The Ringer NFL Show - Sticking With Indy, Trusting Philly, and More Week 2 Bets | The Ringer NFL Show

Episode Date: September 18, 2020

We discuss Joe Burrow’s impressive Thursday night performance (2:02) before getting into our favorite gambling picks for Week 2. We discuss the Eagles’ chances against the Rams (29:30), the Colts��� bounceback potential (43:37), betting underdogs in Week 2 (58:45), teasing the Ravens and Chiefs (1:10:45), and more. Hosts: Warren Sharp and Joe House Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Friends, today's episode of the Ringer NFL show is brought to you by State Farm. Getting great car and home insurance from State Farm at a surprisingly great rate. Well, that's like drafting a player that becomes an all pro. Maybe like the Washington professional football team drafting Chase Young. We call that the real deal. State Farm agents provide personalized, service so you can customize your insurance to fit your needs like a competent GM putting together their very own competent roster unlike certain incompetent GMs associated with certain

incompetent rosters like what might be going on up in New York. Sorry Giants and Jets fans. You need a team that supports you. State Farms got a great one. In addition to agents, the award-winning mobile app helps 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 its A-game when you want the real deal. Like a good neighbor, state farm is there. Hey, everyone, welcome back to the Ringer NFL show. I am Warren Sharp, founder of Sharp Football Analysis.com, and I am joined by B1 and only

Joe House. Joe, how is week one for you? All right, all right, Sharpie, here we are. Week one is in the books. We have lots and lots of exciting things to talk about with Week 2. It was a mixed bag for me,

but we just watched another exciting Thursday night football game. And before we get to the Week 2 dance card and what Week 1 produced for us, I want to get your reaction to that Brown's Bengals game. There were a lot of jokes coming into the Thursday night football with this Ohio bowl and a lot of people, you know, saying negative things.

I found that game to be extremely entertaining. And on top of that, that's my first prolonged look at Joe Burrow as a professional quarterback. And I have to tell you, I am impressed. Yeah, no, absolutely. some of the throws that he was asked to make and that he did convert some of those first downs, some of the sideline passes, some of the intelligence were off the charts, really incredible. We have to realize one thing with a quarterback like Joe Burrow entering the stage.

It is very difficult for a true rookie quarterback to play on Thursday night on a short week, especially early in the season. Most of these guys that have done this over the last five, 10 years. I think they've gotten one and six. They've thrown one touchdown to 10 interceptions. So to see also the fact that Joe put this team on his back from a passing perspective. They didn't get a lot out of the ground game, which was something that I was on. I bet the under in Joe Mixon's rushing yard, which ended up cashing. But I thought that they were going to be throwing the ball more. But I didn't think they were going to be throwing the ball this much. And he was

extremely impressive. What did your eyes tell you? So one thing, he's a big boy. He's 6.4, 220, but he moves very light on his feet. And that movement, both in terms of acquiring yards when a play breaks down, but also for buying time, maybe the most impressive stat of the entire evening to me was converting five out of five on fourth down. I applaud Zach Taylor and the Bengals for the aggressive play and going for it that number of times. And I'm so impressed by the poise of Burrough. So the open question with Burrow is we watched him do it all year long at LSU, show that poise, show that maturity, show a super crazy high football IQ. But there's always that open question when he gets, you know, when you get up to that next level and the speed of everything is so

radically different. And the results, you know, the reviews from the Chargers game were good reviews for Burrow, but this was his first moment on a truly national stage, the only game of the week. And I'm just honestly blown away. I just thought he was incredible. Yeah. And there was a lot of things that I liked about this game. It was fun talking about some of the inefficiencies near the goal line and some of the Red Zone play calling that some of these coaches need to improve upon. But they recorded, the Bengals did 30 first downs, 30 points on the scoreboard.

Like you said, tremendous performance, 285 passing yards, just really incredible. But it's sort of, and especially since he covered, a lot of people are going to be talking about that, it's sort of overshattering what Baker Mayfield did. And what Baker Mayfield did was actually very impressive too.

He threw a bad pick at the very end of the game. But for the most part of this game, he played extremely clean. He performed extremely well, very efficient. And there were so many questions, so many questions about this guy after week one, after the way they got blown out by the Baltimore Ravens. And what I said heading into this game on our Wednesday Ringer show was, let's not beat him up too bad if he doesn't look pristine in this game on Thursday night because it's a short week and it's hard for Stifansky to make the changes that are necessary to improve things too much. But we may see a little bit better performance because he was not playing the Baltimore

Ravens and trailing the whole game. They may have a lead here so they can do more things. And I said the real true test, if we haven't seen it after next week's game where they've got a mini buy after this week headed into a game against the Washington football team in week three, if we didn't see it there, then I would say throw in the towel, like we got some real concerns here with Baker. but I was optimistic, but certainly didn't expect him to deliver the way that he did. He hung in the pocket really well when he needed to, but they also did a lot of bootlegs

and rollout type things because Baker's short. And he was having so many passes deflected at the line of scrimmage in his week one game that they were getting him away from center and he was thrown on the run really well, really accurately. And I thought that he had a great game as well. Yeah, I laughed when you started in about recognizing Baker because the Browns won the game. And really, it didn't feel like the game was very much in doubt for most of the second

half. It felt like the Browns pretty well had it in hand. And the series that they had at the end of the game where they ran the ball, whatever it was, nine consecutive times, they honestly scored too quickly for those of us who might have had the Browns minus the five and a half. But they just were very efficient throughout the game. And the rollouts were very efficient. effective. I mean, Baker looked super comfortable. O'Dell got involved. You know, the lead into the halftime discussion was about O'Dell, even though I thought Baker was really the story. But, you know,

good to see both of these teams show signs of life. You know, both of their fan bases have reasons to be excited and, you know, hopeful for this 2020 season. And that's really all you want out of a Thursday night game, honestly. Yeah, definitely exceeded expectations. I think a lot of people were having negative thoughts. Next week we've got Thursday night is going to be the dolphins taking on the Jaguar. So, you know, another opportunity for us to have

zero expectations and hope that it gets exceeded. But I don't think that that game is going to exceed what we saw here, you know, Gardner Minchew going up against Ryan Fitzpatrick most likely in that battle. But this game, Joey Burrow, we'll call him Joey covers now. When he covers the spread

house, we got to call him Joey covers. Joey covers going up against Baker Mayfield comes back, backdoor cover for him. Just a fun game to watch. And I really enjoyed it. I really enjoyed what we saw. And so that leads us up into kind of turning the page to start looking at this weekend's action. But before we get too far ahead of ourselves, talk a little bit about what your experience was, week one, lessons learned, and some of your big picture results. Yeah. So let's talk about how week one went down. And, you know, just looking at the summer, it felt like a pretty standard NFL kind of week.

