The Ringer NFL Show - The Rise of the Underdog, PIT vs. TEN, and Week 7 Bets | The Ringer NFL Show

Episode Date: October 23, 2020

We recap the entertaining Giants-Eagles Thursday night game before discussing how we should think about point totals now that unders are starting to hit more than overs. We also discuss the rise of the underdog, Warren’s thoughts on Pittsburgh vs. Tennessee, and some of House’s bets for Week 7. Hosts: Warren Sharp and Joe House Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

All right, my gambling gurus, my wagering wizards, my betting buddies, it is time the Ringer NFL Friday show. It's Joe House and Warren Sharp. This week's show is a doozy. The dogs are barking. It's the rise of the underdogs. Unders have been making a move. And we look at the marquee game, Tennessee and Pittsburgh, as well as a couple little plays

out there on a teaser. and maybe something against the Jets. Coming right up, stick around. We've got a great one coming for you. Hey, podcast, pals, today's episode of the Ringer NFL show. On the Ringer podcast network is brought to you by State Farm. Getting great car and home insurance from State Farm at a surprisingly great rate. Why that is like drafting a player that becomes an all pro.

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Choose insurance that always brings its A-game podcast, pals, when you want the real deal, like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Welcome to the Ringer NFL show. I am Warren Sharp, joined as I always am on Fridays by the one and online. Joe House and my God, Joe, what the hell did we just watch? That was one of the craziest Thursday night games we have seen. I think in a meme, it was the fumble, it was the trip and fall by Daniel Jones trying to make it down to the end zone.

I mean, that just was maybe the highlight of the season so far. I really hope that doesn't become the emblem of his entire career. It certainly feels like it is going to be the, signature play of the giant season the way that they're headed. But Warren Sharp, and we're going to talk about overs and unders. I want to begin with this. Imagine betting on the over in this game. The total was 45 when I looked at it.

Imagine having the over in this game and watching these two teams have five dozen opportunities to score and end up at 43 total points. I mean, look, we were texting back and forth with Bill during the game. And I know that he was on the Eagles here just to win outright, which so he won that. But it was absolutely absurd. Of course, there was like the Evan Ingram drop on that deep pass that might have helped to seal the game. But the opportunities for the Eagles in this game were absurd. Have you ever seen a game where a team has eight fucking trips into the red zone?

They had eight trips into the damn red zone. I mean, the Giants had two trips into the red zone. They scored both times. The Eagles have eight fucking trips into the red zone. They score on only three. The very first one of the game and the very last one of the game. If you remember the first one of the game, they get the opening kickoff. They go the length of the field in this well-executed.

Carson Wentz goes four for four. They have three players rush the ball, three players catch the ball. They score an opening drive touchdown. In between, they go one of, what is it? One of six inside the red zone. And I couldn't understand the end zone fade after end zone fade, after end zone fade. It is literally one of the most lowest percentage play calls down inside of the red zone. And that was beyond frustrating to watch a team continue to rely upon that and just come up with nothing.

And of course, they missed the field goal too at the end of the half, the shank at the really short field goal. It was absurd. This is one of those games, though, where you're talking about like a faulty final score. That was this one. Each team had 13 drives. And for a little while, the Eagles just kept punt in the ball. But my God, how do you get eight trips to the red zone? Well, we have two things now that we're going to cover. The over under on when you were going to drop your first F-bomb of this broadcast was three and a half. minutes. You came in just under and then you dropped another F bomb. Unders are back, baby. Unders are back. That's the whole point. But here, here's my question for you, Sharpey.

Here, here's the thing that I think it's time to go ahead. And I know the Eagles fans are all over this. Doug Peterson, right? Doug Peterson loses Frank Reich. And he essentially says the beginning of the season, I make most of the play calls on the offensive end myself. He has a run coordinator and then he has a special offensive assistant or some other kind of nonsensical title like that helping him. But the play calling ultimately on the offensive side of the ball resides with Doug Peterson, right? Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, he's he's the head coach slash play caller. So it absolutely, the buck stops there. And that's got to be extraordinarily maddening if you are an Eagles fan because there is now, you know,

extraordinary evidence that he's not good at it. He is, he's, he's got some combination of a lack of awareness of the situation and you hit on it right away. The fades in the end zone. Who is in his ear telling him, let's try that again. We see something there, right? They have the analysis and the game plan coming in where they think that there must be, they must think there's some advantage to be gained.

And they continue to run this low percentage play to no avail whatsoever and just leave points on the board, which means leaving the game open for a team like the Giants to go out and snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. Well, the other thing, too, in addition to that is the Jalen Hertz stuff. And I don't know how they, how much they're using and practice. time to dedicate to Jalen Hertz type packages. So I can't comment that it's entirely wrong to do, to utilize him because maybe they're practicing it a ton and some of the stuff just isn't working in the game. But this isn't like Taysam Hill, where Taysam Hill has been with the Saints for a few

years and then you bring him out and the stuff's not working, but he's at least had time. Jalen Hertz is a rookie. He was just drafted. It was a total. It was a total. abnormal off season. And, you know, when I see a two-point play, which could have allowed the Eagles to breathe a sigh of relief, you're down 21-18. Clearly, they got the ball back. They were in field goal range for a while. They didn't need to score that final touchdown, right? So what they would have been able to call plays, I still think with the same aggressiveness, but at least have known fallback, we can at least tie this game here. But they used Jalen Hertz on this two-point point play. And I just want that ball in Carson Wentz's hand. Carson can run. We have seen Carson

be able to run the football. If the play needs to have Carson run, he can. But Carson is so much more adept at reading defenses. Say what you want about him and some of the mistakes he makes at inopportune moments. That is all true. But if I have a two point play and I need to score it, I want Carson throwing the football there. And if it's a purely designed run and there's no, throwing option. You know, I'm probably still at this point in his career, probably still want Carson Wentz to be the guy running that football. Sure.

He already had a rushing touchdown in this game. It was, I think, statistically, his best game across the board of the entire season. He threw for almost 360 yards. The only thing you would want to do is maybe hold him back because you don't want him to get hit. But in that situation, it's like a two-point play at the end of the game, got to have it type play. Clearly, you didn't have to have it because you could have won without it.

