 This is covering the spread here are your hosts Jim Saunas and Dr. Ed Fang What is going on everybody welcome on into covering the spread that is the sports betting podcast here on the fan dual Podcast network as we're inch closer and closer to week one of the NFL season letting you know where we're looking For different lines on the fan dual sports book. My name is Jim Saunas I am a senior writer and analyst for number fire dot com joined here as always by Ed Ray Ed Fang of the power rank dot com Ed We're cruising on through here talking to Rob Pizzola about some NFL today. I am pumped for that. How are you doing? I'm doing great. I'm happy to change my last name if you need me to Jim So yeah, I combined your last name with the power rank. Yeah, no school I think that's for from a branding perspective. Yeah, I think that that should be something you at least look into maybe And then I sound a little less Asian, which is probably good, too Yeah, I know I'm doing great Really looking forward to talking to Rob Pizzola about his process can be taking a ton of notes and Yeah, looking forward to another great show with you, Jim Yeah, Rob's in what I've followed on Twitter for a while and I've always enjoyed his thoughts on various things also interesting life go into like CFL games and stuff like that So definitely a fun to talk to you follow Rob on Twitter at Rob Pizzola early this week We talked with whalecapper about the US open for tennis I think Rob might do some tennis stuff to at least he was at a tennis match a couple weeks ago So it's got a couple of tennis minds here as well. We talked about the US open the whalecapper We discussed different markets how much to or how to bed and match things to look for there The value of the draw which will take place pretty soon here for the US open and people He likes for this year's open prior to that draw So make sure you check that out by searching for covering the spread wherever you get your podcasts Apple podcasts Spotify stitcher Google Play covering the spread is available all those places as well and while you're an Apple podcast Leave a rating your review got a new one once again at this week that made me chuckle. Let me pull it up here They They okay, so the phrasing in this was they Or any knowledge gaps are filled by various expert guests And I thought that was the most kind way to say Jim and Ed know nothing about tennis and decided to pawn it off on whalecapper So yeah, thank you to Plantastic life for being very kind to us when you didn't really have to it was very nice. Yeah Well, I mean we were all front about that I feel like it's sort of gotten slammed to be like hey Jim How about you know, how about Joe commission this turn? Oh man? I've only got his odds at 43% cheese. What's this line? It's a terrible line But yeah, I think that that's that is kind of the goal But I appreciate the kindness regardless it was quite good if you want to leave a kind or whatever kind of review You want just go to Apple podcast and search for covering the spread Thank you again to Plantastic life for being gentle to our egos We'll get to Rob Pazzola in just one second But first if you want to get in on the action check out the Fando sportsbook and place your first bet today If you lose Fando will give you a refund of up to $500 in site credit visit sportsbook.fandwell.com More details terms and conditions apply must be 21 plus and physically present in New Jersey or Pennsylvania Gambling problem call one a hundred gambler. Let's dive on in now and get set for 2019 NFL with Rob Pazzola Covering the present Let's welcome Rob Pazzola into covering the spread to talk a little bit of NFL Rob Thank you for joining the show. I really do appreciate it You know busy time a year for everyone. So I appreciate you swinging by. How are you doing today? I'm doing well I mean, it's a busy time a year, but it's also probably the most fun time of year leading into football season So I'm excited to do this and I think it's a great time to have you on because when we were talking with you before We set up this interview you mentioned that you wanted to discuss this may process perspective And I think that that's kind of the this is kind of a key time to have that discussion because during the year You have to keep up with news you have to constantly be evaluating teams and stuff like that So a process-based discussion I think right now is the key time to do that now with you When are you really doing most of your research to get ready for NFL season? Are you starting, you know in August or how do you ramp that because you're busy all year long? When do you start to really get into the NFL again? Yeah, it's it's tough because I'm just a procrastinator by nature So typically I want to get started a lot earlier than I actually do and it turns out I usually get started late July and leading into the beginning of August. I've taken a liking to golf So I've been trying to golf as much this year and that kind of bled into the NFL prep time But I mean it's sort of a year-round process even though I'm not really working on it in the summer I'm sort of thinking about it. I developed these hypotheses and start doing some testing on Either new metrics or things that I feel are maybe not being accounted for by the market That might make an impact in the following year, but I really don't wrap up the efforts until the end of July Absolutely now we've talked about Projections from a player props perspective already on the show But you know projections matter a lot when we're talking about Projections for team win totals for Super Bowl odds and for other markets, too There is a lot of relevance to doing projections So when you are starting things off at the end of July early August What's kind of the starting point for you when you're trying to project how good a team will be in the upcoming season? Yeah, so I guess even before I get into the teams the starting point for me Is just looking at things that might have an impact that that aren't reflective of the team So like rule changes for example, how are our rule changes in the NFL going to impact the league as a whole? Now, you know, I remember back two years ago when they introduced the illegal contact after five yards and penalties going up I knew was going to affect scoring earlier on in the year, but the market itself wasn't really accounting for that earlier in the Year, so there was an edge to be had there So I think there are certain things like that you can look out for right away Looking into prior so home field advantage has that changed from year to year is a team playing in a new stadium? Are they expected to have more fans in in this season? How is that changed as a whole? So basically anything outside of the team evaluations that's going to affect the outcome of the game That's my starting point before I even look into that now after that I start getting into what I was talking about earlier So I delve into some of these hypotheses that I have from the previous year I actually like to make notes during the football season of things that I notice To potentially research that in the off season. I don't really like to change my models in season It's not something that I like to do, but it's something that I make a note of so that I can go back to it next year so constantly making those changes and