And in that respect, slightly different from what we anticipated. We were kind of prepared for anything when we were convened at this time a week ago, entering week one. We had kind of a thesis, a working thesis around the idea that maybe offense was going to be slightly ahead of defense and we might see a lot of overs. The results across the board, favorites went eight, seven, and one against the spread. home teams went nine, six and one against the spread. And the totals went nine and seven in favor of the overs.

Underdogs went six and ten straight up. I don't know if there's anything about those kinds of results that's a big shocker, right? Those aren't outlier results. Am I right about that? No, you're 100% correct. We saw we did not actually see, although in the Thursday night game, we saw more mistackles than usual. We did not see more mistackles during the game on Sunday. But what we ended up seeing House is, if we're diving into the analytics a little bit,

is a little bit more conservative offenses across the board, passing that was closer to the line of scrimmage than usual. So fewer air yards down the field. You saw it from the Kansas City Chiefs especially, right? Like they played a very low variance game in week one. They were in part potentially saving the wheels of their wide receivers. They didn't want Tyree Kill having had much less time to work this offseason to come in and run 30 routes down the field, you know, burn out as hamstrings. So they were going a lot more run heavy. Not everybody went more run heavy, but in general, many of the teams, not all, but many of the teams were throwing the ball closer to line of scrimmage.

We also had a really clean game from an officiating perspective. nothing that I see from the officials doesn't make me raise my eyebrows and think that there's something predetermined here. I absolutely think that the league told these guys, we want to make sure ratings are decent, let's lower the flags. We don't want these to be flag fest all weekend long.

So, you know, I think the play was probably sloppier and deserved more flags, but they intentionally did not throw as many. Well, there is one aberration to that, And I know the Cowboys fans out there want to make sure that this gets mentioned. And that is offensive pass interference. We did see a handful of those calls. And it honestly did swing the outcome of the Cowboys Rams game.

You know, in pure slow motion, it didn't look like a lot of contact on that Michael Gallup play. But they did call the offensive pass interference. And it did deprive Dallas of an opportunity to try and at least, you know, you know, get the field goal to win the game, right? No, it absolutely did. Now, that game I thought Dallas had for the taking, and we'll walk through some of the games as we're looking ahead. But I thought Dallas kind of blew that themselves from a coaching perspective.

There were a couple of penalties that were a little bit questionable, a couple of things that the refs actually missed. And, you know, that comes with the territory. But I definitely, it wasn't a ref show week one. It'll be interesting to see if it gets to that point later on this season. And if they stop holding the flags in their pocket. and they actually start calling what they see. Yeah.

Well, I want to share with you how I did in a few different of the competitions that I participate in. And it's not for the purposes of we are not going to, I promise everybody listening to this Friday show, all of our wagering wizards, all our gambling gurus out here, I am not going to subject you to how I did each week with these stupid bets. The reason that I want to mention how I did in week one is because I made a mistake. that I want some help with, you know, navigating how to play this. So I went in the ESPN against the spread contest, 13 and 3.

In the rigor mega contests, I went 4 and 1. In the actual wagers that I played where I put actual money, I had a certain bankroll set aside. I went 2 and 6. And the only two that I hit were overs. Hit the over in the Chiefs Texans Thursday night and then I hit the over in the Buck Saints. The six losses were all direction. I had the Colts in five of them.

And then I had the Eagles as an emotional hedge in another one. I need you to explain how you tied the Colts into five of them. Let's walk me through that. So I played the Colts Money Line in two of them and I tease the Colts in three others. And basically because of the number that the Colts were sitting at at the time of Wager, they were at eight and a half as a favorite, I got through the crucial seven and the three with the six point tease. So, you know, mission accomplished, right?

We talked about it week one. What you want to do if you're going to tease is get down through the seven and through the three. And I felt pretty good about. Or up through the seven and the three and the seven. But yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah, I'm trying to catch on here. And part of the motivation for including the Colts and having them featured so heavily,

was a preseason thesis again around the Colts getting to 10 wins this season, exceeding their win total. The Colts has a potential favorite to win the NFC South. And this is an important divisional game for the Colts. If they really have big ambitions for this upcoming season, you have to go beat Jacksonville. That's a division game. Jacksonville is going through a rebuild.

they've offloaded a bunch of talent. You have to go down there and, you know, take care of business and they didn't do it. They left points on the field. They out gained the Colts outgained Jacksonville by over 200 total yards. They left 10 points on the table. Phil Rivers had a crucial late game interception, and that's all she wrote.

Yeah, so let's talk first about tying up so much of your portfolio. on one team because we're going to use you as a learning lesson for the rest of the people out there. I know that when we walked through the show last week, you were talking about this kind of, I forget what you called, like a foundational play. Yes, I anchor, anchor bet. I'm looking for a multiplier. I want a multiplier here. Right. So you were looking for this thing that you thought was like a surefire slam dunk. And then you tried to raise your payback, payout on everything else because you had this thing in a bunch of wagers. Now, I was not aware that you were planning on tying five separate ones to this. I thought this was like one thing that you were using as your anchor,

and then you were tying a couple things to a singular wager. So we're going to learn from this. For the people out there, you know, I obviously work with a lot of groups, betting groups, and, you know, betting professionally as well. The key is to diversify a lot of what you're doing. And, of course, going to go in hard on certain times of the year where you think something is really good. And the way that the professionals do things is that we are going to try to access that game in every way possible when we like it. So first, we might take, if we want to be obvious, we might take the game spread, right? So we might take the underdog plus a certain number. Then we're going to come back and take the first half, that team on the first half number. Then we're going to come back and we're

going to tease it in a few different ways. We're going to tease that team. Then we're going to come back. We're going to take some money line. We're going to try some other derivative bets that we can make, team totals, et cetera. But that's never week one because you can't ever be so certain that you really like something in week one and tie so many different things to it. So it is smart to tease through the three and the seven because you're getting the best value. It does not mean that it always is going to win. It's just the best value for when you choose to tease something. But also, let me just tell you one little thing about teasers. It is smart to pick a few different legs that you want to throw in there.

