The Ringer NFL Show - Super Wild Card Weekend Bets

Episode Date: January 7, 2021

Warren Sharp and Joe House break down every game from the super wild card weekend, and Joe House begins his journey to go 13-0 in playoff bets this year. Bills - Colts (14:50) Rams - Seahawks (31:55) Washington Football Team - Buccaneers (45:35) Ravens - Titans (1:02:04) Bears - Saints (1:14:35) Browns - Steelers (1:22:35) Hosts: Warren Sharp and Joe House Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, hey, everybody on today's episode of the Ringer NFL show, it is super wild card weekend. Warren Sharp and I are breaking down every one of the six games. We are beginning the journey, the quest to go 13 and 0 in playoff bets. We're giving out angles on every one of the six games along with a couple bonus angles. Stick around. Welcome to the Ringer NFL show. I'm Warren Sharp. I'm joined as I always am by Joe House and House.

We have a big announcement to make off the top, my friend. Sharpie, it is the wildest wild card weekend. So you know how we get down. I might call it super wild card weekend. Super wild card weekend. You know how we get down here at the Ringer this weekend immediately following the final game Saturday and the final game Sunday. the Ringer NFL show will be going live on Saturday.

You can watch that not just listen to, but watch Kevin Clark and Ryan Rissillo. And then on Sunday, Kevin Clark and Nora Pichati will be breaking down every single playoff match up. Make sure you are subscribed to the Ringer's YouTube channel at YouTube.com slash the Ringer. And of course, you are following us on the Twitter machine

at Ringer NFL. All right, Sharpie, so that's the business in the books. We've got everybody lined up for taking down what has happened over the weekend. But we have some prognosticating to do, my friend, this is the quest to go 13 and O. Are you ready for these playoffs? My friend, some could say I've been waiting for a year. year for this moment. It is the most wonderful time of the year. Some people thought that, you know,

a couple weeks ago, Christmas, New Year's was the most wonderful time. This really is, they call it super wild card weekend. I love you add the super to it. It makes it sound extravagant. And they do have six games this weekend for us. Typically, I love the divisional round because you had four teams resting at home, getting healthy. The best of the best in the NFL, the two teams in each conference that had a buy, rejoin the rest of the group that had to do. Rejoin the rest of the group that advance from Wildcard weekend. But I got to tell you, it is kind of nice to have six teams and only one sitting at home resting. It is going to be a brilliant weekend. And I'm really excited to break down these games with you because I think there's a lot of interesting angles and

matchups here. I don't typically love House divisional rematch games. We've seen these teams play a couple times already. I'd rather see some new intriguing matchups. But I got to tell you, I don't know how many cups of coffee I've had so far today. And I need them. It's fun to help some of these guys with ideas for the postseason and see if it's successful out on the football field. So I'm really looking forward to these games and obviously extremely anxious at the same time. Yeah, well, I will tell you,

I could tell how excited you were going to be for today's show, because I heard you on with the Podfather on the BS podcast. you and Simmons talking a little bit about what to anticipate further down the road in terms of potential matchups. And it was a pretty chalky conversation, but that's fine. Nothing, you know, no games have been played yet. And all of the possibilities, the variables out there are intriguing. But one thing that left out of that conversation that really hit home, this, my friend Warren Sharp, is a test of our relationships. Our loved ones, are really having to make a sacrifice for us this weekend because at 1255 in the afternoon,

on both Saturday and Sunday, I am going to disappear and I will reconnect with my family probably around midnight on both days. Is your family also known as a pillow in your bed? They're going to be long asleep before you talk to them until the next morning. Well, this is right. I mean, I might have to sneak in and give the 10-year-old a kiss on the head and, you know, just, you know, some kind of nice gesture for my wife. I'm probably going to have to come up with flowers, some kind of chocolate, something on Monday morning needs to be waiting for my wife, which comes downstairs in the kitchen. Wow.

That's a good idea. That's a good idea. For my family, it's going to be business as usual. I'm always like zoned out, just in the bunker working. And that typically not quite as hard on Saturdays, but it's still usually pretty crazy because actually Saturdays is a day that I'm doing advance work for the next week's games when I'm working for teams. So I spend like Friday nights and Saturdays working on advanced stuff for like the following

weeks games. But now we're going to be watching games all day, Saturday. all day Sunday. It's actually easier, though, House. The interesting thing is you've got some live betting opportunities, some in-game waging opportunities. It's a lot easier to spot those and act upon them because you're actually watching every game. I really am reluctant. There's some people who follow along with games or watch the Red Zone only. I don't know. I don't want to alienate like two-thirds of our audience here, but I just don't understand watching the Red Zone. I can't fathom trying to keep up with the

NFL and just watch the red zone. It makes no sense to me. But yeah, there's some people who do that and then try also to live bet. And that's not a good idea. But this is a good opportunity. You're watching every single game. But I would highly encourage you. If you're doing this live betting, only do it during commercial breaks. That's the only time you're going to get a true line because everybody else is like 10 seconds ahead of you if you're just watching on TV. So they already have some ideas. They'll set some faulty numbers there on the. their line. So just live bet during commercials to get the most fair and accurate numbers from the books. See, we didn't even have a sharp points lined up for this week's conversation. And there

it is. You just gave it out. This week's sharp points. Please feel free to go ahead and do some live betting. But as Brother Sharp, just advise, wait till commercial. So you make sure you're getting something fair. So we have talked about on this pod over the course of the season that will mostly live betting is pretty slanted against the better over the regular kind of the regular season. It still is. It's still. It's still. It's, it's still is 100% um, it's difficult to pick your spots. But the point being that the, the times that you want to live bed or you might be interested in doing that would be when you're actually watching the game. And because there's nothing overlapping any of these games are all standalone. Everybody out there can actually watch

these games. And then number two, you just want to make. sure that you're not getting screwed, getting a bet mid-series or something like that when the lines aren't fair enough. So just make sure you're doing it during a break. There's a strategy call right out of the box. I'm interested in, and I don't know the answer to this. We did not discuss this by email or in our pre-show conversation. What do you warn Sharp and the folks that you work with? How do you approach the playoffs in terms of your betting strategy. Is it the same in terms of just looking for value opportunities selectively? Or do you increase the number of bets that you make? Is there an increase in the amounts?

How do you guys approach the playoffs? Well, that's a really good question. So I approach things as if I know more than the sports books do in many cases because I have more time to research these games. And I have more time to analyze things that in every single game that I may not get to during a course of a 16 game, you know, regular week when I have some other responsibilities and you just can't dive into this level of detail. And certainly like my track record has shown that I've been able to do that and have success and beat these guys. I do better. I am more successful betting in the postseason than I am even during the regular season. So in terms of my win rates up in a nice high comfortable rate.

So I am looking for other types of derivative bets. And you'll see that some house this week. I'm looking for some derivative bets that are. What that means is I'm not just looking at, well, yeah, Buffalo minus six and a half or over 51, right? There's other ways to attack the game besides just taking the standard bets that are on the very first page. of your sports book when you go to bet the game, you click a button. It's called more wagers.

And now you have other ways to bet on this game. And some of those provide better angles, more opportunities, especially as you dig into matchups and research some things a little bit more. So I am betting a lot on these games. I'm betting more angles on these games and more derivatives. And it's a lot of fun. It's a ton of fun.

Yeah, just because you have this opportunity to deploy your information. advantage in a more direct way because you said it. There's just less games. Yeah, but let me also tell you this, like for a public's perspective, number one, the lines obviously are a little bit sharper in general. Like the sides are going to be a little bit sharper because the books have fewer games to handicap. Number two, the public has a little bit more say in some of these games because it's almost like every single one of these games, especially when you get down to four games and then the conference championship games. It's like a standalone Sunday night football game during the regular season or a Monday night football game, right? Like everybody who

likes to bet on football is betting on that particular game. And some of these guys are betting higher dollar amounts because these are good teams. These are teams that they're used to seeing. These are teams that have, I mean, they're not going to be in the playoffs if they're not covering spreads for you. So, you know, you have an affinity to bet the Buffalo bills because they covered seven or eight in a row. And so you're like, oh, my God, I know this team really well. I'm going to bet a lot of money. And I see you breaking stuff over at your house there. You're on the Buffalo Bill's train. There you go. There you go. So there's a confidence level that increases amongst the public. They put more money into the marketplace on every single one of these

games than typical. So there's opportunities to fade the public to go against some of the little half point line move that the public might have influenced that you can get, which you wouldn't have been able to get during the regular season on a random 1 p.m. Sunday afternoon game. So there are some opportunities to do some different things. And this is the one time when I will say that the public has a little bit more of an influence over the final result of a number. Now, if you're talking about a big move, like the Pittsburgh Steelers opening at three and a half and now are sitting at five and a half or six, like that's not from the public, right? The public doesn't move numbers that far, but you are going to get slight tweaks from the public that you wouldn't be able to recognize most of the time during the season.

