Looking for sharp football betting action this weekend? Your curated list of bets, analytics and humor, every Saturday at 10am Eastern.
NFL receiving prop – Philip Rivers will start his second game for Indianapolis against San Francisco on Monday night. In his opener, he threw the football an average of 4.7 yards past the line of scrimmage.
Tanner Busick of Dr. Bob Sports thinks this trend of throwing short persists this week, especially since Rivers will likely be without both starting offensive tackles. The beneficiary is slot WR Josh Downs, who ran 25 routes last week, his second highest total all season.
Tanner likes Josh Downs over 24.5 receiving yards, -135 available at BetMGM for the NFL Monday night game.
NFL interception prop – Arizona QB Jacoby Brissett hasn’t won many games as the starter, but he gets the opportunity to throw the football a ton. He has had at least 40 pass attempts in his last six games.
Part of these opportunities come from game script, as Arizona has lost each of these games. Even though Arizona is +2.5, I don’t think they necessarily lose to Atlanta at home.
However, the market projects 37 pass attempts, and this implies a 51.9% chance that he throws an interception according to my model. There is value in Jacoby Brissett over 0.5 interceptions, +108 at FanDuel (48.1% break even probability).
Members of The Power Rank get access to more interception props at noon Eastern on Saturday.
James Madison at Oregon, College Football Playoff – In The Tip Sheet, Sam Panayotovich describes how sharp money has come in on James Madison, not the big home favorite Oregon.
Chris Andrews, the director of the South Point sports book, got big bets from professionals on James Madison +22. Other sports books got the same action, pushing the market to Oregon -20.5, -21.
The Tip Sheet is an awesome betting newsletter you should sign up to receiver in your inbox. Sam and Joe Ostrowski also relaunched their betting podcast Chicken Dinner; check out the first episode here.
3 football predictions – Here is a sample of predictions usually saved for paying members of The Power Rank.
- CFB Playoff: Oregon will beat James Madison by 16.3 points at home. James Madison has moved up to 19th in my member college football rankings. See the previous nugget.
- NFL: Buffalo will beat Cleveland by 9.0 points on the road. After improvement in each of his first three starts, Shedeur Sanders hit a bump against Chicago last week. He had a 27.5% passing success rate compared to the 42.9% NFL average and 3 interceptions.
- NFL: Kansas City will beat Tennessee by 1.9 points on the road. With minimal data on Chiefs QB Gardner Minshew, I made a 6.9 point adjustment from Patrick Mahomes based on the consensus of bookmakers.
Football humor – There’s only so much functional football energy in the world. If Philip Rivers is coming back, other players must be sacrificed. A brilliant minute 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 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