Like I myself did throw in a teaser. I did have the Colts in there. And I tease the bears. I forget who else I teased. There was some other stuff that I was doing where I had the Rams in there. It was a three-team teaser. So it paid out plus 160, but you had to hit all three. two of the three hit, one of the three did not, and you lose everything. It was a smaller wager

for me at plus 160. But the key is spread some of these teasers out a little bit and use some more round robin. So you've got like Colts to the Bears. Then you've got the Bears to the Rams, because the Bears to the Rams would have both those both hit and you would have won. So you just got to spread things out a little bit. And we won't do that moving forward with the anchor on so many of your wagers house. But things happen. This is precisely. the point of this show. That's one of the points of this show. I am the average Joe.

You are the Sharp and we are trying to help America in its moment of need do better. So we're going to do better. We can build from this, Warren Sharp. We will. We will build from this. Another interesting thing I will tell you is

the teams that won this past week, they actually went 15-0-1 against the spread. So teams that won in week one, there were no teams that won but didn't cover, right? Every single team that won covered to spread, with the exception of the charters when they beat the Bengals, which was a three point line and they pushed. Now, of course, if you took the Titans at the exact worst time and you laid three points with them, you did not cover, but you had months where you could have taken the Titans as an underdog or a favorite of one point at worst two points and pushed. So anybody who bet that game and took the Titans and ended up losing, you are not betting intelligently. You must take the value of the number.

And if the number gets away from you such that it's now minus three, there's a certain point in time. Like if you wanted the Titans and now it's minus three and it's game day and just like, screw it. I'm going to bet. You just got to suck it up and say, I missed the number. I'm sitting this one out. Every single game you don't have to bet. And there's certain times in my life where I walk away from wagers when I miss the number.

You absolutely, it's a good practice to get into, especially when it goes on to like a key number of three. You got to just know when to walk away if you missed some value. Yes. Or be prepared to, you know, you just call that. That's discretionary cash and you might lose it and you have to be. I've got to bet on this game because I want to have some action on the game and I'm prepared to say goodbye to that money. It's the same way as, you know, buying a. a delicious, I don't know.

Well, let me ask you this. Let me ask you this, just a general betting question for your house, because you mentioned something on our last episode that this is all for fun, and it's about having fun. And I do agree that betting is fun. But let me ask you this, although there's a rush involved, do you have fun when you lose? No, no, no. Okay.

So the goal, the overall goal is we know that we are going to have more fun when we win. win and it's not fun to lose money, even if it's a thrill to have action on the game. And so you're right, if you're talking about like $5 meal deals, $20 for pizza, stuff like that, and that's disposable income for yourself, and you just want to have that action on the game, then I completely, completely understand that. And you're just looking for the joy, the rush that comes with betting on sports. And there is rush and there is joy. But when you're actually, trying to make money off of this thing, you absolutely need to know limits, limitations, line moves, anticipation, a lot of different factors. And that's what we're going to try to

teach people. Discipline. We're going to try to teach you guys all of that type of stuff on this show. Yes, we certainly are. Okay, so week one is in the books. It is now a cliche that everybody who talks about the NFL uses, which is the overreaction to the results of, week one and how that informs, you know, the public's approach potentially to week two. We saw dominant performances from the chiefs, the Ravens, the Seahawks, and to a slightly lesser extent, the Saints and the Bills. That's my sense of it. Do you agree with that takeaway?

Yes. I mean, those teams definitely were, I will say that the Saints win was not as glamorous as the final score indicated. They got lucky in many respects. Drew Brees did not look good in many respects. But those other four teams that you mentioned, absolutely extremely strong performances. All of these teams were forecast to go to the postseason.

I do not believe that we upgrade any of them, especially not the Chiefs and the Ravens, based upon what they did. I think with the Chiefs, what we can say is, they played that game in an extremely interesting manner. house and I'm really curious to see how they're going to play this week when they take on the chargers because they went far more run heavy and far more conservative. But even with such a dialed back approach offensively, they still absolutely railroaded the Texans and just prove that

they could win games against mediocre teams. You know, the Texas, let's not forget, I know they made the playoffs and had a good run last year. They were only forecast to win seven and a half games this year. They really look in trouble as particularly offensively after that game script ran out and they don't have a strong defense. So the bookmaker lowering their number to that level, I think was the right move. But certainly the chiefs being able to win, even when Mahomes isn't on track and even when that offense isn't racing through the secondary with the ball with Tyree killed deep passes, this is a team that's going to be needs to be reckoned with. I think the two teams that did something different that are interesting to note on your list here are the Seahawks who finally let Russell Wilson Cook and used a lot more passing in their attack.

And so did the Buffalo Bills. They went at a much higher pass rate than they've done. In years past, they used more play action. These are things that are actually going to raise their ceiling in general for their future. So I actually think that, yes, they were dominant. Yes, we already thought they would go to the playoffs, both of those teams. but I think this should make you feel a little bit stronger about those two. Okay.

And I'm intrigued by both because I want to, I have both of those games on the list of games to discuss this upcoming week. I think the New England-Seattle game is, is the marquee game of the week and that it's poised. It's set up for a great Sunday night. Let's go ahead and talk about that one a little bit. I'm, the Seattle is favored by four,

which in ordinary times, would be right in line with the ordinary home field advantage that Seattle enjoys, except for we don't think that there's any such thing as home field advantages at the moment. What do you attribute the four point line to? Well, we know that Seattle is higher power rated. We know that they're forecast to win more games. We know that they're overall a better team. There may be, it's to be determined yet how much of those four points.

are baked in as home field advantage. Everybody's got different power ratings. Everybody could make decisions based upon their power ratings to see how much home field is actually baked into this four point line. But there's no doubt that Cam Newton or Bill Belichick are not going to be intimidated going to Seattle with no fans in the stands. Like there's absolutely no intimidation factor. So the only potential advantage is the fact that New England has to travel all the way

across the country. Other than that, it's like any other road game in an empty stadium, right? So I think you really do have to minimize the home field for a team like Seattle, for sure. So the other games of note, and let's just pick up on a couple of these interesting contests. The Rams and the Eagles have settled at, I think, a pick-um at the moment. It started off with the Eagles as a slight favorite, and then the Rams, I saw at least in one book, became a slight favorite after their performance, and now it's settled at Pickham. Am I following the line movement correctly? 100%.