All right. Well, look, we've been doing this, you know, through all 17 weeks of the regular season, we've really been building to this moment. And through the course of those 17 weeks, many, many times we talked about bets that I liked, bets that you liked, things that we might play. we never really during the course of regular season bit down hard and said, yes, we are affirmatively going to do this. This is the house and sharp preferred angle on this particular game or situation. I mean, there were a couple instances where we had, you know, pretty vigorous agreement. But for the purposes of these playoffs, I want us for each game.

There are 13 games starting with Saturday, the Buffalo Bills and the Indianapolis Colts running through the Super Bowl, I want to have 13 winning bets. I want to see if we can do it. And, you know, it's our show. So we make the rules and we can pick what, whatever angle or situation we like. It could be a side. It could be a total. It could be a total in the first half. It could be a total in the second half. It could be a, um, a, a leg and a teaser, but, or just a plain old money line bet. I want to see if we can give out, uh, starting with this week. week. Let's see if we can give out six winning bets to all our betting buddies out there. What do you think? I think the best thing for me to do in this instance is to be the little devil and

angel on your shoulder. Okay. Okay. And I will whisper some things in support or sometimes, you know, I talk to guys that I work with and they are very negative. They're very reluctant about certain things, but they don't dislike it. We're just trying to provide reasons why something might fail. And oftentimes, it's easiest to try to figure out if you like something by focusing on the negative first. And if the negatives aren't that bad and you can work your way past the negatives, then you probably got something that is really good. So I will be the voice of reason to be positive or contrarian. And then you can decide if you still like that. And then you can decide if you still like that wager or not, but I will certainly try to try to help as I can for you to achieve this

landmark goal. But I think it's going to be very difficult for you to make it through here unscathes. But let's give it a shot. I mean, you never know. Yeah, why not? Right now we're zero and zero and anything is possible. We have six games. KG is in the house. Six games. Let's try and do this in 60 minutes. We'll see if we can give out some, some good advice and some good observations and maybe try and win a couple bucks along the way. The first game of the weekend, it is the Indianapolis Colts at the Buffalo Bills. You mentioned already, Buffalo laying six and a half. The total's 51 points. The Bill's first home playoff game in 25 years. And I think they're allowed to have what, did they say 10,000 fans, 5,000 fans?

They're letting some fans. Yeah. And the fact. is it really doesn't matter the number you're going to get probably some players families there and these guys are get to play in front of them for the first time. And that alone right there is special. And it doesn't matter if there was 30,000 or 10,000, like the fact that those guys get to play in front of some of their family and some fans that hopefully have jumped through through some tables at their house before they went to the stadium out because I'm guessing they're probably not going to allow tailgating. Most of these places don't. So jump through some tables, had a few adult beverages and are enjoying themselves, it's going to make for a fun atmosphere.

Yeah. And, and, you know, there's no reason for you and I to spend a bunch of time singing the praises of Buffalo. We were doing it each week on the show. Over the last 10 games, the bills are nine and one. Only lost coming on the Hail Murray to Kyle Murray, to Kyle Murray in Arizona. over those 10 games, the bills are second in the league in points scored. They're scoring just under 35 points a game. And their defense has been pretty good. Sixth in points allowed, they're allowing less than 21 points a game since the week 11 by. They have the largest point differential in the league, 229 points, 110 points.

You mentioned it. They're on a great streak against the spread, 8 and 0. and yet this Indianapolis Colts team feels like a spicy underdog. I mean, I really feel like I learned a lesson over the last half of the season, which is not to go against the bills under any circumstances. But these are a lot of points for an Indianapolis team that on the one hand disappointed me and frustrated me a bit because they let teams come back in. the games in the second half. The Colts were not a great second half team over the second half of

the season. We watched both the Ravens and the Steelers come back after Indianapolis opened up those games in really good form and looked like they had the formula to beat both of those quality teams. They ended up losing both of those games. And on top of that, the Jacksonville Jaguars put the, you know, put a scare in America. this past Sunday. I mean, the Colts went out, felt like it was going to be comfortable.

They let the Jaguar score two touchdowns. It was 20 to 14 with three and a half minutes left in this football game. The outcome very much in doubt. And then fortunately, John Taylor went on a run. They won by 14, covered in some spot. It was a push in some spots and they failed to cover in other spots.

But in any event, the the Colts have have been kind of frustrating this year. What is your take on this matchup? Well, let's approach you first from the Buffalo Bills perspective. If I'm the Buffalo Bills, we have got to be starting this game, passing the football on first down. Now, my narrative this whole season, my narrative for the listeners out there, this is nothing surprising for you. But I am a little bit down on the Indianapolis Colts defense compared

to many other people out there. So I'm sort of a fader of the Indianapolis Colts defense. And the one thing is a fact, though, they do get better on third down. They're very good on third down. But on first down, they are allowing two passes from 11 personnel since their week by a 70% success rate, 9.8 yards per attempt and plus 0.43 expected points added to first down passes in the first three quarters of games. That is like a blinking by sign for the Buffalo Bills and Brian Daibald to throw the football on first down and take advantage of this past defense that gets markedly better on second and third downs where on each of those downs, they have negative EPA allowed to 11 personnel on each of those downs.

downs and less than 48% success rate on both of those downs. So you want to be passing the football on first down. When I look at this game, though, when I look at this line, the line itself certainly looks to be a little bit inflated because of the 8-0 cover rate that Buffalo is undergone and everybody, myself included, leading the charge that this team is just a ridiculously great offense. I've shared it before. Recap, two key points. Only one of their team in NFL history has recorded at least 20 first downs every single game of the season. That was the 2012 New England Patriots. The Buffalo Bills are the second team to ever have done that. Number two, the Buffalo Bills have punted the second fewest times in NFL history for a 16 game season.

So this is a team that has done very well offensively. And everybody knows that by now. Everybody sees these high point totals. Everybody sees that they put up 50 freaking six points on what a lot of people thought probably until that game. I still think he's great, but I don't think he is the coach of the year. Brian Flores and his top ranked defense, right? I mean, how are you going to allow a backup quarterback to come in over half the game and put up that many points against you? I know some of it was defensive, but extremely impressive performance. So let's look at this number. We'll say the Indianapolis Colts have never been made an underdog of more than three points in any game this year. And now they're catching six and a half to seven points.

Right there alone is like, okay, this is a totally different category of line that you're putting on the Indianapolis Colts. Secondly, the counter to that house is that every single time they've been made in underdog, they've lost straight up and against the spread. So they've lost to the Browns, they've lost to the Steelers, and they've lost to the Baltimore Ravens. as an underdog. So when the odds maker makes these guys a dog, they're making these guys a dog for a reason. If you like the Indianapolis Colts, you got to start thinking in your mind, what is the path to victory here? You don't want to be down at halftime. If you are down at halftime, obviously, you know, you don't win many of your games, but the Colts have actually done a pretty good job of getting back into some games that they have trailed at halftime. I believe they've

been down at halftime in five games. And in those five games, they've actually gone three and two, if I'm not mistaken. But what's gotten them back in those games, obviously their offenses had to do something. But their defense has been on point with halftime adjustments. They've allowed just 5.6 second half points in these games when they're trailing at the half. Now, 5.6, we're talking about less than two field goals, obviously less than a touchdown. That's all they're allowing. Could the Buffalo Bill's offense score just 5.6 points in the second half here, probably unlikely. So, you know, you're not going to really have this massive adjustment that the Colts are going to make. It's going to completely foil the plans of the Buffalo Bill's offense.

You're going to have to do something in the first half here. The key, of course, is running the football, being well balanced, using Jonathan Taylor. The Indianapolis Colts have a very explosive rushing offense with Taylor of late. now they've played some bad run off run defenses the buffalo bills rank number 30 in the NFL at explosive run defense so they will give up some chunks on the ground um but i i think this game is interesting because i'm never going to count out the colts even if they're down at half time with the way that they can throw the ball and get back into games i am talking about the colts like we know the bills are great but the colts can throw the ball and get back into games and i don't

know what the bill's defense is i don't really know what he's of these defenses is, to be honest with your house, I think both are a little bit overrated. Well, and we've seen with our own two eyes, Indianapolis in particular, being susceptible to deep ball scores. That's how Pittsburgh ended up coming back against them. And that's in very recent memory. The thing that scares me with Indianapolis is their secondary, speaking of the defense, they haven't picked off a pass in three games, and they've allowed four of the past five opposing quarterbacks to throw for 315 yards or more. The other thing that concerns me if the Colts are behind is looking back at the Colts

schedule, the coldest game it looks like Rivers has played in, say, like, the last six or seven games was at Pittsburgh just after Christmas. it was a high of 42 degrees, but a bunch of those games in the latter half of the schedule were dome games. And we know Phil Rivers coming from San Diego and the West Coast didn't clock a ton of cold weather games. Right, Sharpie? No doubt about it. It looks to me like the last time that the Chargers played in a game with a temperature of 35 degrees or less.

