The Ringer NFL Show - Favorites on Thanksgiving and Sunday Matchups | The Ringer NFL Show

Episode Date: November 25, 2020

We recap the Rams-Buccaneers 'Monday Night Football' game that has us wondering if Tom Brady needs more sleep (3:00) before running through the three Thanksgiving Day games (28:00) and the slate of Sunday games that includes the Browns-Jaguars and Colts-Titans matchup (57:00). Hosts: Warren Sharp and Joe House Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, everybody, happy Thanksgiving on today's episode of the Tuesday Ringer NFL show. Warren Sharp and I are talking about, of course, the delicious, the delightful lineup on Thanksgiving Day. Two turkeys and a delicious dessert. We're also going to help you prepare for week 12. We've got a couple of nice Sunday games with Sunday angles to cover with you. Let's check it out. Hey, hey, podcast, pals, today's episode of the Ringer NFL show. on the Ringer Podcast Network is brought to you by State Farm.

Getting great car and home insurance at a surprisingly great rate. Why that is like drafting a player that becomes an all pro, the real deal. Like my homie, Chase Young, he is an all pro and he is the real deal. State Farm agents provide personalized service so you can customize your insurance to fit your needs like a GM putting together their very own roster. You need a team that supports you in State Farm has got a great one. In addition to the agents, they have award-winning mobile app that's going to help you manage coverage, pay bills, file claims, and more. With a great price and even greater service, State Farm goes from strength to strength.

Choose insurance that always brings it's a game when you want the real deal. Like a good neighbor, state farm is there. Welcome to the Ringer NFL show. I'm Warren Sharp. I am joined as I always am by Joe House, and we are bringing this to you on Tuesday, November 24th, a couple days before Turkey Day House. We're going to break down Monday night football, talk a little bit about Thanksgiving Day games, and roll into some of the Sunday Slate Week 12.

But what did you think of that Tom Brady performance on Monday night football, my friend? I mean, we talked about this last week, Sharpie. And by the way, happy Thanksgiving to everybody. And thanks especially to Chris Vernon for letting me fill his big shoes, his gigantic shoes on a midweek pod. Usually Sharpie, you and I are convened at the end of the week for giving out some gambling advice. But we'll go ahead and try and give out some nuggets here midweek since we have a, Oh, the traditional three Thanksgiving Day games, the best holiday ever invented by humankind Thanksgiving.

Well done, humankind. But Sharpie, Tom Brady, he needs some sleep. I mean, I saw reports after we did the pod last week that Bruce Ariens had them doing some nighttime practicing. They were doing nights, night sessions leading up to the game. it barely mattered. They're one and three in prime time now. And who knows whether or not the body clock of Mr. Brady is the culprit,

but he was out of sorts all evening and all joking aside, that Ram's defense was bad ass. That's a badass secondary right there, Warren Sharp. It is. And we actually discussed some of this previewing the game on Friday about how good and underrated the new defensive coordinator is for the Rams, how great they've been, particularly at halftime adjustments. But I want to start with Tom Brady.

And you mentioned obviously his sleep patterns and his inability to perform in prime time. I don't know if that has anything to do with other elements of his game, but we won't even focus on that. The thing that I want to talk about is his deep passing ability. And there was a stat tweeted out earlier that over the last four games, he is 0 of 19 on passes thrown at least 20 yards in the air. And I have a distinct problem with Byron Lefich. It's not actually with Bruce Ariens because Arian doesn't call the plays. And he was asked about might you take back play calling duty?

And he said, no, I'm going to go ahead and let Byron Lefich continue to call these plays. But I was disappointed with the way that this team seems to be calling their offense. It's as if, and I understand that there's going to take some growing pains of incorporating Tom Brady into the mix. Two things, though. Number one, what this team seems to be doing on first down. And number two, the fact that every single fourth and short, it gets radioed in and Brady's checking his wristband instead of running to the line of scrimmage and fucking sneaking the ball and getting a first down. But let's back up and talk about the first down play calling. It seems to me that this team likes to do one of two things on first down,

throw a deep shot or run the ball. And in both cases, neither of them tend to work. They always get set up into second and long. And one of the key things, the mainstays with Tom Brady in New England House, was their ability to have a efficient early down passing offense to bypass third downs quite frequently. And it feels like this team all too often gets trapped into converting on third down

because they're trying to be yolo on first down or run the ball for one yard. I don't understand what Byron Ruff, which is doing. This is not what Tom Brady brought to the table up in New England. His strength is not handing the ball off to the running back or throwing a deep ball 20, 30 yards down the field. Utilize his strength on first down. got one of the better receiving cores in the NFL now that Antonio Bryant is completely healthy and incorporated into this offense with Chris Godwin and Mike Evans. Why are you just

running the ball or throwing deep? Makes no sense to me. I have a question for you. The Bucks have really been Jekyll and Hyde and in particular Tom Brady. And he has looked so lost, so disorganized, so uncomfortable against the saints both times. In the loss to the bears, he didn't look great. In the game against the Giants,

he looked uncomfortable. And now this most recent game, but on the other hand, sometimes they cook. What they did last week to Carolina, which is a team that, that, you know, we've seen give up points to everybody except

to teach your Detroit. Lloyd Lions and I can't wait to talk about them. I don't understand what's at the heart of this dramatic swing and performance because Brady by now should be comfortable with his awesome set of receivers. It seems like everybody was healthy last night. and they by now should have the play calling, the rhythm of the play calling worked out. Am I wrong about this? No, you're not wrong about that, but let's review their schedule.

So overall, if you just look at the whole thing in big picture, they've played about an average schedule of opposing defenses, but they've played four defenses that rank in the top 10, and they're 0 and 4 against these defenses, and their team has failed to live up to Texas. expectations offensively. We obviously know this last game, they scored 24 points. Prior to that, they've had two game against the Saints. They scored 23 and three in those two games. And then they scored only 19 points against the Chicago Bears who have the third ranked defense. The rest of these

teams that they played outside the top 10 in defensive efficiency, we're talking about Carolina. They put up 31 and then 46. They played the Broncos who have close to a top 10 defense. They only put 28 up there. They played the Packers put up 38, the Charters put up 38, the Raiders put up 45. The one game that was close against a bad defense, they only put up 25 in a narrow win against the Giants, but that was a primetime game. And we know Brady wasn't yet having his, you know, schedule adjusted for the babysitter being in charge at that late at hour. So I don't understand. I think really it relates to the play calling and the fact that they're not. not good enough against some of these better defenses.

So look at their schedule. They're about to play the Kansas City Chiefs. Now, the Kansas City Chiefs sometimes can play like a good defense and sometimes can get walked all over by Derek Carr. After that, Tampa Bay has a buy. Then they play the Vikings. And then they have three crap defenses to close out the season. Two games against the Falcons, one game against the Detroit Lions.

