Your weekly dose of sports betting tips, analytics and humor, every Saturday at 10am Eastern.

NFL player prop – Once the top pick in the NFL draft, Baker Mayfield has played for four teams since the start of the 2021 season. The journeyman did land the starting QB role in Tampa Bay though.

Mayfield led Tampa Bay to a week 1 win over Minnesota, and he threw no interceptions. However, he often puts the ball in dangerous situations, a key predictor for future interceptions.

Bad ball rate is the sum of interceptions and passes defended divided by pass attempts, and Mayfield’s 13.3% rate since the start of the 2020 season is worse than the NFL average of 11.6%.

Despite no interceptions against Minnesota, he had a 14.7% bad ball rate. My model gives a 58% chance he throws an interception against Chicago, which suggests value in over 0.5 interceptions (+105 at DraftKings, although the price was +135 when members of The Power Rank received it on Friday).

New Orleans at Carolina, Monday Night Football – On The Pat Mayo Experience, professional bettor Rob Pizzola notes that Carolina’s 24-10 loss to Atlanta last week was deceiving. Carolina had more yards and better success rate but could not overcome -3 in turnover margin.

In addition, Rob does not like the offensive line of New Orleans, as Brian Burns and the Carolina defense will get pressure on QB Derek Carr. The spread favors the road team too much, and Rob likes Carolina +3 in the early Monday night game.

Follow Rob on Twitter for all of his insights and media appearances.

Miami (OH) at Cincinnati, College Football Week 3 – Bill Connelly of ESPN writes about five bets in his weekly college football column. This week, he wondered why Cincinnati went from -17 to -14 against Miami (OH). QB Emory Jones hurt? No.

Jones and RB Corey Kiner have been excellent this season, and Cincinnati has covered the spread by an average of 22 points this season. Bill’s numbers predict a 26.4 point win, and he likes Cincinnati -14.

For early quantitative college football predictions, Bill posts his numbers in this Google Sheet on Sunday for the next week’s games.

Unabated line – Based on polling sharp bettors, Unabated has determined the sharpest sports books in each sport. The Unabated line is a weighted average of these sharp books that seems to project market movement (see below).

Here are some interesting games for this week.

• Dallas -8.5 vs New York Jets. DraftKings has Dallas -9 as of Saturday morning, and other books were at -9.5 on Friday morning.
• Los Angeles Chargers -2.5 at Tennessee. Most sports books moved from -3 on Friday to -2.5 on Saturday morning. Sharp book Pinnacle is still at -3.
• Tennessee -5 at Florida. DraftKings and FanDuel still have -6.5 on Saturday morning.

Unabated has a host of software tools to help you win at sports betting.

College football humor – “This is his sixth season.” Teams knock on death’s door in a hilarious episode of SEC Shorts.

SEC teams think their seasons are definitely dead.

presented by: @renasant pic.twitter.com/vPSIOM5Wp0

— SEC Shorts (@SECShorts) September 11, 2023

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These nuggets were sent to The Power Rank’s email newsletter. This is a free service that strives to be:

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• Concise
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Other emails offer analysis of college football and NFL games that founder Ed Feng has bet.

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Your weekly dose of sports betting tips, analytics and humor, every Saturday at 10am Eastern.

NFL player prop – Tennessee QB Ryan Tannehill has had an interception rate of 2.2% the past three season, a tick better than the NFL average of 2.3%. However, my research has shown that bad ball rate, which considers passes defended in addition to interceptions, is a better predictor of future interceptions.

Tannehill has had a bad ball rate of 13.3% the past three seasons, significantly worse than the NFL average of 11.6%. Based on the 30.5 pass attempts in the prop market, I project a 55.7% chance he throws an interception against New Orleans.

In addition, my member numbers favor New Orleans by 4.1 points, which means Tennessee is more likely to be down late in the game. These negative game scripts increase the chance of a pick, so 55.7% is an underestimate.

This implies value in Tannehill over 0.5 interceptions, -105 at DraftKings.

NFL Week 1 bet – On this week’s episode of The Football Analytics Show, Adam Chernoff of Right Angle Sports discussed a teaser bet.

• Washington -1 (from -7) vs Arizona.
• Miami +9 (from +3) at Los Angeles Chargers.

