Your weekly curated list of sports betting tips, analytics and humor, every Saturday at 10am Eastern.
Programming note: Next week, the newsletter will feature 3 overrated college football teams, a series I have done since 2015.
Miami at Jacksonville, NFL preseason – Earlier this week, Right Angle Sports (RAS) released Jacksonville -6. A big reason is Jacksonville QB Nathan Rourke, the 3rd stringer behind Trevor Lawrence and CJ Beathard.
Adam Chernoff of RAS believes Rourke is good enough to be an NFL back up but has chosen to stay in Jacksonville to play for Doug Pederson. His play in the second half should give the Jags an edge over the reserves of Miami’s defense.
Adam also thinks there is a second half angle, as he expects the Jaguars to outscore Miami by 3 or more points in the second half. Even though the market has moved to Jaguars -6.5, RAS believes there is still value in the side (game kicks off at 7pm Eastern on Saturday).
College football win total – On a recent episode of The Football Analytics Show, Bob Stoll, a legend in using college football analytics for betting, noted the random element in play differential from season to season.
For example, Kansas was -12 in play differential in 2022, and Bob projects they will only be -5 this season. This means the exact same team could be three points better per game because of regression in play differential.
This is one reason that Bob likes Kansas over 6 wins. While he released this to his customer at -105, Bob thinks there is still value on over 6 wins (-150 at DraftKings).
Bob talked about the blend of math and art in his college football numbers, how rule changes will impact college football totals and more in a must listen episode of The Football Analytics Show.
Women’s US Open Tennis – On the Beating the Book podcast, Drew Dinsick, a sharp quantitative bettor known for his media appearances, noted how he likes Aryna Sabalenka in Quarter 4.
Drew does not see many strong players in this quarter, which includes Ons Jabeur. His numbers give Aryna Sabalenka a better than 50% chance to win Quarter 4, and he see value in Sabalenka +120 (FanDuel) to reach the semi-final from that quarter.
Drew and host Gill Alexander are two of the sharpest tennis bettors, and their passion for the sport comes through in a great episode of Beating the Book that previews the US Open.
How to predict NFL interceptions – In the newsletter this week, I explained how bad balls, or interceptions plus passes defended, are a better way to predict interceptions than only interceptions. This led insights on New York Giants QB Daniel Jones in 2023.
It took a long time to come up with a one line explanation for how to predict interceptions. In a longer episode of The Football Analytics Show, I explained the full path of my research into bad ball rate.
You can also listen to the newsletters in the preview series on The Football Analytics Show podcast. Check out the episodes from this past week on Spotify:
College football humor – Annie Agar posts a hilarious NFL video each week of the season, but it started during the pandemic with this Big Ten meeting. A reminder that this is when almost everyone in Ann Arbor wanted Jim Harbaugh fired.
Smarter sports betting in less than 5 minutes
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