So I expect that we'll see what happens on Sunday afternoon against the charge. Sorry, against the chiefs. But I expect down the stretch, this offense should look a little bit better. But it is absolutely something to keep in mind when the playoffs roll around, depending upon the matchup, what defense they will draw out of that pile. Because some of these better defenses, this offense simply does not work against. And I think it can be fixed. I just think they need to look.

look at their first down play calling and make some adjustments. Well, this is an awesome moment. I want to circle the date, circle the exactly where we are. It is Tuesday, November the 24th. In about six weeks, five and a half weeks, it'll be playoff time. And we're going to revisit this conversation because as you were talking, the mental notes I was taking is we're find out, you know, keep an eye on who Tampa is facing in the playoffs because we're,

We are going to, recency bias, we're going to say, oh, my God, the bucks are killing everybody. The bucks are ready for taking down the entire NFC. They're going to go destroy. And we're going to be reminded potentially in that very first playoff game, depending on who the matchup is, as you just observed, that, you know, they are vulnerable against certain teams. I mean, the Saints and the Rams obviously being number one and one A in that, in that paradigm. But, you know, I'm excited to see how this all plays out in the NFC. One thing to interject there, if you look at this team out of, if you ignore the first two weeks of the season. And in those first two weeks, they played one game against the Saints and then their game against the Panthers.

So if we say like, okay, this really wasn't yet getting towards what we expect them to be. And then they reeled off a couple of wins after that point in time. And you look at what this team's done. They're the sixth or seventh most run heavy team on first down. And those runs are gaining just 3.9 yards per carry. So again, running far too much, only a 40% success rate on these runs and 3.9 yards per carry. I want to say there's only like five or six teams that are worse running the football than them from an efficiency perspective. Yet they're one of the top seven most run heavy teams.

And then their passing is not where it should be because of all these deep shots they're taking. So we'll just see how the seeds all play out. We think the NFC West is going to get at least two playoff teams in the form of Seattle and the L.A. Rams. The Cardinals are also right there. we think the south will be Tampa and the Saints. There will only be one team from the NFC least. We're pretty sure. And then from the NFC north, it's just the Packers, right?

Yes. I don't think it look, the Vikings losing that game. I thought the Vikings might have a good shot of coming back. Losing the game to the Cowboys, which this is remarkable. I just want to sidetrack this podcast for a second to tell you that before the season, Well, you know because you're a client and you got my futures, but there were a handful of individual weekly games that you could bet like before the start of the season for during the season. And I think so far on what I've what has actually occurred were like 3 and 0.

There was a game I bet before the season. It was the Vikings and the Cowboys. And the Cowboys were going to Minnesota. And the line before the season was Dallas plus two. And I had so much faith in Dallas at the time with Dak. And I hated the Vikings before the season, as you know, that we bet Dallas plus two on the road. Obviously, the game rolls around here, and Dallas is catching seven points. It's like tear this ticket up.

It's going to be trash. You got such a horrible line. Andy Dalton starting. It's not that Prescott. Normally, if you have a great bet, the line's going to move in your favor. This one went completely the opposite direction because of the quarterback issue and how bad Dallas is. And still, Dallas goes in there and beats the Minnesota Vikings. That was to me just a thrill being able to cash that ticket.

It also is going to allow us to cash all of our future bets under probably, not 100%, but there's a very good chance with the schedule that Minnesota has the rest of the way, that although I do expect them to go on a little bit of a run here, they may make a little bit of noise in the NFC North. They may sneak into the playoffs, but I don't know. It's going to be tough. Yeah, that means they have to bump out one of those West teams, the Rams or Seahawks, Seahawks most likely. I don't know if they're catching up there unless Tampa just completely falters,

but with that schedule, Tampa's not faltering. Anyway, so that's enough on Buck's Rams. This is great that we're getting, you know, Bill Simmons, when he did his million dollar picks this week, he really liked, last week, I'm talking about week 11. He talked about how much he likes this point of the season because you really start to get a feel for the quality, the pretenders versus the contenders, and we're really starting to see some of that separation. And the Rams absolutely positively, we know without a doubt, are contenders. And the bucks, they're right on the edge.

I'm not sure. I'm not sure yet that we can call them full-on contenders. No, I think they're going to contend by making the dance, right? They're going to get their ticket and they're going to bring their date. But will they actually successfully get through a dance without their date leaving them for dead. I'm sure you saw Napoleon Dynamite where he got the girl, the girl's mom forced her to, the daughter to go with Napoleon Dynamite to the dance because Uncle Rico was over there lamenting about his nephew. And so they were able to get Napoleon a date.

But as soon as they walked in that door, she saw her click of friends and she bolted and Napoleon did not get a single opportunity. So we will see if that happens with the bucks. The Tampa Bay Napoleon Dynamites. I love it. We've got it lined up for the first week of the playoffs. Well, something's going to happen. I know that much. All right. Let's talk about what happened in week 11. Speaking of things that happen, we'll do a real quick week in review and then set the table for this Thanksgiving dinner. God, I'm going to make so many terrible puns about Thanksgiving. It's just so delicious, Warren Sharp. It's once a year. You've got to. I know. And it's just, it's. It's just the best.

So week 11 in the NFL favorites fell a little bit off. Six and eight against the spread home teams. This is kind of crazy. Nine and five against the spread. And I say it's kind of crazy because it really hasn't, there's not been any kind of noticeable tilt for home teams this year. That might be the biggest spread for home teams covering at home this entire season. I wouldn't be surprised underdogs five and nine straight up.

It was a great day. for the Vegas books. The books absolutely killed it. And over unders, overs, uh, six and eight. So six overs, eight unders. Um, nothing particularly noteworthy in terms of big swings in the season to date stats.

Uh, underdogs, uh, continue to, um, be pretty interesting. 90, 69 and two.

And the over under. are tightening up a little bit. There's only, by my count, 83, 71, and 7 on overs, and you forecasted it as we went along through the first five weeks of the season there. I have one thing to just note

in terms of trendy kind of behavior as we enter the Thanksgiving slate, and that is this little nugget. Favorites, for whatever reason, are great in NFL Thanksgiving Day games. They are, since

2004 favorites are 40 and 6 straight up and 33 and 13 against the spread. Those are pretty good numbers. So we'll look at the favorites and see what we like when we get to the delicious Thanksgiving Day menu. But first, it is time for Sharp Points. All right, Sharpie. This is the point in the show where we have our podcast, pal, chime in and hit us up with a question of interest and inquiry.

The email address, if you have something that you'd like to bounce off of us, sharp points NFL at gmail.com. Tell us where you're from. It's S-H-A-R-P-P-O-I-N-T-S-N-F-L at G-Mail. This week we have Jim in Rochester, New York. I almost botched that. Rochester. He says, Sharpie, you know,

knows that yards per play on both the offensive side and the defensive side are an important metric that prognosticators use in discerning between teams. But what do you do, Jim from Rochester would like to know, in instances where a blowout skews the numbers. He uses as an example, week nine, Tennessee, Chicago, where Tennessee went out to a big league and then just kind of put it on cruise controlled to run out the clock. And Chicago generated a whole bunch of garbage yards in the fourth quarter against a prevent defense. The stats there don't show the true story of the game and they have the effect of inflating Chicago's offensive output. How do sharp folks like yourself factor in those garbage yards?

