Your weekly dose of sports betting tips, analytics and humor, every Saturday at 10am Eastern.
Carolina at Seattle, NFL Week 3 – On The Football Analytics Show podcast, Tanner Busick, the Head of Analytics at Dr. Bob Sports, talked about a number of reasons he likes Carolina side.
First, Carolina has struggled against two aggressive man coverage defenses this season, as their receivers struggle to get separation. Seattle plays more zone defense, and Carolina has been much better against zone than man coverage this season.
Tanner’s model makes Seattle a 3.5 point favorite, and he talked about the value in Carolina +6 on the podcast. Now, veteran QB Andy Dalton will start instead rookie Bryce Young, but Tanner does not think this is a downgrade.
This implies value in Carolina +5.5 at Seattle, a widely available number on Saturday morning. Check out The Football Analytics Show for two other NFL bets Tanner was kind enough to provide.
NFL touchdown prop – On the Covering the Spread podcast, JJ Zachariason, founder of Late Round Fantasy Football, likes Jacksonville RB Travis Etienne to score a touchdown.
As an 8 point favorite against Houston, Jacksonville will more likely have a favorable game script. This implies more carries for Etienne late in the game.
In addition, JJ notes that DraftKings has a price -110 for Etienne anytime touchdown scorer while other books have odds with a higher probability. As of Saturday morning, FanDuel has this prop at -175 while Caesars is at -127.
There is value in Etienne -110 anytime touchdown scorer.
Ohio State at Notre Dame, College Football Week 4 – On the Cover 3 podcast, betting expert Bud Elliott talked about the strength of the two defenses and how they might approach this game:
- Notre Dame’s defense will force Ohio State to run the ball.
- Ohio State’s defense will see if Notre Dame QB Sam Hartman can throw outside to his wide receivers.
Bud has enough doubts on both of these items to like under 55.5 points. In addition, the Unabated line, a powerful predictor that comes from an ensemble of sharp sports books, has a total of 55 (-103 fair price).
Ohio State and Notre Dame kick off at 7:30pm Eastern on Saturday in a must watch game among a very compelling week 4.
Football Analytics With Python and R – As Dr. Eric Eager writes in the introduction of his new book:
We wrote this book for people who want an introduction to data science but do not want to learn from classic datasets such as flower measurements from the 1930s.
In Chapter 2, Eric asks whether QB performance on short or deep passes is more stable. He uses 20 yards in the air as the barrier between short and long passes.
Looking at yards per attempt from season to season, Eric found more predictability for short than long passes. In fact, the R-squared value for long passes is only 0.054, which implies a large random element on these deep throws.
This week, Eric’s book Football Analytics with Python & R was released as a paperback. I have used O’Reilly books in many aspects of my technical education, and Eric’s book will launch many careers in football analytics.
College football humor – Iowa offensive coordinator Brian Ferentz needs his unit to score 25 points per game to keep his job. With a 41 point performance against Western Michigan, Ferentz had an outburst of his own that makes Coach Prime seem like a preschool teacher.
Does it matter that the video was a fake? Nah, it’s still funny.
Smarter sports betting in less than 5 minutes
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