They did it once in 2019. out in Denver where they lost 23 to 20. And they haven't done it prior to that since the 2014 season. So Philip Rivers obviously has aged a lot since 2014. And I am showing current that the current forecast is supposed to be the warmest at like midnight the night before. It slowly drops in temperature over the course of the day. And that when this game kicks off at 1 o'clock, what I am seeing right now, obviously

it could vary a little bit. seeing temps in the upper 20s and it's going to feel like right around 20 degrees based upon that. Now, no wind to speak of, no issues with that, but it is going to feel bitter cold for a team that plays in a dome. And all we're talking about is, you know, the scenario under which the Colts fall behind because of the bill's explosive offense. And do you trust yourself? Do you trust your money?

do can can you look yourself in the mirror and counting on on philip rivers to deliver a potential backdoor cover if you take the colt in those points here's what i want to do on this game this feels like to me a perfect teaser leg i don't want to bite down too hard i don't want to walk in and just be you know wiped out immediately i love teasing the the six and a half down to a half and that way, you know, it's, it's cheaper than a money line bet that way. And I feel like that's a good way to get the weekend started. What do you think about the bills as a teaser leg to start this super wildcard weekend? So I don't mind the bills as a teaser leg. The only caution I would have is what are you pairing it with and you better make sure that whatever you end up pairing with it

later in the show goes through some key numbers because this one obviously is only going through the three because if what you like to pair this with does not, you're probably better off with just a money line parlay. I know you said a money line alone isn't good. But if you have a leg, let's say that you wanted to tease and it's not going through the three and seven, then you just money line parlay that with the Buffalo bills. I will say this to your adding to your case a little bit. The most fearsome thing that I see when I look at the Indianapolis Colts defense, obviously they're pretty good against the run, right? But that doesn't work as well against a team like the Bills who just wants to

who's fine with passing the ball a fair amount. And the weather appears to be good. So they should be able to pass the ball a fair amount. Now, they may be down Cole Beasley, but at least they got John Brown back and had a chance to work him into the offense. The other thing that if you're passing the ball against the Colts, that's always scary, and this is one of the reasons why we didn't love the Pittsburgh Steelers against the Colts is because the Steelers at the time, if you remember this, and it's very good to bring this up,

the Steelers were throwing all these short passes to their wide receivers. And this was going to be easy for the Bill's great linebacking core to rally up and defend. And the Steelers don't use any type of play action. So their linebackers are just going to sit there for the Colts, see what's in front of them, come downhill and attack. And that's exactly how they were able to get a 21 to 7 lead. They completely shut down and stifled this Pittsburgh's. Steelers passing attack in the first half.

What ended up happening was Ben Rottesbergister's drawn up plays in the dirt from back several years ago before Randy Fickner had a game plan for that game. And they start using that and throwing the ball down the field a little bit more often. Well, the other thing that I started looking at here was so number one, the bills do like to throw the ball a little bit more down the field. So that is going to benefit them in this game. But number two, I started digging into that linebacking core, that formidable linebacking core of of Darius Leonard and Bobby Okoriki and Anthony Walker and these guys are very solid linebackers

get great grades in general. But their coverage has been abysmal from like week 11 onward. And Darius Leonard from weeks 11 to 16, I don't love to factor in week 17 sometimes because you don't really know what a team's motivation is and, you know, the Jaguars, like that's who they played week 17. I typically don't factor too much week 17 into what I love. look at. He was targeted 32 times, Darius Lender. 30 of those passes were completed for 9.6 yards per attempt. Bobby Okariki is allowing 10.1 yards per attempt. He missed a couple games in there, but he's

been allowing a lot more. I mean, this linebacking core has not been quite as formidable in coverage as I was expecting them to be when I broke down their numbers at the tail end of the season here. So I'm expecting that Buffalo is aware of that. I'm expecting Buffalo is not going to shy away from targeting them. The one thing that I would say before you finalize this wager and everybody out there listening, really interesting game to go back and watch an NFL game pass, watch their game, I believe it was week 11 versus the Green Bay Packers where Green Bay exploded on these guys early and then couldn't do much late. I know they turned the ball over a couple of times, but they had two straight three and outs to start the second half, allowed the Colts to rally from a big deficit

to get back into that game. And I am studying personally, what the Colts were doing. I really have a lot of respect for their D.C. Matt Eberflus, what they were doing in that second half to try to stymie the passing attack of the Green Bay Packers. But this is going to be a great game to kick things off. I really truly wish this wasn't the first game. I honestly kind of wish that we got Tampa at Washington here. We're going to talk about that game in a few minutes.

Tom Brady wouldn't have been up past his bedtime and we could have the Colts bills in prime time. That would have been ideal to me. Yeah, I agree with you. I was kind of surprised. I know that Bill and the cousin Sal, they try when the slate comes together late Sunday of week 17 to figure out which one's going to get into that first game of the wild card weekend slot. And cousin Sal had forecasted this one because he didn't think that the NFL would miss out on the opportunity to have terrific Tom Patom in prime time. I agree with you. We just watched Washington in prime time. It wasn't enjoyable. America didn't enjoy it. Go ahead and let us watch some quality football between two teams that have really accomplished something this season.

If we get Tom Brady holding up four fingers at the end of that game, then it'll make it all worth it. I just want if he's going to drop that game, I want him standing there holding up four fingers staring at the camera. You know if that's the case, how happy I'm going to be. I don't know if I'm going to make it to the Sunday game. It'll be halfway through that day. But in any event, okay. So you didn't throw up all over the idea of a teaser leg for the Colts. I think that's going to be the play.

I mean, the teaser leg for the bills plus a half. So that's sort of just file that away. Let's go ahead and talk about the next game of Saturday. It is the Los Angeles Rams at Seattle. Seattle from the book I looked at favored by three and a half and the total there is 42 and a half. This is the third matchup between these teams this season. It's the third time they're playing each other in eight weeks. They split the Rams won in week 10 by a touchdown 2316.

The Seahawks won at home a couple weeks ago, 20 to nine. I want to start with Seattle. It's been a tale of two seasons. for them. Their defense was looking historically bad, especially their secondary, in terms of giving up passing yards and passing scores through the first half of the season. And then since Seattle lost to Buffalo, 44 to 36, a big shootout game in early November, Seattle has not allowed more than 23 points in eight straight games. Quick note on that 20 to 9 Seahawks win a few weeks ago.

Misleading outcome, right? The Rams had five of the seven longest drives in that game, had zero points on two of them and zero touchdowns on the others. And it's not like Seattle's Red Zone defense is incredible. The Rams offense under Wolford last week, I don't know what to make of it. I didn't hate it. It looked like the kind of game stewardship game management kind of approach that might work in the playoffs. But I mentioned the tale of two seasons for Seattle.

So the defense went from being horrific to passable. And the offense went through a Jekyll and Hyde identity swap as well. We went from Let Russ Cook through the first half of this season. And through the first, you know, eight games, they were throwing the ball on first down, 55 percent, 56 percent of the time, fourth highest rate of the league. And some of this is from your colleague, Rebar. I had to hit his fantasy notes to get some of these stats set up. But over the last eight games, Seattle's throwing the ball less than 50% of the time on,

on first down, only 47%. That's 21st in the league. And they're averaging 23 points a game with only two games scoring more than 26 points. So, you know, they're, these two teams, are pretty evenly matched. I don't like one side versus the other. What I'm looking at for this game is the total at 42 and a half. But what are you, what are your thoughts?

How do you handicap this one? Well, I'll start with something that Rich was picking up on. And by the way, we have unlocked everything for, for Rich's columns. All the fantasy stuff is totally free for the postseason. So everybody who's listening can just go and read all that stuff completely free. So number one, check that out. sharp football. But number two, I got to say, I mean, it's a little bit disappointing. You look at this total and I'll jump on the, I'll jump on the past percentages in a second. But the bigger story here

to me is you look at this total and it's down to 42 and a half, as you mentioned 42. And I mean, what was it the first time that these teams met in week 10? It was 55, 54 and a half. The next game that they played, it was week 16 just a couple weeks ago, and it was down to 47, but we're still talking about almost five points higher than what we're at right now. And in the prior four meetings in 2018 and 2019, we're talking about totals that were in 47 to 50, 52 point range. We are sitting lower in part because of Jared Gough's finger, but not that much because you know, Jared Gough and this Rams offense really wasn't doing a whole lot.

with complete use of his fingers. It just wasn't a very accurate quarterback. Didn't play with a lot of confidence, was having some issues in this offense. And it's not quite, it's a far cry, let's say from what the Rams were trotting out there. They cannot go deep down the field. And I especially don't expect them to be able to go deep down the field with Goff and his finger.

I do expect Goff is going to start this game. So I do not think we're going to see. uh, Walford, but I will say I was the one upside that he brought house was that scrambling ability and the rushing ability because golf really doesn't do that. And if he's playing with the hurt finger, even less reason for him to do that.

So I don't expect much movement from golf in terms of running the football. I don't expect many deep shots because if there's any time he's going to, he wasn't very accurate on those this season to begin with. But if his fingers nicked up, which it's worse than nicked, but if it's on the mend, the more accurate passes are going to be the shorter ones. It's going to be even harder to develop that accuracy,

trying to drive the ball deeper down the field. So it's going to play a little bit tighter to the vest, which is going to help the Seahawks defense. And then the other reason why the total is low is because of the way that Seattle's offense is playing. And you alluded to that with regard to the early down run rate. After this team had seven consecutive weeks where they passed the ball at a 60% rate or higher on early downs,

in the first half of games, they shifted to no more than 50% pass on first half early downs for two straight games. And over their last seven, they've had just three games with a pass rate above 50% on first half early downs. They were above 55% on eight of nine of their first games of the season in terms of first half early down pass rate and significantly lower. They were the number one most pass heavy team on early downs in the first half of games through week 10. And they've dropped down. Now, they're not bottom of half of the league. They're not one of the least passing teams in the league.

