 This is Covering the Spread, part of the FanDuel Podcast Network. Big week on the gridiron because not just is it NFL Week Number One, but also Week Number Two in college football, which means we have data analyzed, gains to break down, and who better to do so than Drew Martin. Drew will be with us for today to break down his favorite bets and the biggest games across Week Number Two. Let's dive on in. Welcome on into Covering the Spread. That's right here on the FanDuel Podcast Network and NumberFire.com. My name is Jim Sodus. I am a senior writer and analyst for NumberFire.com. Joined here as I am on every Wednesday by Dr. Ed Fang. You can find Ed's work on Twitter at the PowerWrike. You can find his work at thepowerwrike.com and on the football analytics show, Ed. Happy Wednesday to you. Good week for you in week one. How are you doing today? I'm doing pretty well. Dormin's in first place in the Bundesliga. Got an easy Champions League win yesterday, so all is looking up. You weren't going to victory lap like your, I know the Clemson game was kind of bad, but you weren't going to victory lap the old Dominion straight up victory over Votek. You're not going to give yourself the kudos. I gave you the kudos for yesterday. We can talk about that in a little bit. We got some help from some turnovers from Virginia Tech, so it's not like we can go gloating all the way to the bank, but... Ed, you can't go to the bank literally because you got the money, so you literally can't go to the bank. Well, but that would be disrespecting Parker, who I respect, and we don't want to do that. I don't want to take Parker's opinion seriously. Parker got S&U minus 11.5. He's fine. He'll be fine. We got Parker the credit for his talk yesterday, too, so he was good vibes all across the board and a good win there for Old Dominion. Let's bring in Drew Martin as well. You can find him on Twitter. Add Drew Martin Betz. He's got work over at SportsGrid, WagerTalk, and also do other videos for Betfred this year. Drew, happy week two to you. How are you doing? Jim, doing good, man. Thanks for having me on. Always good to see you. My good friend Ed Fang down there, the power rank, buddy, whether it be in Costa Rica, Las Vegas or remote like we're doing now, man. Always a good time with you, Ed, and one of my favorite people in the industry. So happy to break down some games wherever you guys are going. Let's get after it a fun time to be a sports better. Speaking of Ed, I got your mug right here. Oh, yeah. Atlantic show mug. It is making it's show day to you. I'm hooking you up right after this, Drew. I actually I think it's interesting that you showed that side of the mug because I find that the less interesting side of the mug. There we go. We got both for the YouTube viewers, little Andrew Lucklove, you know. Well, Stanford, Stanford connection there, right? Yeah, we'll be talking about Stanford a little later. Couldn't get a rice player on there, too. You could have gotten the Johnny Menzel money sign in the second half against Rice. We could have gone with that. So we could have had both schools covered at some point there. Maybe that's mug number two. We'll get that. We'll get working on that. We're going to get work to work on breaking down week two and just one second, a reminder to make sure you're subscribed to covering the spread. We, of course, have our college football podcast every Wednesday. But also NFL this week, we're talking with Ryan Williams tomorrow to get you set for his favorite vets across NFL week number one. Also, JJ Zachary is with us on Friday most weeks. It'll be Thursday this week because player prospects earlier. So we'll get that up Thursday afternoon to get you some player prop thoughts from JJ. Get all those by subscribing to covering the spread wherever you get your podcast. Also with college football, the NFL now both here. It's time to get in on the action early this season. Help you get started. New Fandall Sportsbook customers can get a no sweat first bet up to $1,000. Think your favorite team is making the playoffs. Who's your dark horse to win the Russian title? Odds for that and much more are available on the Fandall Sportsbook app. Just sign up. Place your first bat in Fandall will give you up to $1,000 back in free bets. If you don't win, there's no better place to get ready for the football season. Then on Fandall, America's number one sports book and official sports betting partner of the NFL must be 21 plus and president select states. First online and real money wager only refund issued as non withdrawal with free bets that expire 14 days after a seat restricted supply. See terms at sportsbook.fandall.com gambling problem. Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit Fandall.com slash RG in Arizona. 1-800-NEXT-STEP or text NEXT-STEP to 5334-2 in Connecticut. 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpd.org slash chat in Louisiana. 1-877-770-STOP in New York. 1-877-8HOPEN-Y or text OPEN-Y in Tennessee. Call the red line at 1-889-979 in Wyoming. 1-800-522-4700 in West Virginia. 