But it would have been a really nice thing to have. That would be the situation where you could run Carson, I think. Yeah. So let me ask you this. Was tonight a best case scenario because the game was competitive, notwithstanding the great ineptitude on both sides of the ball? And we started a nice low point and we go upward from here. Or do we look at the glass half full and say, look,

we had a very, very competitive game. It came all the way down. to the very end. It required the Eagles defense. Who in moments looked pretty good. I mean, they did put good pressure on Daniel Jones as required occasionally. Did we say glass half full? It was very competitive. We enjoyed it. Gave us something. We're never going to forget Daniel Jones falling down. I mean, you know, it's NFL football at its best. How are you feeling tonight? I'm feeling like it was a very important game for the NFC. I think that this was a game clearly.

that changed, I don't want to say change the future balance of power, but change the present balance of power in the NFC East. I mean, right now the Eagles are number one in the NFC East, thanks to this win. It's crazy as it sounds. They've won two games. They're two four and one on the season, but they're in first place in the NFC East at this present moment in time. Next week, they have, what, 10 days before they play again, and they play the Dallas Cowboys.

I don't know if it's here in Philly, if it's there in Dallas. But in either case, if the Eagles are able to win that game, then they have a buy. So for the Eagles, this was a big win. For the Giants, look, this was a game that they probably could have won if they made a play or two here or there thanks to the ineptitude on the Eagle side of things. But if this game is played out 10 times, I definitely think the Eagles are winning this game more than half of those times, right? Like, they clearly dominated most elements of this game.

I didn't quite understand. I mean, we got on display tonight a little showcase of Jason Garrett and his play calling. I tweeted out at one point on first downs, I don't know if it was through the entirety of the first half, but it very well might have been. On first downs, the giants were averaging 12.9 yards per pass attempt when they threw the ball. Only 1.5 yards per carry when they ran the ball. Every single time that they called a run play on first down, they ended up punting it after failing on a third. down. They got forced into third down because of terrible gains on first, and then they ended up punting it. So, I mean, their play calling, that doesn't shock anybody who's familiar with Jason Garrett. Eventually, they ended up passing the ball a little bit more. Of course, Daniel Jones'

massive run. That was on a first down. But in terms of the way we're setting up this week, I thought we at least got a competitive game, which is one of the main things you want to see on a Thursday. How many of these more recent games have we seen where it's just been a blowout? And you end up seeing backup QBs in the second half. Like, nobody wants to see that. So a competitive game that came down to the end, it had some really incredible, great plays and some really terrible bad plays, and then some really hilarious plays. I think it's the perfect start to this week seven and the perfect way to kind of, I don't know,

close the door on this NFC East battle. And we don't know what we're going to get the rest of this weekend. I know the Cowboys still have a game to play, and Washington does those T-T's play each other. I don't know what you're going to make of that one, but definitely a fun Thursday night. I agree with you. I don't want to prolong this,

but I do want to just offer this concluding thought, which is come Tuesday morning, I'm going to be looking hard at the NFC East Division title odds. Because I have at the beginning of the season a play on Dallas to win the NFC East. I now think that Philadelphia is the most talented team in the NFC East. I've seen enough. If they can get healthy over these next two weeks, they have a lot of weapons.

And they have so many guys still to come back. They have a lot of different ways to score. I've been kind of impressed by their defense, even though it's kind of patchwork. I really am going to take a look Tuesday morning at the Eagles odds to win the NFC East. Well, look, the main thing that the Eagles have is Carson Wentz. And Carson Wentz won the NFC East last year basically by himself, right? I mean, that team had no wide receivers at that point in time last season and they were able to win. I think his season last year, if I'm not mistaken, the first QB to pass for 4,000 yards

without a single wide receiver going above 500 in NFL history. So he has shown the highs and lows of him are going to be like this forever. I never think he's going to shake the plays. We're just like, what is he doing? And then the great dimes that he drops at certain points in time, that's like part of the fun, I guess, of watching a Carson Wentz game is you don't know really what you're going to get. But in terms of this division right now, certainly you're looking at these other two teams and they don't really have their quarterback or the other three teams. really have the quarterback situation figured out. Daniel Jones is there, of course, but the Giants team lacks overall talent. And Dallas is all beat up and they've got their backup. And Washington is now

turned to their backup. So certainly I think the Eagles are in the driver's seat here at the present moment. But hey, if they lose next week to the Cowboys and the Cowboys beat Washington, then the Cowboys, you know, move back into that position. So this division is still going to to be wide open. And we know it's not going to take very many wins to win this division. So it's probably going to be wide open for a little while now. It's a race to eight wins. Well, maybe it's a race to seven. We are in week seven. Let's move on. Let's get going with the week seven slate. All right, brother, House, week six is on the books. We saw some favorites struggle, but give us the rundown of how things went last week. And then what are we at season to date? Yeah, Mr. Sharp, it is

interesting. It does feel like we're kind of getting serious with the season now, right? We've got the first four games in our rearview mirror. Some storylines are starting to play out. The week six betting results favorites, as you just kind of anticipated,

five and nine against the spread. Home teams again, seven and seven against the spread, absolutely nothing to be gained by a home team advantage. Underdogs, big week for the dogs, straight up. Six and eight straight up. And then, And the over under, the totals by the count that I have, it was four overs and 10 unders.

So as discussed on this very program, you predicted we anticipated that the overs were going to take a hit. And indeed, that did come to pass. So season to date, a couple of interesting things I want to call to your attention. Favorites now 40, 50, and 2 against a spread. and that means that underdogs against the spread are 50, 40, you know, if you just flip it, right?

So underdogs now against the spread, 10 games to the good. Home teams 42, 49 and 1 against the spread. No home field advantage. Underdogs straight up, 32, 60 and 1. And then the over under totals coming in at 47, 39, and 5. So that's, you know, that return to normalcy as you kind of anticipated.