The Eagles opened as the favorite. They were the look-ahead favorite because the Eagles were supposed to beat the football team, and the Rams were supposed to lose to Dallas. and lo and behold, Sunday night football comes around. The Rams beat Dallas. The Eagles earlier in the day lost to the football team. And so you get this massive swing in sentiment and expectation, partially driven by the simple fact that that Eagles O line was so beat up. Particularly in that second half,

they had some guys go leave the line due to cramping. And they were playing some backups in positions against a very tough, we talked about that front of the. football team. It was very difficult. They caused so many problems for Carson Wentz. That's a really interesting game to discuss in terms of this Eagles, Rams game. And I'm curious to know what your thoughts are on that game after having discussed the lied move. And then I'll share, you know, what my opinion is. Yeah. So, uh, I am not going to miss this opportunity to talk about the Washington, not the almost professional football team. The Washington might be

professional football team because holy cow if you took a snapshot of the nfc e standings right now on september the 18th 2020 there is one team at top those standings sitting there at a beautiful one and oh and everybody else in the division has no wins and it is against all odds literally Washington might be professional team is sitting in that place. And we did talk about, you know, how Washington, with the defensive talent that they possess, could give the Eagles a game. Now, it was a weird game because Washington,

on all of its scoring drives, and I believe that you covered this with the homie Verno earlier this week, they didn't score any points when they started to drive from their side of the 50. All of the points that they scored, all 27 points came from. One of the touchdowns is a pick six, but the remainder

was because they got the ball in Eagles territory. And it was a very opportunistic Washington team. They did a great job of keeping the pressure off of Haskins. And he was able to you know, dink and dunk around and not

have to do anything uncomfortable. And they just really rode that that defense. Now, Carson Wentz did aid and abet the outcome. And in Eagle territory, there's some grumbling. I'm hearing some Carson Wentz grumbling. A little bit of a little bit of Carson Wentz slander out there. I don't know what to tell you, Sharpie. I'm hearing it. What's your view on what happened there? Look, Carson Wentz clearly needs to clean some things up with his game. That's totally understandable. But none of these people were talking about that when the Eagles were up 17 to nothing, and Carson was throwing bombs down the field to Jalen Rager, bombs to the end

zone to Dallas Goddard. So the fickle nature of fans, I understand that, and I also understand that it appears that oftentimes Carson has a boneheaded play. He or there in a tight situation that costs them. He sometimes tries to do too much. One of the interesting things, like let's break this game down a little bit, because it's important to understand this for handicapping and discussing this Rams game. Okay, the Eagles were without their starting running back in terms of Miles Sanders. Right.

When you have a lead in a game, naturally, especially 17 points, you're in the second half, you want to try to run the football a little bit. Get that clock going, save your quarterback. Maybe you build the lead with passing, but then you kind of grow the lead, expand it by balance and running.

But when you don't have a number one running back, and you've got multiple offensive linemen that are down, your run game may not do anything. And in turn, you actually have to throw the football more. And we saw, you know, they were struggling to run the football. They had a 12 personnel, the Eagles averaged only 3.1 yards per carry. That's their primary personnel grouping is 12, especially without Alshan Jeffrey there. They used 66% of their plays came from 12.

And you guys know, that means two tight ends. You only have two wide receivers out on the football field. When they ran on occasion from 11, they averaged 4.5 yards per carry with a 0% success rate. So these runs did not gain first downs. They were not productive runs, even though they had a slightly higher yards per carry. So they couldn't kind of like just end the game. They couldn't kind of drive the nail home because they had no run game. So they had to keep passing the football.

The hard part for them is that they ended up throwing the ball with this massive depth of target. You know, they get this new receiver. Last year, this team missed, and for several years now, has missed a deep threat. They finally have Deshawn Jackson, who's up and running and can go. Now, he didn't get the full load of snaps. They're going to work them into it. Yeah, 50% snap rate. But they had Jalen Rager out there, and they had such a deep depth of target.

They were throwing the ball way down the field. Well, that works when you have a good line that can block. But when your line is bad, the last thing that you want to be doing is hanging around in the pocket waiting for a route to develop down the field and bombing it down there. So I hope that they will play around a little bit more with their depth of target against the Rams. But here is the big thing for this game, Mr. House. The big thing for me is I watched that Sunday night game and I came away with concerns about the Rams from number of fronts. Let's first talk the Rams defense. Dallas ridiculously crushed them when they passed the ball on first down.

I mean, DAC was averaging, I think, like 10.8 yards per attempt. He had like an 89% success rate when he threw the ball on first down. Had they just kept throwing the ball on first down and playing more efficiently on first and second down from a play-calling perspective, they win this game. They win this game. But they went a little bit too conservative, ran the ball more. on the other side of the ball, I don't know what I saw out of that Rams offense.

This was a team that got far more conservative. They weren't throwing the ball down the field. They weren't pushing it. They were keeping it close, calling a lot of run plays from 12 personnel. Things that Sean McVeigh was not even doing back in 2018 when they went to the Super Bowl, three wide, spread the field,

all this play action, get Todd Gurley. They weren't doing any. They were using a lot of 12 personnel and running the ball. They're 12 personnel usage. tweeted out a stat, let me pull it up because I thought this was fascinating, just like looking through their rate of 11 personnel and how it's declined since 2018. They were at 93% 11 personnel on early downs, quarters 1 to 3 back in that 2018 season. Last year it dropped to 69% this year. It's down to 59%. Now granted, it's just one game, but they aren't as aggressive, like putting the pedal to the

metal. They had up-tempo their first drive of the game. After that, they went very conservative, So I have concerns about their aggression, about their belief in Jared Goff, about what they're going to try to do offensively here. And the final key to this, in my opinion, is just the matchup itself, as long as we get some players back for the Eagles, which have been practicing and looks like they're in better shape from a health perspective. This Rams defense, we talked about it earlier this offseason, is weak at linebacker. They lost Corey Littleton, the best coverage linebacker in the game. They're very weak at linebacker. Dallas threw a few times from 12 personnel. They were four for four for 10.3 yards per attempt, a 10.7 passer rating, 75% success rate.