testing for things where That that could possibly improve things that stuff. I love to do a lot of it is centered around scheduling I mean y'all often hear people talk about I guess the sandwich game or the trap game or the revenge game in the NFL But they actually have no idea how to actually quantify That angle or that scheduling spot or if it actually matters at all a lot of these are just Narratives that have been made up over the years and have been used but actually don't have an impact and something that the market doesn't Account for so I always start off with like I said these rule changes any outside factors I move into sort of testing my hypotheses and theories to adjust my numbers And then that's when I start getting into the team-based stuff and to be honest I really don't have a process for the team-based stuff I should really do that honestly to come up with a checklist and make sure that I'm actually going through everything But it's it's just kind of like getting into it evaluating things from a personnel perspective looking at All the changes in the off-season who ended up where where the were changes in the coaching staffs and that's sort of As I work through that I start, you know picking those things apart So mainly personnel is the first thing I go to and then after that more so coaching how a team might look different on the field Just based on Their tendencies what will their distribution of run past be what offensive formations are they likely to use and there's some Guesswork involved no doubt about it But that's sort of the entire process of my off-season and then pre-season starts to give you a little bit of information On whether you're doing things correctly or not although that's also tricky as well Because you don't know if teams are actually showing their full playbook What the motivations are there, but it's a lot of work There's a lot that goes into it and I try to stay on top of it as best as I can So Rob so what kind of what you're telling me is that you're more interested in like studying the teams then say looking at what their numbers were last year in projecting 2019 yeah, well yes and no I mean There's many ways you can model football and I used to do it from a team-based perspective and I've in recent years moved on to a Player-based model so that's always going to matter, but it's it's locked down to an algorithm now It's all mathematical I just basically I'm using data on players and that I do a sort of a sanity check of all those players and all that data to make Sure, there's nothing that looks off to me. So essentially does this pass the eye test for me, but because of I mean because of the way that I've sort of tried to automate things as best as I can and That's been just a personal goal of mind embedding as much as possible because of the time constraints that I generally have It doesn't it doesn't tie me up as much in day-to-day of going through the individual players and things along of that nature Okay, so so that's really interesting. So you are doing player-based stuff now in the preseason I believe when we talked last year you kind of had more team-based things once we get into the season Is that still true? Yeah, so essentially what I was doing is last year I was running two models in parallel a team-based one and a player-based one I found I found it in every model I try to build I tried to build a nice back testing infrastructure But I found that particularly hard to do with the player-based one. There's just a lot that went into it So before I actually switched over fully to that I wanted to give it a full season running in parallel with a team-based model Okay, and essentially what I was doing last year is just betting the edges that both models agreed on Which actually limited my volume a little bit my volume is a little bit lower last year If I could go back, I probably would have changed that and not have done it that way but this year I'm pretty comfortable in the player-based model and I I think I Just think everything's gravitating towards that We now have enough data to I think properly evaluate players or at least evaluate them You know, I say this all the time, but we don't have to get things perfect when we're modeling sports We just have to get things better than other people. That's the sole goal And I think at that with the amount of data I have to work with now and I think I'm in a good spot to do that So that's sort of why I'm switching to that that route Well, one thing that's interesting here And I think that something that's difficult for me as someone trying to evaluate the NFL is that every player is so context-dependent like Odell Beckham catching a pass from Eli Manning is a radically different player than Odell Beckham catching a pass from Baker Mayfield and Obviously your model is going to account for this You know, you're not just saying oh, he's the same person now How do you account for those changes when you move Odell Beckham from the Giants over to the Browns and stuff like that? It's probably one of the biggest limitations that I have because you're absolutely right I mean the surrounding players certainly have an impact on on everyone else I mean quarterback play for example is highly dependent on the offensive line There are a number of ways you can do that you can provide each quarterback with an average offensive line and regress their metrics You know towards an average offensive line or average wide receiver group or average offense in general But they're they're always going to be limitations with that It's something that I struggle with in general and not only in the NFL, but just across all sports I mean you see this obviously I'm in Canada. I'm a big hockey better as well So you see this with the players when they're paired with certain line mates And their production increases versus being paired with poor line mates and their production decreases So I don't think I have that figured out by any stretch of the imagination. That's something I'd like to work towards certainly It's a goal of mine And I think that's actually one of the limitations of the way that I do things But doing that in per imperfectly is probably better than not doing it all And there are probably a lot of models out there that just don't account for that player usage So I think that that's the value in the player base model is you are at least accounting for it Even if you you think it may not be perfect accounting for it at all. I think is a big plus of that month Yeah, I would completely agree. I mean it you can't dismiss it Yeah, for all the reasons that you just meant I mean that this is just a common sense right natural common sense You put a player around more talented players and they will probably perform better And and you have to try to account for that in some some fashion So so Rob, I want to talk to you a little bit about the Raiders They're a little bit of a mystery just because they were so bad added a bunch of free agents but the piece I wanted to ask you about is Draft picks so they had four top 40 picks in the draft and in seven within the first four rounds How do you deal with the influx of rookie talent? Okay, so how there are a number of ways you can do it and I've explored a number so You could use player grades from like pro football focus does college player grades There I mean