Okay. So this is a good question. I got a couple thoughts on it. The first thing is, I never look at combined yards per play for an offense because I want to study what they do passing the ball and running the ball. And the reason it's important to separate that out is because you need to look at a particular game is this, do you think this team's going to be winning or losing? Do you think they're going to be leading or trailing? And so they're going to use one strategy, whether it's passing more or running more. And so if you combine the two, you are more prone to have bigger issues. I also don't like even using that much yards per play. It's a factor. I prefer looking at success rate, EPA, and then a little bit of yards per pass or yards per run and make sure

we're segmenting out both aspects of the game. Then I'm looking at teams trends, like what they like to do is this the third most run heavy team, the fourth most pass heavy team. I'm looking at those types of things. And one of the big reasons that I built sharp football stats.com is so that you can filter everything that you want on that based upon situation in the game and margin in the game. So a lot of times when I'm looking up, I'll just throw out a stat for your house and Jim is like explosive play rate. I don't want to look at what a team's doing in the fourth quarter when they're trailing. I want to know how often this team is trying to generate either throw the ball deeper on early downs in the first half of a game. So I can go to sharp football stats and filter out to only look at the first half of a game and only on first and second down, knowing that on third downs, especially late in the game, a team's going to be.

chucking it with desperation. So I don't want that to inflate their numbers as to what this team wants to do, what their philosophy is as an offense. And so like defensively, a lot of what a team's going to be allowing or dealing with is a factor is a function of what those opposing offenses are. So defenses are just kind of reactive. I mean, some defenses that are great against the run might have more passes targeted against them. But those are going to be very few and far between like super great run defenses. Most of the defenses are mediocre across the board. Some are terrible.

And generally speaking, what's going to happen to those teams is what the offense wants to do that's on the other side of the football based upon their core philosophy. So it's more important to understand what the offense's core philosophies are than what the defenses are allowing from a yards per play perspective. but hopefully that gives a little bit of a clarity or some more things that you can dig into. Yeah, and that kind of insight is helpful. One of the things that I intend to do next season, and I'm going to get your help with this, I want to try and build my own power ranking kind of model.

And I'm going to use some of these slivers of particular categories that you're describing here as elements that go, into that power. I just want to try it out. I want to see if I can do it at my advanced age and with my limited brain capacity. Even though I take my B complex vitamin every morning, it's the first thing I do. Big glass of water, the B complex vitamin. That's how we get the day started. Anyway, yeah, so that, thank you, Jim. Appreciate it. Good insight there on that one. And Sharpie, it is officially time. We are going to talk about Thanksgiving football. Now, I want to, before we jump right into it, what is your setup? How do you handle as a professional, as an analytics professional, it is your job to watch these games. And yet you have, as we all do, important family obligations,

sharp household traditions when it comes to Thanksgiving. How do you navigate? How do you toggle those two important obligations of years? Well, there's certain times when you're looking to make money and there's certain times when you're looking to appreciate the other things in life. And Super Bowl is a time to make money, especially before the game. And then during the game, it's a time to celebrate with family and enjoy the game. But before the game, a lot of props, a lot of getting down on every single thing. It's a very focused time before the Super Bowl.

Thanksgiving's a little bit different. Thanksgiving, you know, this year, obviously, as you know, and everybody knows, is going to be very unique. And we are not visiting any family or friends. Nobody's coming to our house. We're just staying together, my family by ourselves. And so obviously there's elements that you're going to have to give back a little bit more as a parent and a husband in those situations. Whereas if the grandparents were over and lots of distractions, you could slip away to this. den and focus a little bit more on the game. So, um, plus I love roasting my own, like deep frying my own turkey. And I love doing that because it's very quick to do. It's, it doesn't take very long. It's kind of quick to actually cook a big bird. Uh, whereas sticking in the oven, takes up space, takes a lot of time. So I will be deep frying my turkey, as I've done for several years now. And I will be watching every single one of these games. Um, it'll be on. but I will be hanging around my family a little bit more than I typically would do. And, and, you know, I think in part, there's fewer betting opportunities on these games. And it's a really

weird Thanksgiving this year. So got to focus a little bit more on the family. What about you? Yeah, well, that obviously makes the most sense. My family tradition, my mother is a daughter of a first generation Italian. So for as long as I can remember, we have a lunchtime anapasto in my household. And my parents do live in the area. They're going to come over. We have an outdoor setup where we're able to convene outdoors. The weather, as you know, for Thursday, it's supposed to call them for showers in the morning, but should clear out by lunchtime. So we're going to, I'm going to try. We'll see how it goes. I mean, again, I've confessed my tech savvy is not 99th percentile, but we might get a kind of an outdoor TV set up. And then my mom's bringing the out of pasta.

This is just going to be a handful of us. And that's how we're going to get together family wise. And then in terms of, you know, the evening, the turkey, that'll be all me and my wife and my boy on our own thing. but the, you know, the important thing is having an occasion for sure to be able to watch some of these football games as well. And so let's go ahead and share a little bit of insight on what the slate looks like. I called it two turkeys and I try to look up what the best dessert in Pittsburgh is. Have you been to Pittsburgh? Oh, yeah.

I've been to Pittsburgh many times. Well, I mean, as have I, I can't recall I've had Promonti brother. I mean, I've done a lot of the good, the proper eating in Pittsburgh, you know, the underrated Italian food in Pittsburgh. But I don't think I'd ever encountered a famous dessert in Pittsburgh. So I had to look it up. And what I found was this burnt almond tort from a place called Henry Prantles. And I'm sure I'm mispronouncing Prantles. Have you heard of this thing? I've definitely not heard of that. Well, hey, at least the game is going to be a delicious dessert. But the, see, for what I read online, people love this burnt almond tort from Prantle. So maybe we'll have to figure out a way to order one. I order one for you. Hey, Prantle, just, Prantle's just, you got our number. Send it down to us.

You got the sharp points email address. That's a great point. That's exactly right. But we have two turkeys to start off the day before we get to the delightful dessert of Pittsburgh and Baltimore. for Houston is a favorite going to Detroit. There are laying three. The over under is 51 and a half. The only thing noteworthy,

and there's two things that are noteworthy from my perspective. First of all, Matt Patricia is now on my list of bet against every week. And the list is now growing, as you know, Anthony Lynn is now on the list. Adam Gase is now on the list. and Matt Patricia is on that list. A couple things that make me tap the brakes.

Over the last five seasons, 24 occasions of a team that gets shut out in one week. And then when they come back, they play good against the spread, 17, 5, and 2 against the spread. So the Lions put up a stinker, right, put up a stinker against the Panthers, didn't show up. Now they're at home against the Texans as a home. dog, getting three points. I would prefer to not bet this. I'll, I think maybe I will pay attention to whether Kenny Galladay is, is, is back. I mean, he's forecasted to be back, but I guess we won't know till Thursday for sure. But there's nothing about this Lions team that that gives me a good feeling about taking the points. What do you think about this game? No, I would agree. And

Look, your number before we got into this segment about home teams doing so well on these days, or sorry, favorites doing so well on these days, relates to a point that we made at the very beginning when we first started seeing Thursday games was that short weeks favor the better team. Because you tend to either have one or two things or both. Better teams, better schemes, or better coaches. You know, you've got the teams in general, they're either more talented. They're just simply better across the board. They're better coached. And they can deal with shorter rest and shorter weeks, shorter days to get ready,

whereas the worst teams can't. And in this particular situation, I don't really think either coaching staff is great. I don't, but I do think there's a little bit more talent on the Houston Texans right now. And Dijon Watson over a slightly injured. Matthew Stafford, potentially without Kenny Gulliday, who I don't know, you may have better info than me.