But they hardly threw from 12. They used a lot of 11 because that's where their personnel is best. They got three stud wide receivers. But the other thing is Blake Jarwin goes down. So you don't have a tight end now that you can reliably throw the football to. what do the Eagles have? They got two tight ends. Who's going to cover these tight ends? Most time it's a big safety or it's a linebacker. So now you got matchup advantages with the linebackers on who aren't good in coverage against your tight ends who are great in Philadelphia,

very good tight ends in Philadelphia. You got backs out of the backfield that can work in matchups. I think the Eagles have a realistic shot here of winning this game. But meanwhile, what does everybody think? we just saw Sunday night football, the Cowboys were favored, and the Rams pulled out this upset. The Rams must be really freaking good, and Philly must really suck because they lost to the football team

who doesn't even have an actual nickname. Gambling gurus, quick break from the show. The Ringer NFL show this week is brought to you by our good pals at Fandul's Sportsbook. By now you have definitely heard about Fandual Sportsbooks, world-class sports betting app. Fanduil makes it easier to find and place your bets.

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bet you want. If you win, you keep the cash. If you lose, you get your entire bet up to $1,000. It comes back to you in sight credit. We are looking at games this week, me and Warren Sharp. He's the Sharpie. I'm the average, Joe. We're looking at a couple of favorites, even though week two who is not favorite week, I still like the Kansas City Chiefs. I still like the Baltimore Ravens. I want to go to my comfortable place. We have the Ringer mega contest still out there.

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rum with natural flavors and spices. 35% alcohol by volume. Well, there is also, if you're wanting to back the Eagle side, a trend that you mentioned on Wednesday's show with Verno that also really speaks to kind of the over. overreaction element of people watching week one. And that is 0 and 1 teams going up against

one and oh teams and getting points from those one and oh teams. And, you know, the Eagles were in that position before it settled in here at the pickum. And that lands at like a 63% rate. Isn't that the stat like since 2003, something like that? Yeah, absolutely. These are good bets because people are looking to bet on what they just saw. That is a big thing that we're going to cover week in and week out. But actually, this is an interesting time to mention this. I was going to save it for later in the show because we were talking with Craig over the pre-show stuff about just betting a bunch of favorites this week, right? Like, why not just bet a bunch of favorites because they look good last week? They're favorite again this week. Don't we think that they're going to cover the spread?

So now is a good time to like weave this into the discussion. Let me ask you, What time of the year, house, and this is just going to be, I don't care if you get it wrong. I probably might have gotten it wrong. I'm almost certainly going to get it wrong. Please. What time of the year, let's pick like beginning, middle and end. Let's just break up the season into three chunks like that. It's the easiest.

Beginning, middle and end, when do you think, if you were just like a pigeon and you're just blindly betting on favorites, okay, what is the best time of the season to do that? Would it be at the beginning of the season, the middle of the season, or the end of the season? What's the best time to do it and what's the worst time to do it? I believe the best time to do it is the end of season and the worst time to do it is the beginning of the season. Okay. So you got the second part right. The worst time to do it is actually at the beginning of the season. I went back and looked at the last 10 years. Okay. So just in general, let me just say this. Favorite. in week two have only covered 44.7% against the spread, period. Okay, that's just big picture number.

Let's just throw it out there. That's what favorites have covered. Now, the five worst weeks to bet on favorites blindly out of over those 10 years are weeks two, three, four, six, and 10. Okay? Two, three, four, six, and ten. The best time to blindly bet favorites is not at the end of the year is actually right smack dab in the middle of the year. The five best weeks to bet on favorites, I mean, look how this lines up. Weeks seven, eight, nine, 11, and 15. Now, you don't want to be an idiot and just bet on favorites just because this is what's happened over the last 10 years. And so I should be, nobody wants to do that. They've covered 56% of the time during those weeks that I mentioned. That's going to win you.

money, but that's a stupid way to bet on sports. It's just like, oh, well, this is a middle of the season, so I'm going to bet favorites. Absolutely not. But I'm just giving you the background as to this is the worst time of the year to actually blindly just bet favorites or pick favorites. So there's got to be logical reasons and support from a matchup perspective or a value perspective or a public perception that we're fading because of what we just saw. And so there's line value inherent in these things for us to want to back favorites, just like any week. But, you know, we know that they looked good last week. That's why they're favored.

The odds maker isn't, you know, going to give us anything for free here. We got to work for it. Well, I love that sort of background for the next game that I want to talk about, which is Minnesota, Indianapolis, because those two teams are both kind of, you know, in a sad sack status, right? Both teams greatly disappointed their fan bases. Both were favored coming into the week. Both of them were favored by more than three points coming into week one.

Indy was the biggest favorite on the board. And Minnesota favored to win the NFC North and also favored to get to nine and a half or ten wins. And you were all over this when we talked a week ago. You expressed great skepticism around the Minnesota defense. and lo and behold, the Minnesota defense looked absolutely lost out there. So Sharpie, I love the Colts minus the three at home. It feels like at this, it's kind of silly to say it's a crucial stage of the season for both teams

because you cannot start off the season at O and 2 and have hopes of making the playoffs, even with the expanded playoff format, right? Yeah, I think you have around, 11% chance. Maybe it's 12 if we want to round up to make the postseason by starting off 0 and 2. It's very slim pickings. And you're absolutely right about that Colts game. I'm not going to sit here and say that when a team gives up to opposing quarterback 19 of 20, right, for 173 yards and three touchdowns, which is what the Colts defense gave up to Baker, that you slam Donk deserve to win. But what I will say is this, the Colts offense got extremely unlucky.

