The Ringer NFL Show - The Scoring Boom, Power Rankings, and Week 4 Bets | The Ringer NFL Show

Episode Date: October 2, 2020

On this episode of 'The Ringer NFL Show,' Warren tries to keep his cool as he and Joe House react to the Broncos-Jets game (1:45), before giving a take on coach Gregg Williams (4:04). They recap Week 3 (0:00), look into how penalties are impacting scoring (13:18) and power rankings (21:10), before breaking down their favorite bets for Week 4 (27:12). Hosts: Warren Sharp and Joe House Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Like a good neighbor, State Farm is. is there. Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Ringer NFL show. I'm Warren Sharp. It is Friday. I'm joined by House. And House, we got to react to this Thursday night game with the Jets and the Broncos, because there is a lot to unpack here and some things that have me very bubbly. I'm boiling over here. I'm trying to contain myself on this pod and act professionally. But talk to me a little bit about the game. What did you think of that game we saw? Obviously, the Jets dropped. 0 and 4. They haven't won a single game. The Broncos are able to pull off the upset on the road.

What did you make of it? Well, I will tell you this. I was prepared to enjoy, speaking of bubbly, maybe a beverage or three or five or six, because I thought this game had the potential to be a snoozer, to not be interesting. Two and three teams with very uninspiring situations and yet I kind of enjoyed the game. I mean, one thing for sure is the scoring on

these Thursday nights is exceeding the expectations. This is the fourth straight over on Thursday night games, I believe. Am I right about that? No, last week's game barely went under. If you remember, the Dolphins, Jaguars game should have gone over. But yes, the scoring has definitely been off the hook on these Thursday games. They've been very, very entertaining. And that's, a good thing for us when we have to watch a game between two teams that really don't have much of a future for 2020. But I know you're coming in hot because there are certain aspects of the Jets' performance in particular.

And I'll start with the six penalties they had for personal foul, six personal foul penalties. This is ridiculous. So obviously the Jets are coached defense accord. Greg Williams is there. And I've got to say there is, there are not many humans that I have lower regard for as it entails a coach. I've met a lot of coaches behind the scenes. Most of them are infinitely nice dudes. Good people overall. I disagree with some of their decisions. Some of these guys actually learn from their mistakes. Sometimes I'm not always right, but some of these guys learn from the mistakes that I'm noticing and prove what they're doing and are just really good

dudes. But Greg Williams seems like a jackass to me. And he coaches up his team to inflict damage. He tries to kill the head and the body will follow. He got fined and suspended for Bounty Gate. This guy is reckless. We know more about injuries than we've ever known before. We know about the residual impacts of these injuries than we ever have before. It is hard enough to get guys out there, in this season to just play and stay healthy. We're seeing injuries all over the place. And this guy, maybe he's not dropping the bag like he was doing down with New Orleans and the Saints and trying to pay these guys off for hits.

I'm sure he's learned from that. But there is one thing that's beyond a shadow of a doubt. This guy's coming in, hitting guys. I don't know if you saw at the very end of the game. Adam Gase is calling, I mean, they're down nine points. They're not going to win this game. Seconds left. He's calling timeouts just for the sake that he can.

I think used the timeouts to not say that he gave up without timeouts in his pocket. So he uses the timeouts. And Greg Williams has his defense. They're just so trained. They're going in there delivering late hit after late hit on this quarterback. I could not believe those hits. Both of them were flagged, roughing the pastor penalties, six different personal fouls on his defense.

And I'm looking at this guy. And I'm seeing somebody who surrendered 37 points to a, winless team that flies across the country on a short week is being quarterbacked by an undrafted third string quarterback making his first NFL start. They don't have their number one wide receiver. They don't have their number one running back. Their number one tight end goes out in the first half. This dude, Greg Williams, he's not even as good of a defensive coach. Like he's coaching the 2000 Ravens and they're holding teams to three points per game. This guy's defensive strategies are not working in modern NFL right now. He's not some sort of a savant from

that perspective, but his ego is the size of the Empire State building, and he's reckless with his strategies, and players are going to get hurt the way that he coaches his defense. And I would like to say that's the only thing I'm fed up with with the Jets House, but I'm also fed up with their head coach, too. Well, the head coach is about to be gone, and it's suggest, my impression is you would not approve of Greg Williams as the interim coach. That's the one I'm most fearful for. This guy has been in multiple places where he gets that interim head coach. He gets up on it. Do you remember like three years ago he was interviewed? And, you know, for, I think they were doing hard knocks. He was there. And he said, oh, well, I had like eight different job offers for like high

positions at different organizations. And I had to turn them all down so I could take this other opportunity. And then none of that was confirmed by other sources. Like nobody out there actually, like, Who knows if he actually did or not. No, because it wasn't true. Our good friend Kevin Clark, covers the NFL for the ringer, has turned that statement into an all-time Kevin Clark meme. Anytime there's a job on planet Earth that anybody could be eligible for, he makes sure that Greg Williams has mentioned as part of it.

So he's absurd. And yes, I don't want him to become the interim coach. But when I'm looking at Adam Gase, I see a guy who wants to blame other people for the problems. I watched part of his post-game interview after this game tonight. It was just blaming the players. Well, we keep making the same mistakes over and over. You know who's making mistakes, Adam Gase? The guy who's making mistakes is you by continuing to stick with 11 personnel. Chris Herndt in their tight end has three targets the entire game. You're dropping back to pass from 11 over and over and over. I tried to lay out and I can't wait

to go back and look at the personnel groupings for this game to understand how much he was using 11 personnel. But I've gone back over the years and looked at Adam Gase, whether he was in three years in Miami or two years with the Jets. And this guy is systemically, his process is to use 11 personnel. He thinks that's the best strategy. He wants to run his offense. The problem is twofold. Number one, they suck in 11 personnel. They average 5.7 yards per attempt at 38% success rate, 76 passer rating. I could throw out the EPA decimal points, but it's negative. You look at what they do in 12 personnel. They're tremendous.