I can look it up while we're talking here, but I didn't expect him to be back for this game. Oh, I saw something that said that they were forecasting him to be back, and this was like a fantasy kind of prognosticator, so I have no idea. Okay, I saw it. They didn't have practice today,

but actually, as it turns out here, the Andre Swift is returning, but Kenny Goladay was downgraded. Okay. So there's the answer. Yeah. So it looks like a limited participant with estimated practice. They didn't actually practice today. But if he did practice, then he was listed as a limited participant. And it looks like Detroit News.com is indicated that Kenny Goladay has remained as a non-participant in today's walk through and has been downgraded, but DeAndre Swift, with his concussion, may be able to go on Thursday, which it looked like he was not. And it was really difficult to picture a team like

the Lions being able to perform well. I mean, one of the things that we know about this Texans team is that their defense is not very good. And you look at what they allowed to New England. you look at obviously don't take with any grain of salt what they did against Cleveland in that horrendous wind that they played there. But they allowed, I believe it was the first start for the Jacksonville rookie quarterback to almost beat them. I mean, they were a two-point conversion away. That was a 27-25 game that the Texans squeaked out from the Jacksonville Jaguar. So we know that the Houston Texans defense is not very good. But the fact of the matter is the lions have been playing, they played the Carolina Panthers who don't have a good defense

last week and they scored zero points. So they're going to score more than that in this game, but they still, with those limitations offensively, don't really scare you that much. Yeah, you described Ghaladay as a non-participant in practice and that his grade fits that. I'm going to be a non-participant in gambling on this game. That's the way this is going to play out this week. But it's a perfect entree into the rest of the day because we have coming up in the 430 slot, the NFC beast. Hey, podcast pals, I want to talk to you a little bit about our good friends at Fandul. You can add a little excitement to your sports watching experience by betting on all the action. on the Fandul

sports book this football season, there is a reason why Fandul is America's number one sports book. The app is simple to use and they've got great odds on all kinds of different betting markets. Unique fun bets like same game parlay and they have exclusive

always on promotions that let you get more action out of every game day. If you win, they're going to get your winnings to use Safely, which is very important in as little as 24 hours. And right now, Fandul is letting you place your first bet risk-free up to $1,000. Just place a bet on any game, and Fandul will refund you up to $1,000 back if you do not win your first bet. Seriously, no strings attached. Place any bet you want.

If you win, you keep the cash. If you lose, you get the entire bet. to a thousand dollars you don't have to bet a thousand dollars you can bet ten dollars or a hundred dollars or five hundred dollars but if you bet up to a thousand dollars you get it back in sight credit on today's pod with warren sharp we cover a couple angles that i like including the cleveland browns covering the six and a half points down in jacksonville I'm going to parlay that six and a half points that the Browns are laying along with the Browns total, which I think is at 26.5 right now or 27 and a half.

Put those two together. We think the Browns are going to cook. We think we're going to let Baker get out there with a giant spoon and start throwing the ball a little bit. If you've never tried the Fandual Sportsbook, what are you waiting for? Download the Fandual Sportsbook now to get started. and be sure to sign up with promo code Sharp. So they know that Sharpie sent you. That's Fandul Sportsbook, promo code S-H-A-R-P.

You have to be 21 and present in either New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Illinois, West Virginia, Indiana, Indiana, Colorado, Iowa, or Tennessee, the first online real money wager only. and site credit is non-witrawable and expires in 14 days. Restrictions apply. See sportsbook. Dot fandul.com for details. And if you have a gambling problem, call 1-800-5-22-4-7-00. If you live in Colorado.

If you're in Iowa, it's 1-800-B-E-T-S-O-F. That's bets off. If you're in Indiana, 1-800-9-4. W-I-T-H-I-T with it. If you're in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, or Illinois, 1-800- Gambler, Tennessee Red Line, 1-800-888-9, or you can visit www.1-800-gambler.net if you're in West Virginia. The NFC Beast, the first place is on the line.

Washington is at Dallas. is a three point favorite. The over under for that one is 46 points. This spread opened at minus one in the look at headlines last week. But after Dallas went to Minnesota and Minnesota aided and abetted that Cowboys win, Dallas now a three point favorite. I have a couple thoughts on this one, but I'm interested and curious to hear how you're sizing this one up. Well, look, obviously Washington was able to get the win last week and they did it in the manner of speaking that I think they got lucky in doing so. And here is why. I mean, they were losing at halftime. And we also have to consider that the Bengals missed seven points in that first half. The guy missed two field goals that were layups. One of them hit the upright. He also shanked an extra point that hit the upright. I don't know that a kicker has hit the upright. twice in the first half of a game before, but that's what happened with the Bengals last week. So Washington would have been down even more than they were with a seven to nine score at the

half. And then, of course, unfortunately, we all saw what happened with Joe Burrow and he went out and the Washington football team goes on to score 13 unanswered in the second half, erase that deficit and win the game. It looked like a pretty handy margin, but it really was a lot due to the fact that Joe Burrow goes out of that game. Washington can perform better. Number one, they got to get the ball out of Alex Smith's hands quicker, quicker dropbacks, especially against this Cowboys team that's starting to feel themselves a little bit. They had their little watermelon smashing party the other day.

They started to feel a little bit more confident to go out and smash the Minnesota Vikings on the road. Come back home, this is a team feeling pretty good about themselves because they see the division in front of them. If they win this game, they're in first place all of a sudden with Andy Dalton, who's looking a lot better. Washington absolutely has to come out, get the ball out of Alex Smith's hands quickly, short quick drops, get it out, let these playmakers make some plays, don't let the pass rush come because I'm anticipating that Dallas is going to probably send the pass rush somewhat frequently against Alex Smith here. Secondly, Washington needs to get away from

running the ball so much on second down. I mean, I, I, I'll have to go back while you're sharing and I'll spit out the number here that Washington, the rate of which they ran the ball on second down in their game against the Bengals, but they're just far too many runs on second down that aren't productive enough. And if they want to avoid that pass rush, they have to throw the ball on first and second down to stay away from third down when you know teams are going to pass rush against Alex Smith. Well, I think it's hilarious that the Cowboys are celebrating any,

on the defensive side of the ball. If the Vikings were not so incompetent between fumbles and penalties, they easily would have been over 40 points for this game. And it would have been a not very competitive game. I mean, kudos to the Cowboys. The Vikings, you know, created the opening for them and they jumped right through it. And it took the game.