Philip Rivers, I don't think people realize this. Okay, Philip Rivers playing in his first game with brand new talent surrounding him, receivers, all of that. He threw for the most yards of any quarterback in the NFL last week, 363 yards, the most of any quarterback in the NFL. Not those interceptions were not all of his fault, and they did not punt the ball a single time. So when you have all of those things go for you, it really does take sort of an aberration by your opponent, and that's exactly what happened when Jacksonville was able to win that game. Now, an interesting note about Frank Reich, every single season that he's been in Indy, three different quarterbacks, Andrew Luck, Jacoby Brissette, now Philip Rivers,

they've lost the first game of the season. They've lost the first game. And the two prior times, they have come back and won their next game. I think it's because Frank Reich makes very good adjustments and can do so very quickly. Some coaches, you may know some of them by name. You may have a suspicion about them. But they are slow to make adjustments. And their teams kind of wallow around before they're like, well, fine, we'll do something

bold and we'll change this up and we'll, you know, make a modification. Frank Wright does those things in week two. He makes those changes quickly, whatever he thinks, and usually he's right and his teams have cut won both of those games. Now, this is not some sort of bet, oh, I'm just going to bet this because he's lost his first game and he won his second. That is too small of a sample size, but the point being, there's good vibes there with the way that he is able to adjust. The other thing that I like about the Colts, I like efficiency. You'll find on this show that I'm not a fan of a particular team. What I'm a fan of is efficient football. If you're a team and your coach is making efficient play calls and decisions, I will support you. If your coach on a team is doing

dumb things, making inefficient play calls, I will get on their case. The Indianapolis Colts passed the ball on 61% of early downs in the first three quarters. That was the third highest rate of any team in the NFL. And those passes were extremely productive. 60% success, 8.5 yards per attempt. So we're not talking, oh, Philip Rivers threw for the most yards, but he just was chucking the ball all over the place. This was a very efficient passing attack well above average, and they passed the ball a lot. You know where Minnesota was in terms of pass rate? The lowest in the NFL. Dead last. The lowest in the NFL. You're absolutely. right house. They were 36%

pass by far the lowest in the NFL. They called passing plays on just 36% of their week one plays outside the fourth quarter. The league average was 53%. And immediately showing the ill effects of no longer having Stefan Diggs out there

in the split. And they were conservative last year too, but not having Stefan Diggs just further emphasizes to Gary Kubiak, let's run the ball. And especially the worst thing is when you run the ball, and you're gaining like four and a half to five yards of carry early on in the game. They're just like, man, we could just stick with this, you know?

Meanwhile, like you're gaining like 10 yards of pass, but you're just like, wow, this run game, we're not taking sacks. We can just run the ball for it. And it's really an inefficient way to play football based upon the current rules constructs. Now, I don't like the injury to Jack Doyle. That's a problem for the Indianapolis Colts. They're dealing with that. They had a couple of their guys pop up on the injury report just today that weren't even

showing up on the injury report on Wednesday. But I think they're built to withstand that. They have Mo Ali Cox, who you are from the DMV. So I don't know if you extend far enough to VCU. Do you extend far enough to VCU? Only in the sense that I'm a huge fan of Richmond, very underrated food scene in Richmond, Virginia. Great golf down there.

And terrific music. terrific music down in Richmond, Virginia. So I get a little shout out for VCU. It's not the DMB. It doesn't count as a DMB. But I have a feeling that Mo's got some VCU roots. He does. Now, he's not shaking the go-go with you up in D.C.

Right. But what he is doing is he played for Shaka Smart. If you remember when Shaka Smart coached basketball, that we're getting off track a little bit. But he is the all-time leader in field goal percentage for VCU, currently. He was a four-year starter at VCU. He led VCU to its first ever A-10 championship with Shaka Smart Dare coaching him. He is a Hooper. He is a basketball dude that did not play football since his freshman year in high school. This is an incredible story. Why is he playing

professional football now? So Chris Ballard is a really creative guy. who somehow scouted him, found out about him after the draft. They signed him after the draft. They obviously didn't draft him because he wasn't playing any football. He played basketball in college. Signed him, and they've slowly started working him in. He really didn't do very much. He caught two balls last week, targeted twice, caught both of them.

But Frank Wright this offseason said that he was a dominating presence that was picking up on his route running, very improved from that perspective because he's super wrong. raw. So, you know, I always hesitate. Jack Doyle is not going to jump off on like the spark scores. He's not the super talented guy with high, you know, jumping height or catch radius or any of these types of things, you know, his vertical is nowhere near what Mo Ali Cox is. But Moe Alley Cox's football IQ is nowhere near Jack Doyle. So I'm not sitting here and being like, oh, well, this is basically Antonio Gates just stashed in the basement and Chris Ballard dug him out and they're going to be starting this ridiculously great tight end. My point is, though, that we might get some efficiency out of him, but they're going to

stick with their three wide receiver sets a lot. The Colts are going to stick with their three wide receiver sets a lot. And you know what crushed the Minnesota Vikings last week was the Green Bay Packers using three wide receiver sets. Aaron Rogers averaged 9.2 yards per pass attempt. They had a 62% success rate when he passed the ball out of 11 personnel. This is, Indianapolis used to be a 12 personnel team. If they had Eric Ebron and Jack Doyle and both were up, they would be using a lot of 12. Keep in mind that Frank Reich came from Philadelphia

where they used a lot of tight ends. He was trying to duplicate that a little bit here in Indianapolis, but they don't have the tight ends this year. So they've adapted and gone to a lot more 11. I think they're still going to have some success here. I'm very concerned about this Minnesota Vikings defense. We bet them under on their win total. We bet against them week one.

And I think this is a team that's just in a lot of trouble defensively, even though Mike Zimmer is the NFL's best against the spread coach following a loss. He's 23 and 14. He's really good following a loss. But there's just too many new pieces on that defense, man. I just think that that's going to be a tall order for them to get things together in such a short turnaround. Yeah, the Colts only laying the three points is what makes this so appealing to me. but the reason I'm tapping the brakes is the stat you just mentioned. And in tapping the brakes, I just mean I might wager a little on it. I'm not going to go heavy on it.

And the other thing is I feel like the Colts defense remains a giant question mark. Letting Gardner Minshu go 19 for 20 against you and control the outcome of the game in the fourth quarter like that, not being able to get a stop when you absolutely have to have a stop. It just shakes the confidence a little bit. That's all. That's all I'm saying. It should. It should. I agree.