They are still number 13 since week 11. So let's not go completely crazy here saying that this team just doesn't pass the football at all anymore. But the most interesting thing is when they were passing on those early downs in the first half of games at a 64% clip, number one, highest rate in the NFL through week 10, those passes were averaging 9.6 yards per attempt and a 61% success rate. Over the last month and a half since week 11, 9.6 yards per attempt is down to 6.0 and 61% success is down to 57% success. And this is in part due to the fact that opposing

defenses are playing a lot more of two high safety looks, cover two, which is exactly what the Rams are going to play against them as well. And we know that Russell Wilson struggles tremendously against this. Over the course of the entire season, when he's being played with the single high safety, Russ is averaging 8.3 yards per attempt with 8.7% of his passes going for a touchdown. And this is from Dan Pizzuta over at my say, against two high safeties, 7.3 yards per attempt with only 4.8% touchdown rate. So the touchdown rate is basically cut in half. The Rams play almost nothing but too high safeties and they have a lot of coverage back there. They take away the

deep passes to DK Metcalf. They force you to play a little bit more cautiously and Russ seems to want to try to go for these deeper shots instead of taking the smaller stuff underneath and they tend to run the football a little bit more because the Rams don't stack the box and so the QB pre-snapses run looks that appear to be solid and then it encourages runs. This is exactly what I would be doing if I'm defensive coaches, I'm trying to get teams to run the ball. I don't want them passing on me. I want them to burn themselves out trying to run the ball a ton and then hope that they get called for a holding penalty, which I'll digress for a second

here, house, but I'm predicting that holding penalties are going to be down in the playoffs. All types of penalties are. And I'm encouraging all offensive coaches to get their offensive linemen to hold a little bit more often because it's going to be unlikely. In certain games, I've already looked at the referees, and this is something that you have a chance to do when you only have six games to handicap, is to look at the certain refs that are reffing different games because the refs are the guys that stand behind the line by the past the quarterback off the side and tend to throw most of these holding calls. So even if they got different guys on their crew, those guys are going to be the bronze primarily responsible for calling offensive holding. And you can look at their trends in how many which refs call holding and which refs don't. And I'm certainly using that as I'm talking to some different offensive coordinators this week. Oh, wow.

I mean, there you go for the, so a sharp point for any coordinators that might be listening to this week. Well, so the tale of two Seattles, they won six of their last seven games of the season. They did score, I just wanted to mention, you know, they scored 40 points against the Jets, you know, four weeks ago. But otherwise, you know, they won 26, 23 because they scored two touchdowns right at the end against the 49ers. The Rams game was 20 to 9. The Washington football team game was 20 to 15. They lost to the Giants 17 to 12 and they beat the Eagles 2317 and the Cardinals 28, 21. So it's not like what we saw.

They were averaging, you know, over 35 points a game at the beginning of the season. You and Simmons touched on this in the Simmons podcast. the formula that we're looking for out of Seattle is a slight return to that aggressive approach to throwing the football on early downs plus this improved defense and Jamal Adams is insisting that he's going to play so that's an important part of the improved defense

for Seattle. Is that formula enough to make me feel comfortable laying three and a half at home? It should be. It should be. I mean, when you're talking about going up against the Rams, now the line is dipping and the line is dropping. And I think especially if Jared Goff gets announced up, which I'm expecting that's going to happen, then you're going to find that this line is going to certainly get to a better spot. So my advice is if you do like Seattle, you wait this one out and get a better number later once Jared Goff gets announced up. I am. am not advocating to take Seattle here, but I'm simply saying that if you want to bet Seattle, I would wait. Okay. Well, I don't have a strong feeling one way or the other between these two teams and the one aspect that does leap off the page, having seen a good bit of these teams over these last eight weeks with, with the, you know, this being the third game is,

maybe this is the wrong way to go about it, but it just feels like an under to me. It seems like two offenses that, you know, have been going through an identity crisis, uh, especially with, with the Rams, but, you know, I think all things being equal, the Seahawks would prefer to win these playoff games with defense. And so I'm inclined my. lean on this is the under on 42 and a half. I think you've got two offensive coaches, well, a defensive coach in Pete Carroll, but an offensive coach of Brian Schottenheimer plus Scha McFa that have a healthy amount of

respect for the defense on the other side of the field. And I do tend to think that although I would argue that both of these offenses need to come out more aggressively, when you've got a quarterback, my estimation that Jared Goff is starting this game, he's going to be playing. flying with a nicked up finger, you're not going to want them to just come out dropping passes all over the place and throwing the ball down the field deep and possibly risking an interception. So you're going to want to come out, I think from Sean McBay, hopefully a really good scripting to try to confuse with Cooper Cupback, try to confuse

the Seahawks defense a little bit, some misdirection, some things like that. So Seattle better be on their P's and Q's from that perspective. But I would expect that they would come out a little bit more conservatively. And typically, you know, Seattle, like this would be the spot. Let Russ cook a little bit early and then have them have them turn to the run late. But they oftentimes go with the opposite strategy where they're like, okay, let's not lose the game early and let's let Russ win it for us late, which is exactly what you don't want to need to have happened so frequently. But I could definitely see a little bit of a slower start to this game if you're taking away the deep stuff from Russ with this too high safety. and you're going to be more conservative with Jared Gough.

Okay. Well, you didn't throw up all over it. That's going to be the play on that second game. Let's go ahead and get to this third game. And let me begin by saying, I apologize to no one. And the Washington Football Club will apologize to no one for taking the NFC East by the throat with a dominant performance against the Philadelphia Eagles. You can't even say that with a straight face, can you?

So atrocious. I loved every minute of it and I hated every minute of it. But here's the thing. The Buccaneers and Tom Brady really had something, a point that they wanted to make at the end of the season. And they did it. They did what we all kind of expected out of the Bucke. which was, you know, they got 11 wins.

They got to the postseason comfortably. It's the first time they're in the playoffs since 2007. They're on a four-game winning streak. Three of those victories coming by double digits. But there are a whole bunch of, you know, hold on. Let's wait a minute. Let's just take our time and study this and take a look at a little bit of the numbers here. So one factory, this is from my good pal.

Big Al, Big Al McMorty. Tampa has struggled this season against teams like Washington who give up less than 21 points per game. Tampa is 0 and 4 against the spread against such teams. And curiously enough, Washington has been pretty good against high octane offenses that score at least 28 points per game. Tampa fits that category. Washington is 4 and 0 against the spread in that circumstance, playing against teams that are high-powered offenses. And Washington, in those games, 4-0 against the spread, held those teams to just 17. And 0.75 points per game. Hey, okay. that there's a reason to think that that Washington might have a chance you and uh bill touched on

a couple other aspects of of this game the major dilemma for my Washington footballers this weekend is scoring scoring enough points to remain competitive the Washington's finished 25th and passing yard is 26th and rushing Antonio Gibson is going to have trouble against the Tampa run defense. They, they, uh, permitted the league low 80.6 yards per game. Um, Washington's offense can't score points. The only way Washington can score points is when their defense gives them preferred field position by way of a turnover. Their defense directly scores for, for them. Or, you know, Washington, um, you know, get something out of the special team game. On off.

the idea of asking a quarter, Alex Smith to lead the team on an 80 yard conventional, like let's chew up 12 play kind of drive. It's just too big of an ask. Now, home underdogs in the NFL playoffs are 26, 14, and 1 against the spread. That's a 65% hit rate. And they are straight up 23 and 18. since 1980.

Your guy and my guy, T.A. Cleveland, he's the first. I've seen this nugget a few places, but I saw it from T.A. first. In the history of the NFL playoffs, there's only two instances of a hometown team hosting a playoff game and getting greater than seven points. It was Tim Tebow at home with the Denver Broncos in 2010,

a straight up win. and it was the beast quake. It was beast mode, Marshawn, the Seattle Seahawks against the New Orleans Saints, shocking the world with a straight up win back in 2010. So I'm not calling for a straight up win out of the Washington football team. All I'm saying is there's a couple reasons to think along and hard about this situation.

last one. You made a joke about it. Tom Brady, he's 43 years old. We think that his bedtime is around 9 o'clock at night. In primetime games this season, he is 1 in 3 straight up and 0.4 against his spread with five touchdowns and five picks. Kick off this Saturday night, 8.15 p.m. Can Tommy get some of that Warren Sharp coffee, Sharpie, What's going on with this one? Oh, I'm sorry. It's 11 o'clock right now. I was asleep. I'm on Tom Brady time. No, I will, let me just start with this. I didn't want to interrupt you.