But their secondary is terrible. I mean, they are, they remain as awful as they've been. there's there's a slight improvement but you know feeling had a great game just in jefferson uh dropped the ball that would would have been you know a a potential swinger in in the outcome but the the but the pressure that they put on uh joe burrow was great uh and and obviously very sad to see Joe get get injured. But that defense, you know, the expectation for the season was a formidable pass rush, was good linebacker play and try to take some pressure off of the Washington

professional football team secondary because it's not a very good secondary either. But the Dallas secondary, I mean, come on. I really hope that they take to heart what you're describing in terms of an offensive game plan and let Alex Smith cook a little bit by getting the out of his hands. Yeah, and I will say that the last week's game, I'm looking up the numbers. It was a little bit of an anomaly. The fact that they were over 50% run, 55%,

56% run, in fact, on these second down plays. Over the course of the greater part of the season, they have not been that run heavy. They're slightly more run heavy than average, but I do think the main function for this team

for Washington, the rest of the way, needs to be that we know teams realize Alex Smith can't be as mobile or and he's definitely not as confident as he once was on these third down plays. You have to try to get him out of those third downs because when you're in third and obvious pass, if I'm a defensive coordinator, I'm going after this guy. And for that very reason, they've got to be more efficient and try to bypass third downs or get into third and shorts. But you're right, Washington, the ability to get pressure. Their defense, though they rank great in a lot of metrics, they also allow a lot of explosive plays. So I just want to put that on people's radar because if you go and

you just look up some of the statistics for Washington on the defensive side of the ball and you say, hey, they've got like the number five ranked defense against the past, their number seventh ranked defense overall. They've got a top five pass rush. You look at all these numbers and you say, wow, this looks really good. This looks really good. But then you look at the points that they're actually allowing in these games. And all of a sudden you're like, oh, this doesn't look so good. Go and look at what they're allowing in the first half of games.

And keep in mind that the Bengals, instead of scoring nine, missing two field goals and an extra point, they should have been scoring a lot more than that, 16 points in that one. And you'll see that Washington is allowing on average, with the exception of that first Cowboys game where Dalton got K.O. and I think it was raining in that game too. I'm not, if I'm not mistaken. Washington's allowing like 18 points per game in the first half alone against these opposing teams.

And it's definitely something that could be a problem if Dalton has a little bit of protection and can get the ball to his receivers. Because we all know that those receivers have a lot of talent and they certainly can make some things happen after the catch if you get them the ball in space. Yeah, only one other nugget for your consideration. in Dallas for some weird reason on Thanksgiving Day since 2011,

one and eight against the spread. And that's probably because they always come into these Thursday Thanksgiving games as a good size favorite. They're four and five in those same games straight up. But one and eight against the spread is interesting. I'm not going to bet this game either. although, you know, there is an opportunity for an emotional hedge. I could bet on Dallas to win and that would help my wallet.

And the three points is fair. And if they win, that's good for my one. If they lose, that's great for my team, my home team, number one in the NFC East. Well, I will also say that I think it's funny. The NFL for years, obviously we know Dallas gets a home game. so does Detroit on Thanksgiving, which means another team has a short week road game, number one. Number two, it also means that Dallas then has a rest advantage the next week over who they play. So what the NFL started to do is say, okay, well, let's give other teams the opportunity to play

and we'll give Dallas Thursday games in back-to-back weeks. And so we see that this week as well next Thursday after this Thanksgiving game. game. Dallas plays the Ravens. And for a little while, they were giving them two straight home games, two straight home games Thursday and then Thursday again. So they would literally host back-to-back Thursday games. And finally, it was last year that the NFL was like, okay, well, maybe it's not fair. So then we'll send, let's send Dallas on a road game on a Thursday because that's so unfair to teams like to make them go on the road on Thursday, except it was the Thursday after this game. And so they had the full week to prepare.

It didn't really matter. They had a full week to prepare. So yeah, you're going on the road, but it's not a short week road game, which is the most difficult component to this. So if the NFL really wants to be intelligent next year, they will make Dallas play a road Thursday game before this Thanksgiving day game. And that way, Dallas will have to play a short week Thursday game right before they get to host Thanksgiving.

So Dallas is playing Washington. They have the advantage there. They have not done well against the spread, as you've mentioned, but just know that next Thursday they'll be going to Baltimore to take on the Ravens, who we will talk about now. Yeah, that sets up really nice. So speaking of the traveling team, we know as you just described that the traveling team enters these Thursday night games

at a disadvantage. And, you know, Baltimore is in what looks like from the outside, a really challenging kind of moment. They have a couple of positive COVID tests. Both of their starting running backs are on the virus list, right? Yes, correct. Yeah. And, you know, Baltimore now, right, J.K. Dobbins and Mark Ingram.

And the Ravens are kind of reeling, right? We've seen them. They let Tennessee come back and tie them up. and then win that game in overtime. Their offense looks a little bogged down. Their defense is a little beat up. They let the Patriots run all over them in a monsoon two weeks ago. So Baltimore is getting four points at Pittsburgh in this Thursday night dessert game.

And I have to tell you, I like the Ravens. Lay it on me. What do you like? Well, I just go back to the matchup earlier. in the season when they outgain the Steelers, you know, by more than double. It was 457 yards to 221 yards. And it really was simply a function of four turnovers by the Ravens, including a pick six by Lamar early in the game that really tipped the scales for the Steelers. One of the reasons that the Steelers had a hard time in that game is because they could not get their run game,

really going against that Ravens defense. And it was a low scoring game. And I expect that same kind of formula for this game. These teams always play close games. It feels like I'm getting an extra free point here. I would have been, if it was Pittsburgh minus two and a half, I wouldn't have touched it.

But Pittsburgh minus four, that's a point in a half. I mean, this historical matchup between these two teams is, is always dead even. And Baltimore as an underdog overall is looking to cover its fifth straight time. And they play great against Pittsburgh. They're five and one and one against the spread and their last seven games to Pittsburgh.

So the Ravens are my pick. Yeah. And I can tell you, this is certainly a team with his backs up against the wall, given the fact they had a big lead against Tennessee. Remember, just last week a couple days ago, up 21 to 10 against the Tennessee Titans. a team that wants to run the football and you somehow blow that game. So Baltimore blew that game, had a lead. And one thing I'll caution, you know, obviously a lot of people do this. You're certainly not on an island here.

But when we talk about the Steelers in their game last week, yes, or not last week against the Ravens, yes, Baltimore gained 457 yards in Pittsburgh only 221. However, the key is not that the Steelers didn't gain that many yards because what do you want them to do? They're starting multiple drives with short fields. And so they're not going to gain as many yards when they're starting with the ball on their opponent's 21-yard line. They're not, they're just, and they're up big at some points late in the game.

They go on that 14 to 0 run. So part of this is that the Pittsburgh Steelers. need to continue to stick with the pass unless they're having success on the ground. Ben Rothersburg came out and was quoted today talking about the run pass ratio and the fact that their run game really isn't doing much. And Ben said something to the effect of, we're not here to try to run the ball a certain number of times. We're here to try to win the game. And so it doesn't matter for them, for Pittsburgh, if they go super pass heavy. In that game against Baltimore, they pass the ball on 68% of their offensive plays.

This is just who they are right now. They're a very pass-heavy team. They've got all of their receivers fully healthy. And when you have all your studs up, you want to utilize them. And James Connor has not been productive on the ground. Now, the other thing Baltimore obviously is dealing with, they just, you know, we already know that they had multiple guys that were injured that missed time on the defensive line, Clay Campbell, Brandon Williams.

