Move The Line - LIVE from Circa Sports: 2026 NFL Betting Market Roundtable

Episode Date: August 28, 2026

Ryan Noonan and Connor Allen go live from Circa Sports in Las Vegas for a wide-ranging conversation on the 2026 NFL betting landscape, including the Circa survivor tournament. They discuss the markets, futures, team outlooks, and betting angles that stand out as the regular season approaches, along with the latest movement and opportunities across the board. Subscribe to 4for4's Betting Package or try SharpStack free for 7 days: https://www.4for4.com/plans Circa Sports Survivor and Circa Million, $30 million guaranteed: http://circasports.com/contests Watch Move The Line on YouTube: https://4for4.co/3OupraJ Join the Discord: http://discord.gg/4for4 Follow the show: https://x.com/MoveTheLineNFL Connor: https://x.com/ConnorAllenNFL | Ryan: https://x.com/RyNoonan Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

A little closer. Yeah, exactly. This is what we're meant to do anyways. You know, it's nice and close. We don't do a lot of live shows together. Yeah, okay. We're getting good feedback from both of them. Okay.

Yeah, I think, yeah, Andy won a ton of money last year. I mean, 30K, 40K, something like that. Nice. I love, too, that they have prizes for coming in last. Like, at what point do you flip to just taking, like, the worst CLV? So obviously, how this works is picks lock or the spreads lock on Thursdays. You have until Saturday to submit. So obviously there's going to be injuries, there's going to be some line movement, things like that after Thursdays.

So there's different strategies, right? It's like, do you take the best CLV, obviously, do you lock those in? When does that matter? We try to do some of the research there, and I think it makes sense, honestly, go through it because a lot of people play in like pick five against the spread pools. Yeah. I think the game theory and strategy behind it's pretty cool. Yeah, there's other things that are comparable to the Survivor Millions that aren't necessarily Survivor Millions. So yeah, I get hit up with friends that are looking for, hey, I need your picks for the week.

I need what's going on? So what are your thoughts? Yeah, it's just kind of a unique, interesting discussion point. We ran some data on it as Austin Echler walks by, which is, you know, always interesting to see. I'll tell him how much he, you know, made me some money in draft Kings, you know, about 10 years ago. But catching a bunch of checkdowns late in the game in the fourth quarter. But yeah, absolutely PPR got. Yeah, love that.

That's really cool. Yeah, so let's go through some of the circumillion stuff. Again, so pick five against the spread each week. That's kind of what we're looking at for this type of contest. And last year, or the winning score was 60 and a half points. You get one point per correct pick. You get half a point for a push, I believe, and then zero for a loss, obviously. So 16 and a half was the winning score.

54 is the cash line out of 90 total picks. The fueled aggregate from 2024 to 2025, 49.6% against the spread. That is not going to be profitable. That's not going to pass. In any way, shape, or form? if you're betting those games individually, it's not profitable. But it is interesting to see for sure. Yeah.

So I don't love our chances out of the out right here. We're looking at like 1%. You've got to hit 60-something percent against the spread. Now that being said, maybe there's a lot of injury news. Maybe we get lucky. Maybe, you know, there's, we get a lot of positive CLV opportunities. And we peruse those correctly. Because basically what the research says is that if the line moves through a three or seven,

which again makes logical sense that it's no matter the ownership it's like an auto pick you just got to lock it in you got to pick it now if the line only moves maybe a point or two from I don't know three and a half to five or something like that that maybe it's going to get a lot of ownership but it might be a good opportunity to fade even at worst odds okay yeah because that was something we were talking about yesterday was really is this a situation where I understand survivor game theory and fading perceived chalk right when you have we keep talking about like the clear week one chalk and survivor, the chargers against the Cardinals,

and is it wise to not step in front of that train? But I was really curious to see if there was anything on the data side that would speak to how to handle chalk on the million side, because at the end of the day, you still gotta pick five picks, you still gotta hit winners. There's not a ton of leverage that I would think based off of ownership, but the data does tell us

that it actually does matter a little bit. Yeah, and if you look at it, so when the frozen number versus the close, you can look at it if it got better by two plus points Out of the 26 times that that happened, it covered 61 and a half percent of the time. So pretty good right there. Better by half to two points have been 140 times.

It wins 53.2% of the time. So again, probably still worth taking situationally. If the number moved correctly, that makes a ton of sense. Within half is about dead. If it gets worse, as you can imagine, like the number is the inverse of what we just talked about with the other two. Yeah. Yeah, which is not super surprising.