you could use and I'm just I'm not saying I do this or even consider it But like I've heard of people using madden ratings for players that come into the league to evaluate talent And using that for purpose of their model and then sort of just extrapolating the madden ratings into some player rating that fits their system personally I like to do a cluster analysis of past drafts and basically look at where players were drafted and essentially what I expect their value to be now and I'm gonna repeat this many times over the course of this podcast But there's gonna be imperfections in every single method I don't think there's a perfect way to evaluate players that are coming up through the draft class and how they are gonna perform in the NFL Right out of the gate. I You'll start to get some information over the course of the first few weeks of the season Which you can then you know feed into the model and slowly work Towards getting an actual player value for them. But for me, I cluster players from the draft by position and And where they were drafted to sort of determine what I believe their value is going to be for that rookie season and I've done a lot of research on quarterbacks and When researching that as it pertains to the draft I think the biggest thing that I've seen is that NFL talent evaluators are better than perception I think they get a hard a bad rap because the the the bust rate of NFL draft picks is pretty high but in general a Quarterback picked first overall is going to have a higher probability of hitting that a quarterback picked 15th overall So I think that that that method that clustering method makes a lot of sense because again NFL Talent evaluators have their faults, but they're not that bad at what they do when so I think that that method actually does make a lot of sense to me personally at least Yeah, I agree and and you are somewhat reliant on the GMs to have like some sort of I don't Somewhat accurate draft boards, right? I mean to your point But yeah, I mean it's a lot of hit or miss with the NFL draft But I've just found that to be a fairly successful Method and yeah, you're certainly gonna get the you know Patrick Mahomes of the world that just The model can't catch up quick enough to how good he actually is because you're using priors and things like that And there's always gonna be situations like that but again, it's just The goal again is not to be perfect It's just to try to get as accurate as you can with what you're working with and with players of that skill set You know, there's many other things you can do if you want to just evaluate the college numbers of that player You're more than welcome to do that as well But there's limitations with that like what if they play in the Texas Tech offense where they know the passing They play in the big 12 where the defense is absolutely garbage That's gonna affect their college numbers So it's really hard to put things in the perspective when you're doing things like that But I know people who certainly would like to do it that way Not only for football, but for other sports as well. I've just chose to go with the cluster route and just Opt to Think that the GM's kind of know what they're doing. So I'll just go I'll go that way I think that's a very fair assumption to make personally We're talking here with Rob Pazzoli can find him on Twitter at Rob Pazzola PIZO LA another thing besides personnel that changes each year is coaching staffs and For me, that's hard to judge because a lot of times the coach is either a first-time head coach or coming from a completely different Situation with a different level of talent in his previous stops. So when you are Adjusting teams who made offseason coaching changes. How do you kind of do that? Obviously again? It's not gonna be a perfect system But what are the steps you take in order to project what they'll look like under that new head coach? Well, first and foremost, I mean I want to see if they have prior So I mean it's easier if a coach has been in the league before Especially if he's coached a long time in the league An example of like Bruce Arians moving over to Tampa Bay this year We've got a pretty big sample size on Bruce Arians of what he likes to do and how he likes to run his team So that's a lot easier, but then you get situations like Cliff Kingsbury where I Have no clue. I have no kind of clue. What kind of offense he's gonna run Goes back to Texas Tech example again, but you know, he's playing in the big 12. It's like a run-and-gun type offense That's probably not gonna work in the pros So you got to use preseason to kind of evaluate and one thing I have to do is take some educated guesses I mean, it's very important for me Especially the way I model the games themselves to be able to accurately predict run-pass distributions for teams And it's not an exact science by any means and and that's where I think My love for football comes into play and just it not being worked for me and being able to watch preseason and read up on news and Accurately project things. It's funny because and this is like a little bit of a tangent, but I was watching Action on Showtime when it when it premiered a few months ago or even further than that now and Bill Krakenberger Crack as he's known who is you know profiled in that series was Talking about not watching the games like why would I watch the games? I have my bed in I beat the closing line. That's my only My only goal is a sports better and that's fine I mean, that's his opinion on things personally I find that I gained so many little things from watching the games that No model can accurately account for that. Well, I don't want to say no model, but we're not there yet So little things like that like the run past distributions just little nuances that you see with coaching coaches how they fair in certain situations and To get back to the original question it's coaching is one of the toughest things to account for in general I know that there are certain coaches that are better than others I it's very hard for me to quantify that the only thing I've been able to quantify is that there is a bill Belichick factor in football the Patriots consistently outperform their metrics every single year and that's it's come back to coaching So I actually do give the Patriots a coaching factor that goes into my model. Whereas I don't give it to other teams but If I told you I had the answer to how to account for coaching in the NFL, I would be lying to you Don't you just love it when the Patriots kind of lose a couple games And then they're you know a little bit undervalued in the market or like Bama like kind of slips up a little bit And they're undervalued a little bit in the market Those those that's that's the best just because of those those coaching changes. So Rob I wanted to ask you, you know, I struggle a little bit in the preseason figuring out some of these teams that have In a league quarterback, but not much talent on the rest of the team. Let's let's be specific. I'm talking about Seattle I got Russell Wilson. I really don't like any of the talent around him. I don't like How they insist on running the ball at a rate way higher than any other team in the NFL And I don't really like any of their talent on defense How would how would you account for that team in terms of your either your models or