Looking for sharp football betting action this season? Your curated list of tips, analytics and humor, every Saturday at 10am Eastern.
NFL season long player prop – On The Football Analytics Show podcast, Ryan Noonan of 4for4 Bets talked about Justin Fields. With only WR Garrett Wilson as a receiving threat and a strong offensive line, Ryan sees a run heavy system that takes advantage of the Jets QB’s ability to run.
Fields has put up strong rushing numbers the past three seasons:
- 1143 rushing yards in 15 starts for Chicago in 2022.
- 657 rushing yards in 13 starts for Chicago in 2023.
- 289 rushing yards in 6 starts for Pittsburgh in 2024.
Despite the risk of an injury, Ryan likes Justin Fields over 625.5 rushing yards, -114 available at FanDuel.
College football win total – On the Cover 3 podcast, Bud Elliott likes the prospects for defending Big 12 champion Arizona State despite the loss of key players from last season. QB Sam Leavitt has impressed this off season and is starting to show up in early NFL mock drafts.
In addition, Bud likes the potential situation for Arizona State in their final three games. West Virginia might not have the depth to play up tempo all season, and Colorado and Arizona might be in quit mode after difficult seasons.
The Cover 3 team was making a call on every win total, so it was not clear if the following was a bet. However, Bud sounded confident about Arizona State over 8.5 wins, +106 available at FanDuel.
NFL home field advantage – For my member predictions, I’ll start the season using data from the past six seasons. With my methods, home field advantage has been 1.69 points over all games during this period.
For members of The Power Rank, I use a different home field for division versus other games because the values differ:
- 1.40 points for division games.
- 1.86 points for non-division games.
In previous seasons, the gap between these two numbers was larger. After a few weeks of the season, data from the current season will adjust these numbers.
Big Ten media poll – The wisdom of crowds is an incredible predictor of team strength. In the four team playoff era, 60% of playoff teams started the season in the top five of the preseason AP poll (2014 to 2023).
While we wait for the AP poll, let’s look at some interesting results from the Big Ten media poll:
- Penn State beat out Ohio State by a slim margin as the top team. Penn State will have veteran QB Drew Allar while Ohio State will break in redshirt freshman Julian Sayin.
- Michigan at 5th is ahead of Indiana at 6th. The wisdom of crowds seems to have more confidence in high upside freshman QB Bryce Underwood for Michigan compared to the transfer QB Fernando Mendoza (California) for Indiana.
Betting humor – John Reeder of the Risk of Ruin podcast:
I’d set the market at -4000 that you pick out a white guy at random at the conference, although maybe that has changed since my trip in 2023.
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 and a sample of predictions usually saved for paying members of The Power Rank.
To get this free service delivered straight into your inbox, enter your best email address and click on “Sign up now!”
Leave a Reply