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5-Nugget Saturday, November 25, 2023

By Dr. Ed Feng Leave a Comment

Looking for smart sports betting action this weekend? Your curated list of tips, analytics and humor.

Washington State at Washington – Despite a 5-6 record, the experts on the Cover 3 podcast like the chances for Washington State to cover and possibly pull off the upset. The panel noted the quality in Washington State QB Cam Ward, and Washington still has their issues on defense.

College football betting expert Bud Elliott likes what he saw from Washington State against Colorado last week despite the lack of competition. In addition, the Cougars have key players coming back from injury.

Bud said he would bet Washington State +14.5 or better. My member numbers at The Power Rank agree, as I have Washington by 13.0 points at home. As of Saturday morning, FanDuel has Washington State +16.5 for the 4pm Eastern kick off.

NFL passing prop – On the Move the Line NFL podcast, Connor Allen does not like the match up for Los Angeles Chargers QB Justin Herbert against Baltimore’s defense.

Herbert will play without many of his key weapons such as WR Joshua Palmer. In addition, Baltimore’s defense has allowed only one QB to throw for more than 252 passing yards this season. Detroit’s Jared Goff needed 53 pass attempts but still only had 284 yards.

Connor likes Justin Herbert under 252.5 passing yards, a number available at DraftKings as of Saturday morning.

Rest advantage in the NFL – Tampa Bay played last week at San Francisco. The Bucs travel to play Indianapolis, a team that had a bye last week after a win over New England in Germany.

To calculate rest advantage, I use data since the start of the 2015. This gives me a sample of 260 games with a team coming off a bye week against a team that played the previous week.

This calculation gives a rest edge of 0.8 points to Indianapolis against Tampa Bay. However, the error is only 0.6 points, so there is no statistical certainty that bye advantage exists at all.

Along with the 2.1 points for home advantage against a non division opponent, my numbers like Indianapolis by 2.6 points at home. To learn how my schedule adjustments play a role in these home and rest calculations, check out a recent episode of The Football Analytics Show podcast.

Sports betting Q&A – For Thanksgiving, professional bettor and founder of Bet Bash Spanky answered questions for over two hours. One person asked what he would do if sports books didn’t limit him.

Spanky said he would bet props. This would give him the highest return on investment. Check out all of his answers on the most recent episode of the Be Better Bettors podcast.

College football humor – Are you an Auburn fan despite the home loss to New Mexico State? Try Extra Strength AuburnFansatol, a product of SEC Shorts. Side effects include constantly talking about the early 1980s.

Auburn loses to New Mexico State.

presented by: @renasant pic.twitter.com/xFI1ojDmXL

— SEC Shorts (@SECShorts) November 20, 2023

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!”








 

 
 

Filed Under: 5-Nugget Saturday, The Power Rank Newsletter

Podcast: Ohio State at Michigan, 2023

By Dr. Ed Feng 2 Comments

The Game. Ohio State and Michigan are undefeated. Again. This episode previews the game based on what types of models are better at predicting college football outcomes.

This episode of The Football Analytics Show is also available on:

  • YouTube
  • Spotify
  • Apple Podcasts

Here is the script used to create the podcast:

With one second left in the game against Notre Dame, Ohio State scored a touchdown as Chip Trayanum plunged into the endzone from the one yard line. It capped a 15 play 65 yard drive and earned Ohio State a critical early season win.

After the game, Ohio State coach Ryan Day couldn’t hold back his feelings. He said:

I’d like to know where Lou Holtz is right now. What he said about our team, I cannot believe. This is a tough team right here. We’re proud to be from Ohio. It’s always been Ohio against the world, and it’ll continue to be Ohio against the world.

In the aftermath of a big win, you can excuse Coach Day for not knowing some of the facts about Ohio State’s toughness.

First, Notre Dame only had 10 players on the field on the last play of the game. They were also missing a player on the previous play from the one yard line. That play was an incompletion to Marvin Harrison Jr.

Ohio State had the odds tipped in their favor as they won the game.

Second, Ohio State was not that successful in running the ball against Notre Dame. It seemed like RB TreVeyon Henderson had a great game with 104 yards on 7.4 yards per carry. This is much better than the college football average 5.1.

However, 61 of those 104 yards came on a touchdown run in the 3rd quarter. Otherwise, Henderson had 43 rushing yards on 3.3 yards per carry.