just your study of? How good do you think Seattle can be? Yeah So there's a few teams that come to mind like that where I can see a lot of talent But I'm not sure about the quarterback position the other way around so you have your scenarios where you have Seattle Which is quarterback great not filled with a lot of talent. I would almost put Green Bay in that category as well and then you have the complete opposite where it's This team is loaded on paper, but they're quarterback is a huge question mark The reality is I have a feeling of what each position is worth to each specific team Based on what I think that their distribution of plays is going to be so if a team is very past heavy Their quarterback is going to be worth marginally more. It's not a huge amount of things, but it's sort of a set weight I don't really want to get into how I calculate that right, but I will say that for me I mean quarterback is extreme. We all know the quarterback is extremely important But my model tends to gravitate towards teams with good quarterbacks versus the opposite way around where it's a team That is loaded on talent, but maybe not set in the quarterback position I notice Yeah, I would say that I mean We'll get into teams that we like and we don't like You know towards the end of the podcast or at least teams that I like and don't like but You know Buffalo in Chicago to me are fades this year Which scares me because I look at both those teams I especially love both the defenses But the huge concern for me is the quarterback position on both of those teams And if either Mr. Biscay or Josh Allen puts it together this year, those are scary good teams Which it's funny that I would say that around Buffalo because but I do believe that Buffalo could be really good But I would wage here more often than though than not those teams are not going to get enough out of the quarterback position To reach their market value are to be successful. So you're more likely to go under like You know a team like Chicago at nine wins And and more say that you know Russell Wilson's worth eight and a half wins essentially, right? Well, you know Matt Ryan and Julio Jones are worth nine wins. Yeah, essentially I mean, I think you've seen the market do that as well I mean not necessarily in the case of Buffalo Buffalo has been a little bit puzzling to me because their Wind totals actually I think slightly gone up since Chris first posted the original ones But I think for the most part Chicago's took a pretty deep dive. I think when they first opened They're implied win total was around nine point four and now it's around eight point eight Which is very unusual to see a win total implied drop over half a win So but yeah, I would agree with that that statement so that all relates to trying to project teams before the season and I think that it's a different beast in the NFL because Obviously, we don't get a large sample size, but we do need to account for what we see during the season So for you Rob, how quickly do you change over your thinking from okay? This is what I had preseason to okay I kind of have to ignore this and just go based on what I've seen in 2019 When does that change kind of occur for you where you're leaning more on 2019 data in season versus what we saw last year And in the offseason At what point do I lean more on it? I think it's about halfway through the season But from the first game of the year, I'm already incorporating that data because we have that data now So basically the way my models work is the further we get into the year the less and less I'm using previous seasons, but by season's end. I'm still using the year before as well And that you know, there's a constant debate about that especially in football I think it's Rufus that always says priors matter And he always repeats that during football season, but I I agree with that but The the promise there's extenuating circumstances is why I always give myself a manual ability to override weighty because Let look cam newton last year. He played four games at least where he was hurt I guarantee he was not anywhere close to a hundred percent And if I'm constantly if that data is still feeding into my model I'm never going to have him accurately projected if he's healthy now that Now we're getting the guessing games Which makes it even like this guy looks hurt. Can I trust the date on him? And then there would be guys like Patrick Mahomes where four games into the year last year I have him. I'm still working off You know his first four games, which are very good, but I have his prior in my system Which is what I expect him to be coming out of of college And it's not I mean, it's not a good quarterback. So I'm finding myself betting against kc every week And I gotta stop doing this because I'm watching this guy play and he's clearly He's clearly a top five quarterback in the league even though he's only played four games But my model thinks he's this guy is, you know, below average and and you gotta That's the problem. I'm a huge math guy I stick with math with almost everything But you have to be able to recognize that This is not passing the eye test for me Like clearly there is something wrong here And I'm not one of those guys that's just going to sit by and be like, wow, the math says this So I'm going to go with because I'm betting my own money and if I don't believe in what I'm betting then It's you know, it's hard. It's very difficult for me to do that when I know that something is is up. So um, I slowly wait Towards the uh, the data that's coming in from this year But I do go back quite a bit not only the last year but the year prior as well And I shouldn't say necessarily the year because I'm actually using a number of games So there will be times where a player plays two or three games in a year or sits out an entire year So I go back even further than that But I think that's important or else you get into these very small samples That they can be extremely misleading Excellent. So Rob, let's get into the fun part of the show I'll talk about teams that grab your attention for 2019 whether it be wind totals Super Bowl odds or anything else on the betting markets So, um, I'm going to give you like a little interesting tidbit right off the top here. So, um, I typically don't look at like the The way I model things is much different than I used to so typically four or five years ago I've very much looked at the previous season's luck factors um, so the turnover margins the record and close games What else adjusted games lost for teams due to injury Basically, you're trying to strip out as much luck from the previous season Going into the next year This is the first time I did this this morning. No, I was gonna come on with you guys So I went through all the luck factors from last year and actually compared it to the numbers that my model is producing this year For regular season wins and it's actually insane how closely they align even though it's two different methods Um, and I think part of that is because I'm doing this at a player At a player level. So all these teams that had significant injuries last year that are going to get guys back in the lineup Um, I'm I'm going to see them with a higher projection this year and vice versa I do bacon sort of like an injury factor into my my regular season wins going into the year, but