Looking for sharp sports betting action for this weekend and the Super Bowl? Your curated list of tips, analytics and humor, every Saturday at 10am Eastern.
Super Bowl prop – My interception model depends on the rate at which a quarterback throws the football into dangerous situations. The play by play tracks these plays as both interceptions and passes defended, or plays in which the defense gets a hand on the ball.
Once a quarterback throws the football into a dangerous situation, he has no control over whether it ends up as an interception. Seattle QB Sam Darnold has had 24.6% of his dangerous footballs end up as interceptions this season. Since the NFL average is 18.2%, Darnold has gotten unlucky with interceptions this season, as we expect strong regression to the mean.
My interception model gives a 53.1% chance Darnold does not throw a pick in the Super Bowl. There is value in Darnold not to throw a pick, +102 at FanDuel.
Top down NBA betting – The SharpStack +EV tool uses data from sharp sportsbooks to find value at other books. For example, consider New Orleans wing Saddiq Bey. Most sportsbooks have his points prop at 16.5 points, but SharpStack points out that BetMGM as well as a few off shores has 17.5 points.
As of Saturday morning at 10am Eastern, here are a few NBA player props with value at BetMGM:
- Saddiq Bey, New Orleans, under 17.5 points, -125.
- Amen Thompson, Houston, under 8.5 rebounds, -140.
- Matas Buzelis, Chicago, under 1.5 blocks, -160.
These props do move fast, but I picked a few that lasted at least a few hours this morning. Use the code thepowerrank to get 25% off SharpStack.
College basketball predictions – Members of The Power Rank have had access to these predictions for Saturday’s games since Friday.
- Duke will beat Virginia Tech by 15.3 points on the road. Duke is 2nd in my member college basketball rankings behind only Michigan. The market moved from Duke -10.5 yesterday to -12.5 this morning.
- Houston will beat Cincinnati by 13.7 points at home. Kelvin Sampson has had Houston in the national championship hunt every season with only a handful of one and done players. This season, two freshman, point guard Kingston Fleming and stretch four Chris Cenac, both project as first round picks.
- Arizona will beat Arizona State by 15.2 points on the road. Arizona ranks first in my college basketball team rankings that take margin of victory and adjust for strength of schedule. My member rankings also use market data and have the Wildcats at 4th. Arizona will not remain undefeated this season in a rugged Big 12, but today is not the day they lose.
New England pass defense – In evaluating a team, it is useful to pull trusted resources from a wide variety of resources. Let’s look at my trusted resources for the Patriots pass defense.
- Passing success rate: 19th.
- Yards per pass attempt: 8th.
- PFF coverage grade: 1st.
The first two numbers come from my calculations which adjust for opposing quarterbacks faced. In addition, I threw out the first three games of the season. CB Christian Gonzalez missed those three games, and New England had poor performances against Geno Smith and Tua Tagovailoa.
While my metrics think New England’s pass defense is NFL average, a strong signal from the charting that PFF performs on each players suggests this unit is better than average.
NFL humor – For their vacant head coaching job, Buffalo interviewed Philip Rivers, who has never coached in the college or the NFL. He has been too busy with his 10 children.
However, Buffalo was such a mess that Rivers pulled out for the first time in his life.
Smarter sports betting in less than 5 minutes
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