They're doing significantly better. Then you have to say, well, we're game planning for an opponent. What do the Denver Broncos do well? Understanding it's a short, freaking week. Denver's not going to be able to change up their strategies so quickly to defend you. And guess what? Denver sucks against 12 personnel. Denver's defense allows 9.9 yards per attempt, 68% success, and a 146 passer rating.

You look at what they do against 11. They've played three competent passing offenses on the season as Denver. The Tennessee Titans, that was when they had AJ Brown, the Pittsburgh Steelers, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. They held those teams to just six yards per attempt from 11 personnel, a 41% success rate, an 84 passer rating. They're very good against 11. And yet I can guarantee from having watched the game

and looking at the box score and the player stats after the fact that he overused 11 yet again, not game planning for the weakness of his opponent, not self-scouting for the strength of his team, and it's the same thing, Groundhog Day, every single week. And we can't even, in my opinion, we cannot even accurately evaluate Sam Darnold as it stands right now. Sam Darnold has played with two guys calling plays for him. Jeremy Bates and this combo of Adam Gase slash Dowell Loggins, who use 11 personnel nonstop,

the offense has had the top 10 worst injury luck over the last three years. It was second worst last year. their leading receivers this year heading into the game was Braxton Berrios plus a tight end. Last year it was Jameson Crowder plus a running back. Like he does not have a competent offense around him to evaluate him. And I just don't know what's going on with the Jets. But I know their head coach needs to improve his strategies. I don't think that's even possible.

And the defensive coordinator appears to be a terrible human being with the way that he wants to hurt opposing teams and never appears like he's ever going to change. Well, from a gambling perspective, it seems like playing against the Jets, whoever they're playing each week, just jumping on the money line for the foreseeable future as long as Gase is involved and might not be much longer. And if Greg Williams is involved, seems like maybe that's an angle to play. I don't know. I don't know either.

You have to wait and see like who ends up taking, if they do fire Gase. I really don't think it's going to help the Jets either way. I don't think the answer is on that stuff. Let me just put it that way as to who they need. to be the coach. So firing him now versus doing it later, I don't know where that is actually going to get you. I want to see Joe Douglas have the ability to build a team, to get a coach in there that they believe in and build this team up from the ground. Joe Douglas sort of came in. He was handcuffed to Levyon Bell. He was handcuffed to Adam Gase. If we want to see what Joe Douglas can do,

let's let him have control over some of this stuff. And we'll see if that happens. Okay. TBD with the Jets. In the meantime, don't wager on the Jets under any circumstances. Last week, we will do a real quick recap of week three, but we did look for value in the Jets getting 17 in a tease because they were at 11. That didn't bear out. The 17 Jets plus 17 was still a dead loser. Fortunately, you talked me out of it. I didn't bet it. The NFL week three, betting recap, favorites eight and eight against the spread. Home team, seven and nine against the spread. Underdog six, nine and one, straight up, the over under, a slight tilt towards the over, overwent nine and seven.

And on the season, I mean, a bunch of these hovering right around 500. The favorites are 22, 25, and one against the spread. Home teams 24, 23, and one against the spread. The only place where there's any. kind of advantage out there is remains with the overs. Overs are 29 and 19 on the season. That's a 60% clip. And it seems, you know, perhaps sustainable because we keep seeing these, these big scoring games, tonight's game, a good example of it, 38, 27. That was, you know, 25 points over the 40. That was, I think, the closing number.

What do you think about the sustainability, the durability of overs as we enter week four? Well, we talked about this a little bit on Wednesday, but there's a few schools of thought as to why there are more points being scored. And I could just say that in my view, based on my research and my understanding, everybody is just solely basing all the scoring just on penalties. And it's not just on penalties. They are calling the game slightly differently. As long as they don't change that, the penalties are going to stay.

consistent with how they've been called. And I don't think they should come in mid-season and start changing how they want to call the penalties all of a sudden. So, like, yes, there's a few more types of penalties being called and some things are a little bit different, but it's only actually impacting scoring like 20% of the overall scoring impact, okay, like maybe one out of the five points scoring is being impacted by. The rest of the scoring is primarily being impacted by a few teams that are playing very aggressively and very differently than they have in the past or with quarterbacks that are just dialed in. And I'm talking about the Green Bay Packers, the Buffalo Bills, the Seattle Seahawks.

You also have a couple teams that had quarterback injuries early on or we're playing backup quarterbacks early on that made switches that don't have those same quarterbacks playing. I'm talking about Josh Rosen down in Miami. I'm talking about Ben Rothsberg's injury in Pittsburgh. So all that's done. And a lot of the scoring, if you just looked at like those five teams, they account for like 90% of the scoring change that we're seeing the scoring increase. is because those teams are scoring way more points this year than they did last year.

So eventually that should regress a little bit. But that's part of the reason why, if you just look at the first three weeks, scoring is up so much is because those teams are so different. But the other point is the fourth down aggressiveness, which I do not expect to change. These coaches are now becoming accustomed to calling fourth downs of being more aggressive in certain situations. And that is going to continue. And that leads to points.

Whether they convert them or they don't, it's going to lead to. the points. If you're at midfield, the thing that's going to make the under better is if the team punts the ball. If the team with the ball goes for it, it's going to lead to points. If the team with the ball goes for it and doesn't convert, it's going to lead to points for the other team easier. So what you're rooting against is punts if you have the over. And if you have the under, you're rooting for puns. And so inherently, if there are less puns, you're going to get more points. And that's what we're seeing in these games. So I think that the source. scoring is going to continue. And unless something else changes like the referees calling something

differently, what's going to happen is that the books are ultimately going to raise the totals on these games. And then you're going to get to a level playing field where now there's more value to unders potentially once the overs get overinflated. And this type of stuff happens every year. It's not just with totals necessarily, but certain games keep covering the spread. So the book inflates the numbers on those teams and then you eventually get value fading them. And so it's old school to these bookmakers. They know what they're doing with trying to set the numbers. We try to be a step ahead of them. And we were correct in predicting that there was going to be more points. And so we've had success betting some of these totals, whereas some other guys are just catching up to to that.