1-800-GAMBLER.NET. Let's dive in here to week number two, but before we take a look at the specific games that are popping here for week two, I want to talk to you about overall process in week two because we've seen these teams at least once, sometimes two times. So we have some data to look at, some our eyes have seen things. How do you balance accounting for actual good data with not overreacting to what we've seen in a small sample so far? It's an interesting question, Jim. And first of all, I got to say, like great intro, man, you're really killing it. And to bring up the Johnny Manziel showing the money sign against Rice, never forget of a trivia question. Never forget. When did that happen against what team? I would have never guessed it was against Rice, but I hope it was against Rice. Otherwise, I'll sound very stupid. Yeah, man. But in turn, it's a great question in terms of, you know, the changes that we've seen in college football, because it's got to be part of your process here, the transfer portal. And these changes that happen, things can kind of be more positive for a team or more negative quicker in today's college football. So if you're kind of handicapping the same that you were five, 10 years ago, I think you're doing it wrong, Jim. I think you got to be quick on your feet. Something that I've realized just going back and tracking my bets, you know, doing this, you know, as my straight job for like eight years now, this will be my eighth football season, is week zero and week one, I'm down overall. I've gone to very low volume in week zero, week one, really just the first game out the gate in college football. And a big reason why is because I think in those weeks, whenever a team is playing their first game, you're kind of relying on other people's opinion of what you're betting, like, oh, this team's going to be better because of this reason or whatever the case may be. I mean, unless you're actually going and watching their practices and then going and watching the practices of the team they're playing, which I'm not, now if you have the time to do that, it actually might be a good betting philosophy going forward. But Jim, I mean, to answer your question like week two to about, you know, week eight, week nine, I think it's the best time to win in college football. I really do because now you can kind of get ahead of some of those changes. So in terms of overreacting, I've kind of pumped the brakes on that. I've gone into overdrive. Hey, if you see something in the market's kind of off, just ride it. I mean, I'm kind of going into overdrive on that, Jim. I'm going pedal to the metal here. And if I like something and the number moves a point or two, you know, I'm still going with it because the number is always important. But early in the college football season, I won't write sides. I won't write the right side of the move on the total as well. I don't want to take it just a couple points thinking, oh, you know, the totals already moved two points. I can't bet the over now. I don't know about that. I mean, if these both of these OCs want to go up tempo, they got quarterbacks that can throw it. I kind of just roll right over that two point move, Jim. So I guess you could say I'm the kind of sports better. That is is more of the, hey, let's go get it. You know, let's fire away week two through week eight. Yeah, I would completely agree with you, Drew. You know, when I was talking to Chris Andrews at the South Point, you know, he always talks about you can ride momentum in college football. And I believe that now is the time to see things and to react. And yes, you may overreact for a couple of teams. But I mean, also my work has shown that you do want to get on these moves. And we're going to talk about some of that today. Chris Andrews has also said you do not ride momentum in the NFL. And I also believe that. So you're more, I feel like, obviously, yes, teams change in the NFL and you want to pay attention. But I stick with my prior much more in the NFL than in college football. College football, you need to react. I mean, do you think Hawaii has a pulse? I mean, we've had two games for the Hawaii Rainbows and they have yet to show a pulse. They are a 51 point dog heading into Ann Arbor this week. And the only thing that affects that spread and that outcome is, you know, what quarterback is getting played in the second half by Michigan? Sure. And what their offensive philosophy is, if they want to keep scoring, even if it is the backup quarterback, if they're throwing the ball down the field, they're going to keep scoring, Ed, because Hawaii, sometimes these college football teams, when they're not good, they're really not good. Oh, it's not the backup. I mean, I'm talking like they need the fifth stringer in there. Cover 51 points. So JJ McCarthy is getting the start and it's pretty interesting because he was 100 to one, 100 to one ish, maybe even greater, heading in the last week or sometime this preseason. I don't know what the exact number is. Maybe we should bug John Sheeran about it. He had five snaps in this first game. So this was Kate McNamara's game to start against Colorado State. So he had five snaps. He did pretty well in those snaps, you know, he's he's 60 to one to win the Highland right now. So someone's hitting that. I don't think it's necessarily the performance and McCarthy starting against Hawaii, which is just kind of, you know, this blessing for him, because I mean, I just, you know, it's going to get ugly in the first half there. So but yeah, I mean, Hawaii is just a perfect team. Like we kind of thought they were bad. The numbers kind of thought they were