Yeah, one other thing too that I thought was where what numbers the field picks, or like what games the field pick? So 8% of the field picked Sunday night games, which I thought was interesting, which is like well over the average of what it should have been, based on like how many games are available. So it's, and then favorites are picked 11% more often than underdogs. Okay. The Thursday night game is a fascinating one.

So the lines come out for us to make selections on Thursday afternoon, basically. And when you have to get, when you want to select Thursday, you have to submit your full week on Thursday as well instead of getting like the Saturday entry time where you can lock in your picks. So it was interesting to see it looks like, what was that? 3%? 3% percent.

3% of people pick a Thursday night. So a lot less. So like again, both island games, 3% of people pick a Thursday night game, 7 and a half percent on Monday, 8.2% on Sunday night. So again, Sunday night seems to be the king. Yeah. Why that's the most pick game? Maybe it's just better games.

Maybe it's people have more opinions. I don't know. Yeah. And it's interesting too because you have to feel like, you have to feel like you have to a real edge on Thursday to submit your entire week. Your entire card, yeah, which I don't know if we're ever going to do that. Probably very rare, I would imagine.

Yeah, we would have to be like, it would have to be a massive move on a Thursday or something that we'd feel good about. And even your edge on a Thursday, are you giving up a little bit of equity and edge on the other four to lock in a perceived edge on Thursday? It doesn't seem like it's a strong EV move on submission. No, I agree. I agree. It's kind of an interesting viewpoint.

One other thing, too, you can look at the champion profiles, so look at the people who won and what kind of picks they made. So, 2024, someone took a favorite 91.1% of the time. Average ownership of their picks was 20.4%. So chalkiness, 56th percentile as well. And basically, there's no correlation between winners or even top tens, really. It's all over the place. It seems like it's a year-to-year thing based on how favorites are performing,

how underdog is performing, et cetera. So it's pretty crazy. Honestly, I think those are most of the notes that I had on circa millions. I still think it just boils down to make the right place. Yeah. I kind of think so as well, which is maybe lame. Maybe it's just like, you know, pick the right picks. Yeah, it is.

But avoid probably avoid Thursdays. I don't think you can be shy on as the line moves and look at CLV. Yeah, we're, you know, first time for us tackling this tournament. A lot of sharp people, a lot of sharp groups. You know, that's a struggle to knowing that we're, you know, up against, you know, pretty big aggregate groups that are, you know, submitting and kind of covering and hedging all that stuff. Yeah, we're quite the underdog here, but that's, that's okay. Makes it fun. Yeah. I also think we should touch on some, some quick survivor stuff,

and then as well as like week one real quick. So obviously they have the survivor pool as well. It's a little bit different. There's a couple different survivor pools. With Circa, there's two double pick weeks. So you have to make 20 picks total if you survive the entire thing. Again, as Andy mentioned, it's going to be like 25-ish million, we think, that isn't going to be chopped by the winners, whoever wins there. And so there's a lot of different strategies, especially too, with like week 18, you know, some teams sit, some teams they don't play. So I'd like model that one out.

There's not look at headlines here, but I used look at headlines to figure out, you know, the quote, optimal pick for each week. I mean, it starts early. Like, you know, week one, you have the chargers against the Cardinals who are 10 and a half point favorites. You have the Jaguars who are, I think,

seven and a half to, I think we think it's going to keep climbing. Yeah, I think we both like that Jags number. Yeah, the Jags number there against the Browns in week one. But then you have some of the lower-owned, you know, kind of guys that, like, the Raiders against Miami, are probably going to be super highly owned because you don't want to use the Raiders again. You know, and like, it's, you're fading the Cardinals, you're fading the Dolphins all year.

But I think that's where you can get yourself in a sticky situation. Or the longer stuff that happens early in the season all the time. Like we were referencing it earlier, like last year, the Raiders went into New England and won, right? Like, and New England has been going to the Super Bowl, and the Raiders have the first pick in the draft. So, like, that's why right now it seems like the Chargers are such an easy, pick in week one.

It doesn't mean that they're not going to win, but it is such a spot where, like, you just don't want to run, your season ends right away in Survivor. Yeah. That's the struggle. I think that I'm going to put in some smaller entries down the road and maybe some spots and probably flirt

with the idea of getting a little bit more creative early. Am I doing that in Circuit Survivor, a $1,000 entry? Probably not, to be honest. I think that that's kind of a tough sell for me. But, you know, I don't blame it. I mean, Again, like this is what the problem, though, is that if you're doing one or two entries and you're playing against groups that are doing 10, maybe more, you know, it's 10 max, but there's people who, you know, can do other ways to get around that. And so, yeah, it's like, I don't blame them.