And then we're going to try to zig when everybody else zags. The goal is to be ahead of what the marketplace is. Yeah. So at some point, and then it could be this. week, it could be next week, you are going to start circling some inflation and maybe start looking at some unders. Is that, am I picking up what you're dropping? That is correct. What I will tell you, like I never bet things across the board and just say, oh, well, this is what's going to happen. I will tell you that for my clients, we have moved faster on games this week, on some totals this week, have gotten out of the gates, out of the blocks a lot quicker than we have in some prior weeks. And that's because of things that we've seen in the

marketplace and we were trying to stay a step ahead. Look, it doesn't make a lot of sense to people who just gamble, you know, a couple hundred bucks and like to just sit back and watch the games. But our true competition is not the books because I know no matter what the numbers the book set, I'm going to be able to beat them on totals. Like whether they set the lines too high or too low, I'm going to beat them. We've done it for years. I have a better way of coming up with totals than the sports books do. That's why we're able to consistently win games. My bigger competition is not those guys. My biggest competition is the other betting groups and trying to get to the games first so that I get the best numbers before they do. And when I'm coming out here,

betting on games on Monday mornings and moving the marketplace, three points on some totals, like that is literally unheard of, but that's what we're doing because we're trying to get out in front of some of these games and we know we want to be first to a game that we like. And we don't care what happens after the fact. If somebody else wants to ride the co-tank, and get a bad number and chase our number and chase the steam, that's fine. But we want to be the first ones to get down. That may not happen every single week. Next week, it's very likely that we don't act on Monday.

It totally depends on how the market transpires the rest of this week. But that's what a lot of people who just play DFS or just regular fantasy football don't seem to understand why sports betting is so much more difficult and so much more competitive is because we don't get lines from. a fantasy website. I won't even mention their names because they're not sponsoring us. We don't get lines from those guys. The price sits all week long. Oh, well, this guy's, you know, $7,000 and that's his price all week. And you can just take your time and figure out how you want to set your lineups and put your guys in there. The betting market is constantly moving. It's not even like the stock market

house where, as you know, it's not a nine to four type thing. And the market closes and nothing happens. This thing is constant all hours of the day, seven days a week. And, you know, you're you have to stay ahead of it. It's international. I mean, right, it has a whole bunch of attributes that are different. There's a lot more money going on in the far east than anybody here wants to consider. And there's a lot of people that talk about sports betting now and try to come off as experts at sports betting and experts is where's the sharp money going because I saw the line move like this. And we talked about it before.

There's a lot of setups. And if you just try to look at the sports book and see what the line open. and see where it is now and expect that you know that that's definitely the sharp side of the game. You got something coming to you. And that's why we're on our end working with a lot of other pros, looking at different account, having access to tons of good information and being able to understand with our relationships what's actually happening with some of these games.

Well, I think this is the perfect setup and perfect segue into this week's segment of sharp points. And I want to this week, this is the segment where, where I reach and you teach, we try and pick an aspect of wagering and go a little bit deeper and let folks sort of understand some of the method behind the madness. Before we get into the sharp points, though,

I just want to make a joke about Doug Peterson because he absolutely had the under. Well, I don't mean, I don't. That game was, how would you not be cheering when that thing goes to overtime tied at 46? I mean, you got to be thinking this thing is a slam dunk. now. I mean, you probably could have sold it in the secondary market by that point. But anyway,

this week for sharp points, we just had as our marquee game, Baltimore against Kansas City. And as we sized up that matchup, we went through a bunch of reasons why the three and a half points was the line and why you thought that that was a reasonable line and why, you know, it was Baltimore that was favored at home by three and a half. And I sort of said, why wouldn't you try and jump all over the chiefs here? You know, aren't we thinking about this the wrong way?

And you laid out a very solid case for why Baltimore was favored the way it was. And I think, you know, we know what the chiefs did. They went in and beat Baltimore's butt. And, you know, Lamar has a hard time with chiefs. And that whole storyline continues.

It persists. But from a power ranking, kind of a starting point, which is a way that a lot of pros, a lot of sharps kind of size up the relative strength across the 30 teams in the league and then try and develop an understanding whether or not there's any value to be had and to try and in particular figure out whether the line that's been offered up is a basically accurate line. I thought we should talk for a little bit about this power ranking aspect and get your thoughts on that. Right. Well, a lot of, this is how the books come up with their numbers very quickly for the look ahead numbers and that sort of thing.

They're not taking a lot into consideration from like pure handicapping, well, the specific guys out. What about these matchups and all these edges and that type of thing, which is stuff that guys like me will then focus in on. They've got a number. You number all the teams from one to 32. You have a power ranking. You actually come up with. formula that has a lot of variables that go into the formula to calculate what you think each team is ranked and then you adjust for home field advantage, whether this team's going here or there. And then, of course, there's some other minor adjustments on top of that that some of the odds makers will do, whether they want to take a position on a game, whether they don't want to

take a position and just give the pure number where they think they're going to get the most balanced action. So they'll make some minor adjustments to it. But that's how they come up with the line very quickly and then professionals and betting groups also do their own power rankings. And I mean, these days, since anybody can have a website, anybody just puts up power rankings all over the place. I mean, some of these power rankings don't make a whole lot of sense, but there's power rankings all over the place that you can look at. Now, with this particular game, one of the things that I think there were a few things that were a little bit underrated. I never really believed that the Ravens at three or three and a half necessarily for the full game presented line value. Okay, when you're

to typically bet on a game from a total or a sides perspective, you're looking for line value. Is this number inherently wrong? And is there value in going opposite this number to a certain direction, whether you're taking the favor of dog? Because your number is different and there's enough distance between your number and their number to offer value to bet the certain way that you want to. This number didn't really give me the sense that there was value on the Ravens. But But when I was looking at this game, I anticipated that Baltimore was going to have success. We talked about it, running the football here. And so there's other elements to this game when you're actually setting a number or betting the

game. We have to start digging into the specific matchups where just the pure power ratings aren't going to tell you the matchups and where you need to look for the edges. They're just going to tell you, well, on a neutral field or in Baltimore that I have the Ravens favored by X amount of points. there probably was too much home field advantage built into this number. And I think the books are still overweighting home field advantage by just a little bit. That's number one.

