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

Super Bowl look ahead spread – Based on my current member numbers, I’d make Cincinnati a pick or -0.5 against either Philadelphia or San Francisco.

Assuming a full strength Patrick Mahomes, I’d make Kansas City -2 on a neutral site against Philadelphia or San Francisco. It really makes things easy when the two finalists from the NFC have about the same rating.

Patrick Mahomes passing yards prop – The market has concerns about Mahomes’s ankle injury, but it may have over adjusted a few numbers. For example, the passing yards prop is typically in the 310 range, but DraftKings has 285.5 for the game against Cincinnati.

On the latest Props & Hops podcast, pro bettor Hitman said that his information leads him to believe Mahomes will be healthier that the market anticipates. Hitman also thinks that if Mahomes has limited mobility, it might turn a few scrambles into pass attempts, which helps the over.

Hitman likes Mahomes over 285.5 passing yards against Cincinnati.

Brock Purdy – Despite the stellar play of the rookie, I was determined to find something wrong with him. He had only thrown four interceptions this year, but there is huge amount of randomness in picks.

Back in 2020, my COVID project was a better way to predict interceptions. I found that it’s more predictive to look at interceptions and pass defended, or any play in which a defender gets a hand on a pass or jars the ball loose with a hit on a receiver. In essence, this expands the set of plays in which the QB put the ball in a dangerous position.

The key to predicting interceptions is bad ball rate, or interceptions and pass defended per pass attempt (my research found this to be as predictive as completion percentage). The verdict on Purdy? His bad ball rate of 11.7%, better than NFL average of 12.3% this season.

Based on a market value of 31.5 pass attempts, Purdy has a 50.2% chance to not throw a pick, or to go under 0.5 interceptions.

San Francisco at Philadelphia – Pro bettor Rob Pizzola likes many aspects of Philadelphia’s match up with San Francisco.

First, Philadelphia is capable of exploiting San Francisco’s weakness in the secondary. While CB Charvarius Ward is solid, this leaves Deommodore Lenoir to cover either A.J. Brown on Devonta Smith on the outside.

Second, Philadelphia has strength along the offensive line to match up with the strength of San Francisco’s defensive line. This will help slow down the Niners pass rush. If the pass protection breaks down, QB Jalen Hurts can then scramble against a defense ranked 26th in success rate against QB scrambles.

Rob likes Philadelphia -2.5 at home. Check out all the good work Rob and colleagues do over at The Hammer.

Injuries – This information is curated from the ESPN NFL injuries page unless otherwise noted.

• Kansas City QB Patrick Mahomes is dealing with an ankle sprain, but coach Andy Reid says he will start. Mahomes hasn’t been on the injury list the past two days, but his mobility remains a question.
• Kansas City WRs Mecole Hardman and Justin Watson are questionable with a pelvis injury and illness respectively.
• Philadelphia OT Lane Johnson and CB Avonte Maddox both practiced on Friday and will play against San Francisco.
• San Francisco RB Elijah Mitchell is questionable with a groin injury. Key weapons RB Christian McCaffrey and WR Deebo Samuel were on the injury report earlier this week but are no longer there.

Get ready for a wild NCAA tournament – My college basketball team rankings take margin of victory and adjust for schedule with my proprietary algorithm. Let’s look at the rank of the four teams that have contested the last two championship games:

• Kansas – 18th
• North Carolina – 21st
• Baylor – 25th
• Gonzaga – 19th

This season, Purdue tops these rankings, and they are predicted to beat an average Division 1 team by 16.6 points. At this point last season, five teams had a higher rating than 16.6.

Early season returns suggest that there are no dominant teams in college basketball. There might be more surprise Elite Eight and Final Four teams in the 2023 NCAA tournament than usual.

Humor – Greg sent professional poker player Melissa an unwanted picture of his genitalia. Melissa posted a cleaned up version still not suitable to show here and said “thanks i hate it.”

Greg was not pleased, and asked to get in touch with her boss. Melissa sent him to another poker player, who informed Greg that HR said that this matter needed to go to the police. Greg didn’t get the joke and was not pleased. You can’t make this up.

This Barstool article makes it easy to follow the thread.