You know, there probably, there are going to be people with, you know, the Raiders, going to be people with, you know, other kind of like smaller favorites that you just don't want to use later on in the season. Yeah, Connor had a great thread today at Connor Allen, NFL, talking about just like mapping out and planning. So regardless of like what your week one pick is, I think you just have to have, regardless, you just have to be forward thinking. You know, you can't essentially open up and take a week at a time. You have to be, you know, a little bit more forward thinking. You have to be a little bit more strategic depending on like how you're leveraging, depending on how your pool does it like Circa does. Like you have to make multiple picks in a couple weeks, right? When you get to the holiday weeks, you have to think through.

I have to have available players and teams on Thursday for Thanksgiving, for instance, right? So you have to be a little bit planful in trying to map it out. You just can't open up the slate and be like, all right, who's the biggest favorite of the week? You have to be thinking a little bit more down the road. And that's what's crazy. So Thanksgiving is really tough. I mean, there's five games that are going to fall in that area. Yeah.

Rams versus Packers, and the Rams are the mega chalk at this point. The biggest expected win. Bill's Chiefs, Lions, Bears, Broncos, Steelers, Cowboys, Eagles. I mean, just brutal. Like tons of coin flips, tons of good teams. great football watching slate, but very difficult for survival. And then Christmas, too. Eagles, Rick's Texans, Bills, Broncos, Bears, Packers, Rams, Seahawks.

These are all like coin flips. Coin flips. Yeah. So, I mean, I think you can plan out as much as you want. And then you get to these situations and maybe there needs to be an injury. You got to get lucky a little bit with some of it because I don't, there's not a clear situation right now. When I'm looking at and we're like, oh, I feel good about any of those selections. No, the Thanksgiving one in particular, obviously you can't get to Christmas until you navigate Thanksgiving.

Yeah. That's where a lot of people died out last year. That's just a tough week. And then you have to make another pick for the week of the Sunday games, right? Essentially the main slate of stuff too. But yeah, your Rams stuff, like you're going to have some spots where I think the Rams played the Cardinals before we get to Thanksgiving. You're going to want to use the Rams that week. But you have to actually be thinking about Thanksgiving. Whereas that right now on paper, no injuries, the five games that we have slated on Thanksgiving, the Rams are the clear pick for now. That's definitely challenging. You're going to want to use the ramps at some point before that. I guarantee you really, it feels like you can't. Yeah, no, you pretty much can't. What I thought was interesting, too, is that, so Arizona is the opponent in six of the 20 picks in the optimal path,

which is hilarious, but... You know they're going to win a couple of games. They're going to win some games. And they're going to be 10-point dogs. They're going to be seven-point dogs in a lot of these games, and then just randomly win. What's crazy to me is, like, I mean, their team sucks. Don't get me wrong, but they have some good players.

You know, like Kobe Bresset, Michael Wilson, Marvin Harrison, Jr., you know, Trey McBride, Jeremy I love when he's healthy. Like that offense alone, if some team just comes in and has a bad offensive day or struggling randomly, I don't know, woke up on the wrong side of the bed. This Cardinal team is going to win some random games. Yep, absolutely. We know that.

They know that they can hang some points. Like there's some young talent on the defensive side that can continue to emerge and grow. This isn't like a pro Cardinals over. No, definitely not. Yeah, let's be clear. But it's also like we just have to be honestly. These are actual NFL football teams. They're going to be really competitive and put out some,

you know, some competitive games. So they're going to be a breakers of a lot of, a lot of survivor pools at some point. We just don't know when those are going to be. Because like you said, they're going to be one of the chalk teams to go against every week, right? It's like, who the Cardinals play this week? Who's Miami play this week?

It's going to absorb a lot of survivor ownership. And knowing when to Zigg and Zigg and Zagg off of that perceived chalk is going to be. It would be a very Chargers thing to losing week one. It would be the ultimate Chargers thing. You know, fives are high. you're getting Mike McDaniel, you're feeling good. And then they just somehow find a way to shit the bed.

And that just would not be surprising at all. Look, it's happened every year. We talked about it with some people the other night. Think about like week one, two years ago. Jacoby Brissette and the Patriots went into Cincinnati. Oh my gosh. That burned me. That burned me on some of them.

Yeah. So like there's some early season just wacky stuff every year. We come in after having done this for months and months. We feel like we know who these teams are. We think we know how these things are going to go. And then it becomes very clear that, like, it's football, man. There's variance. They still have to play the game.