bad. And then I just feel like there's just some massive downgrading for that team. Rightfully so. And does kind of mash up well, Ed, with what you said about your model, the changes you made recently to the model be more reactive. That's the line of what Drew was saying to about week two being reactive and the fear not being overreacted, potentially not reacting enough to what you've seen early on. So that's reassuring to me as we transition now. I'm talking about some games here in a week. Number two, starting off with Tennessee at Pittsburgh, Tennessee, a six and a half point favorite here. Total 66 and a half at Fan Duel Sportsbook. And there was a lot of turnover at Pitt, Drew, coming into this year. But they got a nice win in week number one against a decent opponent. So can they do it again and cover six and a half in this game? Sure, they can, Jim. I mean, we've seen the push here, you know, talking about line moves and changes coming into week two, you know, Tennessee was what? Open minus four in the hook. Now, as I was six and a half, so flirting with a full touchdown here. I think Tennessee is a very intriguing handicap. It seems like a lot of people like them just from the people I've talked to. Obviously, we've seen the move here in terms of the week two line liking Tennessee as well, four and a half to six and a half. I don't know that there's that much to go off of, though, Jim. I mean, they beat, you know, they beat down a Mac team, what, 59 to 10? And we've seen a huge talk about overreactions. I don't know if it's overreaction, but it does need to be noted. You know, last year's line, Pitt was minus three in Knoxville. Now it's what? As we're speaking now minus six and a half Tennessee in Pittsburgh. When was the last time Tennessee played north of Lexington, Kentucky? I'm asking because I don't know. Probably it's been a long time. SEC teams don't tend to go north very often. Pittsburgh, I thought, look pretty good. I mean, one thing that does worry me a little bit about Pitt is newness, you know, a new quarterback in a new system. We saw that newness offensively kind of struggle in college football. So that's one thing that I'm taking into my handicaps coming into week two. That's something that makes me pump the break with Pitt, because in the backyard brawl, what you talked about, a good win against a good team. I think West Virginia is going to be pretty good this year off of a loss nationally televised like that on opening night. I wouldn't be surprised if the Mountaineers, I know this isn't this game, but become a moneymaker over the next month or two. A lot of times people write them off and you can get value that way. But Tennessee, this is where I think I'm a little bit off market. I need to see more. I really do, Jim, because I'm not a big Josh Hypo guy. You know, I thought he kind of rode the curt tails of Scott Frost in Orlando with the UCF program. And the people that I talked to, you know, he I doubt he was going to be the head coach for UCF much longer. It came out that he took, you know, I mean, a better job, I guess, going to to an SEC school. I don't think he would have lasted much longer at UCF, meaning they would have likely shown him the door after a year or two. Defensively, I need to see more from Tennessee. Can they really hold up and offensively? I feel like week one, that's when you want to bet, you know, Hinden Hooker in his system because they will kind of keep their foot on the gas pedal and run it up against Ball State scoring 59 points. I don't know if they're going to have that ability here against Pittsburgh and having to go on the road, I bet you it will be a very tough place to play against a Pat Narduzzi. You can make all the fun of him you want. He can recruit defensive linemen. So this is going to be a lot different look for this volunteer offense. And if you made me bet it, I'd probably take the points with the home dog. Yeah, so I think this is I agree with everything that Drew is saying. I would like to point out, you know, Pitt got gifted a pick six, which went right through the hands of the West Virginia wide receiver in week one. I think they were pretty lucky to get away with that win. I do feel like we're going to, you know, West Virginia could be a moneymaker. I thought JT Daniels looked great. I thought Neil Brown made some horrible coaching decisions. So hopefully doesn't, you know, hold them back too much. I mean, I'm pretty sure what did they punt like fourth and one in Pitt territory at some point in that game. So I think, yeah, I do think it's an interesting you break up a great point with with what happened last year, for sure. Let's get down into our second game of the week that is Kentucky at Florida. Right now, Florida, five and a half point favorite total years, 52 and a half. And we saw Anthony Richardson in the highlight reel last week through with some nice, nice throws, nice runs as well. Florida pulled the slide upset there as slide home dogs. But tough test in week number two as well. What's your view of this one? Kentucky at Florida. Great game. First of all, I mean, the kind of teams jockeying here from right behind Georgia and the SEC East. And this is one where the Gators have kind of owned the Wildcats, you know, over the long term, but of recent, maybe not so much. What Stoops has been able to do in Lexington, very, very