um To me, this is not popular. I think the Tampa Bay Buccaneers Are going to be us. I mean, they're the biggest sleeper for me in the league this year Interesting. Um, I'll get into a little bit of why but if you take a look at their season as a whole from a year ago Obviously the turnovers were huge, but I'll talk about that in a second adjusted games lost I believe they had like the highest adjusted games lost due to injury in the last It was at least five years, but it was uh, they lost pretty much Six or seven starters on their defense at one point Which they're going to get back this year now Not a great defense even with those starters But an upgrade over who was playing a year ago and then close games. They weren't very good in that metric either but Looking back to last year the season as a whole James Winston out for the first three games of the year. So Fitzpatrick is in there Eventually Winston comes back and he's struggling massively with turnovers Was absolutely horrible and then he loses his job again to Fitzpatrick who now all of a sudden it turns into a The turnover machine that we know him as from previously He becomes the real Ryan Fitzpatrick Tons of turnovers until Winston comes back in for a second time. Now. I don't know if there was um An emphasis placed on turnovers with him going into the latter half of the year But he only threw two picks in his last seven games Now it's a small sample and there's some luck involved there, too I did see some dropped interceptions when I was looking at the data, but I think The emphasis with Bruce Arians there and and James Winston is going to be don't turn the ball over and we have a shot and I think if you put them at a league average turnover rate last year They would have been a decent team and that's even with all the injuries that they had So now they have a full complement of weapons The argument against it the division. It's tough I mean New Orleans Carolina Atlanta the schedule is not doing them any favors I've personally seen New Orleans taking a bit of a step back. That's most Atlanta I could see getting better because of they also suffered from significant injuries on defense last year Carolina honestly have no clue. My gut is that they tell they get better. My numbers tell me they're going to get better I'm still not sold on cam Newton being healthy going into the year But personally, I think the Tampa Bay Buccaneers right now Markets have them at roughly 6.6 implied wins Um, I have them at 7.7. It's the biggest gap I have of any team right now going into the year So that would be the team that I would look out for Interesting. Do you like their changes? Um, like on the defense side of the ball, they were they were really bad I mean I I can get on on I can get on board with the offense for sure Especially if Winston eliminates the turnovers. Do you just see regression to the mean on defense? Or do you like some of their player? Editions in the off season. So I I don't hate them any I hate their secondary. I don't like their secondary Make that very clear. That's where they get docked the most in my model Uh, I still believe that they are going to be like a bad defense. They're they are but they're I mean relative to last year the improvement that they will actually make on defense by being Let's just say somewhere between below average and bad and not nearly like close to historically bad Is enough to to make to be a significant factor the turnover margin I mean, I don't even know what the turnover margin is like Let me see if I have it up in front of me here, but it was it was insanely bad Then I remember them in san francisco was just absurd the turnover margin last year. So yeah, it's a lot of regression But um and by no means do I think they're gonna have a good defense It's like especially with the opponents. They're gonna play there's gonna be some high scoring games But I think the offense is good enough and the the key is that the defense is not nearly as bad as it was last year there's a big difference between historically bad and And bad and I think that that could be a big step up for Tampa Bay They can just be bad as opposed to historically bad. It's a pretty big difference now Let's talk about the flip side here. You talked about liking Tampa Bay You've alluded to New Orleans, Buffalo, Chicago as teams you may not be as enthused about Are those the teams that stand out to you on the on the flip side here that maybe you're looking at unders Or looking at other, you know props of them for the full season Yeah, so those are some that I've definitely taken unders on I've taken an under on the LA Rams as well Which pains me because I'm actually a Sean McVeigh guy. Well, I was a Sean McVeigh guy until the Super Bowl Twice from like the 40 yard line on on fourth and one and I was like, what's this guy doing? But You know, the Rams are an old team. I don't think people realize how old they are So I think a lot of it for me is age regression there More more so than anything else Jared Goff to me I think in this the second half of the year Was a much truer indicator of who he is versus the first half of the year I mean teams kind of figured out that he's sort of a one read quarterback and you can confuse him a little bit He's going to make some mistakes and they really struggle in the second half of the year to move the ball relative to the first half of the year The o-line is worse than it was a year ago I just don't see, you know, the Rams are still a great team Um, but Are they a double digit win team? I'm not convinced. I think the division's better I do like San Fran despite what I've seen from jimmy g and preseason so far I'm trying not to let that seep into my mind. Although it is there right now I think Arizona is at least more competitive as well Seattle, I mean I I never know with Seattle. I have no clue every year I think this is like I look at the talent like you said Ed on paper and they don't look like a good team But they have an elite quarterback and they'll make games competitive and they'll figure it out But uh, I think the Rams and saints. I mean, it's funny. It was the nfc championship game last year and those are two teams that I love last year, but Age regression I think will catch up to them the saints tough division Uh, but I mean Drew Reeves is 40 now. I mean there is clearly His arm speed is not what it once was. I think he's slowly turning more into a check down quarterback He can't really make that deep throw or he'll still try to deep throw, but he hangs it up there now Uh, granted he has the receivers are able to come down with it but those are two teams that Man it scares me, but I did take unders on both the saints and the Rams Um In addition to some of the other teams I talked about bears bills. I'm a cowboys fan I took an under on the cowboys which pains me as well But the cowboys won five games by a field goaler less last year. Um, yeah There's actually some really good studies available online. I've done my own in the past, but anyone who wants to search Um, close games the previous year and then look at those teams the following year Uh, I think after last year I think it's 37 of 40 teams. So that's what 92 and a half percent that they won or lost What is considered an unsustainable amount of close games? In a single season and then 37 of those 40 teams actually