And we have these a handful of instances, the last handful of years of, in both these instances, the Pats were on the road. Oh, yeah. Beat Cincinnati. The Pats lost at home, right? The Raiders were on the road. So, you know, you can't even just get cute with like, I'm just going to take a nice, big home favorite.

You have to get a little bit more creative. Yeah. This is why I'm not in Survivor. This is the reason why Survivor is not. for me. It seems so clean and easy. One team, you don't have to worry about the spread, just win in advance. And I always say I'm not going to play, and then I end up playing. I'm firing a couple of entries. But a couple other, like, stats that are interesting. Six teams never clear a 60% win probability in a single game all season.

Arizona, Atlanta, Carolina, Cleveland, Miami and the Jets. Vegas and Tennessee cleared exactly once. I think Vegas is week one. And so, I mean, Tennessee clearing against anyone is kind of crazy, to be honest, as well. Don't know what week that is. But that's probably, I think they host Miami at some point. That would make sense. But yeah, it's crazy to me. I think that I'm more apt, personally, to fade Miami, I think, like, like, as a long-term thing than Arizona.

Yeah. We've talked about it at length. I mean, I think that they legitimately are one of the worst rosters that we've seen in years, like, top to bottom, offensive line, receivers. I mean, do you see them tweet out the receivers? Caleb Douglas, Chris Bell, and, I mean, maybe these guys are good, you know, like, maybe they're going to be good. I'm interested in Chris Bell, but I don't want to make him. I'm a big Caleb Douglas guy in fantasy.

But the ball does have to go somewhere. But how run heavier they're going to go? How is it going to work? Are they going to be? I actually do think Miami is going to be one of those teams that is annoying to play a couple of times. Which is because they run the ball. Because they're going to run the ball very well. Keep the variance high.

Right. Like they, the variable of Malik Willis, you know, we want to maybe fade some of the A-Chane stuff long term, but like in an individual week, we know he's healthy, he's suiting up. They could be just annoying to play. It doesn't mean they're going to win a lot of games. They can just be annoying, right?

So maybe you can muddy it up. It's going to be great because, like, it's going to be the team that when they fall behind, just live bet whoever's already beating them because Malik Willis is the comeback quarterback is going to be just a disaster. Yeah. I mean, I don't think it's more than 23 pass attempts in a single game as a star in the NFL so far. And then, you know, was it Liberty before that came in, sucked at Tennessee. It's been a disaster for him.

And then he plays two to three good games at Green Bay with an awesome supporting cast. It was exceptional. Yes. He really was. He was very good. Against largely bad teams with an awesome supporting cast. I mean, we see quarterbacks in those situations do well all the time. I mean, see the Vikings, right?

I feel like the Vikings are a greatest standard of you're lifting up Nick Mollins and the Josh Dobbs of the world. Or even, I don't know, like a Matt Flint who played really well and then goes to Seattle and they can't even beat out, you know, just sucks. So I think there's a lot of different scenarios here where this Dolphin team is really bad. We played them under four and a half wins. We played it at minus 140 was the max. It's up to like minus 160, three and a half in most places. I think I would still play under four and a half at heavy juice. Not sure I touched three and a half because, again, they're going to win like one or two random games.

Three or four would be pretty lucky, in my opinion. Five seems like insurmountable, to be honest, based on their schedule. Yeah. No, and it's a tough schedule too. actually the same thing for the Cardinals too is not just necessarily a bad team it's just a kind of a brutal schedule for a team that's we're expecting to be kind of one of the bottom feeders but any thoughts to like leveraging you know a team that you like maybe more than the market early in Survivor whereas it might not look

right now where there's a ton of expected probability that they're going to win but I'm thinking about like look I want to kind of go I want to leverage this the week one in game in particular that I want to leverage a team that I'm a little bit higher on against the team that I'm a little bit down on the market on where I kind of want to attack him early. That's Minnesota against Green Bay. I kind of want to attack Green Bay early pre-MICA. Yeah. You know, maybe without Josh Jacobs as well.

You know, I'm a little bit more bullish than the market, I think, on Minnesota. And again, on paper, that's not going to look like a spot that I should be attacking in Survivor, but it kind of is a spot that I would want to attack in Survivor, right? Because I feel like there's, it's not going to be a popular game. I think the times you get contrarian are the, weeks where you feel like there could be a lot of chaos, right? It's like, week one. Yeah, which week won.

Yeah, again, like, that's great. So, because no one's going to pick Minnesota. Like, Minnesota is going to be like less than 1% on, right? Right. But, again, you survive that and you get like one or two these big favorites gone or even, you know, already used, basically. Like, you're at such a massive advantage, I think, relative to the field there starting off.