So the overs now have dropped all the way down to the low 50% range. Is there anything we can talk about in terms of, is it safe to play totals at the minute? Or we just look for situational value? How are we supposed to think about totals? No, we're supposed to. So entering the season, we discussed the fact that we thought that there could be some more overs because of things that we were handicapping, some other factors. that I don't think the linesmakers were fully taking into consideration. And we capitalized on that.

I mean, there was that one week, what was it, House Week 3 or week four, where Monday morning, we were talking about I jumped on five overs on Monday morning and went four and one on those. But since that point in time, like, everybody started talking about overs and that value has dwindled. Then the odds maker has been boosting up artificially inflating the numbers a little bit. And so there's not as much value there. So you definitely can't, and you haven't been able to for several weeks, bet the overs blindly, nor should you ever have really done that. Even when I was betting five of them, I was still looking at my model and where the situational

edges were based upon my line versus the Vegas line. And that's how you should continue to bet things. The good news is, like, I didn't have to sit here and say, oh, I wonder if the odds maker is going to catch up to these totals this week. I've got a computer model that said they caught up this week. I'm only finding value in these two games and unders in those two games. And so I'm picking my spots based on where my model is suggesting that I should. And that is absolutely something that should be constant, regardless of what weak it is. We should always be focusing only where the value is. So there's absolutely, it is still safe to play totals, but you again, have to pick and choose your spots based upon where you find value. All right, Warren. So on this totals situation, we've been touching on it all season long. The overs are now all the way down into the low 50% range. My question to you is, is it still safe to play totals? I mean, how can we find situational value? The unders, you know, kicked ass last week. How are we, what's the methodology for us to try and find a little bit of value on totals? Yeah. And I'll say it's the same as what we've always done. And that is, you're looking for mathematical edges against the lines that the odd makers are posting. So we did that early in the season. In some weeks, we were betting five overs on a Monday morning because they had the

total set too low based on my model. And then other weeks, we were not betting any totals early because there was not as much value because the odds makers already adjusted. So it's always a game of cat and mouse trying to find the spots where they're wrong on their numbers that we see enough value and some weeks it might be to the overs and some weeks it might be to the unders, but absolutely, as you've kind of indicated, and the data is showing, just betting overs like we talked about is not profitable at all any longer. Yeah. Well, one other interesting takeaway, now that we enter week seven out of these season to date

numbers, it looks like underdogs are starting to separate themselves just a little bit from the favorites. And it looks like they're clocking right around that 55% mark. They're 50 and 40, underdogs against the spread we're talking about. And at this number, we're getting up to that 55% that holy grail line because that's where we start to get profitable here.

And it happens to be a very nice opportunity to go ahead and dive into some sharp points. All of our podcast pals out there, the email, Sharp Points, NFL. at gmail.com. That's S-H-A-R-P-P-O-I-N-T-S-N-F-L, just so we get it right. And when you send us a question, let's make sure that you tell us where you're from. We want to personalize this. We have a great question from podcast listener Matt with one T. Matt with one T. We don't

know where you're from. He says he has a really hard time taking minus odds when Gambling, which means he's he's not a fan of favorites. He says if we just compare, you know, looking at a minus 120 against a plus 120, he only has to be right a couple times at plus 120, taking underdogs where you have to get right three times on a favorite at minus 120 to replicate the winnings there.

He says that doesn't mean he just goes and bets all underdogs, but he's really looking to bet plus odds where he sees the value, but he's more likely to take a favorite and put that into a parlay to juice the odds up. And he wants to know about this strategy. He wants to bounce that off of you, Brother Sharp. Well, I'll just say this. Anytime that you're betting an underdog, you never want to bet an underdog unless we're talking like a 17-point line,

some ridiculously inflated number. You know, maybe potentially this Bill's Jets game or maybe potentially next week's game where the chiefs are going to be laying a ton of points. The places that you want to be betting an underdog are going to be the times that you actually think this guy's got a shot to win the game outright. And you should always put a tiny amount of your bankroll. Anytime you're betting a dog against the spread, put a tiny amount of your bankroll. on that dog to the money line. So never leave a naked dog out there. Never take a dog of three and a half,

five and a half, seven points and just bet them against the spread and not put a tiny amount on the money line. That way you're going to put yourself in a much better situation long term because very often some of these dogs are going to be winning the games outright. And that's how you're covering your spread because they want outright. You want to be able to take a little bit of that profit. I never really look at, you know, the, well, this is minus 120, so I'm only going to take a couple of these and I'll take three dogs because it's plus. I'm looking for value in any number. So we're attacking the board any which way that we see it. And most often, if you are looking at taking a money line, it's going to be in a situation where you're doing for a favorite.

It's a money line parlay or you think that the number is off a little bit and that you're actually getting slightly better value by taking them on the money line rather than laying the point and a half, especially if there's a little bit too much juice on the point in the half and you'd rather just take the money line. It's all about value. This whole thing is simply about is about value. So I wouldn't say his thought process is flawed. You're definitely getting better return by betting underdogs. The key is picking the right spots to do so. But my advice, in terms of a takeaway, anytime you have a dog on the spread, put a little bit on the money line too. Well, that's going to produce great ROI. I didn't get a chance to sit down and do the math on how much, you know,

return on investment underdogs straight up have produced. But if you're playing that way, so far this season, you're hit you're at 55% on underdogs over the favorite. And underdogs are hitting it at better than one third of the time straight up. So at the kind of number that you're getting that dog at on the money line and you compound that with taking, you know, the spread number also, that that's producing some juicy returns. I'm sure that's a very nice return on investment if we put that out over, you know, the kind of season to date total, right? Yes, definitely. And one last thing I'll say on dogs in general this season is if you look at road dogs versus home dogs, we know the bookmakers had trouble figuring out what home field advantage should be this season.

season. And therefore, they were probably giving a little bit too much credit to the home teams. There's a little bit more extra value in the lines for the road teams. And that absolutely was the case. If we look at dogs in general and split them home versus road this year, home dogs are only covering the spread 43% of the time, whereas road dogs are covering the spread 54% of the time. So road dogs are making you money. Home dogs are not, although I will say road dogs have kept a similar hit rate over the course of the entirety of the season, but home dogs started off the year much worse than they've been over the last week, week and a half. Road dogs have, sorry, home dogs have come back and done a little bit better there as the odds makers are reducing

the amount that these home teams are being inflated on the spread ever so slightly as the weeks progress. The marquee game of the week is my favorite game on the entire slate, it's Tennessee at home. And this number's fluctuating a little bit. But when I looked at this and set this up this morning, Tennessee's favored by one and a half over Pittsburgh. And Pittsburgh is my kind of road dog. I absolutely adore what Pittsburgh has done so far this season. And I think there are a few things working against the Titans this week in the first place. third game for the Titans in 12 days. That's their punishment for all the COVID shenanigans.

