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

Buffalo at Miami, NFL Week 3 – Rob Pizzola of The Hammer can’t ignore the injuries to Buffalo’s defense. Key members of the secondary in S Micah Hyde and CB Dane Jackson will not play.

Rookie CB Christian Benford and Kaiir Elam have seen the field plenty this season due to an injury to Tre’Davious White, and they will get even more snaps this week. This must have an impact against a speedy group of Dolphins receivers.

In addition, DT Ed Oliver and Jordan Phillips will also miss this game. Buffalo’s offense should score points as they usually do, and this all suggests value on the over. As of Saturday morning, FanDuel has 52.5, -115 on the over.

Rob and company do great work over at The Hammer, a new sports betting media company.

Surprising college football prediction – When I asked professional bettor Eddie Walls to make a prediction, he said he doubted whether Notre Dame would make a bowl. Even though I had the Fighting Irish were overrated at 5th in the preseason AP poll, this prediction really surprised me.

Eddie argued that Notre Dame has a great defense but almost nothing on offense. The schedule also looks tougher as a team like Syracuse no longer seems like an easy win.

Eddie brings an intimidating amount of college football knowledge to any conversation, and you can catch all of his insights on this week’s episode of The Football Analytics Show.

Injuries – Unless otherwise noted, this information is from USA Today for college football and ESPN for the NFL.

• Los Angeles Chargers QB Justin Herbert sat out practice on Friday and is questionable against Jacksonville.
• New Orleans QB Jameis Winston is again listed as questionable against Carolina, but he did play the entire game against Tampa Bay last week.
• San Francisco QB Trey Lance was placed on injured reserve because of an ankle injury. Jimmy Garoppolo will start for the Niners.
• Dallas QB Dak Prescott returned to practice on Thursday but will not play against the New York Giants on Monday night.
• Auburn QB TJ Finley has a shoulder injury and will not play against Missouri. Robby Ashford will start, but he might have started anyway as Finley got benched against Penn State last week and Zach Calzada is also injured.
• Florida State QB Jordan Travis has a leg injury and is questionable against Boston College.
• Northern Illinois QB Rocky Lombardi has a knee injury and is questionable at Kentucky.
• Purdue QB Aiden O’Connell has an unspecified injury and is a game time decision against Florida Atlantic.

James Madison at Appalachian State – Parker Fleming notes that James Madison QB Todd Centeio has been excellent this season. The transfer from Colorado State has completed 66% of his passes despite often throwing the ball deep (11.5 average depth of target).

James Madison should be able to throw the ball against an Appalachian State pass defense that has struggled this season. Parker’s numbers predict Appalachian State to win by 5.3 points, and he sees value in betting James Madison +7 in this game.

Parker puts together three college football shows per week for The Hammer that I highly recommend.

World soccer/football predictions – These predictions come from my world football/soccer rankings that take game results in international matches and adjust for opponent.

• United States vs Saudi Arabia – United States has a 55.0% chance to win. Saudi Arabia has a 17.3% chance to win. There is a 27.6% chance for a tie. The USMNT looked awful against Japan on Friday in a 2-0 loss. The competition gets easier against Saudi Arabia in Spain on Tuesday.
• England hosting Germany – England has a 55.6% chance to win. Germany has a 21.3% chance to win. There is a 23.1% chance for a tie. Both of these teams are coming off unexpected 1-0 losses, as England fell at Italy and Germany to Hungary.
• Portugal hosting Spain – Portugal has a 44.9% chance to win. Spain has a 30.1% chance to win. There is a 25.0% chance for a tie. This match on Tuesday should be excellent as Spain and Portugal rank 5th and 7th respectively in my world soccer/football rankings.

For more predictions over this international weekend, click here. I’ll have lots more predictions before the World Cup starts on November 20.

NFL play by play data – You want to dig into the NFL play by play data, but you don’t want to scrape the data yourself. That nflfastR package exists, but it’s really annoying to get started with R as a Python coder.

Dr. Ben Baldwin, author and maintainer of nflfastR, has you covered. The most recent NFL play by play is available in a csv file the morning after games. Now you can data science to your heart’s content without actually having to scrape a thing.

Chad Powers – Eli Manning wanted to know more about the walk on experience, so he made a visit to Penn State. With the help of a make up team, he became Chad Powers.

In the end, he didn’t end up making the team for two reasons. “Think fast, run fast.” But this clip from the tryout is pure hilarity.

We thought Chad Powers looked familiar…@EliManning went undercover as a @PennStateFball walk-on and it is everything. pic.twitter.com/5i5eD22lO7

— Omaha Productions (@OmahaProd) September 19, 2022

You can catch the entire Chad Powers episode of Eli’s Places on YouTube.

Football betting with a PhD edge

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

Cincinnati at Dallas, NFL Week 2 – Dallas QB Dak Prescott will not play in this game, but professional NFL bettor Rob Pizzola thinks that Dallas has problems on offense beyond the quarterback position.