One explosive can skew a metric like yards per carry, which is why I prefer to look at success rate. For an offense, a play is a success based on the necessary yards towards the next first down.

  • 1st down, 50% of these necessary yards.
  • 2nd down, 70% of the necessary yards.
  • 3rd, 4th down, obviously all of the necessary yards.

Success rate measures consistency on a play by play basis, and one outlier play can not skew this metric.

Against Notre Dame, Ohio State had a 26.9% rushing success rate. This is much worse than the college football average of 42.5% this season.

The run game was an issue for Ohio State earlier this season. TreVeyon Henderson came into the season as a Heisman contender, but didn’t show up against Notre Dame except for a lone play. He missed the next 3 games with an injury.

A few weeks later, Ohio State earned a tough 20-12 win over Penn State. However, the Buckeyes had a 32.4% rushing success rate in that game, albeit against a tough defense. Ohio State won the game because Marvin Harrison Jr. played up to his potential as the best WR in college football. He had 162 yards on 11 receptions and a critical TD.

However, things changed the next week. Henderson came back from injury and had 162 yards on 24 carries against Wisconsin.

Over the past 4 games, Ohio State has had a 48.1% success rate on run plays. This recent performance matters in making a prediction against Michigan.

Break

Michigan has had a remarkable season. After somewhat sleep walking through a weak out of conference schedule, they started dominating Big Ten teams.

  • 52-10 at Minnesota
  • 52-7 vs Indiana
  • 49-0 vs Michigan State

No one is going to write letters of recommendation to the college football playoff committee about beating any of these three teams. However, Michigan has had a better margin of victory against these three teams than Ohio State. They were also more dominant in SR against Minn and Michigan State.

Based on data from the current season, I take metrics like margin of victory and success rate and adjust for opponent with my proprietary algorithms. I put these together to get a sense for team performance for the 2023 season.

Based on this current season data, Michigan is about 3 points better than Ohio State.

Michigan has answered two key questions since the preseason.

First, the receiving corp was considered the weakest part of this team. However, WR Roman Wilson has emerged as a top threat, as he has gained 3.14 yards per route run. Any statistic over 3 is considered excellent in college football. TE Colston Loveland continues to fulfill his potential with 32 receptions, second behind only Wilson.

Second, the defense has exceeded my expectations. Michigan ranks 12th in my adjusted success rate. 

One thing is clear. Michigan is in a better position to beat Ohio State this season than either of the last two. As of Wednesday morning, Michigan is favored by 3.5 points at home.

Contrast this with the past two years. Last year in 2022, Ohio State closed as a 9 point favorite at home. There was likely late market movement towards Ohio State when it became clear that Michigan RB Blake Corum wasn’t at full strength. In 2021, Ohio State closed as a 6.5 point favorite on the road.

For those past 2 seasons, Ohio State had CJ Stroud at QB. With his success as an NFL rookie, Stroud looks like the best QB prospect since Patrick Mahomes.

Kyle McCord has taken over at QB for Ohio State, and he is good. With probably the best set of receivers in college football, Ohio State is 8th in my adjusted passing success rate.

However, McCord is not CJ Stroud and never will be. With this change and Michigan’s strong performance this year, the market has shifted on the results of this game. 

Michigan is favored by 3.5 points. My adjusted numbers based on this season would make this spread even larger. However, season long averages are not the best way to predict the outcome of college football games. Let me explain.

Break

For a long time, I ran my member college football predictions based on these season long results. This supported The Power Rank as a business for almost a decade.

Then in 2020, I couldn’t run those season long numbers like I usually did. With COVID, all one hundred and some teams were no longer connected by out of conference games. This renders the math I use for schedule adjustments meaningless.

I had to adapt. I developed a way to adjust a team’s rating each week based on the past game results. This is a more aggressive system that moves quickly on a team. This system tends to lean more towards recent performance like Ohio State in their last 4 games as opposed to metrics from the entire season.

I’ve found this more aggressive system to give a smaller error than my old model based. I trust this model even more when there is a reason for the recent surge in performance. Situations like when a Heisman caliber running back returns from injury.

Remember, Ohio State struggled running the ball before TreVeyon Henderson came back from injury. After the Penn State game, Ohio State ranked 112th in my rushing success rate adjusted for opponent.

