to get you have the time, the mental energy to really lean into some exotic,
Just the keep part. Yeah. It's all the best lines, make all money.
Oh, wow. So that next Thursday game, so our Junes come into town, come to the big city. That's right. And we're gonna watch the next Thursday game together. And we get the pleasure of Eagles, Texans. It's
privilege. It's a real privilege. Look, for me personally, it's if I'm, out with you guys it's almost better than thans the, than compelling football
Exactly.
Exactly. That's the privilege. Pretty much every single time we go out, we're always watching like some terrible game. We bears Washington.
That was, don't think either. Paying attention in Patriot.
True.
I guess before we go, let's just like quickly, what do we think are our top five kind of okay. Again, preliminary. It's top.
I'm gonna table the rave books, even though I like that play. I'm fine with the Jaguars.
Patriots. The Dolphins. The Cardinals the Niners, the bills.
Okay. So yeah, we definitely have a lot.
Yeah, I definitely like Niners. I definitely like Bills. Again, the bills the line over time, who knows? Maybe it scares me off, but as of right now, I'm feeling confident. Bills, Niners.
Dolphins. Cardinals,
Cardinals, Patriots. Yes. Dolphins. Again, the lines have been sold off like so much last, like a couple weeks again.
Now we got the lines being priced as one of the worst teams in the nfl,
And I still don't wanna forget that the lions are good at back doors. They haven't done it the last two weeks, but remember going back to preseason, the NFL ranking kinda here and there and Yep. Two week blips and things like that. And the Dolphins.
One of the things we've talked about on the dolphins betting them as well, is this is not a team that like, they should be really explosive, you'd think, and they should be able to like drop 30 at any point in time, but they don't. Yeah. It
only gets 30. It's true. And only in the second half. Or the reason I really like this spot is the, with the magic angles.
But I think you make some compelling points. And there also, there are so many other good spots across the board when you forced that. Yeah.
Patriots, I'm with you on Patriots and I wanna be with you on the Jags, but I we're talking about butt hurt. My butt is destroyed, destroyed.
I'm not, by the way, I'm much more, but on Patriots. Way too exposed. I knew I was exposed and stubborn.
Yeah. Sometimes in those games too you're just, you have such high conviction that like, once the game gets out of hand, it like catches you by surprise.
It really
catches you by price. And I was getting hot. I was like, Oh man, I I got the first quarter I got the alt line at the perfect time I got like, Everything looked good. Heading into like right before the half. You gotta have some humility.
Yeah. If you got the Bears first quarter and then you call the swing and then I think, we got the Patriots like plus three and a half when they opened the game minus eight.
You're talking about clv talking about line value going through key numbers 7, 3 0 plus three. You're feeling good. Yeah. And yeah, Didn't matter.
But it will all be made up for, We take them when they cover against the
Jets. Yeah. Unless they lose versus the Jets, then it's gonna be getting you twice.
Yeah.
You might have to have a Joe Flaco on Jersey on stream. That'd be a disaster.
The one thing that gives me a little bit of a yellow flag in this one is the Patriots, again, minus one. And now it's up to minus two and a half. It's not going through any key numbers, so it's not a huge move. But the fact that there's optimism still. The people are writing off that Bears Patriot's game as just noise.
It happens and I was hoping the market would sell off a little bit on the Patriots. Give us a little bit more value here. Maybe even swing the other way. When we look at the Mar market Consensus power rankings, pages still ranked 13th. Yeah. So higher than what we think, we would have them fundamentally and dry quality has 'em at 15th.
And I think personally we would probably have them even lower. But I think, yeah, we have some things to work with. So optimistic, gonna bounce back from the two and. We're tied with the market right now in, in circa, but we're going to leap past. We're almost out of October
And then will we be out of October? No, we won't. So maybe one, one more bad week. . No more bad weeks. Just those. All right. Thanks everyone for listening. That was good stuff. We got through a lot of content there. Got through the whole NFL Week eight slate.
Thanks for joining. Thanks for chatting with us. We'll see you Sunday on Game Trade. That's right. Take care everyone. And that's the closing bell.