Number two, what I am seeing from having watched the game live and rewatched it and gone and dug into the statistics behind the game, that the chiefs never actually stopped the Ravens from running the football. In the first half of the game, the Ravens average 7.9 yards per run and a 67% success rate on the ground. And yet they called 17 pass plays and only nine run plays. And their 17 pass plays only gained 1.5 yards per attempt and a 24% success rate. I was not anticipating that the Ravens on both sides of the ball would, from a coaching perspective, come with the game plans that they came with. And that was a shock to me and not something that I was anticipating as part of like,

whether you call it your power ratings, what your, the average level of performance slash coaching that you're going to expect for a team, we did not see that from the coaching perspective. Like, if you're the Ravens and the thing, and I mentioned this on Wednesday, so I'll mention it real quick and then toss it back to you. But you have to make the other team stop you from running the football. And the same type of thing happened against the Tennessee Titans where the Ravens were having success running it, but they, because they were down on the scoreboard, they moved to like this to pass heavy mode too quickly. And it wasn't easy passes because the defense wasn't stacking the box on them either.

So it was difficult passes just because you're down, but the defense is playing, kind of daring you to pass. And you need to force them to adjust to the run. And then you can pass in more advantageous situations. So that was one of the big things that I found a little bit frustrating, expecting better things out of the Ravens here. If these two teams play again, the bigger thing to me is, the Lamar Jackson talking about the chiefs being their kryptonite and the chiefs knowing them.

And that definitely needs to factor into the spread next time is the fact that Andy Reid and the chiefs always seem to be staying one step ahead of what the Baltimore Ravens are doing. And sometimes there's just like from a coaching, a coaching mismatch, even though I think the Ravens have some of the most intelligent coaches of any team in the NFL. The chiefs have the quarterback and they have the advantage. And we still have not seen the Ravens been able to come from behind. and win any of these games. And that's what we're going to need to see if we want to have confidence because it's almost inevitable that you're going to be behind the chiefs at some point in the game, whether it's early or whether it's late.

And you better be able to rally your team through the air to catch up to those guys. And right now, Baltimore just has not seemed to be able to do that. Well, this is the perfect segue into the marquee game of this week on the week four slate. The best game on the entire slate is Kansas City at home laying. against the New England Patriots. And so the betting public, which includes me, just saw Kansas City take care of business against the team that looked if they were one,

if the chiefs were 1B, the Ravens were 1A as the two best teams in the NFL entering into week three. And the chiefs just beat the living daylights out of the race. Ravens, New England looked pretty good against the Raiders, but it took them a little while. They still look like they're trying to find an identity on offense. And Cam is trying to build some chemistry. We had three Rex Burkhead touchdowns this week in New England did against the Raiders.

And the Raiders also were co-conspirators in their own demise. There was a safety in there, and it took them a little while to get going. I mean, we had circled New England and the Raiders as our favorite game, at least it was mine and you didn't talk me out of it, favorite game on the board last week. And in New England took care of business. I didn't really have to sweat that one. Now, Kansas City on a short week, favored by a full touchdown at home against New England. We said last week, we know New England is adept at taking away the one thing that a team loves to do. And in fact, that seemed to bear out.

We watched New England hold Darren Waller to two catches for nine yards. The week after, Darren Waller eviscerated the Saints. But here's the challenge that I'm having, right? I don't know it's the old immovable object, you know, unstoppable force challenge here. What is Kansas City's favorite thing? What can New England do to disrupt my homes? Is that even the right question? I'm a little bit at a loss for the right way to approach this game.

Well, no, that's the exact right way to approach the game because that's how Bill Belichick tends to approach the games. Trying to take something away. We knew it was going to be Darren Waller last week. It definitely was. I know you said, like, I was on the Patriots as well. And I know that you said that the game was no sweat, but I was actually not loving the way that that game was going for the Patriots early on in the game. They were struggling to slow down the run game. game. They were, I mean, one of the reasons why we like the Patriots is because we thought that

Waller was going to be eliminated. And the Raiders really didn't have any other receiving threats after that. But they were still moving the ball down the field with Hunter Renfro and Nelson Aguilar and drawing DPI penalties. And it was really uncanny. And the problem is, like, yes, the New England Patriots have played a very difficult schedule. I show them as playing the third toughest schedule of opposing offenses. So it's no wonder they rank as the eighth worst defense in the NFL right now. They rank the sixth worst defense against the pass right now in the NFL. But they've played the number one most difficult schedule of opposing passing offenses to date.

And I know that'll seem a little bit shocking because you're talking about the Raiders and the dolphins are on that list of opponents. But the Dolphins and the Raiders are actually playing really good offense. and they're passing the ball really well right now. And if you look at those teams overall efficiencies, they all rank top 12 in the NFL. The Seahawks, of course, are one of the best in the league. Now you're taking on the best passing offense of the Kansas City Chiefs. And the short answer to your question is, what is Bill Belichick going to take away?

The answer to that is not much effectively, not enough, I think, is the better answer, because you look at what Andy Reid has done against this team, against BELichick. against better defenses than what Bill Belichick has. At this time last year, people were on the verge of talking about the Patriots being the best defense in NFL history because of the points they were allowing, not looking at the fact that this team had played nobody's offensively. At least this time they've played some offenses that are playing efficiently at the present moment and they're giving up points to them and they look bad against them rather than playing

nobody and looking really good. So we have a better picture as to what the Patriots. are defensively. But against those better defenses in prior years, Andy Reed, if you look at 2017, 2018, they played twice, including the postseason game. And in 2019, Patrick Mahomes and these chiefs and this offense in general, putting up 42 points, 42 points, 31 points, and 23. And I will tell you, if you look at that game, the 2019 game, they only scored 23 points, did the Kansas City Chiefs in Foxborough in December, because Patrick Mahomes banged his hand on a helmet in the second quarter.

