Welcome to your weekly diet of sports betting tips curated from the sharpest minds in the industry. This service comes Saturday morning at 10am and is written by Edward Egros.
Injuries. Here are some key NFL injuries to track.
- WR Will Fuller V, Miami, Out. He will not play against Buffalo due to personal reasons. He also didn’t play week 1 due to suspension.
- DE Yannick Ngakoue, Las Vegas, Expected to play. He had a hamstring injury this week, but the latest from NBC Sports expects him to play at Pittsburgh. And no, I’m not including RB Josh Jacobs here.
- CB Joe Haden, Pittsburgh, Questionable. He has a groin injury that makes his status against Las Vegas uncertain. Haden is particularly important this season as Pittsburgh gave significant snaps to two young corners (Tre Norwood, James Pierre) in week 1.
Useless Trends. In week 1 of the NFL season, underdogs were 12-4 against the spread and 10-6 outright. These trends probably do not mean anything for week 2, as Drew Dinsick has pointed out in his podcast Deep Dive with Andy and the Whale.
Dinsick says overreactions cause market inefficiencies at this time of the year, and spotting those could lead to a profit. My take is similar: your priors are not necessarily wrong, they’ve only been challenged. How Bayesian is that???
Rams at Colts. Preston Johnson, professional sports bettor, came on The Football Analytics Show with Ed Feng this week. He talked about value in Colts +4 against the Rams this week. His numbers make the Rams a 2 point favorite, which didn’t change much from the 1.5 points from the preseason despite their performance against the Bears.
The Colts are now +3.5.
Note: an earlier version of this article incorrectly said that Preston liked Rams +4, which was incorrectly changed to say that he liked Rams -4.
Eternal quest for edges.We all know it’s harder and harder to find an edge betting NFL games. However, an article in The Ringer has offered an idea: bridging the empathy gap.
Some of the more dysfunctional NFL franchises feature poor communication between the front office and coaches or players and coaches or analytics staffs and everyone else. If there is a way to identify which franchises have the best work flows, there may be an inherent betting advantage.
Granted, this approach is tougher to quantify, but it’s worth exploration.
Football Back-to-Backs?It’s one thing for a “west coast team” to travel east, it’s another to have to do it in back-to-back weeks. That’s what’s being expected of the Denver Broncos and San Francisco 49ers.
Denver played the New York Giants and will get the Jacksonville Jaguars, while San Francisco took on the Detroit Lions and will face the Philadelphia Eagles.
The big question though is: should back-to-back road trips move the spread, or at least be accounted for?At FanDuel sportsbook, the Broncos are six-point favorites while 49ers line has moved from -3.5 to -3.
Note, Sunday, 11:21am Eastern. It escaped our attention that San Francisco stayed on the east coast this week. An earlier version of this article mistakenly said that Denver did not have a 1pm kick off.
Bo 2.0. Bo Jackson may be the greatest athlete Auburn has ever produced, but Bo Nix wouldn’t mind being in the same conversation.
After a couple of unremarkable seasons on the plains, the Tiger QB has helped lead his offense to the top spot, per cfb-graphs.com, in terms of EPA60, or total EPA based upon 60 offensive plays. Strength of schedule still matters in September, but if you’re looking for a reason to believe in a team other than Alabama or Georgia winning the SEC, Auburn may be worth a look.
Excelsior! While the pandemic and streaming services have challenged the motion picture industry, one company has emerged as a savior to movies. It is a group that’s been around for more than eight decades: Marvel Comics.
Feedback please
This is the second week of our Saturday round up of insights. Please drop feedback and suggestions in the comments below.
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