5-Nugget Saturday, August 22, 2026

Looking for sharp sports betting action this weekend? Your curated list of tips, analytics and humor, every Saturday at 10am Eastern.

Indiana Fever at New York Liberty, WNBA – Michael Fiddle is a sharp sports bettor a track record of closing line value (CLV) and a contributor to Yahoo Sports. For this WNBA game, he sees a favorable situation for the home Liberty.

Indiana are playing the first game of back to back games on the road (New York on Saturday, Chicago on Sunday). In this situation, the Fever often rest Aliyah Boston in one game and Caitlin Clark in the other.

Boston is listed as questions at New York, and Michael suspects that she won’t play. He likes Liberty -2.5 at home against the Fever as he expects the spread to move to -4.5 when news breaks that Boston doesn’t play.

Follow Michael Fiddle for his expertise not only in WNBA and NBA but the NFL as well.

NFL season long player prop – San Francisco TE George Kittle tore his Achilles in a January playoff game. This week, news surfaced that Kittle might return for the opening week of this season.

I don’t buy it. An Achilles injury often takes up a year for a player to return, and Kittle’s age of 32 years old most likely slows down his recovery. In addition, Kittle missed time last season because of hamstring and ankle injuries.

In addition, work by Connor Allen shows that the under on NFL season long receiving yards props wins at a 63.7% rate over the past five seasons. A big reason for this win rate is probably injuries.

Perhaps an athletic freak like Kittle can make a full recover, but I think there is value in George Kittle under 699.5 receiving yards, -110 available at DraftKings.

College football predictions – During the preseason, my public college football rankings combine a number of trusted sources. With enough data from the current season, I will add in my team rankings that take margin of victory and adjust for strength of schedule with my algorithms at The Power Rank.

I’ve used this ensemble method for a number of years. While I don’t fully trust each ranking individually, the composite public rankings mostly agree with a more trusted model like my member market model. For example, Texas Tech ranks 8th and suggests little drop off from last season.

I’ve also posted college football predictions for Week 0 and 1 based on this public, composite model. Bill Belichick opens his second season at North Carolina in against TCU in Dublin, Ireland, and he is unlikely to start the season with a win.

The NFL’s most interesting coordinator hire – Most NFL coordinator hires are boring. A man gets promoted from a position coaching job, or a former head coach drops down.

Not new Los Angeles Chargers DC Chris O’Leary. In the latest episode of The Football Analytics Show, I break down his season as DC of Western Michigan last season and his prospects with the Chargers in 2026.

I’m pumped about how these 5 minute episodes have turned out. Check out the three episodes available now:

• Chargers DC Chris O’Leary is the NFL’s most interesting coordinator hire.
• How the markets rank Texas Tech without Brendan Sorsby.
• Tej Seth on the Chicago Bears in 2026.

New episodes appear every Friday until the Super Bowl.

Baseball humor – Seattle’s disappointing season got worse this week as they were down 19-0 to Milwaukee in the 8th inning with two outs. Then the Mariners goofed in a big way (:34 video).

Smarter sports betting in less than 5 minutes

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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.

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