Towards the end of the second quarter, they were up 20 to 7. And the Patriots offense was not very good last year. It was not very productive. And the Chiefs were playing pretty good defense at that point in time. Patrick Mahomes could not really throw the ball down the field with his injured swollen hand. It was having trouble gripping the ball. They just ran the ball a ton in the second half. They ended up scoring only three more points the rest of the game, giving up nine.

points to the Patriots. They won the game. They covered the spread. They were the underdogs in the game. But they didn't score many points. But do not look at that game and say, oh, my God, Bill Belichick held him to 23 points the last time they played. That is the wrong way to look at that game. If you go back and watch it, you will see what I'm telling you is accurate. And so I look at this Patriots team, I do not see how they're going to stop this attack. That attack that Kansas City trotted out there, spreading the field, and basically it's like a pick-your-poison type strategy. I did not like the strategy that the Ravens defense entered, you can't just blitz Mahomes, not contain him, and you're going to give up these opportunities down the field. And most quarterbacks can't hit them consistently,

but this guy's dropping dimes all over the place. So I think that in Kansas City, the rest advantage that the Patriots have, one extra day of rest, I think obviously Andy Reid is better with more rest. You look at all of his records. He's phenomenal with more rest here. I've not done anything with this game, side or total. I'll just lay it out there that I haven't. But those would be my concerns if I'm looking to back the Patriots here. That being said, we just saw House what this Baltimore Ravens team was able to do on the ground when they ran the ball. They just didn't run it enough. They just moved away from the run too much. And getting James White back for the Patriots and having a full complement of running backs to be able to let Cam run some more and also hand

the ball off to these backs and use short screen passes to accomplish virtually the same thing is going to be the path to victory for the Patriots or the path to covering this spread is by moving the ball down the field basing them offense primarily on that rushing attack. I feel like the safe thing to do if I'm going to play anything at all on this marquee game is just tease Kansas City from the seven down to the one because basically you're saying in that circumstance, will Kansas City win this football game at home? And if I'm going to play anything at all, I feel like, you know, that the tease, if I can pair it up with something else, because the money line price is not favorable. It's not a good money line price. I'd rather

play a teaser and just get Kansas City down to one, but then I have to find somebody to go along with Kansas City if that's a play at all. Now, do you agree with the idea? if you're going to play Kansas City, go ahead and tease them down to the one? I don't know. I mean, you're not going through the seven here, so it's a little bit less valuable. But I will say, you know, one of the big things, like when I watched that game last week, the interesting thing about Cam, so let me just break down something here. We're talking about the Patriots offense being, then can they stay in this game here?

The first couple weeks, the Raiders used a ton of zone coverage. But last week, they used way more man coverage against Cam Newton. And in the first half, they used it on 67% of Cam's passes when he wasn't just throwing a simple screen. On 67% they used man and they forced Cam to throw an average just 1.0 yards per attempt with an 11% success rate. He threw one interception, recorded a pass rating of 2.8. Whereas against Zone, he was like over 10 yards per attempt, over 60% success. For whatever reason after halftime, the Raiders came back and used Zone far more often. The Patriots also made some adjustments against that man coverage and had more success.

And that's when they kind of really extended their lead. And Cam looked a little bit better in the second half of the game. So, you know, I don't know. Will Steve Spagnola make some adjustments because he's been pretty balanced. Man versus Zone. He doesn't skew one way or the other too heavily. And it's going to be interesting, the defensive strategy. If he saw anything about the way the Raiders were limiting Cam in the week, the first

half of last week's game if you make some adjustments. But yeah, I mean, anytime you have a line that's close to seven, it's certainly going to look easy to just tease this team down to just have to win the game. But I don't, at this point, I can't actually tell you if I think that that is the best strategy of how you should play this game. Okay. Well, that's fine. I'm kind of inclined to just leave this game alone and, you know, just enjoy it, right? Keep my money out of that game. There's other games that I like better. I'd like to actually put my money to work. And it actually includes a team that may not seem like a very likely candidate for value.

But in this power ranking thing, I'm actually looking at the Jacksonville Jaguars. I like the Jacksonville Jaguars this week. They're somehow getting three points against the Cincinnati Bengals. and I don't know what has happened in this world that we're at a point where the Jacksonville, where the Cincinnati Bengals are favored under any circumstances. Can you explain that to me? Well, again, I think that we're looking at, we got a couple of things going for us here if we are looking to back the Jacksonville Jaguars.

Number one is perhaps a little bit of overrating home field advantage still built into these numbers. Number two, we have the allure, the sexiness of Joey Covers. I call him Joey Covers when he covers his spread. We talked about on the show. He has not lost against the spread. He's one of three quarterbacks in the NFL this season who has not lost against the spread. So people are attracted to this rookie stud who won the national championship, won the Heisman, comes in here.

They bet on him week one. Boom, covers the spread. Actually, they pushed. They were three point under. dog, they push. Week two covers the spread. Week three covers the spread. Backdoor covers. These guys are getting the job done that week two game was a backdoor cover in prime time on Thursday night. They got the cover last week in that 23 to 23 tie in Philadelphia. They have not treated the bettors badly. And for that reason, we're going to have a gravitation of whoever was betting on them

before plus this sentiment that what in the world did I just watch from the Jacksonville Jaguars? I bet on the Jacksonville Jaguers. I thought Gardner Minshu was going to crush it last Thursday. He was at home. They were favored by three points. And they lost. And I lost my money. They lost outright. And guess what? As you know, House, we were on the dolphins. Okay. So we anticipated that result. But the public wanted to see Gardner Minshu get the job done. And he didn't. And so they don't like Gardner Minshu sort of out of sight, out of mine played last Thursday. But let's, if we want to talk about some of things that aren't really factored into the power ratings, we could, but one of the things that's really interesting here is

the discrepancy between the two. Ten days, right? They have 10 days between games, nine full days of rest from playing an opponent. And meanwhile, you've got the Cincinnati Bengals that literally played five complete quarters. Now, I know overtime's only a 10-minute quarter, but they went all the way to the end. That game tied. So that game, they played the full overtime period, not a quarter, obviously, But they played five periods of that game much more tired physically versus a team that's had extra rest. So that accounts for something. But what are some of the other factors as to why you might be inclined to bet the Jacksonville Jaguars catching the points here?