Henderson came back the next week, and Ohio State has moved up to 64th in my adjusted rushing success rate. This rank based on season long numbers doesn’t reflect how good the run game is right now.

For most of the past month, my aggressive model had Michigan ahead of Ohio State. This past week, Ohio State moved ahead of Michigan if only ever so slightly.

My member numbers based on this aggressive model favor Michigan by 1.5 points at home. I’d lean Ohio State +3.5.

Break

I live in Ann Arbor, and the Harbaughs live in my neighborhood. While I’ve never seen Jim, I always see his dad Jack walking in the neighborhood.

Earlier this season, I ran into Jack and exchanged some pleasantries. I asked him how his son was doing, as Jim was serving a three game suspension and didn’t coach those non-conference cupcake games.

Jack said he was doing fine. I asked him whether as a dad he was going to hang out with his son during those games. Jack replied:

Hell no. I’m going to the game.

Jim Harbaugh will not coach against Ohio State, and it seems safe to assume that his dad will not join him in his Ann Arbor home. But does Jim’s absence matter?

Maybe. I can’t make any quantitative arguments about it, but it seems helpful to have every coach available in the most important regular season game of the year.

In addition, Michigan LB coach Chris Patridge was fired last week for his involvement in the sign stealing activities. Michigan is down two coaches. We will see if this has an impact on the game.

Filed Under: College Football, Podcast

Members: Football analysis for November 23-27, 2023

By Dr. Ed Feng Leave a Comment

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Filed Under: Member Content

5-Nugget Saturday, November 18, 2023

By Dr. Ed Feng Leave a Comment

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

Unabated podcast – Same game parlays seem like the domain of amateurs. You laugh at your friend that bets the SGP that shows up first on FanDuel. However, on the Unabated Podcast, professional sports bettor Rufus Peabody talked about the edges in SGPs despite the high hold.

The sports books price a SGP based on the correlation between quantities such as QB pass yards and WR receiving yards. Rufus thinks there is value in finding exceptions to these general correlations, and he plans to build software that allows people to explore this value in SGPs.

The Unabated Podcast with Captain Jack and Tom Viola is an excellent sports betting resource. In addition, they were also kind enough to have me on this week to discuss my mathematical schedule adjustments and interception props.

NFL interception prop – Even with the power of using bad ball rate to predict interceptions, small sample size is an issue. While I trust the 1702 pass attempts of Josh Allen since the start of the 2021 season, Sam Howell has 417 attempts over his two NFL seasons.

Howell has a bad ball rate of 12.5%, worse than the NFL average of 11.6% since the start of the 2021 season. While I might expect regression to the mean for a more promising QB, Howell’s rate is most likely accurate for a player who might not start past this season.

Despite being a large favorite against the New York Giants and QB Tommy DeVito, the market has a large value of 35.5 pass attempts for Howell. My model gives a 58.5% chance of an interception, and there is value in Howell over 0.5 interceptions (-115 at DraftKings).

Los Angeles Chargers at Green Bay, NFL Week 11 – On the Props & Hops podcast, NFL originator SharpClarke notes the Chargers offense continues to underwhelm without key contributors. WR Mike Williams is hurt again, and center Corey Linsley has not played since week 3.

From watching game film, SharpClarke sees slow but steady improvement in the Packers offense, with a strong offensive line and young WRs finding their stride with QB Jordan Love. The Packers did well against Pittsburgh last week, and they face a worse defense against the Chargers.

SharpClarke’s numbers make the spread Chargers -1.5, which agrees with The Power Rank member prediction of 1.4 points. There is value in Packers +3.

College basketball predictions – These are predictions are based on my model that adjusts teams according to early season data.

  • Connecticut will beat Indiana by 10.6 points, neutral site (Sunday). Connecticut brings back Donovan Clingan and Alex Karaban to defend their national title from April, 2023. While they have yet to face decent competition in three games, Indiana should give them a test in New York City.
  • Houston will beat Dayton by 13.0 points, neutral site (Sunday). Houston lost Marcus Sasser and Jarace Walker to the 1st round of the NBA draft, but Kelvin Sampson probably still has a top 5 team. Houston beat a solid Utah team by 10 points on Friday.
  • Florida Atlantic will beat Bryant by 21.2 points at home. Florida Atlantic brings back five contributors from a team that came within a point of the national championship game in April.

Members of The Power Rank get access to these predictions the day before the games, which allows you to take advantage of the soft opening market.