impressive. It's not only a basketball school anymore, guys. They can play some very good football. Now, something to notice, they're top running back, likely out for for Saturday night in the swamp. So, you know, sometimes running backs, particularly the NFL, don't matter as much, but college football. Some of these top running backs actually kind of do now. We'll let us throw in the football against this Florida defense. I think that he can have some success. I think a lot of question marks still out with Florida. I know we saw one game against Utah, very good youths team. But at the same time, it was week one for Utah, going on the road all the way across country, you know, dealing with the humidity. And let's keep in mind like like Ed just brought up with the backyard brawl. Utah was throwing into the end zone at the end of the game to win the game. So it's not like Florida was all that impressive. Now, granted, it's a good Utah team. I think the door is still open for them to make the playoffs if they are able to run the table. Tough one to call here. It really is, Jim. I like what the new head coach for Florida. His name is escaping me now from Louisiana. But I like him, you know, the twang in his voice. He's a good coach under Nick Saban. And I think he's going to have the defense ready to go. Offense look pretty good. Richardson, a dual threat player, and he is a heck of an athlete. So if he's able to kind of replicate that again, I'm not really looking to go in front of Florida. And at the same time, still need to see more about Kentucky. So this is going to be a watch and see for me. But overall, I think both teams are going to be money makers this year. And if you made me bet this one, you know, total in the low fifties, I think I think this might be an over bet. Excellent. So, yeah, Drew, let's move on to the next game. We've got Baylor at BYU, BYU is a three and a half point favorite. We haven't seen either one of these teams against quality competition yet. So what are you seeing in this one? This is a an interesting one, 53 and a half minus three and a half. I guess minus fours out there for BYU. Provo is a tough place to play. I don't think enough people kind of realize that Baylor, I think, is going to have more speed. They're well coached themselves. Interesting dynamics here with the assistant coaches. Jeff Grimes, the new OC at Baylor, he was at BYU, also the offensive line coach as well. So there's some familiarity there in preparation for their opponents. BYU, something that I've noticed after the last couple of years and brought it into my power ratings, you know, making numbers on all of these teams is they're the oldest team in college football. You know, a lot of them, you know, having the Mormon, you know, making their trips and being a lot of times two years older. I think that matters in college football, in college basketball. You know, were you the stronger, bigger guy when you were 25 or when you were 19? You know, I know the answer for me and I think that it's showing on the field a lot of time with the Pougars. Last week, both quarterbacks threw for over 75 percent completion percentage. I think that shows again, we get a total here in the low fifties again. BYU, I thought they were very impressive going across the country to the state of Florida, USF. I know a lot of people talking about their opponent in week one, South Florida, the Bulls were actually kind of up on South Florida, thinking that team speed going to be very strong. What was 38 to seven at halftime? BYU put up 50. They could have put up a lot more. They had 315 rush yards, over 575 total yards against USF. So I think this offense is pretty good. I think that they've got the quarterback position that they need here. And I think Baylor can score some points as well. So in the low fifties, I don't want us to just kind of pick another over here because I'm usually an under better, but I don't want anything to do with this under. Jim, I think the over of 53 and a half is the way to play this one. This is the only line that we talked about where the total is not risen because you went up point. This one has stayed steady 53 and a half. And like I typically try to skew towards unders as well. But like, yeah, I mean, it's tough, you know, when we see some low numbers, you got to react to the number. That's kind of what you're doing here. Makes sense. Yeah, I like it. I mean, and also, you know, it's late night, you know, 10, 15, kind of a little bit of a degenerate special field, 10, 15 on the east coast. You know, thin air as well. So maybe maybe there's little huffing and puffing hands on the knees for the defense as well. Might help us late. I love it. All right. So that is Baylor at BYU. Let's open up the board now, Drew, and talking about all the gains here for week number two. Which other bets standing out to you for week number two in college football? How about the Miami Hurricanes, boys? I know it was just against an FCS team week one, but I'll tell you this. Christopher coming down to Miami and it sets up well. We get a Southern Miss team that did not look good week one against Liberty. Now they're having that was at home. Now they're going to have to go on the road, hot environment in Miami and play a offense that is looking to run it up. Christopher coming back home to South Florida. What would what would