In the first leg, Arizona has yet to announce whether Clayton Tune or Josh Dobbs will start at QB. The Cardinals are a disaster and made it worse by trading safety Isaiah Simmons, their best defensive player.

In the second leg, Adam loves that Vic Fangio now coordinates Miami’s defense, and this helps Miami keep this game close. In addition, the Los Angeles Chargers have little home field advantage.

Adam also talked about how his NFL process has changed this season and broke down Dallas, Houston and Atlanta among other teams in a must listen episode of The Football Analytics Show.

Unabated line – You know the market is a fantastic predictor. But which sports books are the best in a specific sport? How can you use this information?

Based on polling sharp bettors, Unabated has determined the best sports books in each sport. The Unabated line presents a weighted average of these sharp books. 

Here are some results of the Unabated line as of Saturday morning.

• Texas A&M -3, -102 at Miami. The sharp consensus suggests the spread should be a field goal. While many books had Texas A&M -3.5 on Friday night, they have moved to -3.
• Iowa -4, +102 at Iowa State. This suggests value in Iowa -3.5, -108 at DraftKings if you have other reasons to like the Hawkeyes.

Unabated has a host of software tools to help you win at sports betting.

Nebraska at Colorado – Coach Prime and Colorado stunned the football world with an upset at TCU as a 21 point underdog. Bob Stoll notes that the pass offense with excellent, as four receivers had 117 yards or more.

However, Colorado was not as good against the run, allowing 7.1 yards per rushing play. Bob expects Nebraska to run the ball instead of throwing it with inconsistent QB Jeff Sims. In addition, Nebraska’s defense was good against Minnesota, allowing 3.7 yards per play.

Bob was impressed with Colorado, and he now rates them 3.2 points better than average. On a preseason episode of The Football Analytics Show, he said that he had Colorado consistent with the markets, and my market rankings had Colorado 4.6 points worse than average.

Bob’s numbers predict a 1 point win against Nebraska, although Nebraska +2.5 was not one of his best bets. Check out his college football analysis every week over at Dr. Bob Sports.

NFL humor – Anyone else have Kansas City side and watch that pass sail right through the hands of Kadarius Toney for a pick six?

Andy Reid to Kadarius Toney tommorow morning

pic.twitter.com/aQF6eqZwkK

— evin (@KayvonOjulari) September 8, 2023

Smarter sports betting in less than 5 minutes

These nuggets were sent to The Power Rank’s email newsletter. This is 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.

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

 

 

 

Your weekly curated list of sports betting tips, analytics and humor, every Saturday at 10am Eastern.

College football receiving prop – After transferring from Oregon, RB Trey Benson exploded at Florida State with 990 rushing yards last season. However, he is not a huge receiving threat, as Florida State insider Bud Elliott points out they throw more often to Lawrence Toafili out of the backfield.

Against LSU, DraftKings has Benson’s receiving prop at 16.5 yards, and he went over this number in three of 13 games last season. He never caught more than two passes in a game. Despite his speed, an athletic and efficient LSU defense should decrease the likelihood of explosive plays.

Bud sees value in under 16.5 receiving yards for Trey Benson (-120 at DraftKings), as Florida State meets LSU in a huge Sunday night game at 7:30pm Eastern. Follow Bud on Twitter for all of his college football betting insights.

NFL sack prop – Matthew Judon had a stellar season with the Patriots last season, as he recorded a career high 15.5 sacks. However, this total was three more than any other season, and this means regression looms for the 31 year old Judon.

In addition, ESPN’s Seth Walder has put together a sack prediction model that considers these factors among others:

• Pass rush win rate, a metric from NFL Next Gen player tracking.
• Blitz rate based on the defensive coordinator.
• The sack rate of opposing quarterbacks.

It might seem strange to considering the opposition, but quarterbacks own sack rate more than you think.

These three factors all work against Judon, and the model projects 9.0 sacks in 2023. This implies value in under 11.75 sacks (-135 at DraftKings).

Buffalo Bills – On The Football Analytics Show podcast, Dr. Eric Eager talked about how the market is undervaluing Buffalo, as the Bill have had the best point differential in the league the past two seasons.

