Your weekly curated list of sports betting tips, analytics and humor, every Saturday at 10am Eastern.
College football receiving prop – After transferring from Oregon, RB Trey Benson exploded at Florida State with 990 rushing yards last season. However, he is not a huge receiving threat, as Florida State insider Bud Elliott points out they throw more often to Lawrence Toafili out of the backfield.
Against LSU, DraftKings has Benson’s receiving prop at 16.5 yards, and he went over this number in three of 13 games last season. He never caught more than two passes in a game. Despite his speed, an athletic and efficient LSU defense should decrease the likelihood of explosive plays.
Bud sees value in under 16.5 receiving yards for Trey Benson (-120 at DraftKings), as Florida State meets LSU in a huge Sunday night game at 7:30pm Eastern. Follow Bud on Twitter for all of his college football betting insights.
NFL sack prop – Matthew Judon had a stellar season with the Patriots last season, as he recorded a career high 15.5 sacks. However, this total was three more than any other season, and this means regression looms for the 31 year old Judon.
In addition, ESPN’s Seth Walder has put together a sack prediction model that considers these factors among others:
- Pass rush win rate, a metric from NFL Next Gen player tracking.
- Blitz rate based on the defensive coordinator.
- The sack rate of opposing quarterbacks.
It might seem strange to considering the opposition, but quarterbacks own sack rate more than you think.
These three factors all work against Judon, and the model projects 9.0 sacks in 2023. This implies value in under 11.75 sacks (-135 at DraftKings).
Buffalo Bills – On The Football Analytics Show podcast, Dr. Eric Eager talked about how the market is undervaluing Buffalo, as the Bill have had the best point differential in the league the past two seasons.
Eric thinks Buffalo has a more talented roster than Kansas City, although the perception of the the Chiefs is better given their Super Bowl win last season. In addition, a healthy WR Gabe Davis and rookie TE Dalton Kincaid will help this team.
Eric sees value in Buffalo 9-1 to win the Super Bowl, a widely available number. He also broke down run pass options, weak link systems and multiple teams in a must listen episode of The Football Analytics Show.
Third overrated college football team – In the Cotton Bowl, Tulane came back to beat USC and recently crowned Heisman winner Caleb Williams in a wild 46-45 game. This capped a magical 12-2 season.
With this kind of finish to the 2022 season, Tulane was destined to be overrated heading into 2023 (24th in the preseason AP poll). Let’s look at how they rank by a variety of preseason metrics:
- 35th in my market rankings based on Circa win totals
- 37th in SP+ of Bill Connelly
- 55th in ESPN’s FPI
With returning QB Michael Pratt, Tulane won’t sink to 2-10, their record in 2021 in which everything went wrong. However, they probably sink towards their program level from 2018 to 2020 in which they won about half their games and had an average rating by my team rankings.
Check out my first and second overrated college football teams for 2023.
College football humor – When Nebraska made their coaching hire, Faux Pellini said:
Congratulations, Matt Rhule! You’re the next contestant on Nebraska’s favorite game show, “He’s Not Tom Osborne But He’ll Do for Now.”
On Thursday, Nebraska allowed Minnesota to score 10 points in the final minutes of the game to lose 13-10. The Cornhuskers have broken regression, as they are 2-14 in one score games since the beginning of 2021.
Level up your football betting game
You want to level up your football betting game in 2023. This curation of sharp bettors is fine for Saturday, but you want more earlier in the week. Predictions, analysis, anything that uncovers value.
Members of The Power Rank get access to all of my best predictions and analysis. This includes:
- College football spreads
- NFL spreads
- NFL season player props
College football week 2 predictions will go up on Sunday to take advantage of the soft early market.
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