Looking for sharp football betting action this weekend? Your curated list of bets, analytics and humor, every Saturday at 10am Eastern.
NFL interception prop – Jacksonville QB Trevor Lawrence seems about league average in turnover prevention. Since the start of the 2022 season, he has a 2.4% interception rate, close to the 2.2% NFL average.
When I predict interceptions, I look not only at interceptions but also passes defended, or plays in which the defense gets a hand on a pass. Bad balls are the sum of interceptions and passes defended, and bad ball rate gives how often a QB throws the football into dangerous situations.
Lawrence has a bad ball rate of 14.9%, one of the worst in the NFL. My interception model gives a 57.1% that he throws a pick against New England. There is value in Trevor Lawrence over 0.5 interceptions at -114, available at FanDuel.
I use a higher threshold for interception props for members of The Power Rank, and these get sent out at 11am Eastern every Saturday.
NFL passing yards prop – On the Move the Line podcast, Connor Allen of 4for4 Bets made the case against Marcus Mariota. The Washington back up quarterback faces an uphill battle against an excellent Seattle defense.
Seattle held New England QB Drake Maye to 178 passing yards when he had WR AJ Brown for part of the game. In addition, Washington won’t have two starters on the offensive line (Sam Cosmi, Laremy Tunsil) against Seattle.
Connor likes Marcus Mariota under 173.5 passing yards, available at BetMGM, despite the low yardage number. Follow Connor Allen for all of his NFL player prop insights.
The Detroit Lions offense with and without Ben Johnson – Ben Johnson’s Chicago offense exploded for 59 points in Week 1. It made me wonder how the Lions have performed since the offensive guru left after the 2024 season.
While Detroit’s offense peaked in 2024, the last season with Johnson as coordinator, the 2025 offense rated about the same as the 2022 and 2023 offenses with Johnson. This holds no matter what simple or advanced metrics you use.
I also included some analysis on head coach Dan Campbell’s play calling last season after he took over from his OC John Morton. Catch the latest episode of The Football Analytics Show on Spotify, YouTube or The Power Rank.
Analytics driven story telling – I had never looked into the NFL’s passing rating statistic until I was asked to by audio producer Harry Swartout. On Echo of the Whistle, he uses an NFL game in which both quarterbacks had a 0.0 rating to tell a rich data driven story on passer rating.
Harry contrasts my data driven approach with thoughts of Nathan Peterman, the NFL quarterback most famous for throwing five interceptions in a half of a game. And that game wasn’t the one in which he earned a 0.0 passer rating.
NFL humor – Injuries to young quarterbacks stripped Week 2 out of a lot of joy. At least we can laugh at contrasting the exits of New York Giants QB Jaxson Dart (done for the year with a knee injury) with Chicago Bears QB Caleb Williams (probably back in a few weeks with a hamstring pull). This video is worth 15 seconds of your time.
Smarter sports betting in less than 5 minutes
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