This is not, we are in week two. There's a lot of question marks still to be answered. And I do not think that you should feel super confident about a lot of things right now. You got to have. I'm glad you said that because let's talk about some plays that that might make some sense this week. Now, I don't have anything in the way of totals that jumps off the page at me. All of the total opportunities are our. already off the board. You have to bet the totals on Monday or Tuesday. And, you know, this,

this podcast is up on Friday. We want all of our gambling gurus, all our wagers, wizards of the wagering to take what we have to say and process it into their Sunday action. But totals, the, the most interesting total to me was the Miami total. It already went from 43 down to 41, I think I saw. And there was one other total that already moved two or two and a half point. So the opportunities with totals are gone unless you have a terrific book somewhere in Thailand or something. I don't know. Somebody that's going to really hook you up with some great juice. Well, let me tell you real quick about totals, right? So we know, and you know this too, because you like to bet a lot of money, I know, and you can't get as much down as you would

like early in the week because the limits are low and the limits rise later in the week. And so when somebody's betting on Monday morning and they're moving a line, let's pretend you've got a total and it's at 50. And you place, and let's say the limits are $2,000. You place one bet and you follow up with another bet on that game at 50 and you're betting, let's pretend you're going over the total at 50. You might make those couple limit bets. It might move to 51.

The book's getting a little scared. Why is this sharp account betting my over multiple times? They must really like it. And so they're going to move to 51. on. They might even go beyond that potentially if enough other books start moving in that direction too. Like if you got the ability to bet at a few different spots and you're coordinating the timing of it all so that you're hitting these books all at once, a bunch of these books might move. And some of the other guys just move on steam on air and they don't want to be far off the market.

They see somebody smashing the over. And so they're going to go there. But if you were to place that same $2,000 wager on Saturday, the book's not going to do anything. They're Their limit might be $5,000, $10,000. You know, it's hard to say what book and what their limits specifically are. But the point being that it's easier to move lines at the beginning of the week. It's harder at the end. And the overall point is that it's too early in the season to really know what the intention of some of these moves are. I will tell you this with 100% certainty.

No public bets are moving these numbers on Monday and Tuesday. That's not how the market works. It's betting groups are moving these numbers, and sometimes they're moving them because they actually like the side that they're betting, and other times they're moving them to set stuff up to come back. So, for example, there may be some totals that moved in a certain direction that you're like, man, I really like that. Now I can't get it.

Or you might be like, wow, why is this moving in this direction? I kind of like the other side. the point is that this number may come back to where it was at open by the end of the week by Sunday morning. And the way that it's moving right now, well, now it's Friday, so it's a little bit different. But where it may move right now, like in the future, is not necessarily the same move as what was coming in on Monday where they were trying to set something up. So I just want people to be aware that some guys sit there and they try to say, oh, well, I know this is sharp because I saw the screen and it opened here and now it's there. And so it must be the sharp position.

And if you think that that's the case, I got some news for you. That's not necessarily always the case. There's setups that happen all the time in the NFL and you can't just look at the screen and figure out what's sharp. Nothing is that simple. Man, I love, I could just sit here. and listen. The lessons, we need a name for these, these kinds of segments, the deep, sharp lesson, the sharp intel. I don't know. We're going to come up with a name for this. You see money. We got to come up with the name for when Sharpie goes deep with us on how these markets behave. This is some market intelligence that the average Joe out there cannot otherwise access and really get a full understanding of what's going on. Well, let me tell you, we just went through a full

analysis of why you don't try and bet favorites in week two. And all that I want to do now is take a look at a couple of favorites. I want to go to a comfortable place. I just want to be in a safe place. You know what? You know what, House? This is a funny thing. You would think differently about betting these teams and laying these points if they weren't called favorites. Think about that. What if What if when you had to lay points, it was called taking the dog? And what if when you were catching points, it was called getting the favorite or being the vetting the favorite. Right.

I know. Just the terminology is steered to make the public want to lay points. It's just if you've never thought of that, about that, it is 100% true. The psychology of it is quite brilliant. So I want to wager on the Chiefs and the Texans this week. I saw both teams last week. They validated everything that we thought about them coming into the season. They kicked us and they took names.

I love the position that they're in with respect to the teams that they're up against. The Chiefs are laying eight and a half at San Diego. If you tease them, you get through seven and three. You get all the way down from eight and a half to two and a half. Andy Reed, while at Kansas City, he has a terrific against the spread record on the road. He has a particularly good record within the division in games against Anthony Lynn. He's 4-1-1 in divisional games against Anthony Lynn. He's 66, 44, and 3 against the spread on the road.

He's 33, 22, and 1 against the spread with eight or more days between games. Like a lot of good Andy Reid mojo out there. And I don't have to lay all eight and a half. If I can get through the seven and the three with the tease, the question is who to pair that Chiefs tease are with. And why wouldn't I just go ahead and do it with the Ravens? Why don't I just tease the Ravens from the seven down to the one? I get through three there.

And basically it feels like I'll let you explain to me why the math doesn't necessarily support this. it feels like it's cheaper to do the T's than to lay out the cash on a Baltimore money line bet because the money line bet is whatever it is probably close to 360 or 400 or something. I haven't looked at it. I don't have it up right now. But that's that's where, that's the, the play that I'm sort of chewing on. It's Friday. I'm looking at Sunday. I want something comfortable in week two. What do you think about, about just a regular old square t's like that.

So you're right, it is comfortable. Like, it's a reassuring feeling. Oh, my God, I got Patrick Mahomes and Lamar Jackson. They basically just have to win the game. And so, like, this is a slam dunk. And they may easily do that. Nothing is a slam dunk. That's right.

Let's break down the chiefs. You threw out a bunch of really good stats for the audience there with how good Andy Reid is. And this does come down to a lot of coaching. And we talked earlier about how they didn't even play. play their best football and they still were able to win easily in week one. Now they're playing this Chargers team. Now, let's think about what we just saw. We just watched this Cincinnati Bengals team who played the Chargers. And the Chargers struggled to run the football against

the Cincinnati Bengals. Meanwhile, we watched the Browns just roll for 200 plus rushing yards against these guys. They couldn't. They tried to run out the clock and they couldn't. They kept scoring touchdowns running the football. They scored too fast. They ran right through tackles. This is, this was the worst run defense in the NFL last year. And yet they were slowing down this Chargers offense last week. So that is a problem for the Chargers. Now, the other thing that I think is interesting here, attacked us from a different angle, because I could lay out a million reasons why Patrick Mahomes is phenomenal. Let's talk about their defense. This defense with Steve Spagnol, has really improved from the first half of the season last year to the second half of the season.