This is your team. So I wanted to let you complete your setup here. But I got some beef with some of the stats that you threw out there. So let me just, let me just say this. I don't use points per game necessarily. Like I don't use points per game to decide. if an offense is good or bad. So you threw out a nugget that against the four best offenses or offenses that average a certain threshold of points, that they're four and oh against the spread.

What I will share with you is, I don't know what those offenses are or what the games are part of that. But from what I can see here, this Washington football team has played five games against offenses that rank in the top 15 of efficiency. The Cleveland Browns, Week 3, the Baltimore Ravens week four, the L.A. Rams week 5, the Seattle Seahawks Week 15, and the Carolina Panthers, surprisingly enough, yes, but they ranked Top 15 in week 16. They went 0 and 5 in those games, and they didn't cover a single spread. I guess it depends what you got on the Baltimore Ravens. If you got 14, you pushed because Washington lost by 14 in that game. But they're winless. ATS in these five games as well. So from that perspective, I mean, there are night and day differences between the numbers you're sharing and the numbers that I'm seeing as I look through these efficiencies and results. But be that as it may, that's not the reason not to like to think that there could be a little

bit of value for Washington here or it's not the reason to think that Washington couldn't cover the spread. But I do want to start with the better team here. and that's Tampa Bay. And it's very important that Tampa jumps out early here because we shared this nugget last week when we were talking about the big game of the day last week, which was Washington, Philadelphia, how great Washington's defense is in the second half. And in part because they changed out their quarterback potentially, but Washington did not

allow a single point in the second half of that game. And since week six, Washington is allowing getting. get this, four points in the second half on average. They have allowed a total of 44 points since week six. The next best team is the New Orleans Saints. They have allowed 77. The team after that is the Rams. They've allowed 84.

Then in 91 to the same Tampa Bay Buccaneers team. And 98 have the Indianapolis Colts defense. So we're talking about this leagues, 20,000 leagues better than the other teams on that list of best second half defenses. Now, yes, of course, some of it has to do with playing a bunch of teams from the NFC East, but they are still very good at second half adjustment. So if you are Tampa, you have to come out quick here. There's no excuse. You cannot just say, oh, yeah, we'll take this easy. We're scared of this pass rush. Let's start the game slow. Let's run the ball a lot to keep the pass rush away from Tom Brady. I disagree with that strategy because Washington's going to be very good,

as it's been historically at least in the second half. So you've got to score some points early in this game. Now, what Tampa has done recently has certainly caught my eye. And I hope it's not just because you've played the Falcons twice and the Lions. But what Tampa has done is much different the last three weeks than it was to start the season. Weeks one to 14, Tampa Bay had a very run-heavy approach on first downs in the first half. we've talked about this before. They ran the ball on 61% of their first downs in the first quarter.

The NFL average is only 55%. Those runs gains three yards per carry, second worst in the NFL. Let's expand beyond just the first quarter. Let's look at the first half. They ran the ball on 52% of their first downs in the first half. That's above average run rate. Those runs gained just 2.7 yards per carry. That's the number one worst in the NFL.

why would you bring Tom Brady down here so you can run the ball at an above average rate for the worst production in the NFL is beyond me. However, the last three weeks, Byron Lefwich and Bruce Ariens and Tom Brady appeared to flip the switch and they're now 67% pass on first downs in the first quarter, up from 39% pass. They're averaging 8.5 yards per attempt on these passes. They're still terrible when they run the ball, but at least they're not running the ball as much. and it's going to be very important for this team to pass the ball on first downs. And so when you're sitting back house with a few cocktails in your belly watching this game

and rooting on your boys, pay attention as the fans at home should be as well to see how often Tampa is passing the ball on first downs in the first half. And believe me, I'll be tracking it on my Twitter and sharing that information during the game. The other reason why you want to be passing the ball a lot on first downs is because, because Washington's pressure rate is significantly worse on first down than it is over the course of the second and third down plays. They are getting only 25.8% pressure on first down. The NFL average on first down is 31%. But on second down, they go all the way up to 41% pressure rate, which is way above average. The average on the second downs is only 29% across the

the NFL, they're up at 41%. So they're well below average pressure on first down. They're well above average on second down. And on third down, they move from 41% pressure rate up to 46% pressure rate. So they're getting more pressure on second and third downs well above the NFL average, but they are not on first down. So let's pay close attention to how often Tom Brady is passing the ball here. So I've already laid out what I think Tampa should do at a high level. I got one more deep nugget to share with you, but it's going to hurt your team even more. Do you want me to share that with you?

Or do you want to cut to the chase and just give your bet? Have you heard enough here? I've heard enough. I don't look. This is a rare precious moment in my Washington fandom against all odds facing colossal uphill odds. This Washington football team is hosting a game here in the in the Washington DC area Saturday night and they are the kings of the NFC East.

Here's what I want to do. So I don't want you disadvantaging them anymore. They're already plenty disadvantaged. They're starting quarterback. Where's a brace to keep his, his foot upright? So we've got enough disadvantages. I, you told me when I made my play on the bills in that tease.

I want to tease the bills down from six and a half. to a half point, you said, make sure you pair that, that teaser leg with one that goes through the crucial numbers. You know I've learned that over the course of this season, Warren Sharp. I, in fact, am the other half of that teaser leg is these Tampa Bay Buccaneers. I'm teasing them from eight and a half through the seven through the three down to two and a half. So that's my play on this. Now, I do think there are two other bonus angles on this that I want your endorsement of. Based on what you described, in terms of possible winning approach for Tampa.

I like Tampa's first half over, and I think that team total is like 13 and a half or something. Is that right? And then I like the under for the second half. Whatever the second half total is, we'll know, you know, I don't have it up. Well, they don't have the second half total up here. But I can tell you for the last game that they played against Philly, because we took a little bit of that ourselves, it was under 23 in the second half.

So we'll see what the total is here. This game has a little bit higher point total at 45. But sometimes they're typically in line with what the first half team total was, first half total, which is 23, 22 and a half to 23. So I would expect something similar to that in the second half. So those are the bonus plays. The actual play for the 13 and O, the quest to go 13 and no. That's Tampa as the second half of the teaser with the bills. I'm teasing Tampa from eight and a half down to two and a half.

And then a couple two bonus angles there for everybody. Tampa over 13 and a half in the first half and then whatever the under is for the total in the second half. You on board with that? I'm on board with all of that. I will share this other little nugget because nobody else is. been discussing this that I've ever heard. I think the reason that Alex Smith ended up straining his calf muscle in the week 14 game against the 49ers and didn't play in the second half and then missed several weeks and now is playing limited and gimpy actually is because of that gruesome

cleating that he took in week 13 against the Pittsburgh Steelers because he got destroyed on that leg with a cleat and it was bleeding everywhere. They had to tape it up really tight. He had to play in the second half with this strong tape job. And trust me, like in the days after that, like you are favoring that the front part. There's going to be a massive contusion. There's going to be issues with that. And you're going to be walking a little different and favoring a little different,

probably using your calf muscle a little bit more. And so it does not shock me at all that when he got into the game the next week, after not practicing very much as a result of that contusion, the week leading up to the 40-Ires game that he, that he ends up straining it. So that's how I think he ended up hurting it. Man, oh man. Well, you know what?

I want him to have a very successful, extremely successful Saturday night. And I'm okay. I've prepared myself for the Washington football team ending their season. And then I'd like Alex Smith to hang it up and do whatever with the rest of his life. He wants to do with his beautiful wife and his beautiful kids and not play professional football anymore. That's what I would root for. That's what I'm hoping for. I am a forever a fan of Alex Smith for his ability to come back.

So amen to that thought. He's certainly deserving of comeback player of the year and then some. And if this is his final game, then, then, you know, let's take him out the right way. Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, yes, exactly. That's right. Okay. Well, look, we've got Saturday in the books.

And then we, that probably took us a full hour. We will not spend a full hour on Sunday. Baltimore, Tennessee. This is the third time in basically like 12 months that Tennessee has been an underdog going up against the Ravens. Each of the two previous times Tennessee has won outright as an underdog going up against the Ravens. I personally attribute that to head coaching. I think Rabel really has a particular perspective on. on how to succeed against Baltimore.

The Ravens obviously are one of the hottest teams in the league, second hottest maybe behind the bills. They've only scored under 34 points one time in the past five games. They're winning games and blowing people out. The offense is cooking. And especially on the run, the fascinating thing to be when I saw this research, the two top two teams,

in expected points added by way of their rushing offenses. The Ravens have the highest rushing rate in the NFL, and the Titans are third. And then on first downs outside of the fourth quarter, Tennessee leads the NFL at 65%. And Baltimore is second at 63%. And the running game for Baltimore has been outstanding. over 150 yards or more in five straight games,

over 200 yards in three of those games, 404 yards in week 17. J.K. Dobbins is running all over the football field. The Titans defense, obviously gigantic question marks look like they could be in a position to give up a whole bunch of points and yards to the Hot Ravens offense. ranked the Titans 29th against the past 19th against the run which you know in theory would help against the run heavy Ravens and then one thing for the Titans offense uh I haven't seen the status

update on Roger Saffold he was hurt in week 17 offensive lineman for Tennessee but um that would be a big blow for Tennessee's offense but Tennessee's offense has been you know, the thing that has kept them alive this season. How are you taking this game under consideration? Well, first, I'll just tell you, Saffold did not practice on Wednesday, which is today as we're recording this. So it's to be determined, but this was just a walk through. They didn't actually have, the Titans didn't actually have practice today.