Brandon Williams got put on the COVID list. Now, Calais Campbell's is sidelined for a third straight week with a calf injury. Most likely, I don't know that he's been officially ruled out, but he's been out for multiple weeks. Now, outside linebacker Pernell McPhee just a few hours ago was placed on the COVID list. You already mentioned both the running backs are on the COVID list, which I find it really interesting, house. They talk about these close contacts and the contact tracing, like literally of their running back room, two of the guys have COVID. So somehow the other running back wasn't in close enough contact with these other guys

as they're like standing next to each other, taking reps in practice. And they're all three kind of like there together and part of the running back room. Very odd to me. But at any rate, the Ravens will have one running back up plus a backup with J.K. Dobbins out and Mark Ingram out. It's going to be a challenge. But you know what? Neither of these teams backs down from a challenge.

And that's what I love so much about him. Nobody makes any excuses. Pittsburgh's by week got canceled because of Tennessee. Mike Tomlin didn't miss a beat. He's just like, it is what it is. We don't care about that. We're not even focused on that. That doesn't even bother us in the least.

We're playing to win games. That's the Steelers mentality here. I think this is going to be a great game. I got to tell you, even though there's some injury issues going on with Baltimore, the storylines here of this game are. phenomenal. You've got one team in Pittsburgh house undefeated best start obviously in franchise history. You've got another team up against the ropes, a team that went, what, 15 and one last season, the number one overall seed now has been beaten down in some of their most recent games.

Their offense isn't playing well. How will they respond? How do they come out from the corner in this game on a short week, up against it all, short-handed? Will they be able to go toe to toe with this undefeated team. It is going to be a tremendous game to watch. And I don't even care what happens during the Lions game. I don't even care what happens during the Washington game. How bad those games are. I am sorry. If those games stink, I'm going to enjoy the food and family. This is the game you better have your pumpkin pie and your fork and you better be staring at that TV, get the kids to bed early because you're going to want to watch this game. It's going to be a Prantel's almond tort, and you just scared me with all of that injury

and COVID stuff on the defensive side. Maybe I'll just play the total. I got to look at the total right now is 45. So the total has been bet down. It's definitely taken some under money. It's now down to 44 and a half at most spots. It opened at 46. And the thought process is that last game out, even though Baltimore scored a bunch of points, they're having trouble getting the ball through the air to their receivers. Lamar Jackson is to blame for it in part. Their offensive line is banged up in part. I mean, you look at that offensive line and what they are right now compared to what

they were before. They lost Ronnie Stanley. Their left tackle, they were already without Marshall Yonda entering the season. They lost Nick Boyle. They're down some guys that are physical at the point of attack that help the identity of this team and give Lamar Jackson that ability to keep the defense guessing. You don't know what type of punch is coming from them. Is it going to be a run? Is it going to be a play action pass? You're not really sure. Now defenses are just like, yeah, sure, try to throw the ball. We're going to pass rush

your line because you're not that great. We don't really fear your run game as much anymore this season. And who do the Ravens have that are going to aggressively dominate you in the receiving game, aside from your tight end, Mark Andrews? Because Marquis' Brown has been up and down. They're working in Des Bryant now, but they don't really have the receivers that are going to scare you. And so teams are just like, fine. You try to pass the ball if you want. We're blitz and Lamar. We might play a little man. He doesn't do as well against man. And we're going to shut the run on the way to your quarterback. It makes life more difficult for the Ravens for certain. But they're not going to back down from this. And, you know, there's a, there's a chance that

they could pull this up. They were the better team in the last game. and they lost the game. Typically speaking, those are good dogs to back in the rematch in the same season. Well, that's it. I don't care. Even though I'm having the Prantel's Almentort, I'm taking the points with Baltimore and I'm going over. That's it. And I might parlay them. I might do all of it. It's Thanksgiving. I'll be full. I'll be laying on the couch. The pants are going to be unbuttoned. That's the way I'm going to go with this one. I love it. Look, as long as you're playing within your means, it's fun to have a little coin on the game, make it more interesting. And I'm all for it. It happens once a year. Have fun, bet responsibly, but definitely get some action down on

these games. That's right. Well, speaking of getting some action down, we also have a great slate of Sunday games. And I know there's a couple of these Sunday tilts that have caught your attention for particular angles that you like. Now, one of those games, I was curious when you raised it, it's the Cleveland Browns who are laying six and a half points at Jacksonville. And the over under is now all the way up to 49. It opened at 46 and a half. The only play for me in this game is the total. It's not even posted in the book that I play with because we don't know who the quarterback for Jacksonville is. And my book won't. won't, you know, post a number until there's been an announcement for sure.

The Browns, this is the first Browns road game since October the 25th. They've been playing in Cleveland and the weather has been horrendous. For three straight weeks, they're playing in crazy wind. They're playing in downpours. And all of those have been unders. The Jaguars are coming off a three-point game against the Steelers defense. What has caught your attention with this football game? So a couple of factors, both of which relate to the weather.

And you set it up perfectly for me. But I have people who work for me at Sharp Football Analysis that live in the Cleveland area. And they have said six days out of the week, the weather has been okay. And for whatever reason, on Sundays in Cleveland, like the skies open up, the winds will whip. and they've had horrendous, like we're talking about monsoon slash like tropical storm type wins in some of these games. It's been absolutely absurd. And not only has it happened for three straight weeks, but there was a buy mixed in there. So this team hasn't played in normal weather for over a month by the time this game actually is going to take place. And you lost your number one

wide receiver in Odell Beckham. Now, in these games that you were playing in this horrendous weather conditions, you ran the ball 62% of your offensive plays. That was the number one most run heavy rate in the NFL over that course. And it's understandable. Those runs, however, recorded an NFL low 3.1 yards per carry with just 39% success. That also sort of makes sense, though, with the defense just playing the run. But the point is you didn't have a lot of success with that run game. Now, should we expect the run game to get a little bit better here? Yeah, we probably should.

That said, passes in that bad weather still from Baker on early downs in the first three quarters, gained 8.3 yards per attempt. Now, in the first seven weeks of the season, when the weather was fine in Cleveland or they were playing on the road, the Browns were about 50-50 split run-pass ratio, which is slightly more run-heavy than the NFL average, but definitely not anywhere close to. the 62% clip that they have been the last few weeks. You look at the Jacksonville Jaguars defense, and I want Kevin Sifansky to think about this from this perspective.

Jacksonville is without their number one pass rusher, Josh Allen, who was absolutely bawling. You probably haven't heard about him because he's in Jacksonville, but he was a total stud. He played, he was one of the best pass rushers in the entire NFL so far this season. they're without multiple starters in the secondary. They literally just put two guys that played last week on the IR with injury, so they're not going to be playing. And two other guys from the secondary missed last week's game due to injury.