went on and What's the best way I could term this they moved towards the more predictable Side the following year. So teams that ended up winning a lot of close games regressed They got worse the next season and vice versa teams that lost a lot of close games got better the following season There's a lot of good data to back up that theory as well Yeah, I've I've done that too rob and it's That regresses very hard to 500 your record in close games regresses hard to 500 Even in college football too, which I thought there'd be a little bit more of a signal just because you know the more bigger disparity in teams Um, but yeah, that's you you're gonna see uh, working in close games go to 500 every year That's one of the that's one of the things that the saints too just looking at the same schedule open in front of me here It's it's five five games that they won by four points or less now granted. I do Saints have an above average coach. They're a great quarterback last year That plays a factor certainly in in close games and special teams will as well with your kicker But there's some you know luck involved in in that as well But uh, yeah, we just we see it's not consistently reproducible from year to year You look at close game records from year to year. It's almost no correlation. So it's uh um, I I think For someone who doesn't model games and is just going into the year looking at football and says, you know what I'm going to take Close games record games lost due to injury turnovers Pythag make some sort of model out of that I There are worse ways I can think of doing things and uh, you actually do see the it's the market Really moved towards those metrics as uh, you get closer to the season That's outstanding stuff. Uh, that is rob pezzola. Once again follow him on twitter at rob pezzola rob That was a fun discussion I love having the more process based stuff getting to pick your brain a bit about You know how you look at things during the all season, but also during the regular season too And I think the player based model is pretty fun to discuss and I like the thought process behind it So thank you a bunch rob for swinging by good luck with your nfl bets in week one and beyond that And hopefully we'll talk to you again soon. Sounds good. Thanks for having me guys Covering the future Want to give one big thank you out to rob pezzola or swinging by and talking about his process or betting the nfl Follow rob on twitter at rob pezzola and ed a lot of good insights there from rob and I think I talked about this a couple of times, but I love the thought process of being player based When it's a sport where there's as much change over as the nfl. I just love I love that process Yeah, no, I love that too And that means I need to figure that out by next preseason, you know for some of my own models It is uh preseason 2019. We're already thinking 2020 Yeah, exactly. Well, I mean, you know, I mean in this business. You got to keep getting better or you get left behind That's right and you know, it was really nice talking to rob because I mean I've I've almost come on the show and Going under lana nine wins. I've gone almost come on the show and going under Seattle at eight and a half wins and part of me is be like Right, they got good quarterbacks right how much is that worth and and it was It was uh, it was really good to talk to him about that and and see that he kind of supported like well That's a risky. That's a risky take, you know, because they got the one position Figure it out like the flip side of that too and I think it's yeah, it's difficult sometimes to separate the quarterback from the situation I think that Mitchell turbisky may have benefited from a positive situation last year with chicago and the question is can he benefit from that again? in 2019 and I think that looking for quarterbacks Who may have Punched above their weight the previous year is something that's that's interesting to me. It's something that I try really hard to do. It's hard to identify where those Overperforming quarterbacks may be so I thought that was a really interesting discussion too Absolutely, and I mean you don't have to look any further than Blake Bortles in 2017 Great season for Jacksonville. Obviously the strength was on that defense But that was the one NFL went until I really liked Jacksonville under nine last year And I mean you brought up like the bears. I kind of like Jacksonville from a year ago I mean, yeah, that I'm not the first person to bring that up either. I think that it's a pretty apt discussion You had this really good defense paired with I don't want to say Mitchell turbisky is a bad quarterback, but I think an unproven quarterback would be an accurate way Uh to describe him because like he's got a lot to prove Yeah, I mean he's still young and there's still the possibility. He progresses because especially under a guy who is as smart As matt naggy, I don't want to say turbisky is back because that's an accurate. He's an NFL quarterback But Unproven I think is the way to phrase that I'll talk about Atlanta in my cover in the future in a second But first dad, I want to hand over to you It is week zero of college football got some games coming up later this week And you want to talk about organ an organ is a team that I believe we touched on With bud elli, but what do you see with organ for this year? So organ got great news last year when quarterback jesson herbert decided to come back for a senior year He might have been the top pick in the nfl drafts And organ also has a boatload of starters coming back as well and a lot of these are on the defensive side of the ball But when I calculate my preseason model organ only comes in 20th Even with all those returning starters And the reason why is they really haven't shown the program strength over the last couple years to be any higher In 2018 it was their first year under mario christa ball Really a roller coaster season and they ended up 47th in my team rankings that look at margin of victory and adjust restrict the schedule In 2017 it was the first year under willy taggart And they were 49th In 2016, uh, they were even worse. This was the last year under mark helfrich and they were 73rd So when the highest you've ranked over the last couple years is 47th You really need a jump to think that you're even going to get to 20th And this is certainly possible. I mean, I definitely believe jesson herbert is a talented quarterback Um, he's getting a lot of nfl hype, which I think is a very important thing to consider. Um You know, these guys are good talent evaluators And if he's being projected as possibly the top pick that definitely means something and just in contrast, you know Texas quarterback sam elger is not getting projected up there. And I think that says a lot about texas Um, they also have to make they also can make a leap on defense They were 37th when I look at adjusted yards per play from last season They get a lot of those stars back But they do have to replace defensive coordinator jim levit Who is one of the most respected people, um, you know as a defensive coordinator so I really like under nine wins for organ and One of the big reasons is the schedule. So they open with a semi-road game against alburn in atlanta. They're not going to be the favorite there Uh, washington is going to probably be the