But supposedly, if they were practicing, he would not have been practicing. today. This was the game that there was the pregame dust up, if you remember, earlier this season, where you had the logo walk and, you know, drop the nuts out midfield and see what happens and Harbaugh getting involved. And yeah, that was an interesting game. And now the game's in, in Tennessee. And I'm really interested to see these two teams obviously don't like each other, right? That game was in Baltimore the last time that they played. They played them two times in Baltimore, one twice in the Ravens Stadium, once was in the playoffs, completely shocked the Ravens who were absolutely rolling. They were off of a buy come into that game. And holy cow,

all of a sudden, Tennessee is up big in that game. They have to, Baltimore has to abandon the run game, focus on the past game, which is exactly the worst thing. They tried to get Lamar to beat them to the perimeter on man coverage. And he wasn't able to do that because they were doubling everything inside and forcing the receivers to beat him in one-on-one coverage is just too difficult. What was really weird to me about the game that they played earlier this season house, yes, Baltimore was up. Baltimore's up actually pretty big and Tennessee rallied to come back in that game and ultimately won that sucker in OT with Derek Henry running for that big touchdown.

And he's had good luck running against Baltimore. But the one thing that is super, super interesting is in the first half of that game, I do think that Mike Vrable is inside their heads. I really think Vrable from the first game and then the second game. Look at what Baltimore did offensively in the second meeting, the meeting this season. In the first half of the game, Baltimore goes 66% run, not just on early downs, including third downs. They are 66% run.

I usually give Arthur Smith and the Titans grief for running the ball on first down too much in the first quarter in the defense's stack in the box try throwing the football. They completely took the ball out of Lamar Jackson's hands in that first half and ran the ball a ton. Then they go in the second half and make some massive Baltimore does make some massive adjustments come out in the second half. And Lamar's chucking the ball all over the field. They go 61% pass even though they're playing with a lead in the second half of the game. Lamar in the first half of the game only goes four of 11 averages only 4.9 yards per pass attempt and a very low success rate. In the second half of the game, as I said, they're throwing the ball more.

He goes 12 of 17, 7.2 yards per attempt, a 71% success rate. So it was a tail of two halves for this offensive philosophy. First half is keep the ball out of Lamar's hands. Second half is let Lamar throw even though he didn't do well in the first half. very strange play calling and change up for the Baltimore Ravens at halftime. So I don't really know what we're going to get in this game. I can tell you that in the first game, there were seven turnovers from the Ravens effectively because they turned it over three times just regularly and then they went for it on fourth down

and failed four different times. So seven turnovers essentially. This last game that they played, these two, teams combined, obviously it goes to overtime. It's tied at 24, goes to overtime. So they had 48 points in regulation, 54 total when you include the touchdown that they scored in overtime. They combined for nine trips to the red zone in that first in the game this season, and only three of those were converted into touchdowns, which is really a typical Tennessee is usually pretty good in the red zone. They only converted two out of five. And Baltimore only converted one

out of four. Another little tidbit is that the Baltimore center was playing with COVID in this game because his sample was taken Sunday morning of this game and those tests come back that night and they find out on Monday morning that their center has COVID. So he was actually playing with it. The Ravens all end up getting COVID immediately after this game and Lamar misses, you know, the game against the Steelers, et cetera, et cetera. So a lot of interesting elements of this game. I, once again, and pissed off at the league for sticking the best game of Sunday at 1 p.m. I mean, build up to something, will you? Like, do we have to see Mitchell Trubisky at four?

Do we have to see the corpse of the Cleveland Brown's coaching staff at 815? Like, I would much rather see this game at 815. You and I are in absolutely the same position in terms of that. The league wants, I guess, Big Ben and that Pittsburgh and all the terrible towels of primetime Sunday night. And I guess Drew Breeze is still a draw in that 4 o'clock slot on Sunday. I don't get it.

Maybe, you know, the idea is the high-powered Saints offense, but in any event, this game is Baltimore favored by three going into Tennessee. And you know this from some of the attitude

I've shared with you over the course of the season. I don't believe in Baltimore. They've beat three teams with a winning record. Let me put that more directly and correctly. They have 11 wins against, of those 11 wins, only three have come against winning teams, and two of those were against the Browns. They beat the Browns twice.

So I think that this Ravens team has absolutely loaded up on a, on, and in a way that a good team does, you take care of a business. against bad teams. We just saw it on Sunday. They absolutely hammered the Bengals, 38 to 3. It was a must-win game for the Ravens to preserve their playoff chances. But their winning streak is the Bengals, the Giants, the Jaguars, that Browns shootout on Monday night, which was probably the most entertaining game of the season, at least it was for me. And they beat the Cowboys. They have losses this season to the Steelers, Titans, a bad loss to the Patriots.

They lost to the Steelers twice this season. And then they lost to the Chiefs in week three. So my play for this game in the quest to go 13 and now, I'm playing a parlay. And this is absolutely the way a square guy does it. I believe in Tennessee, I'm just going to play their money line. and I'm parlaying the Tennessee money line with the over because I want to watch a shootout. The total for this game is 54.5. I have parlayed the Tennessee money line, which is sitting there at plus 160 with the over.

And that is a nearly four to one return on that wager. Tell me how square that is. It's square, but if you like Tennessee, I think you want to like the over here because I don't think their defense is holding Baltimore scoreless. Baltimore has been clicking a little bit of light against some bad defenses, but Tennessee's defense is no different. I will share this thing I just looked up. I'm not really a proponent of like all of these types of trends, as you know, but I started thinking about this game as you were talking. it got me a little bit curious. So here's the trend.

You lost to a team once in your last meeting, and it was this year. And the time you played them before this year, you also lost to them as well. And now you're facing them in the playoffs. Since 2013, those teams are 11, 6, and 3 ATS. So Baltimore falls into that trend of having lost their last two meetings to Tennessee and now facing them in the playoffs. and if you are favored, you have gone 6 and 0 straight up and 5.0 and 1 ATS. Now, most of those games are at home.

You're a home favorite. So the fact that they're favored on the road would be the first time since the 2013 playoffs when the 49ers played the Carolina Panthers in the divisional round. If you want to go back and check some notes on that game. But the Panthers, sorry, the Panthers were home. as an underdog against the 49ers when Carolina had won the meeting earlier that year and the prior meeting and they lost that game 23 to 10. So that doesn't necessarily play in your favor, but I do think that that parley makes a lot of sense. And the payback is certainly worth it if you want to fade

Baltimore to just take it and parlay it to the over. I like the revenge trend that you just shared because as you described earlier when you were talking about the game, it's real revenge. These teams like really don't like each other and they have played. This will be the third time, you know, inside of a calendar year. So it's genuine proper revenge. And I'm willing to hold my nose and stick with with the wage. I know the trends are against it. But I'll go ahead and ride with Tennessee.

Let's ride, my friend. Let's ride. Okay, speaking of ride, with all due respect to all the good people of Chicago and all my fantastic friends down in New Orleans and what a food scene down there. I can't wait for the pandemic to be over so I can get back down to New Orleans. This is my least favorite game on the slate. I think it's the least interesting game. It's the Chicago Bears going to New Orleans. New Orleans is favored by 10 points.

The total is 47. Chicago on a little bit of a hot streak. They needed it. They won four of their last five games. Saints have scored 85 points in their past two games. That's pretty good. This is just like that Ravens Tennessee game, another overtime rematch from the regular season.

The Saints went into Chicago back in week eight and one with a field goal, 26, 23. Since then, the Saints have been extraordinary on defense. They have been allowing opponents to score on a league low 26.7% of their possessions over that span of eight games. And a league low, 14.9%, under 15% of their opponents' drives end in touchdowns. And over those nine games, the Saints have held six of their opponents to 16 total points or fewer. Now, we have on this podcast been critical of the Chicago Bears and their offensive approach, their offensive game plan, but the Bears seem to have gained a little bit of a spark

when they went to Mitchell Trubisky and went back to him and they put Bill Laser in that offensive coordinator spot. Now, they have been on a decent run, but, you know, know, we want to tap the brakes a little bit. And again, I think this is some of rebar's work. The Bears were just one in six this season against teams with a winning record. The worst record amongst all playoff teams. They only played five teams all season that were in the top 10 in defensive EPA allowed.

And the Bears scored only 16 points per game, a little over 16 points per game, as opposed to 26 and a half point. points per game. The Saints also are able of putting pressure on the quarterback. Mitchell Trubisky has not faced that on this most recent run. Norlands fifth in the league in pressure rate and that'll be the highest ranked pressure team that Mitchell has faced. So the big question for New Orleans, of course, what's going on with all its weapons? Will Alvin Kamara be clear? with the COVID. Michael Thomas is eligible to come off injured reserve.

