Looking for sharp football betting action this NFL conference championship weekend? Your curated list of bets, analytics and humor, every Saturday at 10am.
New England at Denver, AFC Championship game – On the Dr. Bob Sports show, NFL expert Tanner Busick thinks the point spread adjustment from Denver QB Bo Nix to Jarrett Stidham is too large. He would have made Denver a two point favorite with Nix, but the market has shifted by 6.5 points because the change.
Stidham has had a higher career success rate than Nix in a small sample size, which is consistent with my analysis after opponent adjustments (one of my minute videos on YouTube). The back up has also been in Sean Payton’s Denver system for three seasons.
In addition, New England’s defense is being overrated after two playoff games against bottom five offensive lines. In contrast, Denver’s offensive line is the best in the NFL according to PFF’s pass blocking efficiency.
Tanner likes Denver +3.5 or better at home against New England. His show is a must watch for NFL insights.
NFL player prop – Writing for Yahoo Sports, Matt Jacob notes that the Denver defense is most vulnerable against tight ends. Even Green Bay back up Luke Musgrave had four receptions against an otherwise elite pass defense.
In addition, the Denver defense allows a 26% target share to tight ends, 7th highest in the NFL. Hunter Henry has the second highest target share for New England this season. Even with only four receptions the last two games, Henry should be a threat against Denver.
Matt likes Hunter Henry over 3.5 receptions. As of Saturday morning, DraftKings has the best price at -112. Check out all the bets in Yahoo Sports on New England at Denver and the Los Angeles Rams at Seattle, content to which I have contributed.
NFL interception prop – This season, Sam Darnold has thrown six of his 14 interceptions in games against the Los Angeles Rams. Each of these six picks were bad decisions to throw the ball, although he didn’t see a dropping defensive lineman on one of them.
In my analysis, Darnold is better than average at interception prevention though. My interception model looks at the rate at which the quarterback throws the football into dangerous situations. Usually, 18.2% of these football into dangerous situations end up as interceptions. My research implies strong regression to this mean from Darnold’s rate of 24.6% this season.
My model gives 53.4% chance Darnold does not throw a pick. Even if the model is missing some match up specific issues against the Rams, this still implies value in Darnold +112 to not throw a pick on FanDuel (47.2% break even probability).
Indiana Football’s secret – Mark Cuban had a meeting with Curt Cignetti and was impressed with how he had a specific way of doing things. What does that mean?
Cignetti has made the final call on all players since he became the head coach at Indiana University of Pennsylvania in 2011. Even now at big time Indiana, he doesn’t have a general manager that helps him. His multi-faceted approach is described in an ESPN profile by Adam Rittenberg, an excellent read.
I found it most interesting that Cignetti is big on ankle, knee and hip flexibility. “It’s a start-stop game,” Cignetti explained. “You’ve got to have those for change of direction, but you also need those to create explosive power. It’s a game of speed, quickness and explosive power.”
Buffalo Bills humor – They fired coach Sean McDermott but maybe didn’t address the actual problem. Brandon Carney kills it in this :42 sketch.
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