the best other team the pack 12 north They have to go to washington and they also have some pretty tough games At stanford at usc at arizona state and then against washington state So you're looking at six games kind of in a 50 50 toss-up range They take half of those that's nine and that's assuming that you're going to win the other games And even with that you're kind of expecting them to take a leap. I just don't see it The phantom sports book. It's organs at eight and a half There's definitely other places out there where you can find organ at nine I think organ is a little bit overrated this year and i'm going to go on under nine wins for organ So I want to go back to jesson herbert there at because I think that when looking at college stuff I I tend to feel most comfortable in trying to evaluate quarterbacks and looking at herbert He's been very good from an efficiency perspective each the last three years He had an 8.4 adjusted yards per attempt in 2016. It was 10.0 in 2017 and then 8.3 in 2018 And those are really good efficiency numbers But despite those efficiency numbers, they still graded out poorly in your model So I think that you could say Oregon or jesson herbert will be a good quarterback Without saying that or you should bet organs over Bet over their total of nine wins So I think that you can appreciate jesson herbert and still be down in oregon Given the efficiency numbers he has already had He would need to make a major leap up in efficiency like if he Where to go kyler murray or baker may feel in the bit and have like a 12 adjusted yards per attempt That's a different discussion, but that's also a pretty big leap up from where he has been previously So he's already been efficient But not efficient enough to grade out well in your models and I think that that does matter Yeah, I think it does too and like I mean no one's expecting to go up into the top five this year And I don't know whether that's coaching or I mean they did lose a couple skill players as well But I don't know. I guess I just I just don't see it like I just don't see this team making a jump this year I think they're they'll be good, but they'll they'll probably be below washington And I think they're going to struggle to win some of those games and those are really those are too tough A tough contest to have on the road or effectively on the road for the auburn one at least right And then when you kind of bake in two losses, you know, they're not certain losses, but you kind of bake in two losses There's a lot of room for downward there. So I think it does make a lot of sense To take the under there with organ I think I would lean that way as well if I were betting that total I want to go back here to the Atlanta Falcons. I've actually talked about them already uncovering the future but I think this one actually ties into that bet the first one we discussed with atlanta was betting them to make the playoffs at plus 138 and part of that Is because of the investments they have made on offense in the offseason also regression for injuries on defense Kind of like we were talking about before but I want to talk to you about davante freeman Because the investments they made on offense in the off season and injury regression for the defense should both benefit him and specifically his rushing yardage prop right now at fandall sportsbook His rushing prop number is 860.5 yards with minus 110 on both the over and the under and I think there is a possibility that freeman could really just obliterate that number As long as he stays somewhat healthy And you can say about any running back because injuries are baked into rushing props for sure, but I think especially with davante freeman There is a lot of upside for him to get the over here The reasons I like this is that the falcons invested in the offensive line in the off season They drafted a guard in the first round and signed two pretty competent I would say guards in free agency You don't usually invest in the interior offensive line if you plan to throw 70 of the time I do value guards when it comes to pass protection But that does signal that they may want to run more They also got a right tackle in the first round and it sounds like he's gonna be practicing again soon I get a hard issue, uh, but it sounds like he'll be okay And might be able to play week one But regardless should not be out too long after that and the other thing here That's a factor for davante freeman's rushing total is that there's no more tevin colman And tevin colman was a legitimately good player at least I thought he was and having him as an alternative Allowed the falcons to take a little bit of the load off of davante freeman's plate Now the backups here are ito smith. He struggled a bit last year He's battling with quadriolison and brian hill for the backup job on that team and Not none of those guys really stand out to me as being in the same tier as a true player As tevin colman that may force a team to put a little bit more of a load on freeman's side He has gone over 865 yards rushing in every uh, each of the three years E or three the past four years the three years He's basically been a starter He'd missed a couple of games in 2017 still top the total there And I think that that bodes well for him here Especially because tevin colman was there for those three previous years where he topped this number They should be a good team They should get a large chunk of the market share davante freeman should and They seem like they want to run a bit more this season as they move over to dirt cutter now again I don't value rushing, you know numbers. I don't I don't want a team to be super run heavy But if they can run efficiently and run kind of often, I think that's a good spot here for davante freeman Number fires projections have freeman at 991 rushing yards, which is over the total by 130 yards That's going to be true again for most rushers because They're assuming health for the most point But it does give him some wiggle room to maybe not be fully healthy For the full season and davante freeman did play earlier this preseason, which I think bodes well for what they think of his health I am broadly into this falcons offense and into freeman himself And I think he could do could hit that over of 860.5 Even without being healthy the whole way through the year So davante freeman 860.5 I think is a really favorable number if it were closer to 900 I would probably back off pretty quickly but 860.5. I think is very fair Given the fact I think this team could run the ball a decent amount and run the ball efficiently That's pretty valuable here for someone who figures to be Almost a workhorse in his offense At any thoughts for you about this falcons rushing offense And I think that you've talked broadly we've mentioned this before and it wasn't on air but about how When guides rack up a lot of rushing yards an individual game It's less about game flow. Maybe more about big plays Yeah, no, and that's something I talked about on my preview series that that launched today Um, I think the thing I want to bring up first is how much are they going to run the ball? Like I've read some stuff that that dirt cutter is going to run the ball more Which to me doesn't make any sense at all when you have matt ryan and julio jones And they threw the ball a lot in tampa bay last year. So