Is he going to play? Michael Thomas and Drew Brees this season and played 10 quarters of football together. But the backbone of the Saints team is the defense, and they're great against the pass and great against the run, and they're great at forcing turnover.

So that's why this is a double-digit line. What do you think about this game? I really just don't like this game. I really don't. We didn't even talk about it ahead of time. I just knew I looked at as I'm going to shit talk this game. I don't. And again,

no offense. And it's not that I don't respect or like either of these teams. I just, it's just not sexy whatsoever to me. So I think the point you brought up on the pressure is going to be very important to see how Mitch Trubisky does against that pressure. And obviously the low-hanging fruit. here is exactly as you said.

This team has done really well against some really bad defenses of late. And how will they do against the defense like the Saints? I mean, both of these defenses technically rank top 10. But I think both of these defenses are not quite as good as the ranking. I'm certainly not going to throw the Bears offense up there as anything great. But when you look at, and we'll probably talk about this later, but when you look at some good offenses that the Saints have, have played so far this year, like top 15 offenses, I mean, they're giving up points to the

to the Raiders. They're giving up points 34 to the Raiders, 37 to the Packers. They narrowly beat the Panthers, 27 to 24. They give up 33 to the Vikings. I know they end up walloping the Vikings, but their defense certainly didn't look very good in that game. They obviously lose to Mahomes, giving up 32 in that game. And they handle the Panthers.

in week 17, and that was a game that, yeah, the Saints needed to win that game. They were hoping to win to get the shot at the first round, first round by. But I'll tell you, that final score is not indicative of that game. I bet the Panthers. That was my only loss. I went six and one in week 17, and that was the only loss I had with Panthers, plus the points. And Teddy Bridgewater drove them down there multiple times.

It just turned a ball over a ton. And so they ended up pulling Teddy because he was just playing so terribly. but they put up yards just not points, but the Panthers hung with them close in the prior game. So bottom line here is, like, I know some of the guys that I work with absolutely love the Saints defense. Like, Rant and Ray think it's like their ticket to the Super Bowl is because of how outstanding this defense is.

And I do think they'll play better during the playoffs. But they haven't quite impressed me as much. That being said, it's just going to be tough for the Bears to figure out something to do. here the Saints. The one thing that they are very good at is stopping the run. They've played the third toughest schedule of run offenses and they've got the fourth best run defense. So you're not going to be able to rely on David Montgomery as much. You're going to need Mitch Trubisky to work some magic through the air. And that's a problem when you got a great team that's good at pressuring you. So I really think that this team is going to be in for some trouble. But the

point spread obviously indicates that with them catching. 10 points. So I don't have a strong feel. I'm really curious to see what angle you want to attack this game with. I'm going to, this could be my afternoon nap game. You know, it's, if my nap starts at 3.30 and I can sleep through the first half of this game, that will be fine. Oh, how are you starting at 3.30? You're going to be captain, you're going to miss a tail end of the Ravens Titans game. There's no chance. No, no, no. As that, as that game fades into into this game, be a nap as the guest over that transition period. I just threw out 3.30. That's not when the nap's going to really start. I am just going to go ahead and directly lay a tiny play

on New Orleans minus 10 and let that be it. When I wake up in the second half and see that they're up by 21 points and watch Trubisky try and throw the ball down the field a little bit, it'll give me a chuckle, it'll put me in a good frame of mine. It'll be the nice appetit. It'll be the nice appetizer before my delightful Sunday night dinner and the Pittsburgh Cleveland game. I'm just going to lay the points. New Orleans at home minus 10. All right. I have no opinion on that. I will honestly, I've got some strong takes elsewhere on this pod. I have no opinion yet. I have not done anything with this game myself. And I don't have an itchy trigger finger either. Yeah. Yeah. It's the nap. It's the nap time 10. That's it. But we're going to try and go away at 13 and

No, I mean, you know, we'll play it. We'll play it. We'll play it. I'm going to play it. Count on it. Okay. Last game of the weekend. And we're slightly disappointed because it could have been juicy, right?

Stefansky's going to win coach of the year. I think, and I think he deserves it. Agree. You just, yeah, okay, good. Strong agree. I mean, let's be real. Strong agree. It should have been, it could have been in the conversation, Brian Flores,

that loss in that fashion and missing the playoffs, it's his second year there. Stefansky gets grades for first time head coach during a pandemic and being able to not have a losing record. Boom, that gives you some major props in my book. Doing it with the Cleveland freaking Browns. Are you kidding me? In a division where you've got two other teams that actually made the playoffs also. So it's not like you got a cupcake division.

Good division. And then last but not least, the Cleveland Brown's track record in this whole thing is just terrible historically. And he's able to produce the results that he's got. I mean, not just produce a winning season, but get to the postseason, get to the playoffs in his first year. I think that there's a lot of deserving coaches for this award. I think it's a tough race this year. But I would absolutely hardcore go for Kevin Sopansky here. Great.

We're on the same page about that. We'll see if we're on the same page about the correct wager to make here. I don't think there's like a ton of intrigue around, you know, how to size up this matchup, because we've seen these teams play against each other twice already this season. And, you know, the Steelers handle the Browns. The Steelers handle the Browns. They're 14 and O at home against the Browns. under Mike Tomlin, including the 38 to 7 ass whipping back in week six.

They damn near with Mason Rudolph kept the Browns from getting into the playoffs this most recent Sunday. You know, they lost because Pittsburgh couldn't convert a two-pointer at the end. But Mason Rudolph threw the effing football 50 yards down the field at the end of the game. the Browns against the, you know, a whole slew of second stringers on the Steelers really had to fight and scratch and claw. And they were in that position because it seems like, it seems like they have been fighting COVID and the Browns organization for a month. They're in that position where that two pointer at the end of week 17 against Pittsburgh second stringers is a crucial moment in the franchise's

history because they lost to the Jets without any wide receivers two weeks prior. And they lost to the Jets without any wide receivers because they have this ongoing, apparent raging COVID problem with the Cleveland Browns. Now, on the football side of things, it was kind of fun to see Baker Mayfield this season. I enjoy the charisma and the character of him. We know from having watched, he doesn't like pressure. The Pittsburgh Steelers can bring pressure. The shootout between the Browns and the Ravens, we mentioned it.

That's my favorite football game of the entire season. Anytime a quarterback has to leave to go take a giant dump, that's my game of the year without until further notice. But I think that the intrigue for this is what version of Pittsburgh shows up. Is it the Pittsburgh offense in particular that throws the ball down the football field? All those weapons we saw against the Colts. We saw Ben Rathesberger all of a sudden flip a switch. It felt like we've been begging for it for six weeks.

Throw the ball down the field. What's wrong with Ben? Why can't he get the ball down the field to all these terrific weapons? Juju and Claypool. And, you know, L'Ombudiante, lo and behold, he starts putting his finger in the sand and they're throwing the ball down the field against the Colts and they come back and blow them out. And that's the version of the Pittsburgh Steelers. I want to see.

How are you sizing up this game? Well, there's two things that don't even really involve X's and O's, but surround this game that I first look towards. And number one is the rest that Ben Rothesberger received by not playing last week and his team sitting. And we know that this was a big storyline amongst some people about how the Steelers didn't get a buy. They never had a week off to rest. Their buy week was actually they were prepping for an opponent that week. So all of a sudden, the league comes in late and says the game's not going to be played. And you're going to have a game played during your regular buy.

And so now you just have to start getting ready for somebody else. So they never really took any time off. apparently, as was reported earlier today, Ben Rothsberger did not throw the football at all, if we're going to believe Ben, right? Some people don't believe Ben, but if we're going to believe the report that Ben told the reporter, Adi Kinkabuwala,

that he said he did not throw the football at all. And that was very beneficial to his feeling this week, to the way, to his mood, to his energy level, he said he feels like a million bucks right now. And he also reported that I think it was after his elbow surgery that this year he's been throwing the football a little bit more with his legs. And Aditi mentioned that his legs were tired also for not resting whatsoever. So his legs and his arm.

And so his whole body rested. And he just feels great. So that's one thing to consider here is they gave him some rest and he should feel better than he has for most of the season. The second thing is Kevin Stefansky being out with COVID. And he's the coach of the year, in my opinion. So it's a bigger deal than most. One of the other reasons I think he deserves coach of the year that we didn't mention

is because he's the offensive coordinator, he calls all the freaking plays. He's the guy who turned Baker Mayfield from a bum that a lot of people thought couldn't cut it in the NFL to a guy who's leading this team to double-digit wins into the postseason. He's got an offensive structure with personnel grouping usage and play calls and philosophy and play action and all of these things that really suit Baker Mayfield well. Well, the offensive system is not going to change. The game script itself is not going to change.

But what happens once that script runs out and the art of play calling, it really is an art. There's a science that I get involved with with trying to help figure out. tactical ways to attack a defense and what the offensive strengths are through some self-scouting, attacking what a defense is weak at, trying to find little angles and off statistics elements to help a team, you know, like I was talking about with the holding penalties and referee, scouting refs and things of that nature. There's a lot that goes into trying to come up with a game plan, but the art of calling the plays at the right time and timing them out and sequencing things and studying, oh, well, they did this here.