Now, again, you have to survive that week and you have to win. But, yeah, I think buying low on a team there could make sense. Maybe for me, it might be the Colts early in the season. I don't know when, what week it's going to be specifically. but I do think that the Colts are, you know, an underrated team. Getting Alec Pierce back now is pretty awesome for them. Probably not week one at home against the Ravens. But maybe that's a million's discussion.

Yeah, maybe it's a million's discussion. Yeah, probably not a survivor discussion. But I think there are going to be times to buy on the Colts here early. And maybe the Steelers, I don't know. Steelers are going to be the other one for week one in particular. Yeah. Like I think we're both a little bit. It's the Falcons.

Falcons is three points. It's at home. If Pittsburgh is who we think they are, which is, I think, pretty good. Yeah. They're going to take, you would hope that they take. carry business at home against the Falcons early in the season. We're like, we don't know what the quarterback situation is in Atlanta. Like someone's winning the job by not even competing.

That's how bad it is. So I think that's a spot where I think is another, like, again, three-point spread, not necessarily something I think is going to be a popular survivor play, but I think it's a spot for people to look at those are the two teams. I think maybe those are millions discussions for us, but those are a couple teams that I'm interested in. I think we might see, it looks like Tua is going to start the year with Pennick sitting out of the last preseason game.

It's tough to win a job if you're not playing at all. You know, like he was kind of started working more in practice, but if you're not going to be playing at all with the first team, it's tough to make a decision there. Even though the rap sheet quote was incredible. It's impossible to name to a tagavaloa the starter. I mean, that's just a damning quote. That is brutal.

Yeah. So, yeah, I think Falcons could be an interesting team to fade as well. But who doesn't want to get hit. Pittsburgh strengths, the defensive line, their pass rush. Like, these are things they just like we want to apply early in the season. I think those are a couple of good spots where, If you're looking for a reason to get off the Chargers, if you're looking maybe a reason to get off of Jacksonville,

I think those are a couple teams we should be looking at. Love it, love it. I think that's all I have on millions and Survivor, anything else you wanted to touch on or anything? No, I think for that, that's good. Maybe we'll do some more future discussion. Maybe we can do a little bit more today with, I think we're going to get hopefully Andy back on.

You know, he wants to, you saw that body as he got up and walked away. He wants to let that thing breathe at the pool today, you know, get out there. He's, you know, he's trying to, he's been locking up really fancy reservations all, over Las Vegas. Oh my gosh, yeah, Omicasse Kings over here. Him and Drew just ripping some omicasse last night. You'll love to see it. 19 course meals, stuff that doesn't even look like food. It's apparently very expensive for a plate. You can eat the plate, you know. It's like all edible. And we're going to touch base with, you know, our proxy and the people that got us

hooked up and can get you hooked up still because it's not too late for you to leverage a proxy to get into Survivor to get into millions here through Circa. Great, again, huge pots, no rake, all the things we've been talking about for the last couple months on the shows to get you guys in. You can get more information in the show notes. But again, we're here now. If you want more information, definitely hit us up. We can help you get set up with the right people that can get you in these price pools. Compete against us.

I mean, yeah, why not? You're going to get a sense of our picks every week, so you'll be able to know how to leverage at least what we're doing. Yeah, it felt like a really natural extension of what we want to do anyways on a week-week basis. Talk about our five favorite, like, looks and what we're going to be probably leaning towards or potentially looking at. Maybe not going to give you all the sauce, but I think overall in a really, really good spot. So, yeah, excited for that. And then, yeah, you can register any time in the next lead up to the season. So this is technically the ultimate of whatever, contest, entry weekends, a ton of events.

Definitely recommend coming out of here next year if you're interested in doing this stuff. But definitely not too late to start firing some entries. Yeah. Hit us up if you have any questions. Let us know. But appreciate as always. Thanks for dealing with tech challenges as we try to get set up today. Yeah, I might have to chop the first 10.

10 minutes or so, whatever. We cut out Andy. Yeah, we'll cut out Andy. I think he was using my mic too, so that was a problem. Yeah, he was, I mean, it was mostly yelling about nothing, so that's okay. It was very Andy style. It was great. The beauty of doing live anyway, right?

So, totally. If you missed Andy, he's pro-broncos AFC, which might mirror something I have for us in the college, too, I think I'm probably considering pro-broncos AFC stuff. That's great. All right. I appreciate it as always for Connor. I'm Ryan. We'll see you all next time.

Thanks, everybody.