THE POWER RANK

7-Nugget Saturday, January 28, 2023

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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

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

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Cincinnati at Kansas City, AFC Conference Championship Game

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Let’s rewind 17 months. Heading into the 2021 season, my metrics had Cincinnati 28th out of 32 NFL teams.

Second year QB Joe Burrow was recovering from a knee injury, and the pundits had all kinds of questions about his offensive line. There wasn’t much faith in the defense either if Cincinnati landed in the bottom five of the league.

In contrast to expectations, Cincinnati had a remarkable season and made it to the Super Bowl. However, that didn’t answer all of the questions about this team. Based on data from the 2021 season, all adjusted for strength of schedule by my algorithms, Cincinnati ranked 9th in the NFL.

The Bengals were a solid team in 2021, one with hopes of breaking out of the fat middle of the NFL. However, they should not have made it to the Super Bowl past Kansas City.

In the current 2022 season, Cincinnati got off to a slow 2-3 start. They didn’t look like Super Bowl contenders in week 8 when they got stomped by Cleveland 32-13 on Monday Night Football.

However, the numbers told a different story about Cincinnati. Based on the adjusted metrics from the current season, Cincinnati ranks 4th, in the range of Super Bowl contenders. The quants went running towards the Bengals like the New York Jets to the Senior Bowl QB practice.

The Cincinnati pass offense has made a significant jump. Let’s look at their passing success rate adjusted for opponent the past two seasons:

  • 2021 – 11th
  • 2022 – 2nd

A part of this improvement comes from negative plays. Burrow has been sacked 45 times this season compared to 70 last season. While some might attribute this to off season additions to the offensive line, sacks tend to be a QB statistic.

Against Buffalo, Cincinnati didn’t have three starters on the offensive line, and C Ted Karras played through a knee injury. Burrow got sacked once, and the Bengals had a sparkling 58.3% passing success rate (42.8% NFL average) in a complete domination.

For the AFC Championship Game, the markets opened with Kansas City as the favorite over Cincinnati. However, the spread moved towards Cincinnati, as some books had the road Bengals -2.5 on Tuesday.

This might show support for Cincinnati because of their performance at Buffalo. However, the market also might have inside information on the ankle injury to Kansas City QB Patrick Mahomes. He missed a series against Jacksonville but came back into the game with limited mobility.

Over the past few days, the market has shifted again to Kansas City as the favorite. Maybe some sharps had the time to process that Cincinnati was fortunate to beat Baltimore during Wild Card weekend.

Baltimore had 364 yards with backup QB Tyler Huntley compared to 234 for Cincinnati. The difference in the game was a long fumble return by Cincinnati.

My member predictions like Kansas City by 3.8 points over Cincinnati. Despite the improvement of the Bengals, my predictive analytics rates Kansas City as the better team. 

My numbers assume Mahomes will be 100%, which he won’t be. However, if you believe Mahomes’s first practice Thursday went better than expected, then I’d lean towards Kansas City -1.

How to bet interception props

Picks are random. When a defender gets a hand on a pass, sometimes it falls harmlessly to the ground. Other times, it ends up in the hands of the defense.

In a 20 minute audio episode, I describe a better way to predict picks than a QB’s interception rate. It is helpful to count an expanded set of events.

This new metric is used to evaluate rookie San Francisco QB Brock Purdy and identify a prop bet for the NFL Conference Championship games.

There are multiple ways to get this audio content.

7-Nugget Saturday, January 21, 2023

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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.

Data driven betting information

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 as well as a March Madness cheat sheet that makes it drop dead easy to fill out your bracket.

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Dallas at San Francisco, NFL Divisional Playoffs

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When do you give Brock Purdy credit? 

In my analysis to members last week, I didn’t give him credit when writing up Seattle at San Francisco. Instead, I leaned toward a small sample size of five games for Purdy. 

However, Purdy had another great game during Wild Card weekend. To look at how he did, let’s look at success rate on passing plays.

A play is a success if the offense gets the following fraction of yards towards the next first down:

  • 50% on 1st down
  • 70% on 2nd down
  • 100% on 3rd, 4th down

As I wrote last week in discussing Philadelphia, this is the most predictive team metric in the NFL.

Against Seattle, Purdy and the San Francisco pass offense had a 54.8% success rate. Let’s look at a few more passing success rates:

  • 51.5% – San Francisco over the past 6 games with Purdy
  • 42.8% – NFL average during the 2022 season
  • 52.4% – Kansas City’s league best rate

Sure, Kyle Shanahan is probably making his life easy with play calling. It also helps to have Christian McCaffrey, George Kittle and Deebo Samuel.

However, I’m now leaning towards giving Purdy credit.

In addition, Purdy had excellent pocket presence against Seattle. He was able to anticipate pressure and scramble to an open part of the field.

Let’s also take a look at San Francisco’s defense. They led the NFL in points allowed per game (16.3) by a large margin during the regular season.

San Francisco is weaker in the underlying metrics though. They are 7th in pass success rate allowed, but they drop to 15th after my schedule adjustments.

The Niners defense has had the honor of facing Carolina, Denver and Arizona twice, all bottom five teams by my metrics.

Dallas is 7th in my pass offense numbers by adjusted success rate. With the exception of Kansas City, they will be the best pass offense San Francisco has faced this season. 

It should also be noted that San Francisco faced Miami with Tua Tagovailoa and Atlanta with Marcus Mariota (they actually had some decent numbers when he was the QB). The pass offense numbers of these two teams have declined since the back ups took over. The numbers most likely underestimate the San Francisco pass defense.

My member numbers have San Francisco by 2.7 points. However, I don’t see value in Dallas.

As of Thursday morning, some books have moved to San Francisco -4, and I don’t think this number comes back towards 3.

Football betting with a PhD edge

This article was sent to The Power Rank’s email newsletter on Thursday, January 19, 2023. This newsletter is a free service that strives to be:

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The predictions are based on my PhD research from Stanford, and the content covers college football and the NFL.

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7-Nugget Saturday, January 14, 2023

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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.

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.”

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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