They are not the ones who got put on IR. So this team could be down four players in the secondary plus their number one pass rusher. And they already were number 31 against the pass with all of those guys in the lineup. So you're talking about a past defense that probably can't get after Baker very well and can't defend wide receivers. This needs to be a ramp up game for this passing attack for Kevin Stifansky. Pass the ball a little bit more. Let Baker Mayfield regain a lot of the confidence in this passing attack. And importantly, you are going to need it because while your opponents weren't able to throw the ball against you the last few weeks,

because you couldn't throw it either because the weather was terrible. After this game in Jacksonville, which is in Florida, obviously, you play the Titans and the Ravens, two key opponents that are going to be vying for AFC seeding in terms of making the postseason there. And you got to have good games there. And you may fall behind in those games and you're going to need Baker Mayfield to be able to pass the ball. I hate it when coaches are just like, well, we can just win this game easily. We don't need to worry about the past. and then you enter a game against Tennessee and all of a sudden you're down 14 and you haven't been

passing the ball in your games for five weeks now and suddenly you're expected to just make this passing game click in a comeback mode against the Titans probably not going to happen. So Kevin Siffansky, not only do you have great weather and should you get back to passing the ball a little bit more, but you have a defense that won't give Baker problems and should increase your offenses upside. You have to figure out how you're going to be able to throw the ball efficiently without OBJ. Let Baker throw the ball in Jacksonville. That is my advice, but it's such a unique situation because it's very rare that we see a

team go for four weeks without playing a game where they can really throw the ball whatsoever. Yeah. So, brother Warren, I absolutely appreciate the prescription. And I certainly hope that Kevin listens to the pod. I'm sure he built it into his daily, his weekly schedule. what if they don't do it? I mean, is there any way to think about handicapping this game? Do you feel like the Browns laying six and a half is a fair number?

Do you feel like 49 is a total provides any opportunity? Well, I mean, I can tell you that I get on totals early in the week and we send them out to clients early in the week to beat line moves. and this was a game that we already took. And we took it at a much better number than this. This is why it went from 46 and a half up to 49. I understand. 100%. But it wasn't just me.

I can tell you that other betting groups were probably fighting us over this number to get first in line to bet the over. Because if you look at that Eagles game when the Eagles played the Cleveland Brown just a week ago, and this is what we do as we study the line moves and who's doing what in the marketplace. besides us because we know we control the market just as much as they do. And there's only a few groups that we have to really worry about from that perspective. And they came in when the Cleveland Philly game was bet down. First of all, they bet this game over majorly. And then somebody realized,

uh-oh, there's going to be a lot of wind in Cleveland for that game with the Eagles. So somebody came down and bet the under. Now, this thing moved like three points from around 45, 45 and a half, up to like 48 and a half. Then the very next day got bet all the way back down to 45 and a half. Literally, it made to massive moves. And then I think there was a couple of COVID issues for the Browns. It came down off the board. It got reposted.

And when it was realized that the wind wasn't actually going to happen, even though there was a little bit of rain in the forecast, they bet this thing back up again. So it closed. I want to say around 47 and a half, 47, something like that. So they were dying to bet, and I wasn't involved in that total, but they were dying to bet the over in a Browns game when they thought it might be fine weather for them. Now you finally have fine weather for the Browns. If you look at their schedule of their other games during the course of this season, I mean, it hasn't even been close. The only games that have been low scoring were the games where they got steamrolled 38 to 7 or 38 to 6 against the Ravens and the Steelers defenses, who, get after the quarterback who can confuse Baker Mayfield, it can put a shitload of pressure on him. That's not going to be the case with the Jacksonville Jaggars.

Every single other game, I mean, you're seeing like 50 plus points scored when this team steps out on the football field. So it'll be interesting to see. Stefansky can control everything here, though. If he chooses to go run heavy, then we're probably not getting this many points. If he chooses to be a little bit more balanced or let this passing game open up to see, get back on track for the next two weeks as well as the potential postseason,

then there's a very good chance that we're going to see more than 49 points scored. This might just be one where I stay away from the total because I'm worried about Jacksonville doing its part in the same way that Carson Wentz and the Eagles did not do their part in that game. I mean, who knows who's going to play quarterback for Jacksonville, whether Jacksonville will be able to score a touchdown. They weren't able to do that last week. anyway, I feel like we've we've satisfactorily covered the Cleveland Jack, the epic Cleveland Jacksonville. We apologize for that seven or eight minutes we spent on that game. But interesting situation for Cleveland.

And I love studying coaching decisions. And I'm really curious to see what Safansky does here. And maybe we just bet the Brown's over. And I haven't seen that number yet. Do you have that number handy? The Browns team total right now is currently 27 and a half. Great. Okay. I can get it behind that. I'm comfortable with that. Let, let, let, let, let, let, let, let, let Baker cook. It's Thanksgiving weekend. Let them cook. There you go. But there is a really great, great game that I want to talk about that everybody's going to be interested in because this will not only decide the AFC South, but also have big playoff implications.

And that is this Indianapolis Colts, Tennessee Titans. game. I think we've been talking about each week. We've been circling either the Colts or the Titans because they're playing in very, very meaningful games, playoff determinative games. And we both like the Colts I know. And I personally also like the Titans and the toughness that both teams have shown. And both teams seem to be rounding the bed. Now, they played against each other two weeks ago and the outcome was decided by the horrendous Tennessee Titans kicking game, which was a bizarre kind of outcome. But since then, Indy has really looks like they're rounding into form. They've covered three or the last four games. They outscored the Packers just

this past Sunday, 17 to 3 in the second half of the game. Their defense is producing turnovers. They finally gave the ball to Jonathan Taylor. I know you don't love to see, you know, a lot of runs, but Jonathan Taylor finally, 22 carries for 90 yards, plus four passes that he caught for 24 yards. And he had a nice touchdown run that got called back on a holding penalty. By the way, the holding penalty thing. At some point, we'll have to talk about that. I've never seen anything like what happened at the end of that Green Bay, Indianapolis game. where Indianapolis had, was it five holding penalties in that possession right at the end of the game? It might have been that. And I hate it when refs get involved to decide games. I almost tweeted

something out to that effect at that point in time. You know, if it is holding, it's holding, right? Like, call it as you see it. But I just hate like the borderline type calls deciding games. It was Sean Hockeyly and they had 11 holding calls in that game, which is by far the most holding. calls of any game this season. In any event, I was super impressed by Indianapolis. That Green Bay Packers team is a formidable offense. And I appreciated Indianapolis. Their offensive game plan took advantage of the weaknesses of Green Bay. So they really look like they're rounding in the form. On the other side, what Tennessee did in coming back against Baltimore, that resiliency. And it took them. It felt like the whole game to really get Derek Henry running, but he was the difference

in the overtime. And, and, you know, Tennessee ended up playing in the fourth quarter and overtime, that kind of smash mouth offense that we've come to, to kind of expect out of them. Very impressive win. For whatever reason, Indianapolis has Tennessee's number. They have 35 and 17 record at all time, and they've won outright 23 of the past 27 head-to-heads. And I say, you know, for whatever reason, the quarterback over most of those times was either Peyton Manning or Andrew Luck, so it's not exactly an outrageous proposition that Indianapolis was beating Tennessee under those circumstances. But in any event, a great, great matchup. How are you looking at this game? No, it is. And the first thing that I did was I looked back at that

last game that they played. And yes, special teams blocked kicks, helped define that game. But I also looked at that game and I saw the Indianapolis Colts with six trips into the red zone. I saw them gain 430 yards to only 294 for the Titans, despite the fact that the Titans had one extra drive in the game, despite the fact that one of the Colts drives started at their opponent's 27 yard line, while all of the Titans drive started in their own territory. So they had further to go. It wasn't it wasn't the Colts fault that they did not a short field, that they had a short field when they got the ball at the opposing 27 yard line and punched it in for a touchdown. So, but they still outgained them by a significant margin

in the yards basis and then the yards per play basis. And then I look back at that game and I see the game, and I think about the game last week where the Colts played the Packers. And I knew going into that game, I said, this is going to be fun. And we talked about it on the podcast on Friday, and we said, I don't think the Colts defense is as good as everybody thinks that it is. Everybody has in this top defense, but they haven't gone up against anybody, especially not a quarterback that can actually throw the football down the field. And what ends up happening in that game last week against the Packers? On early downs in the first three quarters, the Packers actually passed the ball 58% of the time. Aaron Rogers, 15 of 18, 9.2 yards per

attempt, a 72% success rate, and three passing touchdowns on those 18 pass attempts. Just totally destroyed this Indianapolis Colts past defense when passing the ball on early downs in the first three quarters. And I was not surprised because this is exactly what I expected from this Colts team that is not as good on defense as they're cracked up to be. However, they're very good against the run. And last game, the Titans, if you remember, went up the field on their first drive. They had three first downs. They passed the ball every single first down.

