Your weekly digest of sports betting news and tips, every Saturday morning at 10am Eastern.
Silver and Black Eye – A less important consequence of Jon Gruden’s resignation is how Las Vegas will perform this weekend. On Saturday morning, the Raiders are 4-point underdogs to the Broncos. While the Power Rank sees value backing the Raiders strictly by the data (Denver by 3.3 points), research has been conducted concerning how we, as humans, react to setbacks and tragedy.
The book This is Your Brain on Sports by Jon Wertheim and Sam Sommers chronicles several examples of how athletes experienced massive success during their first game after adversity. Psychologically, we are more resilient than we give ourselves credit for.
Grief and loss also are not linear; there are good days and bad days. There are great life lessons in this book, but pertaining to this game, it may be foolish to assume a jarring coaching change will only be debilitating.
The Weather for Cardinals at Browns – Fabian Sommer looked at how high winds in Cleveland on Sunday could impact the undefeated Cardinals at Browns. He liked Cleveland -3 when his article was posted on Thursday.
The strong wind puts more emphasis on the run game, and the Cardinals have some key injuries on offense (C Rodney Hudson, TE Maxx Williams) that will hurt them in the trenches. On defense, they have struggled against the run, which projects as a poor match up against Cleveland’s run offense.
Sommer’s analysis is almost the polar opposite of the team level analysis at The Power Rank. However, both land on the same side of this spread, as The Power Rank favors Cleveland by 4.3 points. The markets have moved to Cleveland -3.5 as of Saturday morning.
While there might no longer be value in this game, you can catch Sommer’s insights on the Matchbook podcast every Wednesday.
Injuries – Unless otherwise noted, this injury information was checked against ESPN’s injuries page.
- Miami QB Tua Tagovailoa will start against Jacksonville in London.
- Arizona QB Kyler Murray has an issue with his throwing shoulder, as he got attention on the sidelines during last week’s game against San Francisco. The undefeated Cardinals travel to Cleveland, and Arizona coach Kliff Kingsbury will miss the game due to a positive COVID-19 test.
- NY Giants QB Daniel Jones has passed the concussion protocol and will play Sunday.
- WFT QB Ryan Fitzpatrick could come back as soon as Week 7 (next weekend).
- Seattle QB Russell Wilson is on IR and will not return until Week 10 at the earliest. Geno Smith will start Sunday night at the Steelers.
- Indiana QB Michael Penix Jr. left the last game with a separated shoulder. His status is undetermined.
- Miami QB D’Eriq King will not play for the Hurricanes again this season after shoulder surgery.
Kelly Criterion – The Power Rank offers PhD backed analysis to professional and college football. What is trickier to do is suggest how much to bet on any one game (beyond simply looking at the difference between the predicted number and the markets).
One suggestion is the Kelly criterion. The theory is not to bet the same amount on every game, that some deserve a greater fraction of your bankroll than others. On the Circles Off podcast, they had a great conversation on this criterion, both in terms of when it is appropriate and when there may be shortcomings.
Dawg Defense – As FiveThirtyEight detailed, Georgia may boast the greatest defense college football has ever seen, at least based upon EPA/Play allowed so far. However, as many in the analytics community have detailed, who you face may matter more to diagnosing a defense than inherent talent.
By The Power Rank’s adjusted success rate, Georgia has yet to face an offense to crack the top 30. This week, they face a Kentucky offense that ranks 15th. Kentucky also ranks in the top 40 by EPA/Play on offense.
Teaching AP Calculus in Compton – George Chahrouri of PFF joined Ed Feng on The Football Analytics Show podcast to talk NFL analytics and betting. However, George first described getting 12 students to pass the AP Calculus test when he taught in Compton.
George also gave his thoughts on Jon Gruden as well as Chargers at Ravens, Cardinals at Browns, and Bengals at Lions. As always, you can find time stamps for each podcast episode at The Power Rank.
Alabama Needs an Ambulance – One week after getting cocky in the principal’s office, Alabama’s defense allows a 46.6% success rate to Texas A&M and their backup QB (41.0% college football average).
Alabama left College Station bruised and battered, as parodied by SEC Shorts.
Data driven betting information
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