Well, one could be the return of DJ Chark, who clearly was missed last week. But let's break this down first starting at the top. And something that's going to shock people because it was surprising to me looking at this game is when I look at the Jacksonville Jaguars, house, I am looking at a defense that is one of the best against the run. They're the ninth best run defense in the NFL. And that is despite them playing three rushing attacks with good offensive lines and capable running backs. Now, Miami Dolphins, you might say what you will. They don't really fit that bill necessarily, especially the running back who's relatively unknown.

But the Indianapolis Colts was one of the best offensive lines in the NFL. And they had a double-headed combo of a highly drafted rookie, plus, Marla Mack was healthy for that game. And then you got the Tennessee Titans with Derek Henry. And the Jaguarial Jaguars come out and really suffocate both of those run games. They do a good job against the Dolphins run game for the most part. The Bengals rushing attacks ranks second worst in the NFL. What we're going to see is more get pushed on the plate of Joey covers.

And that's going to require him to do more through the air. Now, they don't mind doing that. They end up passing the ball a fair amount. But they use a very basic offense, which spreads to feel lots of 11 personnel. The Jaguars are going to know what to expect here. They've seen it on film now for a few weeks. They had extra time to digest this film. It's not going to catch them off guard like it did week one, where it cat the chargers

off guard, how much they used 11 and just did what they were doing. This is now several weeks on film that this team has been able to adjust to that. And then if you look at the other side of the ball, the Jaguar's offense has been pretty impressive. They have the third most efficient rushing attack. They're balanced. They have success in 11 personnel. The Bengals run defense has been terrible. Defending 11 personnel runs allowing plus 0.23 EPA per attempt. Run plays in general house just so you know are, I mean, you know this, but let me talk to the EPA element of it. Run plays inefficient in general. It's very unlikely that you're going to see positive, especially 0.23 EPA on run plays.

But that's what the Bengals are allowing to 11 personnel runs. They're allowing 5.6 yards per carry. There are a lot of reasons to like Jacksonville here, plus you're getting the full three points. And normally, in a normal season with home crowd, you would say two relatively equivalent teams, the home team's catching around three points. But it definitely does not appear to be the case any. more in the current NFL. And I would even argue whether or not the Jaguars or not the better team to begin with.

Right. This is what I'm getting at. Okay. I love what you just described in terms of especially the defense is kind of eye-opening, how competitive they are. And the one thing, now look, I'm one of those people. Joey covers absolutely has caught my eye. I don't want him to get hurt.

please I'm not going on wood right now. He is in harm's way. And, you know, what we're talking about here in terms of a game plan that the Jaguar, Jaguar's going to be able to bring to the table means a lot more Joey dropbacks. Let's just let him, he's a big boy. I mean, he can handle, you know, 6, 4, 220. But let's just keep him upright for a little while longer. Another game I'm looking at that looks to me like there is a little bit of value and maybe

a tiny bit of overreaction to what happened last week. I really like this Arizona Cardinals team. And I really like the idea of them only favored by three. They're at Carolina this week, but, you know, they just dropped their first game of the season, home against Detroit. And it feels to me, again, if we're thinking about it in this power ranking context, I have the Cardinals way ahead of the. Panthers. And this number feels short. Three feels like a pretty good, good value. You have

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Or in Colorado, you call 1-800-5-22-470. In Iowa, you call 1,800 bets off. Well, the one thing, like obviously this time of the year, it's important to start tracking injuries. And so we've got a tackle for the Panthers, Russell Akung. He may be out this game. We have to check his practice status. We got Arizona down three safeties in their secondary. So we got to check out what their status is going to be.

We also have a Carolina Panthers team that clearly, saw some wind swept away from their sales here with the loss of Christian McCaffrey. And the betting marketplace overreacted to that as we sort of predicted on the show about how some of these players that are, especially running backs, might be overvalued in the public's eye and the odds makers. And they really don't mean as much to a team's ability to win, lose, or cover in this case, a game. And so we saw them get the job done out in LA last week against the Chargers and win that game outright. Now, the Cardinals offense to me, look, I know Kyler Murray is this fan favorite. I know people adore him. I think it's a combination of he's a good quarterback, number one. That's

important, right? But it's also he's a little bit diminutive. And so that leads to his allure. It leads to kind of like the, oh my God, this guy is getting it done. He's chucking the ball around it. But right now, this offense, if you just look at the numbers, try to take the blinders off from having watched them in games and just look at this offense. It's not overly like that aggressive, that explosive. They actually rank 25th in passing efficiency. They rank 24th in explosive pass offense. They are better at running the ball than they are passing it right now. And this Detroit Lions team, there was a reason this total was set at 54 points, 55 points last week. Yeah.

This Lions team has a terrible, terrible defense. They had some major injuries defensively. And Carolina's defense is bad too, but how much really worse are they than the Lions? I don't know on this game laying the points on the road. I will tell you, like we talked about it, I think in the other show, that road favorites are getting a little bit of value inherently because many of the teams with the road favorites or have better quarterbacks or better passing offenses. It can make better adjustments without crowd noise on the road. And if the home team is getting a little bit of point or two of home field advantage, those road teams can take advantage

of it. So I don't have anything super strong for you on this game. Just throwing a little bit of noise in there as far as why the Arizona Cardinals aren't necessarily the most surefire slam dunk bet on the board. But I will tell you that, you know, you take a team that just pulled off a road upset out in L.A. and has to come all the way back home versus a team that soured and lost their first game of the year. And now I was trying to come out on the road and get a game. You know, there is a chance that the Panthers are feeling themselves a little bit here, at least to start the game. All right, Shopi, I got two more for you. That's a round out the card. I'm looking at the Indianapolis Colts at the Chicago Bears.