They got into the red zone. I think they called, I forget if it was a run or another pass, but they scored a touchdown in the red zone and got a seven to nothing lead. And from that point onward, they ran the ball on 65% of their early downs in the first half, scored only 10 more points. They entered halftime with a lead, but that was, in my mind, completely. fraudulent because the Colts didn't punt the ball at all in the first half. They drove every single time at least 45 yards into Titans territory, went inside the Titans 30 yard line on every single

drive, scored one touchdown, kicked a field goal from the 6, kicked a field goal from the 25, and turned it over on downs from the 29 yard line. This Colts offense should have had a lot more points than it actually had. And they were trailing on the scoreboard. Tennessee gets the ball in the second half with a lead in what I'm believed to be somewhat fraudulent lead and decides to run the ball on 75% of their early downs in that third quarter. They didn't score a single point. They end up trailing by 11 points entering the fourth quarter. And House, you know what they do in the fourth quarter? Even though they're trailing by double digits at home, they end up running the ball on 60% of their early downs trying to come back into this game.

collectively runs in the first three quarters for them on early downs average just 4.4 yards per carry. This team cannot fall into this trap. You asked earlier why the Colts keep beating this team and why the Titans don't have a good track record. Well, guess what? They like to run the football. Do something the Colts aren't expecting. What do you have to lose?

It hasn't been working your philosophy of starting the game by running the football and continuing to run the football early and often. Derek Henry will crush in the fourth quarter, whether you run them a lot in the first half and fall behind on the scoreboard or you don't. Derek Henry loves destroying tired defensive linemen. And those defensive linemen are going to be just as tired if they're rushing the passer as if they are tackling guys in the run game in the first half. Try to build a lead.

Try to do something different. And so that's my plea for. for the Titans, if they want a great shot at winning this game, try not to fall behind. Try to get a lead in the first half and you know who's dealing with a toe injury? Philip Rivers. Why don't you make Philip Rivers instead of being comfortable with a lead at halftime and the ability to just hand the ball off in the second half? Make this dude try to throw the ball against your defense.

Now, he probably will have some success because you don't have a great past defense, but still put that impetus on him to try to come from behind with an injured toe. don't make life easy on him. And so I think this game can be very competitive. I think this game's going to be a lot closer than the last game was. I cannot wait to watch this game. I wish it was the prime time game. I know some people would say I'd rather have the chiefs and the bucks at prime time.

I don't want to see Tom Brady asleep walking through another game in prime time. But I certainly don't want to see the Chicago Bears get another shot at prime time. So get those guys out of there. I wish this Titans Colts game. I know they played on Thursday a couple weeks ago. I'd much rather see this game in prime time because I think it's going to be a great battle. And we will see how much the Titans fall back to Earth after that big upset and a come from behind manner against the Baltimore Ravens because we saw these dudes house, one of the highlights of the week,

stomping all over the logo in Baltimore, hating on the Ravens. For whatever reason, they detest Baltimore. And this is like a big rivalry game. And sometimes it's difficult to get up for two key rivalry games in back-to-back week. So how much energy after that massive comeback to get a win, how much energy do they have in their tank to start this game? Should be really interesting. I hope that's not an element because this is for first place in the AFC South.

And there's no guarantee that there's going to be two playoff teams from the AFC South because the AFC is pretty loaded. and, you know, they're up against teams like the Raiders. Miami's still in the mix. I mean, you know, there's not a lot of slots. The Bill's Dolphins could potentially get two, although we'll have to see what Miami does. You've got potentially three in the AFC North, and you've got these two teams at both seven and three.

And a couple of those, like the Broncos know, but the Raiders may be and obviously the chief. So the AFC is loaded. This game is going to be massive, massive variance for that team who wins to be able to get in the playoffs and terrible leverage for the team that loses. Well, I agree with your thesis that this is going to be tight and much tighter than the previous one, which is why I have this lined up for teasing the Titans from the 3 and a half number all the way up to 9.5. Now, I know I'm missing out on the – I already have the 3 with the line. But he's through the seven and I like the Titans getting nine and a half games.

That's a that's a strong teaser leg. I feel like I have to look at the slate and come up with the other half of that teaser leg. It might be the Baltimore Ravens, but I don't that at minus four. I'm already through the three getting them up to 10. It could be. I'm not sure yet. But I know Titans up to nine and a half is something that I'm looking at because I agree with you. This is going to be a tight one.

And I don't have any concerns about the Titans mustering the energy and the will to, to, you know, show up against the cult who have their number. Yeah, you would think that that wouldn't be the case. But sometimes you kind of empty the tank and you don't have a lot to start with. I expect Mike very able to have these guys ready to play. But it is, it is a small factor here to consider. But I will tell you if you are looking at that Steelers game, as we've been talking, And that line is now up to Pittsburgh minus five and a half already with the news of COVID, the issues impacting the Ravens on this short week, kind of starting to continue to filter out there into the national landscape and the betting market.

Incredible. That really is the pants on button game. I mean, I'm still taking Baltimore and the over. Then just keep waiting. Just keep waiting. See how that line gets. See how high that line gets. And see if, if anybody else gets announced out. It's a beautiful week 12 slate. I'm going to spare everybody since it's Thanksgiving the square plays of the week. There are now three square plays of the week because I'm going against the Chargers and Anthony Lynn every week. I'm going against Adam Gase and the Jets every week.

I'm going against Matt Nagy and the Chicago Bears every week because you know what? I don't blame the cow Warren Sharp. I'm not blaming the mother effing cow. But you know what? We're not going to talk about any of those nonsense games because we have a beautiful Thanksgiving slate in front of us. The games we just covered are also wonderful on Sunday. Hey, Sharpie, happy Thanksgiving, buddy. Happy Thanksgiving to you as well.

Super thankful for all the opportunities to be able to talk to the lovely ringer crowd on a weekly basis this season. It's a great opportunity for me. So I'm thankful for that. I'm also thankful for all you guys tuning in for U-House joining me each week. and talking through some of these games. It's been an absolute blast. And I encourage everybody, just a non-football note here, that even though this year is a little bit different,

there is a lot that I'm sure you can think about to be thankful for. Keep your head up. Keep fighting. Got some great football games on. Enjoy wherever you are. Enjoy the moment as best that you can, think of the good things. And we'll all get through this together.