i'm not sure where this chatter is coming from It'll be really interested to see what their play selection is as we get into the season And i'm also, you know, I mean there's also been a lot of chatter about minnesota running the ball a lot Right. I certainly hope that's not true Um, but you know like how does this chatter translate into what they actually do and how you know How can we parse that out given a couple of games of data? I'd be really interested to see What happens there because if they do run like the seahawks run then I don't know I don't think they'll do that. I hope not. I really hope not, but I think for me it's not about the chatter. It's more so about Reacting to the investments they have made and letting them speak with their with their pocketbooks and their draft capital And seeing them bring in jamon brown They brought in uh, james carpenter from the jets, uh, and also drafting Caleb migari and chris lindstrom Those are a lot of guys. I like migari and lindstrom from a passing perspective too But they're also all at least somewhat talented run blockers, especially jamon brown The the giants numbers last year with him starting versus when he wasn't starting were incredible So I think that those investments specifically Say they could run a tiny bit more. I hope they don't run as much as the seahawks I desperately don't want that even though I am you know interested in divante freeman's rushing prop I just think that reading those investments reading where they put their draft capital and and their their money That signals to me A little bit more run heavy this year than they have been Yeah, that'll be interesting. Well, we'll see we'll see what happens. That's what makes you know This first three weeks is is gonna be well first however many weeks Right, and we're gonna learn a lot in those couple of weeks So I think it's uh, it's gonna be fun rob talked about that how once we had that first week of data You want to account for it because it is data that we did not have previously So uh, should be interesting to see how things go here for the falcons in 2019 They're a team that I really do like Pretty interesting amount. It is week zero at of college football We're gonna get into our regular season schedule not next week but the week after that We will have a college football week one preview next week on thursday We're doing a college football and nfl preview broadly on monday just going through what our numbers say About both the nfl and college football picking up some of our favorite bets for the year just giving you One big preview episode to get you set for 2019 But now we got florida versus miami coming up on saturday florida is favored by seven and a half Total there is 47 for jaren williams debut and then arizona against hawaii two fun quarterbacks here clealtate Against col mcdonald who is awesome because hey, he's he's a good quarterback He gets a ton of volume like his his passing volume is high And that's like people talk about him, but he's also decently efficient and it sounds like all mcdonald Which I think is pretty valuable. I'm probably the 10 000 person to point that out But col mcdonald Clealtate i'm pumped for that. What are you are you looking out for anything in this first week of college football? Yeah, i'm looking to see if florida is for real because if they are I think they should win somewhat handily even though Miami has a pretty good defense How's the freshman at quarterback going to play from miami? And man col mcdonald last year his first four games his passing numbers were Ridiculous. Yeah before they finally regressed a little bit Um, but that'll be just the fun late night shootout. I think yeah, I mean I've loved games like that We're it's gonna be a huge total like I have not looked into the eyes of those games enough to bet them But like from a college football fan perspective. I'm pretty jacked up to see what happens there So I think that'll be a fun slate again We'll get a full preview of week one and next week on thursday Make sure you subscribe to covering the spread to get that preview right as it goes up You can find covering the spread on spotify apple podcasts It's a stitcher the google play store wherever you get your podcast You can find covering the spread and again ratings reviews are oh so greatly Appreciated ed. I know you got your big previews going up over at the football analytics show What else you got going on for the rest of the week? Yeah, well the episode I posted today was the secret about hundred yard rushers in the nfl And this was particularly interesting to me because I had a hypothesis that Hundred yard rushers racked up most of the yards at the end of the game when their team was up, right? And that Turns out to be not true. So a little bit embarrassing from that perspective If you're interested in fantasy or daily fantasy, I definitely recommend checking it out I think there's some interesting insights there And then also it was interesting for me jim because it was a 10 minute audio episode And this was one that I wanted to have a written version of it as well Just so people come and check it out and it ended up being 1500 words Okay, and that's that was a lot It just made me be like man, uh Yeah, that was a lot of work putting together 10 episodes, right? Of which eight were done and nine will be done by the end of the week But I would find it pretty depressing to know how many words I have spoken Over the past year and I really would not I would desperately not want to know what that number was Well, or maybe it's very enlightening with just the work that you you put out of a fan duel number fire That's true. Maybe it'd be good for performance reviews Uh, we'll we'll check into that but just my own sanity. I'd really rather not know Yeah, no, but I mean you when you kind of think back about it, you know You never I guess I kind of knew what I was getting into because I had done this for March madness But um, that was an interesting kind of wake-up call. But like, oh, yeah Yeah, I think it's interesting. Yeah, I ended up talking about green You know kind of from a fantasy perspective, which I don't really do But talk a little bit about green bay talk a little bit about the new york jets Cool. I'm looking forward to that you can find the written version of the power rank. I assume Yeah, the written and the audio version are both up I'm still hoping to get a receipt from gymsonis at some point today So I'm gonna ask them about that, you know, when we get off the air works for me I will happily retweet at the power rank whenever I need to that's where you can find ed fang On twitter at the power rank and again the podcast is the football analytics show find that wherever you get your podcast I am at gymsonis j i m s a n n e s You can also follow the van dual podcast network at fan dual podcast big Thank you to calvin theobald for keeping us on the air for today Thank you as always cal for chopping up these videos putting it up on youtube is well You can find all the cover or covering the spread up there and thank you to those of you who tuned in For this week next week monday and thursday getting you set for the college football season And of course more nfl talk should be a whole lot of fun. We'll talk to you then This has been covering the spread here on the fan dual podcast network