Data driven betting information

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

Dallas at San Francisco – While it never feels good to bet an over against defenses that can get after the QB, pro bettor Rob Pizzola thinks both the Cowboys and Niners offenses will still put up points.

San Francisco’s secondary is vulnerable, as Las Vegas with Jarrett Stidham showed a few weeks ago. Dak Prescott will emphasize getting the ball out quickly to his skill position players.

When San Francisco has the ball, Dallas will not have the services of two key cornerbacks on IR and will struggle to contain Deebo Samuel and Brandon Aiyuk. Purdy has also been excellent in extending plays with a 47% success rate when it has taken him 3+ seconds to throw the ball.

Rob thinks the total should be greater than 47, which suggests value on the over 46 (DraftKings). Check out all the great work Rob and coworkers do at The Hammer.

Australian Open – Well know tennis handicapper Drew Dinsick likes the underdog Jannik Sinner (+175 at DraftKings) against Stefanos Tsitsipas in a fourth round match on Sunday in Australia.

Sinner finds himself as an underdog for the first time this fortnight, as Greek 3-seed Tsitsipas is undefeated to this point in 2023. Tsitsipas holds a meaningful lead in the career head-to-head (4-1) with the most notable win coming in last year’s Australian Open quarterfinal (6-3 6-4 6-2).

Despite the recent history, Sinner has made meaningful improvements in his game since that match and has produced consistent results at the Grand Slam level. The market seems to be pricing recent form and historical head-to-head too aggressively in this match, and Drew’s Elo model for tennis gives a 44% win probability (+126) for Sinner.

Follow Drew for all of his NFL, NBA and tennis betting.

Jacksonville at Kansas City – On the latest OddsBreakers podcast, Adam Chernoff makes the case for Kansas City -8.5, still somehow available at FanDuel (-118).

Adam notes the Jacksonville pass defense struggles against tight ends and running backs, so it will likely be overmatched by TE Travis Kelce and RB Jerrick McKinnon. In addition, Patrick Mahomes is a major step up in class for the Jaguars. Check out their opposing QBs of late:

• Zach Wilson and Chris Streveler against the Jets in Week 16.
• Davis Mills and Jeff Driskel against the Texans in Week 17.
• Joshua Dobbs against the Titans in Week 18.

While Jacksonville’s recent record and stats are impressive, they will find it difficult to continue their playoff run after Kansas City.

Injuries – There are no significant QB injuries, so let’s dig into other key players based on ESPN.

• Cincinnati OT Johan Williams and G Alex Cappa will both miss the game at Buffalo. OT La’el Collins is on injured reserve, so Joe Burrow will be without three starting linemen.
• Jacksonville QB Trevor Lawrence is listed as questionable with a toe injury. However, he appears on the injured list every week and hasn’t missed a game yet. Lawrence will play at Kansas City.
• Kansas City WR Mecole Hardman is out with a pelvis injury.
• Philadelphia CB Avonte Maddox is out against the New York Giants. He had a stellar 70.3 PFF coverage grade this season.

New York Giants at Philadelphia – Chris Bennett books the NFL market at Circa Sports Book and opened with Philadelphia -7. He immediately got some bets on the favorite, but Circa has settled on -8 as of Saturday morning.

Chris also noted how well the Giants offense has played lately, so he doesn’t care too much that Philadelphia won at the Giants 48-22 in Week 14. He also likes the dual threat of QB Daniel Jones and thinks the Giants can win outright.

Chris also discussed his background as a professional bettor, his edge in baseball and his general NFL bookmaking process in a great episode of The Football Analytics Show.

College football accuracy – See how The Power Rank member numbers did against SP+ of Bill Connelly and Adv Stat Previews of Parker Fleming in Andrew Percival’s CFB Picker. He tracks a variety of spread predictors by a variety of metrics.

NFL humor – “Based on his clock management skills, I don’t think that was nicotine.” Annie also rips on the Harbaughs and Urban Meyer in a classic.

NFL meeting wild card week pic.twitter.com/W4RUHvy2EK

— Annie Agar (@AnnieAgar) January 17, 2023

Data driven betting information

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

NFL playoff teasers – On the latest Props & Hops podcast, host Matt Landes and pro bettor Hitman broke down a number of games for moving spreads through the key numbers of 3 and 7.