I feel like the Chicago Bears are perhaps the most fraudulent three and O team in the history of the National Football League. And then this Jekyll and Hyde experience we're having with the Dallas Cowboys, I feel like everybody loves to get healthy against the Browns when the Browns come to town. The Browns are terrible on the road. So I like maybe, if I'm going to do that tease with Kansas City, I put together Kansas city in Dallas. And then I just like Indianapolis outright with the points at Chicago. What do you

think about those two? Well, let's talk about the Colts first. And there's a couple things that are of note about the Chicago Bears defense that probably aren't being factored into this number because the odds makers, again, this is a good tie into what we're talking about with the power ratings. Oddsmakers don't sit here and have time to like study, well, what is this team good against 12 personnel, are they good against 11? Like, what's the other team? Do they good? Are they good offensively against using 11? So they don't look at this type of stuff, but it's fundamental. And the Chicago Bears past defense struggles tremendously versus, sorry, they're very good against 11 personnel, but they're terrible against 12. And the splits could not be more diverse. And the

Colts haven't used a lot of 12 this year. They haven't used a lot of multi-tight end sets. But I see the emergence of Moe Alley Cox. and he's been playing good. We talked about him on the show before. Mo Ali. Mo Ali is like the mascot of this podcast, almost. And the Chicago Bears, they have such an extreme weakness. And now Jack Doyle is there to pair with Moe Allie Cox and the VCU baller.

And I think that there's going to be opportunities for them to throw from 12. And the other thing that the Chicago Bears don't have any experience with, they have not played any tight ends that really stretch the field or go down the field. And if you look up at the website, Sharp Football Stats, we have heat maps up there now, which you can look at where on the field teams are passing the ball. And the Indianapolis Colts throw the ball a ton to their tight ends beyond 10 yards downfield. Between 10 and 20 yards, they're throwing the ball a lot to their tight ends. Bears haven't defended that at all so far this year. So I think there is an offensive advantage there.

The interesting thing about this game, as you know, is you've got the insertion of Nick Foles. And I just don't know how much of that is being incorporated into this number. Like, think for yourself, just like if Mitchell Chubisky was still the quarterback, okay? If Mitchell Chubisky is still the quarterback, what is this number? Is this number, maybe it's the Colts minus three? Would it really be much higher than that? The bears are undefeated, right? So how much are we really upgrading the bears with this number based upon Nick Foles being there?

I don't know what we're going to get out of Nick Foles necessarily. What I do know is this team went out and got him for a reason. He has familiarity with the people on the staff. They're going to know what to do with him. But we've seen Nick Foles come in and play great. And we've also seen him in his later years, besides that we last week's game where he got inserted there, start with a game plan and not look nearly as good as what we remember him when we think of, oh, BDN and the glory days of what Nick Foles is capable of doing.

So I'm not sure what we're going to get out of Nick Foles. And both of these defenses are pretty good here. But if Nick Foles plays well, he is definitely an upgrade over Mitchell Trabiski, especially from an accuracy perspective. And I think that the Chicago Bears are probably not being valued enough by this number if Nick Foles actually plays well. Yeah. So I wondered in looking at it because at first blush Indy on the road laying points,

what's going on here. I wondered if there was some kind of impact factored in with Tariq Cohen, you know, being out and immediately a blow to Foles and his efficacy. Plus, you know, on a just basic, you know, the recognition of Indy's defense, first in passing yards against and first in points allowed, you know, what Foles did against Atlanta is one thing because everybody does that to Atlanta. Yeah. The Dan Quinn era is just delicious to put Atlanta up by two touchdowns and go bet the money line on whoever it is they're playing against because Dan Quinn delivers baby. But I don't know.

I just, you know, we've been on the cold. I've been on the cold since the beginning of the season. I think they're going to the best team in the NFC South. I'm going to bet on them to win the NFC South. I think that they are going to win 10 or 11 games this season. And I think they're just a superior team, so I don't mind laying the points. Yeah, and I get that. And I will say these two teams, like I said, they have the number one and the number six best defenses in the league, the Colts and the Bears, respectively. But both teams have played easy schedules of opposing offenses to date.

If you look at who the Chicago Bears have played, I have them as having played the fourth easiest schedule of opposing offenses. If you look at who, they've played teams that are the second worst at running the football. If you look at like the lions and they played the Giants when Sequin went down early in that game and they played the Falcons who can't really run the football lick. And then if you look at the Indianapolis Colts defense, they've played the fifth, the easiest, weakest passing offenses. Now, the Vikings have improved a little bit since they've let the rookie Jefferson who just bawled out last week in that game against the Titans. They let him get a little bit more run last week. But prior to that, they weren't using him.

That passing offense wasn't nearly as efficient. In the last game, the Colch has played, I mean, was against the freaking jets. we just saw this team implode on all over TVs in terms of not knowing how to use personnel groupings the right way. So I think it's going to be a, this game is one of, I think, only three on the card, the entire card where you've got two teams with winning records going up against each other. I think we've got this game. We've got the Patriots Chiefs game. Both teams have winning records. And we've got, oh, the Bill's Vegas Raiders game, that game. Those are the only three where we've got two teams with winning record.

So I think this game is going to be fascinating. I can't wait to watch what Nick Foles look like out there. Okay, let's end this episode with America's team. And their Jekyll Hyde performance and they're snatching defeat from the jaws of victory and the series of mistakes. And we had very high, at least I did, expectations for them coming into the season. They have so many weapons on both sides of the football. And yet they can't seem to get out of.

of their own way. The only win they have through three games was the one point miracle comeback, the all time very best onside kick in the history of the national football league against Dan Quinn of the Atlanta Falcons. Thank you, Dan Quinn. He just keeps giving and giving and given and given. But is this the week that we get the version of the Cowboys that we thought we were going to get when the season began? Well, tell me what your expectations. of the Cowboys were with Mike McCarthy in his first year there. It's all those those downfield threats. It's Michael Gallup.

