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Jacksonville State at North Dakota State, College Football Week 0 – North Dakota State dominated FCS football for over two decades with 10 national championships. Now, they move to the FBS level and join the Mountain West conference.
North Dakota State comes into this opener with some questions, as they lost key players like WR Bryce Lance (4th round pick of the New Orleans Saints) and start a career backup at QB (Nathan Hayes). In contrast, Jacksonville State comes to town with returning QB Caden Creel, who rushed for over a thousand yards last season.
However, North Dakota State fans most likely make the home environment even more of an advantage in their first FBS game. Based on a simple model, I use 3.9 points for home advantage in out of conference games. My member predictions have the home team by 10.6 points, implies value in North Dakota State -6.5 (best price of -115 at DraftKings).
NFL season passing yards prop – In 2025, Indianapolis QB Daniel Jones had to win the starting job in camp but then had an amazing season. In my metrics adjusted for opposing defenses, Jones was predicted to have a passing success rate of 48.0%. This rating was well above the NFL average of 42.5% and 3rd best in the NFL.
However, there are two primary reasons to expect regression for Jones in 2026, which matter in handicapping his passing yards prop:
- Jones had never been above NFL average in my adjusted passing success rate in any of the five previous seasons.
- Jones has finished the season healthy in one of his last five seasons (he got hurt in early December, 2025).
In seven seasons, Jones’s largest total passing yards was 3205 in 2022. There is value in Daniel Jones under 3299.5 passing yards, -110 available at DraftKings.
Prediction markets – Jeff Edelstein wrote an excellent article on how prediction markets are changing the sports betting industry. For example, Rufus Peabody will no longer release his Massey-Peabody college football rankings to members of Unabated.
The reason is simple: his rankings are more useful in making money in the prediction markets, not surprising for a huge market like college football spreads. However, Establish the Run is also withholding their NFL player props, a profitable service run by Adam Levitan.
This suggests there will be enough liquidity in the NFL player props market on platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket to make it worth betting instead of selling the player props.
How to bet Ohio State futures – Ohio State starts the season #1 in just about every ranking system.
You may believe in what Ryan Day has built in Columbus and that the program can overcome losing 11 players to the NFL draft. Or you may want to fade the top team in the nation because you don’t trust the transfers they brought in on defense.
In a short video, I talked about how to use my market model in conjunction with the college football futures simulator at Unabated to find a way to bet Ohio State no matter your beliefs. In addition, I’ve started posting the full episodes of The Football Analytics Show on my X account, which gives you another way to get those 5 minute episodes that drop every Friday.
NFL humor – I’m not a fan of Stephen A. Smith. But he has a following for a reason, and this :17 clip on Cleveland Browns QB Deshaun Watson is hilarious.
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:
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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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