Small as shenanigans, I mean, I know that they were taking as seriously as they could and the NFL's done its investigations and they were apparently playing by all protocols and maybe they weren't practicing behind the scenes, although they sure as hell did look pretty good the last couple weeks. But third game in 12 days, so that's a little bit of a punishment. And on top of that, they fit. this kind of category. And I know you,

your own self have been out there in public stating on the record that you thought that they were the most likely for a regression. They had three come from behind wins to start off the season to keep up their undefeated record. And it wasn't a very impressive array of teams that they beat in those come from behind wins.

And on top of all of that, it was the Broncos, Vikings and the Jaguars, whose defensive DVOA was, or is 10th, 15th, and 32nd that the Broncos have gotten better. The, the Bills 27th and the Texans 25th. So by far, the Steelers are the classiest defense that the Titans will have encountered thus far this year. And the Pittsburgh's defense is formidable.

I mean, they're allowing just 18.8 points a game. that's second in the league. 4.9 yards per play, that's third in the league. First and rushing success rate, fourth in passing success rate. These are the kinds of things we're talking about. And to me, the real deciding factor, why I love Pittsburgh in this situation,

unfortunately, the injury to Taylor Lewin. I hate to see that. By one measure, he had not allowed a quarterback sack across 130 pass snaps this season, a great stat I saw out there. And I hate to see, you know, a guy go down, but that to me, more than anything, really puts a nice feel in the book as I sit down and think about this for Pittsburgh. Yeah, and Taylor Luan, look, he was definitely great as a left tackle. And we're going to potentially see more pressure against Ryan Tannahill. And Ryan Tannihill has not fared very well against pressure on the season. So let's run through a number of,

number of things first when Tennessee has the ball. Steelers' defense has the NFL's highest blitz rate house, and Tannahill averages over two yards per attempt worse when he's blitzed, so less than when he's not blitzed. The Titans, the bigger thing for me, though, is this is a run-first team. And who is really real? Is the Steelers' run defense really real? Or is this Titans' run offense really real?

We know the Titans' run offense has done very well over the years and the Tennessee Titans with Ryan Tannahill at quarterback, when they play defenses that allow less than 100 yards rushing per game, Tennessee is five and one straight up four and two against the spread. So six games in about a year, right? Because Tannahill took over last year, I think we, seven. And so in a year, they've done very well against teams that have good run defenses. But they run the ball a lot. They run the ball on 63 percent of their first down play. that's a second highest rate in the NFL. The Steelers are the number two defense in the NFL against first down runs, allowing just 2.8 yards per carry. So this is strength on strength. This is, you know,

a very difficult matchup for the Titans. And I'm curious to see whether Arthur Smith, the offense quarter of Tennessee, opts to use a slightly different strategy or he just dances with who brung him and continues to go with this high run. run rate, even if it's not productive. The data and the numbers show that when you pass the ball on early downs, you are more likely to get a defense that's playing the run. And therefore, it's more optimal for your quarterback. And especially if you don't have your left tackle and you're dealing with a defense that loves some blitz, do you think the Steelers are going to send past blitzes on first down when they know the Titans run the ball 63% of the time? Possibly not. So this would be great

time to pass the ball against these loaded boxes. If I'm Arthur Smith, I'm trying to pass the ball a little bit more often in those situations. But, I mean, they've done the run heavy thing so much that I don't know if he'll make those adjustments. Well, and we talked about Luan, that injury, we can't really quantify that. They're also dinged. Corey Davis is dinged. John Hussmith is dinged. John who's been getting a ton of targets from Tannie Hill. So like some of his safety blanket stuff, isn't there and available to him. And, you know, I think it's a really juicy matchup. I mean, I'm been extremely impressed by how Tennessee resurfaced post the COVID shutdown of that franchise.

But I think this is the moment where it catches up with them. And I really, you know, this is a classy defense that they are up against the first time this season. And it's, there's a lot of intrigue. I'm all over Pittsburgh, both as on the line and as we just discuss, a little money line play. Plus 110 is what I saw out there earlier today. That is going on my dance card. So let me throw in a couple of other things for you. Number one, this will help your play, and that is that A.J. Brown, the number one receiver for the Titans,

he missed practice on Thursday. So John Hussmith, their tight end, practiced in full on Thursday. He was limited Wednesday. He obviously missed most of the second half of that game last week. He was limited on Wednesday, came back in full, but then A.J. Brown goes out. So it remains to be seen what's going on with A.J. Brown and why he didn't practice and what his status is for the game. But now let's talk about when the Steelers have the ball, because I think you're going to

really like some of this stuff here to reinforce your bet. And then I'll tell you kind of where the sharp position is on this game. The Tennessee Titans use some of the NFL's highest rates of man coverage on early downs. They use man coverage on 46% of early down passes. The NFL average is only 32%. This year, the Steelers' offense has dominated man coverage. Now, the numbers haven't been quite as severe as wide a gap. I'm going to share with you right now in years past.