And we obviously saw what they did last week. Once that script ran out, the Houston Texans scored some garbage time stuff, but they were really limited. Spags used to work with Tyrod Taylor. He faced him once back in 2015. So let's go back to that point in time because Tyrod's now the Chargers starting quarterback. After Tyrod started out the season, 2 and 1 in Buffalo, that Bill's team was averaging 33 points a game, those three games. Then he goes up against Spags.

Now, Spags worked with Tyrod in Baltimore prior to this. Spags and the Giants hold the Bill's offense to just three points through three quarters. This was a team that is averaging 33 points. They scored just three points through three quarters. The Giants who were catching six points, one, 24 to 10 in Buffalo. Okay, Spaggs knows Tyrod. Tyrod does not look nearly as dynamic running the football right now. And there's a lot of things going in favor of Mahomes and the extra rest with Andy Reed and all of those sorts of things.

So there's a few different ways that you can play this game. You can do the very smart approach, which what you're doing, which is they're perfect in a teaser, which they are. But then you have to pair it with somebody. And you're like, who do I figure out how to pair? with. The other thing that you can do is you can look at some things with favorites and some of the historical performances from these favorites. And we know that favorites in general may not be the best bets this time of year, but larger favorites have actually not done terribly in this point in the season. And this is a very large favorite. You could just lay the eight and a half

and say, screw it. I'm just laying the points here. But there's another way that you could do this as well. And that could be you can sell points. I don't know if you, are you familiar with the concept? Have you ever sold points before? I, I haven't had that offered up to me. My book isn't sophisticated enough. Okay. So if your book is, there are some books that you're able to actually sell points. And what you can do is you can, hey, I don't want to lay eight and a half. I think this is a 14 to 17 point win at its closest. Could be 20 point win if you feel really strongly. If you really sit here and think that this is a team,

this team's going to crush, okay, then take the value of a teaser, try to find somebody else to pair it with, but also sell some points. You can take back up to plus 130 if you sell them from eight and a half to 10 and a half. Sell two points. Yeah, you're crossing over the 10.

That's why there's a difference. when you sell up to 10 versus to 10 and a half, you get a little bit more payback on that number of 10 and a half. But it's an option out there and you need to explore all the options that you have when you're betting on sports. I love this. So I'm going to investigate that option. I love it.

I am definitely going to go ahead and pair up the Chiefs with the Ravens. The Ravens 8 and 1 against the spread and their last nine against the AFC. the Ravens beat the crap out of Houston last year. Houston stinks at home for some reason. They're three and seven against the spread and their last 10 home games. The only thing, there's a curious stat out there about Bill O'Brien with extra time. Again, it's a small sample size. But for whatever reason, when he has, you know, that like the eight to 10 days,

he's got a good number against the spread. But I like teasing Baltimore down to just one and pair that up with the chiefs. We're going to do that. That's going to be as comfortable as some macaron. and cheese on a nice Sunday afternoon. I'll look into this buying the points thing, and then I'm going to do a tiny thing on the Colts because I'm not going to quit you, Philip Rivers.

That's where I think I'm going to land on the dance card. I do not think you need to quit. There is nothing that I saw week one. There's question marks around Philip Rivers, and people saw him lose, and people saw him throw an interception. So they're really going to be asking a lot of questions about Philip Rivers.

there is absolutely nothing I saw that game. Maybe later in the season, if his arm falls off or something, then we can obviously ask questions. But right now, there is nothing I saw from that game that should make me say, ooh, I don't like Philip in this offense. I want to start betting against him. There's zero reason to do that just because they lost to the Jaguars. Yeah, just because they lost to the Jaguars and ruined my dance card.

I'm not ready to quit your Colts. Let's do this, Sharpie. Week two winners. We've given them out. Let's take care of business. I agree. I think we're in for a lot of overreactions this week, you know, based upon what people saw. And I think you've got some good angles here. I'm proud that you are not anchoring any of these things. Just because you love the Chiefs, don't tie all these other bets into it Sunday morning once you wake up. I promise I won't do it. Stay disciplined. And I want to hear some better results from. you're wagering next week and, you know, we'll keep rolling. I think we've got an interesting

slate of games and that Sunday night game is absolutely going to be incredible when Bill Belichick goes on to take Russell Wilson and he's got Cam Newton in his corner this time. I'm so intrigued to find out if they're going to run the ball as much as they were doing previously, if they're going to try to attack the linebackers and the secondary a little bit more through the air of Seattle's defense and then conversely, we've got Seattle's offense, which went way more pass heavy. But one of the things they were doing house is they were throwing the ball really short. I'm intrigued to see if they're still able to get away with that game plan or if Bill Belichick will make some defensive adjustments now that it's not shocking anybody.

I couldn't believe the defensive coordinator for the Atlanta Falcons said, we weren't preparing for Russell Wilson. We were preparing for them to run Chris Carson when they didn't do that. we were underprepared to deal with Russell Wilson. Like, the words that come out of these coaches' mouths sometimes, I have no concept of why somebody would go up against Russell Wilson and not prepare to deal with one of the best quarterbacks that we have in the NFL, whether or not he's passing at a 60% rate or a 50% rate, the way that the CIOCs are beating you is generally from what Russell Wilson is doing.

So that should be the number one thing that you have to prepare yourself for. No Bill Belichick will absolutely do that, but they have defensive losses that I don't think, you know, from a personnel perspective that Ryan Fitzpatrick and this Dolphins offense really weren't able to exploit. Seattle's offense may be a little bit different. I think that game is going to be outstanding house. I can't wait to see that to cap things off on Sunday night

and then obviously be back with you next week to talk about some of our reactions and some week three bets. Hopefully a little improvement to the bank roll. Sharpie, you're always teaching. I'm always reaching. Podcast pals. That is our show. Stick around after the outro music here.

You want to hear a quick trailer for the Ringer Fantasy Football Show. Until next week, my gambling gurus. Fantasy football is back and you don't want your team to suck. My favorite fantasy football punishment

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