Eric thinks Buffalo has a more talented roster than Kansas City, although the perception of the the Chiefs is better given their Super Bowl win last season. In addition, a healthy WR Gabe Davis and rookie TE Dalton Kincaid will help this team.

Eric sees value in Buffalo 9-1 to win the Super Bowl, a widely available number. He also broke down run pass options, weak link systems and multiple teams in a must listen episode of The Football Analytics Show.

Third overrated college football team – In the Cotton Bowl, Tulane came back to beat USC and recently crowned Heisman winner Caleb Williams in a wild 46-45 game. This capped a magical 12-2 season.

With this kind of finish to the 2022 season, Tulane was destined to be overrated heading into 2023 (24th in the preseason AP poll). Let’s look at how they rank by a variety of preseason metrics:

• 35th in my market rankings based on Circa win totals
• 37th in SP+ of Bill Connelly
• 55th in ESPN’s FPI

With returning QB Michael Pratt, Tulane won’t sink to 2-10, their record in 2021 in which everything went wrong. However, they probably sink towards their program level from 2018 to 2020 in which they won about half their games and had an average rating by my team rankings.

Check out my first and second overrated college football teams for 2023.

College football humor – When Nebraska made their coaching hire, Faux Pellini said:

Congratulations, Matt Rhule! You’re the next contestant on Nebraska’s favorite game show, “He’s Not Tom Osborne But He’ll Do for Now.”

On Thursday, Nebraska allowed Minnesota to score 10 points in the final minutes of the game to lose 13-10. The Cornhuskers have broken regression, as they are 2-14 in one score games since the beginning of 2021.

Level up your football betting game

You want to level up your football betting game in 2023. This curation of sharp bettors is fine for Saturday, but you want more earlier in the week. Predictions, analysis, anything that uncovers value.

Members of The Power Rank get access to all of my best predictions and analysis. This includes:

• College football spreads
• NFL spreads
• NFL season player props

College football week 2 predictions will go up on Sunday to take advantage of the soft early market.

Learn more about becoming a member of The Power Rank.

Your weekly curated list of sports betting tips, analytics and humor, every Saturday at 10am Eastern.

Programming note: Next week, the newsletter will feature 3 overrated college football teams, a series I have done since 2015.

Miami at Jacksonville, NFL preseason – Earlier this week, Right Angle Sports (RAS) released Jacksonville -6. A big reason is Jacksonville QB Nathan Rourke, the 3rd stringer behind Trevor Lawrence and CJ Beathard.

Adam Chernoff of RAS believes Rourke is good enough to be an NFL back up but has chosen to stay in Jacksonville to play for Doug Pederson. His play in the second half should give the Jags an edge over the reserves of Miami’s defense.

Adam also thinks there is a second half angle, as he expects the Jaguars to outscore Miami by 3 or more points in the second half. Even though the market has moved to Jaguars -6.5, RAS believes there is still value in the side (game kicks off at 7pm Eastern on Saturday).

College football win total – On a recent episode of The Football Analytics Show, Bob Stoll, a legend in using college football analytics for betting, noted the random element in play differential from season to season.

For example, Kansas was -12 in play differential in 2022, and Bob projects they will only be -5 this season. This means the exact same team could be three points better per game because of regression in play differential.

This is one reason that Bob likes Kansas over 6 wins. While he released this to his customer at -105, Bob thinks there is still value on over 6 wins (-150 at DraftKings).

Bob talked about the blend of math and art in his college football numbers, how rule changes will impact college football totals and more in a must listen episode of The Football Analytics Show.

Women’s US Open Tennis – On the Beating the Book podcast, Drew Dinsick, a sharp quantitative bettor known for his media appearances, noted how he likes Aryna Sabalenka in Quarter 4.

Drew does not see many strong players in this quarter, which includes Ons Jabeur. His numbers give Aryna Sabalenka a better than 50% chance to win Quarter 4, and he see value in Sabalenka +120 (FanDuel) to reach the semi-final from that quarter.

Drew and host Gill Alexander are two of the sharpest tennis bettors, and their passion for the sport comes through in a great episode of Beating the Book that previews the US Open.

How to predict NFL interceptions – In the newsletter this week, I explained how bad balls, or interceptions plus passes defended, are a better way to predict interceptions than only interceptions. This led insights on New York Giants QB Daniel Jones in 2023.