But let's keep in mind that Randy Fickner, the Steelers' offense coordinator, He was there last year, but Ben was not. Ben was there for six quarters of the entire season. So he was lost for most of the time. So we don't know what this, it doesn't matter what the Steelers were, Mann versus Zone last year. And Fickner wasn't there prior to that. And in addition, they added Matt Canada. Matt Canada, there's a lot with pre-stamp motion and helping design some of these past plays and concepts that they're using. And these things seem to do really well against man coverage. What the Steelers offense, especially their passing offense on early is doing. Look at these splits. Against man coverage, 11.1 yards per attempt, against zone coverage,

only 4.9 yards per attempt. They've got a 10% better success rate against man than zone, and their EPA against man is plus 0.54. It's minus 0.14 against zone. So their passing offense is substantially better when the defense plays more man, and now they're going up against a team that has one of the highest rates of man on early downs. In addition, this is the first game of the season that they're going to be playing with a full complement of their three wide receiver sets. They never used Chase Claypool the first couple of weeks. They only started going heavy with Chase Claypool when Deontay Johnson was injured, who was their

former number two wide receiver. Deonti Johnson has missed the last two weeks. We thought he might be back against Cleveland. They held him out that game with a back injury, but he is healthy. He's been practicing in full. So now they've got all three of these wide receivers, Juju and Chase Claypool and Deonti Johnson and wide receivers have scored a lot of points against the Tennessee Titans defense. A Tennessee Titans defense really is not good. They're the second worst defense that the Steelers

have played so far this year. The last point I'll make on this before we talk about kind of how the line is moved is the fact that the Steelers are throwing a lot of passes. And if you've been watching the game, you've probably noticed this, a lot of short passes. 60% of all of their passes are between zero and 10 air yards. So they're right within 10 yards of the line of scrimmage. They're not throwing as much behind the line of scrimmage, and they're not throwing very much deep down the field. Even like 11, 12 yards is not that deep down the field with a quarterback like Ben,

but they're not really throwing those passes much. It's Ben reading the defense quickly and getting the ball out of his hands. 60% of their passes in this 0 to 10 air yard range, that's sixth highest rate in the NFL. The NFL average is to allow for defenses to allow those passes to record a 58-1%. percent success rate. But against the Titans, they're recording a 72 percent success rate. They're recording plus.3-9 EPA, which is much worse than the NFL average. And they're recording 7.3 yards per attempt, which is much worse than the NFL average. In fact, in those metrics,

the Titans have the worst defense in the NFL against passes thrown where the Steelers throw the most often, which is zero to 10 air yards. So Pittsburgh attacks where they're weak, and this is something the Steelers won't have to adjust. This is already something that they do. So I think there is going to be some advantages for the Steelers side here in terms of how they're going to be able to move the ball offensively. And Tennessee doesn't really get a whole lot of pressure on opposing quarterback. So that's going to help Ben Rothsburger. But here's a couple things for you, House. This line, the look ahead was like Tennessee minus one. It took a bunch of Steelers money early, but the stronger money now has come back on the Tennessee Titans, and Tennessee is now favored, as you noted earlier, by one and a half

points. The total also took a hit towards the under, dropping it from, I think it was as high as 52 and a half at Open all the way down to 50 and a half. So under and the Titans has been the flavor of the week from some of the more vested sharper groups here on this game. And it's going to be interesting because certainly some of the things that I'm uncovering speaks to the fact that the Steelers could have some advantages here, but it will be interesting to really see what Arthur Smith decides to do. And this is why, House, I always say that it's very hard to separate a quarterback from his play caller. And why I love helping out some of these coordinators, because just picture it. If Arthur Smith decides to run the ball a ton and they're not having

much success, this game is completely different than if Arthur Smith does not run the ball as much on first down and decides to pass the ball more down the field and if A.J. Brown is up. So like the outcome of this game could be massively different just based upon whether or not he decides to break some tendencies against a really good run defense. Well, I hate to use a very dumb example to prove your point, but we just saw exactly the dynamic you described on Monday night football with the dumbass Dallas Cowboys and their dumbass game plan with Ezekiel Elliott. and they basically were their own, they self-cooled Andy Dalton.

They self-cooled the red rifle. They never gave them a chance to get into any kind of rhythm whatsoever. You and Verno covered it on the Wednesday show. And Zeke, for whatever reason, was putting the ball on the carpet. That game was over in the first eight minutes. And I, as a Washington professional, almost professional, might be professional football fan. Absolutely adore watching the Dallas Cowboys.

Stink it up most of the time, I thought last week, and we talked about this on this very podcast, I thought Dallas had an advantage over Arizona at home. And they completely blew that by first down run insistence at a rate that was way outside the bounds of what they'd done in the season to date. Now, I'm interested in getting to the bottom of one thing with you because we were talking about a really fascinating matchup here. We have a ton of respect for both coaches. Pittsburgh and Tennessee. And you put on blast

Mike Vrable this week. And it was one, I don't know how often you get 75,000 likes on tweets that you generate. Maybe that's your kind of territory. I don't know. But I was impressed. You impressed me with this one. You took a

particular strategic opportunity that Vrable created to help his team with an opportunity to win. He it seems by the way the video kind of played out an intentional 12th man penalty to stop the clock, preserve his timeouts. And, you know, he basically weighed the value of the yardage he was forfeiting against getting

that time. And you, you, you did a masterful job of lining up the video and so forth for, for two questions. So for in the first place, the Sharps coming back on Tennessee. the under. Is that out of respect for Vrabel? Do you think that's part of what's driving it? And then secondly, did anybody from Tennessee call you up and curse you out for putting that on blast? No, I didn't hear from those guys, although I know some of them, but they didn't get, they didn't get back to me on being upset with it. Certainly, what was funny is after the fact, he dodged the questions completely, like from the school of Bill Belichick. Yeah, great job of trying to

distract the interviewer. But no, I thought that they, the reason probably the sharp guys are looking at this is if you look at the track record of the Pittsburgh Steelers, when they go on the road, a lot of their games have gone under the total. Now, sometimes they're playing some bad offenses. Sometimes the competition has not been overly good. But this is a team that really does tend to play towards the under. And we know even if they're at home, they oftentimes play down to the level of competition. We didn't see that last week against Baker Mayfield in a game that, you know, the Steelers just absolutely love crushing the younger redheaded stepchildren in their division. So they, you know, anytime they get a chance to crush the orange stepchild of the