NFL humor – Deshaun Watson is out for the season, and Annie Agar suggests that just maybe, the Browns should have had a contingency plan given that he missed multiple games this year.

https://t.co/gB2kltHKNx pic.twitter.com/gCaSd35n0e

— Annie Agar (@AnnieAgar) November 15, 2023

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!”








 

 
 

Filed Under: 5-Nugget Saturday, The Power Rank Newsletter

Philadelphia at Kansas City, NFL Week 11

By Dr. Ed Feng Leave a Comment

While these teams played in the Super Bowl last season, a lot has changed since that game.

Kansas City is known for their efficient pass offense. However, coach Andy Reid and QB Patrick Mahomes haven’t hit their lofty standards this season, as they rank 9th in my adjusted passing success rate.

Expect this to get better, as they still have the NFL’s best TE in Travis Kelce. In addition, rookie WR Rashee Rice as impressed so far with 2.28 yards per route run, much better than the NFL average of 1.5 for WRs.

Kansas City looks great based on this year’s numbers because of the defense. The pass defense ranks 2nd in my adjusted passing success rate.

However, regression is looming for this unit. Kansas City has a long track record of being league average on defense, and their personnel this season doesn’t suggest otherwise. In addition, the Chiefs are 18th in PFF coverage grade.

The offense will improve while the defense regresses, and this means that Kansas City’s rank of 3rd based on data from the current season should hold steady.

Philadelphia has an NFL best 8-1 record. Their lone loss came in a winnable game vs the Jets, as Jalen Hurts lost his mind with 3 interceptions. The Eagles have an unsustainable 5-1 record in one score games, with wins over Dallas and Washington twice.

The defense has been worse than last season, as Philadelphia ranks 16th in my adjusted passing success rate. CB Darius Slay and James Bradberry both have worse PFF coverage grades than last season. In addition, CB Josh Jobe has struggled to fill in for an injured Avonte Maddox.

After a rough start to the season in throwing the ball, Jalen Hurts has been great the past two weeks (NFL averages are 42.3% success rate, 6.05 yards per pass attempt, and defensive rank is according to my adjusted passing success rate):

  • 50.0% success rate, 7.0 yards per pass attempt against Dallas (7th).
  • 50.0% success rate, 7.9 yards per pass attempt against Washington (6th).

Overall, Philadelphia ranks 10th in my adjusted passing success rate. Despite these recent performances, I don’t trust Hurts as a passer and view these games as outliers.

My member numbers have Kansas City by 4.8 points over Philadelphia at home. Based on only data from this season, I’d make Kansas City -5 over Philadelphia on a neutral site.

In addition, Jalen Hurts is listed as questionable, as he played through the Dallas game after taking a hit to his left knee. There is value in Kansas City -2.5, and I fully expect the market to move to -3 or more.

Here are 3 predictions usually reserved for paying members of The Power Rank.

CFB. Oregon State will beat Washington by 2.3 points at home. On Sunday, FanDuel had Washington -2.5 on the road. Now, most books have Oregon State -2.5, as sharp bettors recognize almost a month of mediocre play from the 10-0 Huskies.

CFB. Georgia will beat Tennessee by 8.7 points on the road. All world TE Brock Bowers returned for Georgia last week, and the Bulldogs have looked impressive since that close call at Auburn. Georgia is back on top of my member college football rankings, and I do not recommend taking Tennessee +10 because of this prediction.

NFL. Cleveland will beat Pittsburgh by 1.2 points at home. This prediction comes from my market model that takes closing spreads and adjusts for opponents. This model says that Cleveland is 3.5 points worse than NFL average with PJ Walker at QB. For this division game, I use a home advantage of 1.3 points, and I explain how I calculate this and rest advantage in the most recent episode of The Football Analytics Show.

Smarter sports betting in less than 5 minutes

This article was sent to The Power Rank’s email newsletter at noon Eastern on Thursday, November 16, 2023. This newsletter is a free service that strives to be:

  • Valuable
  • Concise
  • Entertaining

Every week, I send out 5-Nugget Saturday, my curated list of sports betting tips, analytics and humor. If you’re looking for action on a weekend, this is the service for you.

To get this free service delivered straight into your inbox, enter your best email address and click on “Sign up now!”








 

 
 

Filed Under: National Football League, The Power Rank Newsletter

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