Looking for sharp sports betting action this weekend? Your curated list of bets, analytics and humor, every Saturday at 10am Eastern.
Baseball strikeout prop – Grant Mel-Brown of 4for4 notes that Cleveland’s Tanner Bibee has a 20% strikeout percentage this season. This rate is worse than the 22% MLB average and also lower than his first two seasons in the majors.
In addition, Bibee faces a Chicago White Sox team that is trending in the right direction with strikeouts. For the season, the White Sox strike out on 23.3% of plate appearances. However, they are 1.5% better at home and are up to 12th over the past two weeks with a 20% rate.
Grant likes Tanner Bibee under 5.5 strikeouts at the Chicago White Sox, -130 available at FanDuel (game at 4:10pm Eastern). Follow Grant on X and subscribe to 4for4 to get his MLB props in the Discord channel as well as the insights of Ryan Noonan and Connor Allen, two 5-Nugget regulars.
Football predictions – Members of The Power Rank have access to early football spread predictions. Here is a sample.
- NFL. Philadelphia will beat Dallas by 10.1 at home. These fierce NFC East rivals open the season on Thursday night. My wisdom of crowds preseason model is more enthusiastic about the defending Super Bowl champions than the markets (Philadelphia -7.5), but the Eagles are likely due for some regression in 2025.
- NFL. Detroit will beat Green Bay by 1.6 points on the road. The Lions offense has been terrific the past two and half seasons, but this same core must prove their worth again without OC Ben Johnson. With the smaller in-division home advantage, the wisdom of crowds thinks they can get the win at Green Bay, even if the markets disagree.
- CFB. Hawaii will beat Stanford by 0.5 points at home. In this week 0 game on August 23, interim coach Frank Reich will lead Stanford across the ocean to Hawaii. As an alum, I hope the markets that favor Stanford by 2.5 are more accurate than my model.
Clemson – With an upset win over SMU in the ACC championship game last season, Clemson took the final spot in the college football playoff. Now, they return QB Cade Klubnick, three of the top four receivers, and a load of young talent on defense.
In his ACC preview, Bill Connelly of ESPN likes Clemson as the ACC favorite but isn’t quite ready to make the Tigers a national title contender. One is reason is turnover luck. For example, Clemson fumbled 16 times but only lost three last season.
Bill writes about every FBS team in the preseason, and he started his analysis of power conferences with the ACC. Follow Bill Connelly for all of his college football analytics insights and details of his new book Forward Progress – The Definitive Guide to the Future of College Football.
Top college football RB transfer – The Power Rank specializes in making adjustments for opponents. While this started on the team level, I’ve now started making adjustments for individual players.
Here, let’s look at three top running backs that transferred to a new program. The rating is the expected success rate against an average FBS defense last season (the college football average of 43.0% for running backs).
- Josh McCray transferred from Illinois to Georgia and has rating of 50.4% on 114 carries. He probably splits carries with Nate Frazier, who had a 48.1% rating last season.
- Dante Dowdell transferred from Nebraska to Kentucky and has a rating of 49.7% on 143 carries. Kentucky had a top 10 rush offense last season, so Dowdell should have a great season.
- CJ Donaldson Jr transferred from West Virginia to Ohio State and has a rating of 47.1% on 159 carries. He will battle James Peoples, who had a raw success rate of 41.0% on 39 carries last season, for opportunities.
Football humor – Why Bill Belichick decided to coach in college. A hilarious 38 second sketch from Brandon Carney.
Smarter sports betting in less than 5 minutes
These nuggets were sent to The Power Rank’s email newsletter. This is a free service that strives to be:
- Valuable
- Concise
- Entertaining
Other emails offer analysis of college football and NFL games that founder Ed Feng has bet.
To get this free service delivered straight into your inbox, enter your best email address and click on “Sign up now!”
Leave a Reply