Browns or the orange stepchild of the Bengals, they do that. But other teams and other divisions, they have not fair quite as well against. So I think it's a little bit of that. I think, you know, I'm not quite sure from a modeling perspective, a value perspective, that. But we know that some of these guys were betting the under in the Cleveland Pittsburgh game last week. And now they're betting the under in this Pittsburgh game this week. That is very typical. When you see certain betting groups betting on a certain side, they do that somewhat several

weeks in a row. They bet on a certain total for a team. They might bet the same way several weeks in a row until the last. lines catch up with them. My wagering wizards, quick word from our friends at Fandul, I've got to tell you about my new

favorite bet concept this NFL season I have been playing same game parlay is on Fandul's sports book and it's the most fun you can have betting on football. They are very

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Pittsburgh getting the one and a half. And let's go ahead and play the Pittsburgh money line at plus 110 as well. That's a four legged parlay. That's a big chair that even a fat butt like mine will fit in that four-legged stool. How about that parley? If you like it,

go ahead and bet it with your first NFL or if baseball is your thing, World Series single game parlay of the week, you will get $10 back. If we don't win. Now there is one catch Fanduil is the only sportsbook app that has these same game parlays. So if you don't already have a Fandul account, just use promo code.

Sharp! When you sign up so they know that Warren sent you, that's Fandu's Sportsbook promo code S-H-A-R-P. Quick disclaimer for you have to be 21 or older and present in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Illinois, West Virginia, Indiana, Colorado, or Iowa. The refund is issued as non-withdrawable site credit that expires in seven days. That's not a problem because you're going to bet again inside the week. The max refund is $10.

Terms apply. If you have a gambling issue, call 1-800 gambler in West Virginia. You can visit www.1-800 gambler.net in Indiana. Call 1-8009 with it in Colorado. call 1,800, 522, 470. And in Iowa, call 1,800. Bet's off. For some reason, the next two games that I like on the card are our road favorites.

I like very much the situation of Seattle at Arizona. And for some reason, that is a line that has been decreasing as the week has gone on. It's all the way down when I saw it this afternoon. Seattle's down to just three as a lot. favorite at Arizona. And that particular game situationally, I like a lot. Then Green Bay at Houston,

Green Bay is favored by three and a half. Another road favorite. Let's start with Seattle. I just very much like the position that Seattle is in coming off of a buy week with Arizona on a short week after that Monday night. And it's a divisional game.

Seattle's familiar with them. Seattle kicks their ass every year. And I think there's a particular opportunity here. The Cardinals defense isn't very good. They're second in the league and points. Oh, wait a minute. The Cardinals defense ranks very well because they've played bad teams. They have games against Washington, the Jets, and Dallas.

Those three teams combined for 35 points. And so the Cardinals ranked second in the league and points against. when the Cardinals go up against semi-competent offenses, and that's all I'm willing to give these teams, Detroit, San Francisco, and Carolina, they allow over 25 points a game. The Seahawks offense is the best offense they're going to see this season. And I also like the idea of Seattle and Pete Carroll going into the defensive lab a little bit

and saying, you know, looking in the mirror and saying, why is it that we have been so poor so far? the 29th in opponent's yards per play, and they're dead last in yardage per game, over 470 yards per game. I like, you know, the Seahawks coming in with the opportunity to get themselves right on defense and with that extra rest. Am I all wet here? It's a tough game. I can say that we've seen a little bit of money, definitely show up for the Arizona Cardinals. And The main advantage that I think the Arizona Cardinals had, and you hit a bunch of these things in terms of Arizona's defense. Yeah, they look pretty good, but they've played a really terrible schedule of opposing offenses. They played the third easiest schedule of opposing offenses. Now they're going to be facing arguably the best offense in the NFL in terms of the Seattle Seahawks. So that is going to be an interesting matchup, step up in class for them. The one thing that Arizona, Jonah's offense is really good at, is they're really good at playing against zone.

Kyler Murray has struggled in his career against man coverage, but he's done really good against zone coverage. And against zone, he's averaging 8.2 yards per attempt against man, 6.1 yards per attempt in his career. There's only one of their team that plays zone coverage more than the Seattle Seahawks have done so far on early downs this season. They are average, I think, 81% of early down passes against the Seattle Seahawks, Seattle has been playing zone coverage. So this is something that's going to work in Kyler Murray's favor offensively for him to have some success here. The other interesting thing about the Seattle Seahawks, we recognize them as like this big-time juggernaut this year because they are 5-0. And so while that's been strong and

that's been great, the problem is that this is a team that really has failed to take advantage of early leads at halftime. This team, I think, is leading only by an average of one point at half time all over the course of the season. Three out of their five games have they led at halftime, but it's only been by an average overall of one point. I mean, I think that ranks like 16th in the NFL. So they've got to figure a way, obviously not scoring at all in the first half against

the Vikings has hurt them. They've got to figure out a way to try to get back on track offensively, get started much quicker force Arizona out from this what they like to do, which is run the football, a fair amount, stay pretty balanced and help their own defense by getting up on the scoreboard and making Arizona more predictable. The other game I was looking at was Green Bay favored by three and a half at Houston. Now, we spoke last week about Green Bay in a tough position going up against Tampa and by golly, Tampa's defense was up to the challenge.

The Green Bay offense struggled against that Buck's defense. That Buck defense now fourth in pressure rate. And Aaron Rogers looked uncomfortable all day long, but here breath of fresh air potentially for Green Bay. The Texans, the Houston Texans, not very good at pressuring the quarterback. They pressured the quarterback at the league's fifth lowest rate, and not only the Texans not get pressure,

they don't really stop anybody. They're 27th in, in yards per play, and they've only forced four turnovers the entire season. So I like the Packers, and Aaron Rogers put a positive spin on the ass whipping that they took. He said, maybe we needed that kick in the butt. The Texans are in this tough spot, right? They got rid of Bill O'Brien.

They got their dead coach bounce win with Romeo Cornell the first week after Bill O'Brien. But then, I mean, Romeo Cronel strikes me as a very lovely man and, you know, a competent and capable defensive coordinator. I do not intend to suggest anything other than admiration for his personal character. But holy shit, does any, is there anybody out there that snatches defensive? defeat from the jaws of victory like Romeo Cornell, the body of work. And last week, as a stark reminder with the opportunity to, I mean, the Texans had 17 different ways to win that game and more importantly cover the game if you had a little action on the, on the Texans getting five and a half points, as I did.