It's C.D. Lamb. It's, you know, Ezekiel catching balls. It's the run pass balance. It's their ability to play inside the red zone and score touchdowns. Is they controlling the offensive line of scrimmage? I mean, it's that version. Yeah. And I think we have to double check, but I think Tyron Smith practiced today on Thursday.

I have to double check on that one. But having him back, obviously, would be a big factor. They've had some injuries along the offensive line. You do have a team that is playing and banging and staying pretty close in these games, though. They haven't been able to pull them out, but you talk about one score losses to the Rams and the Seahawks, who now a lot of people probably have up there as like two top five, top six or seven teams in the entirety of the NFC. So it's not like those losses by one score have been as terrible as it might seem. Now, they should have got their butt kicked by the Falcons.

They should have lost that game by more. But again, there's been some weird variance if you just look at wins and losses for this Dallas Cowboys team, especially those first couple of games because there's been odd fourth down decisions and aggressiveness in some of those games where they're doing these fake punts and going for it where they could have just kicked a field goal to tie the game in all types of situations. like that that have led to a lot more variance in the end result. I will say this about the Dallas Cowboys. They have played the second toughest schedule of opposing offenses. Like this defense looks terrible. It looks absolutely ridiculous opposing teams the last couple of weeks, 38 points against them,

39 points against them. These numbers are absurd video game type numbers. But we are talking about some very good capable offenses. And, you know, Baker Mayfield. so far this season, as much as my expectations were high for him in this offense, I know he's played three good defenses in general. The Bengals, not so much, but Washington has a decent defense overall, all things considered. And the Baltimore does as well, take the game against the Chiefs out of your mind because not many teams are going to be able to do that to that defense. This Cleveland Brown's team has played some difficult defenses as well, but Baker is struggling.

They only rank 23rd in passing efficiency. They're really good against the run. The key to this game house that I think is going to be fascinating is, does one of these teams get the lead and the pace and the tempo of this thing? Because Dallas has said they want to go fast no matter what. They have the number one highest pace team in the entirety of the NFL. They also are a very pass-heavy team. The Browns are a little bit more slow-it-down type team,

especially when they have the lead, and are one of the most skewed to the run teams in the league. And it's going to be really interesting. Can Dallas try to stop that run game a little bit and force more onto Baker's plate? Can Dallas get a lead here to force Cleveland to pass the ball more and get out of that desired run shell that they have? And the Washington game against Cleveland, Cleveland was a team last week that I teased. And I sort of was regretting it for some of that game because, Cleveland was not playing well enough to actually win that game by the final score. It was not as

indicative a final score as what that game result was. It was much closer than that through most of the game, but obviously Dwayne Haskins played terrible. He's been playing terrible so far this season. And there was too many turnovers from Washington, ended up looking like a bigger final score than the real margin was. So I don't know. I'm not rushing to the window at this point to take the Cleveland Browns here. But I don't know that I'm convinced that Dallas laying points with Dallas, even at this number, is something that's going to be a long-term money winner for you

because of that defense that they have. So I definitely am not going to be on Cleveland to tell you that much, but I haven't come around to saying I like Dallas enough to put down some money on them. Well, so you hit beat me to the punch. I was going to confess in the conclusion. here that I absolutely am suffering from recency bias. And I did watch quite a bit of that Washington, they might almost be professional football team against Cleveland.

And I'll tell you what, they snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. And it was in the hands of Mr. Haskins. It was, Mr. Haskins almost single-handedly change. And I don't need to be kind about it. He did change the outcome of that football game.

Because Washington was right there. They are every bit the equal in the other aspects of the game. Their defensive game plan was sound. They weighed Baker Mayfield uncomfortable. Chase Young going out did kind of change things a little bit. And he's going to be out again this week. So I'm not, you know, I'm going to stay away from that Ravens Washington game. I think I think people need to realize, right?

And too many people out there, you know, if you're if you're doing this, you're trying to get into this by putting more money down on it. You want to, you care more about this. Like, you can absolutely not, not watch the games and just look at the final scores. Because this game looks like a 34 to 20 blowout. Oh my God, the Cleveland Browns definitely got the job done again. Washington was leading in the fourth quarter of this game, 20 to 17. Washington was minus five in turnover margin. They got zero takeaways from Cleveland. They gave Cleveland the ball five times in this game.

And yet Washington has a lead entering the fourth quarter. It was really unbelievable. And like I said, I'm glad that you paid attention and noticed that that was a sort of a phony box score with the final score in this game house. That's very good that you noticed that. I'm reaching and you're teaching, Sharpie. I keep saying it. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to tease Kansas City and Dallas. I need Kansas City down to one.

And Dallas getting one and a half. And that's how I'm going to play those two together. Along with some Jacksonville action, I enjoy it. And then the Colts. I just have conviction. I believe in the Colts. I'm going to keep betting the Colts. The Bears are fraudulent.

And this is the week that catches up with them. Sharpie, that's my betting card. I'm sticking to it. Good luck, house. As always, watch the games carefully. Do not chase after these things. And I'm glad that you didn't come to me at the top of this show with some wild-ass random betting ticket that you put down and you're playing soundly.

And actually, because you didn't have one, we were able to rant as much as I needed to get it out of my system on Greg Williams, on Adam Gase. That was very therapeutic of me. So I thank you. I'm glad. It's for me, so I thank you for that. That's what I'm here for, my brother. All right, podcast, pal.

Stick around. We have the Ringer Fantasy Football trailer. You want to listen to this if you really want to win your fantasy football matchups. Week 4 is upon us, my people. Fantasy football is back, and you don't want your team to suck. My favorite fantasy football punishment I've ever heard is the last place guy had to spend 24 hours in a waffle house. and every waffle he ate was one hour off of his count. I want numbers.

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