So now next time I'm going to try this and then we're going to build off of that. You see guys like Kyle Shanahan, Brian Daibald, Josh McDaniels dial up new plays, spur of the moment, mid game that they weren't even practicing before. So you have that element of things that Kevin Sifansky was able to bring to the table that he's no longer able to bring to the table. I think that will end up hurting Cleveland, not as much in the first quarter, but as the game progresses and he's not going to be there as the as the voice that baker's so comfortable with in his ear and seeing him on the sideline to go up and talk to him.

So that's going to be really interesting. If we dive into the X's and O's briefly in terms of what we're actually going to see on the field from like a player perspective, two things that I think are interesting from the Steelers side of things. Number one, Joshua Dobbs. Like Josh Dobbs came in and ran the ball a little bit. Are we going to see any packages because the Steelers can't run the football at all with the running backs? Are we going to see any packages where Josh Dobbs is out there?

Will they try any short yardage plays with Josh Jobs? Because we know they refuse to sneak the ball with Ben Rothesberger. So would they bring Dobbs in in a short yardage situation and get under center? Would Cleveland go, holy shit, they're sneaking the ball now and crowd the line? Would Josh Dobbs then pass out of that or flip it to a running back to run around the perimeter? or better yet, in my opinion, though I hate to do this when you only need a yard to gain, but have jet motion come in behind him for a handoff away from Miles Garrett's side of the field. Obviously, don't do this towards Miles Garrett, but Olivier Vernon is out of this game for the Cleveland Browns,

and he's a big factor on the edge. If he's not there, do a jet sweep to the side away from Miles Garrett. So there are some little things and details that I think Pittsburgh can have an advantage of it if they try to incorporate that. The biggest question mark for me in this game besides just, well, how is Cleveland going to look offensively is how much is this Steelers offense going to change after what we saw them do in week 16 in that second half against the Colts when Ben said, let's do some of the stuff I was doing in the past and the other team wasn't prepared for it at all. Life is going to be very difficult. I can assure you for the Brown's defensive coordinator this week because they're used to seeing what the Steelers have done in all of their prior 15 games. games up at, well, 14 games up until that one. And now all of a sudden, wait, is the Steelers going to try some of the stuff they were doing in the second half against the Colts? And if so,

what are they going to pull out against us? And, you know, I hope the Steelers keep them guessing. The worst thing in offense can do is become predictable. That's what it was with Randy Fichter. Use some of the stuff from Ben. Use some of the stuff from the past. Don't save it for the second half. Sprinkle it in in the first half. And I'm just really curious to see how the Steelers try to attack them with with a week off more. less that no other team in the league really had the benefit of except for those that are actually on buys. I also just wanted to mention in terms of the COVID impacts for Cleveland, they're losing their left guard, pro ball or Joel Betonio. And that seems like for the

Browns, with their running game being, you know, such a prominent part, that loss feels, feels prominent, right? Feels like it could be a big deal. This feels to me like a bad spot for the Cleveland Browns. I mean, this is, we talked over the course of the season about the bills and their ascendance in the AFC East. And we looked at them going up against the Patriots. They went down to New England and they beat the pants off to England.

And they announced to the AFC East and to New England, we are the daddy. You ain't the daddy no more. I think this is a similar. kind of spot in that sense for Cleveland as an upstart team that's really on a great path making the playoffs. I just don't think they're ready to be the daddy yet. I was comfortable at the beginning of the week laying the four and a half that I think it opened at, laying four, and then it went off the board with the COVID news about Stefanski. It reopened at six. I'm comfortable laying the six as well. I think this is going to be

Pittsburgh winning, what is it, this 18th, 18th straight game against the Browns. And I think Pittsburgh is going to cover the six. I can't hate on that. I will say the line is dropping. So some guys came in, obviously laid Pittsburgh early, then took a little bit at six, maybe bought a half point. I'm not sure exactly what they did if they just took the six or not. But I got a little bit of Cleveland and now have a nice little opportunity.

in the middle there for this game to fall a little bit closer. But I don't disagree with you from this side. I think that the Steelers certainly have every opportunity here, a team that they're quite familiar with, a team that's playing a little bit short-handed. And as you mentioned, the way to get to Baker, the way to beat the Cleveland Browns is just get pressure on Baker-Mayfield. Without Betonio in there,

and with the team that still is adequately good at pressuring that gave it their pass rushers, the week off last week when they played the Browns to get back in there and try to go after Baker in this offensive line and then Baker gets pressured and Safansky's not there to clean up his messes. It could be pretty interesting to see what the Steelers are able to do. I think if Ben throws up on himself, then you got a good shot for Cleveland to steal this one. But otherwise, I do think that Pittsburgh should be able to get the job done. Okay. Well, that's it. That's my sixth wage.

across the six games. Now, just for funsies, I'm not recommending anybody do this, but you could if you wanted to just have a taste on everything. See how far you make it with this one. You might lose it at the very beginning. If you played every favorite on the money line across the six games, in a parlay, you can get five to one odds. So the, that's the bills. The bills the Seahawks, the Bucks, the Ravens, the Saints and the Steelers, all on the money line that that pays off near five to one. Do you have a death wish? A favorite funsy. Well, it's just, you know, that that that that that that pay off does certainly not seem like it is worth it to parlay every single favorite. That payoff of only five to one to me does not seem like it would be

would be worth it. And certainly the sweat that you would accumulate over the course of the day may not make it that valuable to you. But, you know, hey, anything could happen. Anything is possible. Well, look, what's the point of doing this podcast unless I give out one dumb square play? There's, that's the square play of Super Wild Card weekend. Sharpie, I mean, I feel like I should go to bed now. and just stay in bed until Saturday morning. So I'm well rested for this weekend. The problem with this year more than any, and I know our producers are going to be pissed that this is going along,

but it's not our fault that they put six games here on a super wildcar weekend. We'll be able to do next week a lot quicker. But I will say this, you got to pay attention this whole week because of COVID. You don't know what could happen. You got to keep your eyes and ears peeled to all the information is possible because stuff could happen right up until the day before. the game. So you could you should track injuries as you typically would. But with COVID, I mean, nothing is safe until that game actually kicks off. Sharpe, we'll be following you all weekend

long. As soon as the first ball goes in the air Saturday on on the Twitter, it is, I have four screens to watch football. Your Twitter feed now goes on on the primary computer screen because, that you know, I, I, you've been on a, on a hell of a role lately. I'll make sure, well, knowing that, I'll make sure that I try to stay a little bit more engaged. Sometimes I, I'm, I'm focused on watching, but with such few games, I do like to chime in a little bit more frequently. So I'll try to do that. I would also strongly advise last sharp point of the super wild card weekend is if you do have multiple screens in your viewing location and you're typically used to putting up two games at a time or three games at a time,

or three games at a time. Put the same game up on your second TV, pause it using your DVR for about four seconds and then press play, mute that TV. And what you will get is instant replay the entire game long of anything you want to see. You could just glance over there and you will get instant replay. It is one of the things that you will be like, holy shit, why didn't. I think of this before if you aren't doing it. that is my my biggest strongest advice of the weekend.

Outstanding. We are so ready for super wildcard weekend. We didn't even get to your menu. I don't even know what you're going to eat all weekend. How are you going to fuel yourself for this thing? I haven't even thought of it, my friend. I've been getting late nights till 4.15 working for some coaches and then working on other stuff and recording some lovely pods for the fine folks in the Ringer community.

I haven't focused on food yet. Tell me what you've got. I have a feeling you've been putting a little bit more thought into it than I have. Well, no, I mean, I have all the eligible candidates, but I haven't bit down hard on anything. This is midweek. We're just going through the numbers right now. We want to make sure that all the gambling gurus,

the wagering wizards of anybody's out there know how we're feeling about these games. We have a quest to go 13 and 0. I'm going to go 6 and 0 when it comes to my food choices. Chili is 1,000% in the mix. cold, it's the East Coast. So there's going to be a chili on Sunday because I'm a traditionalist. I'm an old guy. I'm a middle-aged guy. Chili on Sunday. Saturday stew. Saturday, nice, earthy beef stew. And I have one ingredient for you. Do not sleep on this. This is a crucial element anchovy paste. Get all your other ingredients. Get it all together. You want the umami. And you can have

whatever your choice cut of beef is as the base for this and your traditional beef stew ingredients and elements and all that you pull together, if you want to take that flavor profile from a six to an 11 anchovy paste. Well, buddy, I'm not going to be able to disagree with you on your Sunday choice, but I can't go back to back like things I'm eating with a spoon out of a bowl type deal. Like I don't know. I got to I got to have something that I'm meeting with my hands, my fingers, some finger food during the game, something that I can grab and eat.

So I love the chili idea. But look, I'm sure you whip up a masterful beef stew and the umami element of it certainly sounds tremendous. So I'm not going to knock you for it. But I do want to know what your full out menu is. So please before the day starts each day, tweet out what your full menu is. for each of the each of the day's slates. We'll get the menu and I'll get some pictures up on the Twitter as well.

Boom, there you go. There we go. It's going to be a great week at Sharpie. So excited. Let's go.