But it did not turn out that way. Tennessee covered with a touchdown in overtime on their first drive. and I just like this situation for Green Bay. Aaron Rogers has a great success rate against the spread coming off and against the spread loss in his career. And the same thing is true when he's coming off a straight up loss. Both of those numbers are above 60% hit rate. He comes out when he's the quarterback and Green Bay loses the next week,

they tend to cover two thirds of the time and they tend to win two thirds of the time. I like Green Bay laying the points on the road to Houston. Look, House, I don't necessarily disagree on this one. I don't have a strong opinion in terms of seeing if there's enough line value here to want to lay over three points. But I will say that this is absolutely the perfect spot where you would expect Aaron Rogers and company to get their mind right. I really don't know what the deal is with this team coming off of a buy with Matt LaFleur. This team got absolutely stomped when they went to Sanford. Francisco last year and lost 37 to 8. This year, they lose 38 to 10. Very similar final scores,

very similar fourth quarters in which Aaron Rogers is sitting on the bench doing absolutely nothing except contemplating the decisions that he made and the mistakes that he made in the first half of that game. But Houston Texans defense is kind of the thing that helps all quarterbacks get right. This is in general a get right defense with the lone exception of the Jacksonville Jaguars and Gardner Minchew, but every quarterback has looked good against these guys. They certainly rank one of the worst in the league. And the good thing is that the Green Bay Packers are going to be able to do whatever they want to do.

There's no case of pick your poison. It's like pick your milkshake here because they can run the ball against the fifth worst run defense. They can pass the ball against a team that really struggles to get pressure and really struggles to defend the pass well. And it's really going to be a matter of whether Robert Tonian, which is that's the right way to pronounce it. He came out and said it rhymes with Funnion, so Tunyon, whether Robert Tunyon can get healthy and be that tight end that they need

because they will want to attack a little bit with the tight end position as well. But I can't, I can't disagree with your strategy. I think that there's going to be points scored here. Houston, their offense got back on track, obviously last week against the Tennessee Titans following the firing of their former head coach, Bill O'Brien. And as a team that's been able to put up points last few weeks. Just haven't been able to win games except when they're playing the Jaguars. Right. Well, speaking of a team that's been unable to win games, I have two plays left on my ticket

to bounce off of you, only one of which I'm really interested in your opinion on, because you know, my square play of the week every week is bet against the Jets as long as Adam Gase is their head coach. and I checked this morning. He was not fired. He's still the head coach. So that means that the jets against the bills. The number I saw was 13 and a half.

That's less than two touchdowns. The bills were on a short week. The bills are traveling. The bills are facing an inflated spread. And I don't care. Buffalo won the first meeting, the first game of the season, 2717. That game really wasn't that close.

and I expect the Buffalo Bills to get themselves right against the New York Jets this week. And I appreciate very much what Woody Johnson is doing for my pocketbook by keeping Adam Gaysen place. Yeah, I mean, look, the Jets were down 21 to 3

at halftime in that game. And the bills, you know, they couldn't get it any further than that. They made a lot of mistakes, a lot of self-inflicted wounds in that game. If you go back and dig through the box score or rewatch that game, a lot of self-inflicted wounds. There are some areas that the bills should be able to attack the

jets, especially if they get forced into third down. The New York Jets really struggle to defend passes that are thrown beyond the line of scrimmage, the way that Greg Williams plays his defense. They like to rally to the football. They play to the sticks and they come up the field, but it's very easy if you got third in seven, third and eight to throw the ball nine or ten yards down the field, and they're terrible. They're absolutely ridiculously bad when you throw the ball just beyond the sticks on third down. And so I think from that perspective, the bills are going to have some edges. The main thing the bills have to avoid doing house.

And it should be fairly easy. But for whatever reason, Buffalo cannot run block this year. They're so terrible running the football, but they're significantly better passing the football. And what they need to do is avoid first down runs as much as possible because the Jets run defense really good against first down runs, but they're terrible against passes. And as long as Josh Allen can get back, drop back, get the ball out quick, avoid some of the pressure, just get it to his playmakers in space. And they're going to have success against this Jets defense.

Yeah, I feel like we can move on. I will say I wouldn't be surprised to see Josh Allen himself using his legs a little bit. Again, in a way that doesn't put him in outsized jeopardy, but that could be a way. You got to be, I agree with you, but you got to be careful because Greg Williams is in the guy's heads on defense. And these guys are absolutely idiotic, and they're definitely going to be headhunting Josh Allen. And I really hope the officials for this game are tuned into this because Josh Allen is like the Cam Newton from three, four, five years ago where this dude takes tons of beatings just because he's a big guy.

If Drew Breeze got touched a third of the time like Josh Allen is, guys would be getting tossed out of the NFL. I'm not even, it's a little bit of an exaggeration, but it's not by much. Josh Allen takes ridiculous amount of beating, and these officials need to be treating him just like any other quarterback when he is in the pocket. I understand when he's a runner, then he's different, but in the pocket, he takes brutal hits, and I expect, hopefully the refs will be on top of that, start throwing some flags early if these jets come in headhunting.

Well, that's a great point, and you were so exercised after that Thursday night game, the Jets against the Denver Broncos when the Jets, the game was over, and they were still going in there and trying to put hits on the quarterback. Come on, NFL. Step in and put a stop to it. Greg Williams nonsense needs to stop. I have one last thing to bounce off of you, and this is teaser candidate time for me.

I'm looking at two games. I like now because I've taken on your instruction. I'm looking for games where the line is under three points. I'm looking for underdogs, under three points that I can tease up to eight points by way of a classic six point tease because that gets us through the key number of three and the key number of seven. And I found a happy marriage here that I quite like, which means it's probably a dead loser, but I want to bounce it off of you. San Francisco getting two points at New England. I'm going to tease them up to eight points. and Detroit getting two points at Atlanta.

