Your weekly dose of sports betting tips, news and humor, every Saturday morning at 10am Eastern.
Detroit Lions future – On an episode of the Props & Hops podcast, professional bettor Hitman broke down the value on the Lions to finish under 5.5 regular season wins in the aftermath of the trade deadline. This is essentially a bet against Detroit going 5-5 the rest of the way after a 1-6 start.
Hitman makes the Lions closer to a 3.8-win team after they dealt T.J. Hockenson to division rival Minnesota. While the players and coaches on the field will still bring plenty of fight, the Hockenson move embodies Detroit’s larger organizational decision not to go all in on the rest of the season.
Los Angeles Rams at Tampa Bay, NFL Week 9 – Professional bettor Rob Pizzola notes that Tampa Bay is now 0-6 ATS in their last six games and continually gets overvalued by market as people expect them to return to form. This is a very vanilla offense that still wastes too many early downs on a running game dead last in the league in EPA.
The loss of Shaq Barrett is huge for a defense that already struggles to generate pressure. With WR Cooper Kupp, WR Van Jefferson, and C Brian Allen slated to play, there isn’t much separating the Rams from the Bucs right now.
Rob Pizzola likes Rams +3 against the Bucs. Check out all of the good work Rob and his team do over at The Hammer.
Georgia State at Southern Miss – Professional bettor Mike Craig notes that Southern Miss has been solid this season with a 5-3 record. Their losses have come to Miami (49th in The Power Rank member numbers), Liberty (68th) and Troy (62nd).
In addition, Southern Miss has a match up advantage against a Georgia State team that tends to run the ball. Southern Miss ranks 31st in adjusted success rate on running plays by The Power Rank’s metrics.
Mike likes Southern Miss at home against Georgia State, and -2 is available at DraftKings and Caesars as of Saturday morning.
Unabated NBA line – Unabated has tracked the accuracy of various sports books, and they combine the results from the sharpest books into the Unabated line. Using this metric is a top down approach to find value.
Over the past 3 days, there were 12 NBA spreads and totals each morning that differed from a value at a square book by a point or more. Making these bets would have gone 6-6. However, the market moved in the direction of the Unabated line in 8 of 12 games, a strong indictor of value.
As of 9:50am Eastern, here are the spreads and totals for the NBA on Saturday that differ from the Unabated line.
- New Orleans at Atlanta, under 232, DraftKings
- Phoenix -9.5 vs Portland, BetMGM
This market moves fast every morning, and value from the Unabated line disappeared in two games the hour before publication of this article. To check out all the betting tools at Unabated, click here.
Edward Golden interview – Edward Golden has won as a professional bettor for over two decades. He also founded Right Angle Sports (RAS), one of the few pick services with a long term track record of winning and honesty.
On an episode of The Football Analytics Show, Edward discussed how his handicapping starts with a belief about a team to tail or fade. Then he looks for any pieces of information to support that belief. This set of information ranges from analytics to weather.
In the end, Edward is looking for an easy decision on a spread or total. He also said that experience is critical in determining the importance of any information.
Key injuries – The NFL QB injury list is quiet this week, as Aaron Rodgers disappeared from the list even though he was limited at practice Friday with his thumb. The college football injuries come from USA Today.
- Tennessee QB Ryan Tannehill was limited in practice Thursday because of an ankle injury, and he is questionable against Kansas City.
- Maryland QB Taulia Tagovailoa didn’t play last week but should play against Wisconsin despite a knee injury.
- Nebraska QB Casey Thompson has an elbow injury and is questionable against Minnesota.
- Northwestern QB Ryan Hilinski hasn’t played the last two games with a concussion, and he is questionable against Ohio State.
- Syracuse QB Garrett Shrader is questionable with an unknown injury against Pittsburgh.
- Utah QB Cameron Rising has an injury that makes him questionable against Arizona. However, Arizona coach Jedd Fisch expects him to play.
- Virginia QB Brennan Armstrong has a leg injury and is questionable against North Carolina.
NFL humor – DK Metcalf had a number two emergency last weekend in Detroit, and this NFL films style video captures it perfectly.
Football betting with a PhD edge
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