For example, the markets have Jacksonville +2.5 at home. Even if you think the Los Angeles Chargers will win, there is plenty of room for Jacksonville to cover +8.5.

With the uncertainty of Baltimore’s QB situation, Cincinnati -8.5 to -2.5 is a great second leg. The markets may move further towards Cincinnati (Pinnacle had -10 on Friday), so it makes sense to bet this now.

Market movement – This is based on NFL data from Unabated odds screen for Circa sports book.

• Seattle at San Francisco – The spread reached San Francisco -10.5 on Monday before moving back towards Seattle. The weather report calls for rain and high winds, which makes it difficult to score the points to cover a big spread.
• Los Angeles Chargers at Jacksonville – This game was at pick on Monday before moving to Chargers -2.5 later in the week. With the news that WR Mike Williams won’t play, some books like Caesars moved to Chargers -1.5 on Friday, but not Circa.
• Miami at Buffalo – This spread has been as low as Buffalo -9 this week but has moved to -14 with news that Skylar Thompson will start for Miami.
• Baltimore at Cincinnati – This spread was Cincinnati -6.5 on Monday and got as high as -10 at some books during the week.

Daniel Jones and turnovers – On The Football Analytics Show, Kevin Cole of Unexpected Points noted how well the Giants QB has been with avoiding turnovers this season. I asked him how much credit new coach Brian Daboll deserved for this play.

Kevin noted that Jones had become better at turnover prevention before Daboll arrived. The young QB lost over 100 expected points to fumbles and turnovers his rookie year. But then this number dropped from 80 to 60 over the next two seasons before going to 30 this season.

Kevin also provides insight on all Wild Card Playoff games in the most recent episode of The Football Analytics Show.

NFL injuries – Unless otherwise noted, this information comes from ESPN.

• Baltimore QB Lamar Jackson will not play, as he tweeted about the instability of his knee. Tyler Huntley was limited in practice on Thursday, and Baltimore had not named a starter as of late Friday night.
• Miami QB Tua Tagovailoa has a concussion, and back up Teddy Bridgewater is dealing with a pinkie injury. Rookie Skylar Thompson will start against Buffalo.
• Los Angeles Chargers WR Mike Williams is out against Jacksonville.
• New York Giants CB Adoree’ Jackson, along with other injured players, looks ready to go against Minnesota.

Garrett Riley – While Clemson coach Dabo Swinney has been loyal to his assistant coaches, he fired his offensive coordinator this week and brought on Garrett Riley of TCU.

Here are how Riley’s offenses have fared in this three seasons as OC:

• 2020, SMU, 46th.
• 2021, SMU, 28th.
• 2022, TCU, 25th.

These results are solid but not elite. The success of Riley’s older brother at Oklahoma and USC probably helped him get this upgrade.

Gonzaga basketball – Up 1 point in the final seconds at BYU, Gonzaga played a magnificent defensive possession and didn’t allow a shot to hit the rim. This gave Gonzaga their third straight conference road win of 5 or fewer points.

However, defense has been an issue this season. Gonzaga ranks 78th in my points per possession adjusted for opponent, as they no long have shot blocker Chet Holmgren.

Gonzaga is still elite on offense (8th in adjusted points per possession), but their defense will need to improve to contend for a national title. My numbers like them to win by 19.6 at home against Portland on Saturday.

College football humor – “We’ll make this exit interview brief. I know TCU has that rehab appointment to get to.”

Georgia and TCU go through the Playoff exit interview.

presented by @renasant pic.twitter.com/3OEt51Blfz

— SEC Shorts (@SECShorts) January 12, 2023

Football betting with a PhD edge

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Tampa Bay at Atlanta, NFL Week 18 – On the latest episode of the Props and Hops podcast, host Matt Landes and pro bettor Hitman both see value in Tampa Bay scoring first. As of Saturday morning, FanDuel is offering +108 (under the scoring tab).

The first team to score prop is a derivative of the point spread for the full game. However, the Bucs play their starters early and most likely rest them late because they have locked up the division. The full-game spread of Atlanta -4 is not an accurate indicator of which team will score first.

DraftKings users not limited to 2 cents can further exploit this angle by betting on Tampa Bay to score first and lose the game at +280.