I want to tease them up to eight points. I look at these two games. I don't think there's an enormous difference between San Fran and New England. And I feel the exact same way about the Detroit Atlanta game. I think they're pretty even. And so I really like the idea of getting up north of a touchdown in both of those games.

What do you think? Where am I going to go wrong with this teaser? Well, the only thing that you have is you got a 49ers team. You got the, we're buying a team in its high point, which we were talking about selling the perils of selling a team in its low point, which is what the 49ers were heading into Sunday night football. And of course, we were dead on the money there. The 49ers won and won fairly convincingly. But now you're buying, you're buying them when they just had a nice game and you're selling the Patriots when they just had their worst performance of the year. I think their offensive line is going to get a little bit healthy. But I will say asking this team, to win by enough of a margin here is going to be challenging. This defense isn't quite as good as long as Jimmy G can get the ball out of his hands, be a facilitator. The 49er secondary has gotten a little bit stronger.

I think it's well within the range of outcomes for them to cover a teaser like here for you. With regard to the Detroit Atlanta game, I don't disagree on this one, but there was one thing that really was frustrating and perplexing to me, House, when I saw the Detroit Lions come back from their buy last week. And that was the simple fact that one of the things I talked about previously was how did lions get so conservative in the third quarter of games. They have a great quarterback. They've got good wide receivers.

They want to come out in games passing the football. And that's what they were doing. In the first half, on first downs, they were passing the ball 53% of the time. But then, and having great success in high yards per 10. But then they would turn in the third quarter and get all conservative and run the ball a lot more. And these runs were very inefficient. Low success rate, 38 percent, low yards per carry, 3.2. Yet they're running more than they're throwing out of the locker room.

I was like, what the heck are these guys doing? I said, hopefully they study up on some of this stuff before the buy week or during the buy week. We can come back with a little bit better strategy. You know what they did in the first half of last week's game? And again, that game got out of control. They were up by 14 entering the fourth quarter against Jackson. Jacksonville last week. So of course, they'll run a little bit more in the second half.

But in the first half of that game, they go 79% run on first downs. These runs are only 36% success rate. So I don't know why in the world they came out of the buy deciding we want to run on the Jacksonville Jaguars. The Jaguars have the number 32 past defense, the number 32 pressure rate defense. They can't get pressure on a quarterback. They're terrible at stopping your pass attack, and yet the lions who have Matthew Stafford, a healthy line and healthy receivers, decide to go very run heavy. I didn't quite understand that the part of the lions in this game that I just don't like is the coaching staff, but everything else I like. I like selling the Atlanta Falcons at a high point after they just fired their coach and got a win and a big time,

you know, feel good moment. Now they come back home and reality starts to set in that, guess what, we really don't have a lot of talent on this team. I mean, we've got to some players, but are we really that good? And if you look at who Detroit's played and how their records and how they fared in those games, they've played some pretty stiff competition and they've done pretty well overall, all things being considered. So I definitely can't argue that much, but I really just wish the coaching staff offensively would figure out how to optimize things. And this week, you are playing in Atlanta Falcons defense. That is one of the worst against the pass and number eight against the run. You absolutely cannot enter this game.

thinking that we're going to run the football all over the Atlanta Falcons. That's not the way to beat the Falcons. You have to pass the ball on these guys. Hopefully the Lions do that with Matthew Stafford. Golode is now healthy. Let these receivers make some magic against his falcons secondary like most teams in the NFL are able to do. Yeah, let Matthew Stafford cook.

I will say this. Damn it. You reminded me of the Matt Patricia Factor. He is on my list of guys to not trust. and I could absolutely positively see myself looking at the fourth quarter of this game and getting very upset. So what I'll do, I'm going to play this teaser because the numbers line up the way that I like. And I don't think there's an enormous difference between Detroit and Atlanta. So Detroit getting eight still feels like the correct side.

I'm trusting the process here, Sharpie. But I'm prepared to be disappointed and I'm prepared to have another round of curse words for the pencil-eared Matt Petrie. Well, and I will say it hasn't worked out this way for the last couple of weeks, but Detroit has historically been a better team in the first half of games and a little bit worse in the second half. And with Atlanta, if Detroit's able to get a lead here and take a lead into the locker room, pretty much like whenever you can get Detroit up by like seven or ten points, like they were up against the Saints prior to their by. They were up 14 to nothing, I think at the end of the first quarter against the Saints. And then the Saints reeled off, I want to say 28 unanswered points

and go into halftime 28 to 14. Whenever the lions get a lead, you may want to place a little bit of something on the other team. And that's what you could do here potentially at halftime. Oh, yeah, a little live betting. That's right, the halftime live bet

to cover off a little tiny hedge there. I enjoy this. Sharpie, we're into week seven. It's getting real. The NFL's rolling along. We've got some contenders and we know exactly who they're, the pretenders are. I'm excited that we're letting the dogs out a little bit, Sharpie.

Yeah, I am too. I'm really excited about this weekend's games, especially the couple of games where we've got two teams with great records. The Titan Steelers should be a great chess match. We broke that down in detail. Good luck to you on that one. And it'll be interesting to see how some of these other teams are able to fare. I love the fact house that they move Seattle, Arizona to Sunday night football. So we actually get a good game there because Tampa Bay versus the Raiders may get canceled with their COVID issues. They got that out of it. So that was smart by the NFL scheduling group. And if you look, we actually have a very balanced slate of 1 p.m. and 4 p.m. games. I want to say there's only 7 1 p.m. kickoffs on Sunday. So significantly better than having

9 and 2, which we had last week. So it's going to be a great viewing day of watching these games, some good late games, some good early games. And then a nightcap that we know is not going to get canceled with the Seahawks Cardinals, cannot wait for Sunday's Action House. Yeah, I know how happy a balanced schedule makes you, a balanced viewing schedule makes you. And I just want you to be happy, Sharpie. That's all. That's all I'm after. That's why you're a friend.

That's why you're a friend. We're not going to do any better than that. My Wageling Wizards, my gambling gurus. Good luck to everybody out there. Let's all have some strong R-O-I.