Rob notes that the Cowboys will not have OG Connor McGovern due to injury. This compounds the issues on the offensive line, as OT Tyron Smith didn’t play week 1 due to injury. WR Michael Gallup will not play.

On Rob’s appearance on The Football Analytics Show, he said his model made Cincinnati almost a 10 point favorite at Dallas. He sees value in Cincinnati -7, a number widely available on Saturday morning.

Check out all the sports betting content on Rob’s new company The Hammer.

NFL passing success rate – At The Power Rank, I calculate success rate on passing plays based on the play by play data. Here is sample of values from week 1 (the NFL average was 43.2%).

• Buffalo, 60.6% at the Los Angeles Rams.
• Green Bay, 47.6% at Minnesota despite the 4 sacks Aaron Rodgers took.
• Denver, 43.2% in the Nathaniel Hackett time management Mount Rushmore game.
• Pittsburgh, 29.0% in a win fortuitous win at Cincinnati.
• Dallas, 26.1% with Dak Prescott against Tampa Bay, an NFL worst in Week 1.

I define success on a play 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.

I’ve found this definition of success rate as predictive for NFL passing as the definition that considers positive expected points added (EPA).

Interested in having raw NFL passing success rates on the public part of The Power Rank? I’ll post these numbers if we reach a certain threshold on this tweet.

Injuries – Unless otherwise noted, this information is from USA Today for college football and ESPN for the NFL.

• Dallas QB Dak Prescott needs at least 7-10 days to deal with a thumb issue.
• Los Angeles Chargers QB Justin Herbert has fractured rib cartilage after taking a hit Thursday night and is “day-to-day” at this stage.
• New Orleans QB Jameis Winston is listed as questionable with a back injury, but he should play against Tampa Bay.
• Pittsburgh QB Kedon Slovis didn’t play in the second half against Tennessee last week due to injury and is listed as questionable. QB Nick Patti finished the game against Tennessee but is questionable against Western Michigan due to a leg injury.
• Notre Dame QB Tyler Buchner is out for the season with a shoulder injury. Drew Pyne takes over as the starter.
• Texas QB Quinn Ewers sprained his shoulder against Alabama and will reportedly miss four to six weeks. However, Texas coach Steve Sarkisian would not say which of three QBs will start against UTSA.

Michigan State at Washington – The markets have moved in favor of Washington this season. While my numbers would have favored Michigan State on the road this preseason, the markets have Washington -3.5.

A big reason is QB Michael Penix Jr. The transfer from Indiana has led a pass offense with a success rate of 57.0% this season (college football average of 40.4%).

The Huskies have not faced the best competition though. However, as I noted on Covering the Spread, Penix led Indiana to 17th best pass offense by adjusted success rate in 2019. While he wasn’t as good the last two seasons at Indiana, Penix has shown a high ceiling.

NFL overreaction week? – Usually, the NFL markets overreact to a one game sample from the opening week. However, Fabian Sommer and Matt Landes noted that there seems to be less of an overreaction in 2022.

For example, San Francisco lost to Chicago, a team contending to be the worst in the NFL. In contrast, Seattle, the 29th team in The Power Rank’s member rankings this preseason, pulled off the upset against Denver.

Despite these results, the markets have favored San Francisco by as many as 10 points this week. Catch Fabian’s insights every Wednesday on the Props and Hops podcast.

Wisdom of crowds – Right Angle Sports is the gold standard in selling picks (yes, there are actually two honest services that win in the long term). How do they do it?

In a recent Q&A, long time employee MikeRAS discusses how RAS has an entire team that contributes to the picks. Some of these bettors have been betting for over a decade and seen almost everything.

This is the wisdom of crowds at work. While no one bettor is perfect, the combined wisdom of many bettors makes for a powerful predictor. This concept also drives the predictive power of the preseason AP in college basketball and football.

In the interview, MikeRAS also discusses his journey from finance to sports and how life as “one of the most gifted originators on earth” isn’t always smooth.

Mayhem in college football – The week 2 slate of college football games didn’t seem that exciting. However, Texas came within a few plays of beating Alabama, a favorite that fared better than Texas A&M, Notre Dame and Nebraska.

As always, SEC Shorts puts a hilarious spin on a wild second full week in college football.

The college football ER was very busy this weekend. pic.twitter.com/Ao09MssXpR

— SEC Shorts (@SECShorts) September 12, 2022

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 Dr. Ed Feng has bet based on his analytics.

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

 

 

 

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

NFL preseason – Last week, we discussed the predictive value of NFL preseason. This research used points scored and allowed during preseason games.

To add to this analysis, I’ve taken point differential in preseason games and adjusted for opponent with my ranking algorithm. Despite the parity of the NFL, these schedule adjustments should matter with only three games.

These results show rank, team name, preseason record and preseason rating.