It took a long time to come up with a one line explanation for how to predict interceptions. In a longer episode of The Football Analytics Show, I explained the full path of my research into bad ball rate.

You can also listen to the newsletters in the preview series on The Football Analytics Show podcast. Check out the episodes from this past week on Spotify:

• How to predict NFL interceptions
• New York Jets

College football humor – Annie Agar posts a hilarious NFL video each week of the season, but it started during the pandemic with this Big Ten meeting. A reminder that this is when almost everyone in Ann Arbor wanted Jim Harbaugh fired.

If the BigTen had a zoom meeting🏈

Thank you guys for all the love on this!!! I might have to do more? 🤔 pic.twitter.com/9DXsyaAJVp

— Annie Agar (@AnnieAgar) May 17, 2020

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

With the approach of the 2023 football season, this newsletter will preview both college football and the NFL in addition to delivering 5-Nugget Saturday every week.

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

 

 

 

Your weekly curated list of sports betting tips, analytics and humor, every Saturday at 10am Eastern.

Baseball strikeout prop – To get a quick estimate of strikeouts, you can do the following:

• Estimate innings pitched by taking total innings divided by starts.
• Take this innings pitched estimate and multiple by a projected strikeouts per inning.

I use the ZiPS projections of Dan Szymborski on FanGraphs. For Cleveland pitcher Tanner Bibee, this gives an estimate of 5.2 strikeouts. A more granular model on the SP K Prediction app considers handedness of the pitcher and opposing lineup and predicts 4.6 strikeouts for Bibee.

Both of these estimates suggest value in Bibee under 6.5 strikeouts against Detroit (+108 on FanDuel).

College football win total – Pro bettor Drew Martin thinks a Vanderbilt win total of 3.5 might be low, as they return their starting QB, five offensive linemen with starting experience and both coordinators. This team will have a short learning curve this upcoming season.

Dissecting the schedule reveals value on the over. Vanderbilt opens the season with Hawaii, Alabama A&M, Wake Forrest and UNLV as their non conference games. It is not out of the question that the Commodores sweep the slate and the over cashes by the middle of September.

Even if Vanderbilt drops one or two games of these games, they can still get to 4 wins with games against Kentucky, Florida, Missouri, South Carolina and Auburn. The Commodores will be an underdog in each of these games, but they did beat Kentucky and Florida straight up in consecutive weeks last season.

Drew likes Vanderbilt over 3.5 wins (-170 at FanDuel). Follow Drew on social media this fall as he hosts the Every Game on the Board podcast which goes through every college football game every week.

NFL preseason bets – While they have built their reputation in college basketball and college football, Right Angle Sports (RAS) now has a full NFL service. Here are some of their preseason bets released earlier this week (current values on FanDuel).

• Dallas at Seattle over 37.5 (current 40.5)
• Las Vegas at Los Angeles Rams over 36.5 (current 39.5)
• Indianapolis -2.5 vs Chicago (current -5.5)

There is no longer value in these bets, as the market has moved. In fact, RAS got closing line value in all seven releases this week.

In an email tomorrow, I’ll explain how RAS has achieved their long term record of success.

Keeping accounts alive – Captain Jack of Unabated has been betting on sports for a long time. In the days in which he ran between books in Las Vegas, he would bet round numbers to save time.

This means Captain Jack would bet $110 to win $100. He didn’t want to bet $100 to win $90.91 and deal with change in coins. To his surprise, he found out that bookmakers use this as a tell for a sharp bettor.

Jack suggests betting non-round numbers to disguise your sharpness. He also talks about four other tells for sharp bettors, including the truth about round robins, in a great article at Unabated.

Football humor – Rob Pizzola almost lost his Bet Bash dinner over this one.

What are we doing here? pic.twitter.com/las2lV4LvR

— Rob Pizzola (@robpizzola) August 15, 2023

The headline is clickbait, as Seth Walder of ESPN, an analytics guy, writes that “a backup running back should have little impact on our forecast for a team.”

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

With the approach of the 2023 football season, this newsletter will preview both college football and the NFL in addition to delivering 5-Nugget Saturday every week.

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