be better in terms of recruiting than having a Heisman trophy winning quarterback in your back pocket going into Broward, Dade, Palm Beach County. Well, he's got it guys. Tyler Van Dyke. I'm not an NFL GM, but I don't think he's going to play many more games in college football. This guy's six for 220 plus pounds throws a great deep ball is athletic. He looks accurate. I wouldn't be surprised if he goes first round this upcoming year. And a lot of people I know you look at the Heisman futures that he's actually not that far down on the list. So the sportsbooks are kind of on to what I'm talking about here, Jim. And we've seen it before. Christopher will run up the score. We talk about, you know, coaches that put the pedal to the metal offensive coordinators that are still throwing the ball down the field with a big lead. I think Miami has the opportunity to have a big lead and this one might get ugly. So usually not a big fan of laying more than three touchdowns. But seeing the Miami Hurricanes, what minus 24 minus 25, not a hundred percent sure what FanDuel has them at. I want no part of the dog here, Jim. I think that this could get ugly early and I laid it with the Keynes. Yeah, 24 and a half right now. Minus one 12 on that one over at FanDuel sportsbooks right where you were talking about it. So Drew is going to Miami. Ed, what about you? What you seen on the board for week two this week? Yeah, I'm going with USC. This team is probably pretty good. This is first, this is a team that's kind of hard for some of the metrics to to get in the preseason, just because you really have to account for a load of transfer talent in terms of quarterback Caleb Williams and and wide receiver, Jordan Addison, I believe those two players are some of the best at their position in the entire country. And Bill Connelly came on my podcast is like, I just can't account for that yet in in the way I do my preseason stuff. The type of metrics that I do look at that can account for that are based on market win totals and you you see them significantly liking USC. So preseason, I'd USC 15th. When I look at market numbers, it's probably a little high, but it's certainly better than having a near FBS average, which is where some of the other metrics have. I mean, this is this is, you know, they they went out. They had a good performance against Rice. They showed that they're not an FBS average team. And Stanford, well, it's the football program has kind of sucked over the last couple of years. There's no other way to put it. They have a lot to prove they do have talent. Tanner McKee is a quarterback that a lot of people consider to have NFL talent, but, you know, they play Colgate last week, you know, not not taking much from that. You know, my numbers make this USC by 13 on the road. I feel that actually could be underestimating it because of some of the things that I said earlier about how these metrics capture teams like that. You know, I really like USC minus nine at Stanford. I think this USC USC team is going to be pretty good. Stanford, I don't think is necessarily going to be that good. So yeah, Fandle has a minus nine and a half. You can find nines out there. Cannot see this closing south of 10. So you're disrespecting the Andrew Luck mug is what you're saying. He's not there. He's not there anymore. That's part of the point, Jim. How dare you? Very rude, very rude. Drew, any thoughts for you on USC and what you've seen with a very, very different team so far? Not not too much other than just defensively. What are we going to see from the Trojans defense? I mean, offensively, the scheme keeping the same quarterback that knows the system. So we kind of, you know, talked about newness earlier. We don't really have that with the most important piece of the offense. So that's why I think USC, you know, you can make some money with USC. Also, maybe looking towards the overs, because I do think there's question marks on the defensive side, but not a team I've been involved with as of yet, Jim. Alrighty, so Drew likes Miami minus 24 and a half. Ed is on USC minus nine and a half. That's all that we have here for our week two college football podcast here on covering the spread. But first you got to get big. Thank you to Drew Martin. Find him on Twitter, add Drew Martin bets. Check him out on WagerTalk, SportsGrid and Betfred as well. Drew, thank you for stopping by. Good luck to you in week two. Jim, Ed, best of luck with you guys. Cash those tickets, man. Thanks for having me on. We will certainly give it a shot. You can find Ed on Twitter as well at the Power Rank. Check out his work at thepowerrank.com. Ed, what is going on for you this week? There and on the football analytics show. I had Dr. Eric Eager from PFF on the football analytics show. So good conversation to get ready for NFL week one. And then, yeah, writing newsletters. This is some of my best information. And you can get that at thepowerrank.com. PhD power hour over on the football analytics show. Go check that out by searching for that wherever you get your podcast and find Ed's work at the Power Rank. I am at Jim Sonnis on Twitter back once again tomorrow to break down NFL week one with Ryan Williams. We'll talk to you all then. Good luck with your college football bats across week two. This has been covering the spread right here on the FanDuel podcast network.