1. Las Vegas, (4-0), 9.23
2. Chicago, (3-0), 8.38
3. Baltimore, (3-0), 7.79
4. Kansas City, (2-1), 7.21
5. Houston, (3-0), 6.68
6. Miami, (2-1), 6.53
7. New York Jets, (3-0), 4.75
8. Carolina, (2-1), 3.39
9. Washington, (0-3), 2.48
10. New York Giants, (2-1), 2.41
11. Cleveland, (1-2), 2.37
12. Arizona, (1-2), 1.84
13. Green Bay, (1-2), 1.79
14. New England, (1-2), 1.42
15. San Francisco, (2-1), 1.38
16. Atlanta, (2-1), 0.76
17. Tennessee, (2-1), 0.49
18. New Orleans, (1-2), -0.01
19. Pittsburgh, (3-0), -0.47
20. Indianapolis, (1-2), -1.01
21. Buffalo, (2-1), -2.12
22. Cincinnati, (1-2), -2.31
23. Philadelphia, (1-2), -2.64
24. Minnesota, (0-3), -3.23
25. Los Angeles Rams, (1-2), -3.34
26. Detroit, (1-2), -3.88
27. Tampa Bay, (0-3), -4.45
28. Denver, (2-1), -5.36
29. Jacksonville, (0-4), -7.38
30. Seattle, (0-3), -7.85
31. Dallas, (2-1), -9.37
32. Los Angeles Chargers, (0-3), -16.10

While many are high on the Los Angeles Chargers, they were the worst NFL preseason team by a large margin. QB Justin Herbert didn’t play, but neither did QB Derek Carr for Las Vegas, a team rated highest this preseason.

Las Vegas at Los Angeles Chargers – Speaking of the Chargers, Dr. Eric Eager of PFF came on The Football Analytics Show podcast to preview the upcoming NFL season. When asked about a bet, he said that he likes Las Vegas +3.5 at the Los Angeles Chargers.

One reason that Eric gave for liking the Raiders is injuries. Las Vegas has weaknesses on the offensive line and secondary, but at least these units head into the opening game with full health. In contrast, Chargers CB J.C. Jackson, a critical offseason signing from New England, has an ankle injury and is a game time decision.

Eric also analyzed Pittsburgh and whether Mike Tomlin is a good coach, Philadelphia and Tampa Bay in a must listen episode of The Football Analytics Show.

Injuries – Unless otherwise noted, these come from USA Today for college football and ESPN for NFL.

• Dallas QB Dak Prescott had an ankle injury this week, but he is no longer on the injury report and should play against Tampa Bay.
• New York Jets QB Zach Wilson will not return from a knee injury until week 4. Joe Flacco most likely starts until then.
• Wake Forest QB Sam Hartman was cleared to play against Vanderbilt after dealing with a blood clot issue.
• Southern Miss QB Ty Keyes is questionable against Miami (FL).
• Texas Tech QB Tyler Shough left the previous game with a shoulder injury and is questionable against Houston.

Cleveland at Carolina – Pro NFL bettor Rob Pizzola likes Cleveland moneyline at -110 in this game, as he gives the Browns a 53.7% chance to win. While this number is available at DraftKings, sharp sports book Circa has Cleveland -2.5 as of Saturday morning.

While we can’t ignore the QB position, Rob thinks Cleveland has match up advantages at the line of scrimmage on both sides of the ball. Carolina QB Baker Mayfield should be under duress, and Cleveland’s run game will take pressure off QB Jacoby Brissett.

Rob also launched The Hammer, a new sports betting media company, this week.

NFL defensive player of the year – In a solo episode of The Football Analytics Show, I explained how an edge rusher’s pressure rate is more predictive from season to season than sack rate. Pressures are the sum of sacks, hits and hurries, and this larger set of events provides a better assessment of player performance.

Last season, Las Vegas’s Maxx Crosby had 11 sacks, an unimpressive total. However, Crosby had a 17.3% pressure rate, second best among edge rushers. This rate is significantly higher than the NFL average of 10.3%.

These metrics suggest value in Maxx Crosby to win AP NFL Defensive Player of the Year at 30-1 at FanDuel (thanks to @Clevta for this tip).

Duke at Northwestern – After winning the Big Ten West in 2020, Pat Fitzgerald’s Northwestern team cratered last season. Long time defensive coordinator Mike Hankwitz retired, and the Wildcats couldn’t do anything on either side of the ball.

In 2022, not much was expected from Northwestern. However, they beat Nebraska as a double digit underdog in their first game. Now Duke comes to town, and Northwestern has a rest advantage (they didn’t play last week while Duke did, worth 0.9 points according to my research).

The Power Rank’s member numbers like Northwestern by 12.2 points. The markets have moved from Northwestern -9.5 on Tuesday to -10 on Saturday morning.

The girlfriend who didn’t exist – If I say Manti Te’o, you will immediately think of his imaginary girlfriend. You might laugh at a man in a romantic relationship with a female he has never met.

A two hour Netflix documentary tells this story of the star Notre Dame linebacker, and you’ll have your hands behind your head, Edvard Munch, The Scream style, most of the time while watching it. But by the end, you might find an ounce of empathy for Te’o.

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 bets that I have made.

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