College football player prop – Quentin Johnston is TCU’s most talented receiver and an NFL prospect. However, his last two performances are most likely inflating this receiving total versus Georgia on Monday night.

• 164 yards against Michigan on 6 receptions
• 139 yards against Kansas State in the Big 12 championship game on 4 receptions

Just like for Michigan RB Donovan Edwards in the playoff semi-final (136.5 rushing yards), these recent performances tend to inflate a player’s yardage total in the next game.

DraftKings has posted a receiving yards prop of 87.5 yards for Johnston. The value is on the under.

Wisdom of computer crowds – Sam Hoppen has been aggregating NFL power rankings each week during the 2022 season. While no one computer model is perfect, an ensemble of trusted numbers, including my public, points based rankings, should be a powerful predictor.

Sam’s composite rankings have Green Bay at 8th despite their 8-8 record and struggles this season. The Packers are also 8th in my member numbers.

Green Bay is getting back key players like receivers Randall Cobb and Allen Lazard in the latter part of this season. While they haven’t made the playoffs yet, don’t be surprised by a late season run by Aaron Rodgers and the Packers.

Kansas City at Las Vegas, NFL Week 18 – With the Chiefs as 9.5 point favorites on the road, pro bettor Rob Pizzola thinks this spread is a bit inflated because of Kansas City’s incentive to play for the #1 seed.

In Week 5, Kansas City hosted Las Vegas and closed as 7-point favorites. Obviously, Las Vegas is not the same team with QB Jarrett Stidham and with Chandler Jones and Denzel Perryman on IR, but Rob thinks there has been an over adjustment.

With the exception of a 24-0 loss to the Saints in which the Raiders had the flu bug, Las Vegas does not have a single loss by more than a TD all season. Conversely, while the Chiefs continuously win games, they have issues in winning by a large margin. Rob makes this game much closer to KC -7, and that implies value on Las Vegas.

Check out all the great work Rob and co-workers do at The Hammer.

Injuries – The NFL data is obtained from ESPN.

• Miami QB Tua Tagovailoa is most likely out due to a concussion and back up Teddy Bridgwater is questionable with a dislocated pinkie on his throwing hand. This means that rookie Skylar Thompson might start against the Jets. Miami also signed veteran Mike Glennon to the practice squad this week.
• New York Jets QB Mike White is out with a rib injury. Joe Flacco will start against Miami instead of Zach Wilson.
• Philadelphia QB Jalen Hurts is questionable against the New York Giants with that shoulder injury.
• San Francisco QB Brock Purdy has a rib injury but is off the injury list as of Saturday morning.
• Baltimore QB Tyler Huntley was limited in practice this week and is questionable with a shoulder injury.
• Chicago QB Justin Fields will not play against Minnesota due to a hip injury. Nathan Peterman will start.
• TCU RB Kendre Miller is questionable against Georgia with a knee injury.
• Georgia WR Ladd McConkey is dealing with a knee injury. While their second leading receiver played against Ohio State, he did not have a strong game.

Connecticut basketball – In Dan Hurley’s fifth year, there wasn’t much expected out of the Huskies basketball team. Connecticut didn’t get enough votes to crack the top 25 in the preseason AP poll.

However, Connecticut has been a revelation, as they won their first 14 games of the season. While they dropped two games this past week, the Huskies have looked strong on both sides of the ball (4th and 6th on offense and defense by my adjusted points per possession, only data this season).

My member numbers like Connecticut by 6.2 points over Creighton at home today.

NFL dominance – As Damar Hamlin still faces his mortality in a Cincinnati hospital, this doesn’t seem like a week for humor. Instead, let’s look at how the NFL dominates the top 100 watched shows in the United States in 2022.

82 NFL games in the top 100 most-watched TV shows of 2022

That football emoji at #35 is the 4-10 Broncos losing to the 4-10 Rams by 37 points on xmas… which got more viewers than any NBA game, any MLB game, any World Cup Game, the Oscars, or any scripted TV show pic.twitter.com/goJraIxjvr

— Lev Akabas (@LevAkabas) January 6, 2023

Football betting with a PhD edge

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.

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Your weekly dose of sports betting tips, news and humor. Happy New Year!

Ohio State vs Georgia – On the Right Angle Sports bowl podcast, pro sports bettor Eddie Walls notes he would have made this game a pick most of the season. The question then becomes how you adjust Ohio State after their meltdown against Michigan.

My answer: not that much. Ohio State had a success rate of 47.4% compared to 37.9% for Michigan. The Buckeyes lost because they allowed five long touchdowns. The research of Bill Connelly shows that randomness plays a big role in explosive plays.

In addition, late market movement pushed Ohio State to a 9 point favorite at home against Michigan. While this could reflect information that Michigan RB Blake Corum wasn’t 100%, it might also show confidence in the Buckeyes.

While Ohio State +7 was available, the markets offer +6 as of Saturday morning. I talked more about Ohio State in The Secret to Predicting the College Football, NFL Playoffs, a premium audio episode available for less than the price of a latte.

Carolina at Tampa Bay – Pro bettor Rob Pizzola notes that Tampa Bay has failed to register more than 23 points in a game since a 41-31 loss to Kansas City on October 2nd. That is almost a three month stretch!

The Bucs offense ranks 25th in non-garbage time EPA per play. Carolina actually ranks slightly ahead of Tampa in this metric despite having the corpse of Baker Mayfield and P.J. Walker at QB for the majority of the season.

With their struggles on offense, Tampa Bay is not suited to cover a large spread. Now that the market has moved to Tampa Bay -4, Rob sees value in Carolina +4. Catch all of the great work Rob and co-workers do at The Hammer.

Cincinnati Bengals and explosive plays – These nuggets have heaped praise on Joe Burrow and the pass offense this season. The pass offense ranks 2nd by The Power Rank’s adjusted success rate, a significant improvement from the 11th after their Super Bowl run last season.

We still might not have seen the best of this unit. I looked at how often pass offenses generate explosive plays of 20 or more yards. While randomness plays a big role in explosive plays, teams more successful at throwing the ball should more often generate these game changing plays.

However, Cincinnati has generated gains of 20 or more yards on 8.7% of pass attempts, right at NFL average this season. This is in contrast to their 10.9% last season, 4th in the NFL.

I also used this analysis to look at Philadelphia and Buffalo in The Secret to Predicting the College Football, NFL Playoffs, a premium audio episode.

Michigan vs TCU – On the Right Angle Sports bowl podcast, pro bettor Mike Craig noted that TCU had a win total of 6.5 this preseason (-125 on the over at Circa). They also didn’t get a single vote in the preseason AP or Coaches poll.

Under new coach Sonny Dykes, TCU has had a great season in going undefeated until the Big 12 championship game. However, Mike thinks there is a significant talent gap to Michigan.

The Power Rank member numbers like Michigan by 8.8 points, and the markets have Michigan -7.5 as of Saturday morning.

Injuries and key absences – The NFL information is from ESPN.

• Ohio State RB Miyan Williams is expected to play against Georgia. The Buckeyes will not have RB TreVeyon Henderson, but Williams had a better yards per carry (6.5) this season.
• Arizona QB Colt McCoy is still out with a concussion. With the struggles of Trace McSorley last week, the Cardinals will go with former Detroit QB David Blough.
• Baltimore QB Lamar Jackson is out vs the Steelers. Tyler Huntley will start again.
• Miami QB Tua Tagovailoa is out, as it seems extremely unlikely he would play with a concussion after what transpired earlier this season. Teddy Bridgewater will start for Miami at New England.
• Philadelphia QB Jalen Hurts is doubtful against New Orleans. Gardner Minshew would start in his place.
• Jacksonville QB Trevor Lawrence is listed as questionable with a toe injury, but he played the entire game against the Jets last week and should play.

Twitter and Elon Musk – You might have gotten your news about this acquisition on Twitter. However, the actual story deserves much more than a cursory look.

On the Risk of Ruin podcast, host John Reeder tells the full story of the acquisition, as he looked to buy Twitter stock before the deal closed. The lessons from this almost two hour episode have deep implications on separating signal from noise in any market.

Chess humor – In September, upstart American Hans Niemann beat world champion Magnus Carlsen. There were accusations of cheating through wireless anal beads.

Niemann has since offered to play naked. You can’t make this up.

Football betting with a PhD edge

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.

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