 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 the debut episode right here on the fan dual podcast network Taking a look at the world of sports betting and letting you know the process behind the bets to filling out the optimal betting slip My name is Jim Saunas. I am a senior writer and analyst for number fire calm My co-host here on covering the spread is Dr. Ed Fang He is at the power rank on Twitter and at the power rank comm as well and Ed Welcome to the show. I want to thank you for joining me and agreeing to go on this journey with me How you doing today? I'm doing great. You know, thanks for you know, it's I'm really looking forward to being on the show in particular. I'm looking forward to working with you, Jim We've had a couple podcasts every March which have been super duper fun and so well organized because of you and I'm looking forward to doing this a lot more that's upcoming football season and I gotta say Ed himself has been Instrumental in helping me with my March Madness picks. I've actually now won the number fire bracket two years in a row I don't think I told you this I haven't talked to you since Yeah, I'm excited to talk to you more than once per year because it'll make me smarter and I gotta get smarter at some point I made a lot of bad DFS plays this year So hopefully you can help me from a sports betting perspective and Ed for those people who don't know you and I know that you know A lot of people listening here do know you but for those who don't know you what's your background and what kind of got you into this This fear of sports analytics. Yeah, so I you know I got my PhD from Stanford and always thought I was gonna be a professor and then just kind of walking around one day and realized I Didn't really want to do that I wasn't really interested in science and it kind of hit me that I've always been interested in sports and I got pretty lucky because what I did for my PhD applied to sports almost perfectly and Allowed me to develop some of my own methods for ranking sports teams That's how the power rank got started essentially developed a method that allows you to accurately a conference drink the schedule When you're ranking teams obviously something that's really important in college football something really important in college basketball And then also international soccer I'm almost already looking forward to Euro 2020 next year when we talk about that. So so that kind of got me into the field and You know started doing this and quickly realized that I could help people Just provide value with with some of my analytics and help people make better bets and Kind of on a grander scale, you know, like my mission in life is to use math and analytics to help make your life better I think it's 2019 you need to have some kind of data-driven approach and some kind of analytics and and a lot of the details of that can be Hard and I want you guys to let me do that for you. And then hopefully I'll be able to explain it to you in a way That lets you make better bets You know and the math part of it is something, you know that I'm pretty passionate about I do some volunteer math teaching at my kid's school I Just I just never loved the way that math was taught to me even though You know, I did pretty well at it. It's just like like betting and sports is such a good way to kind of engage in it Because you can't really even talk about you know a plus 200 bet without getting into a little bit of math. So, right Analytics math, I think you can make your life better. That's why I'm here Absolutely, and you can find all of Ed's work over at thepowerrank.com again He's on Twitter at the Power Rank and he hosts the football analytics show You had a podcast from March Madness as well this past year So a lot of good resources there as well And I think that what you were talking about there was trying to educate people, you know Use analytics to try to find good bets and that's kind of gonna be the focus here of Covering the spread and I think that my intent is To go a little bit process oriented I know that sounds like super cliche and every betting podcast like oh, you know about the process But like actually like not kind of the point here not everyone. There's a lot of picks shows out there Jim So yeah, and we don't want to be that we want to tell you why we're intrigued by Alex Bowman's odd to odds to win The NASCAR Monster Energy Cup series championship. We don't just tell you to bet him We want to say why we think that's intriguing. I think that We're gonna focus on a lot of topics here on covering this spread. We're gonna go Deep into college football and the NFL once those seasons are here We'll also talk tennis coming up in just a couple weeks for the US Open We'll talk some golf of course we'll have I will talk some NASCAR I'll put at the end of the podcast whenever I decide to talk about it So as to not bore all of you don't want to bet NASCAR, but I like NASCAR So we'll put that in at the end as well three different segments per show We're gonna recap what we went through the last time that there is any if there's anything with that actually happened Like let's say we go through NFL week one and we wanted to revisit our process to let us two picks We're gonna go through that because I think it's important to I try to do this all the time is Re-evaluate my process and say did I make a mistake or was I the victim of variance? I think that's important to ask that lose that in our segment called covering the past covering the present is going to be Usually a guest-based segment at least for the preseason today We're gonna be joined by JJ Zacharista of numberfireandfanduel.com You can find him on Twitter at late round QB JJ is going to go through his process in building Projections and how that relates to prop bets for this year will be going through a lot of different guests in there as well We go through that and then at the end of the podcast Ed and I are gonna go more into our specialties and take a look at Things our our numbers say are profitable bets whether it be you know if Ed wants to talk by international soccer Absolutely, that's a great time to plug that you know based on whatever your numbers say I think that that's a great spot to get into that We are gonna touch on some topics that like I don't know anything about tennis Ed I'm gonna have to lean pretty heavily on our guests for that one Yeah, so what are your specific specialties you're gonna focus on for covering the future? Yeah, I mean I mean The the name of my podcast should kind of give it away. I mean I do football analytics that is You know, I mean basically 70 80% of my time is devoted to making better football analytics college football NFL a lot of preseason stuff and You know specifically for football and in general with the show One of the themes that I want to bring to the show is like how markets can help you So you're often betting into markets. They're hard to bet against we you know But they can help you and I'm not gonna tell you exactly how this is gonna happen. I Mean this will this will be clear as we go through the show sure markets can help you Markets can both help you in making projections and markets can also help you in finding good bets So and that's gonna be particularly clear in football. I also Do a lot of college basketball When I first got into this field, you know, camp armor is already round. So Already pushed me not to be like the college and basketball analytics person at all So I've kind of devoted my attention to just March badness because people seem to care about that every year There's no reason they care about March badness. Yeah, and then numbers wise the other thing I do that I think I do on a pretty high level as international soccer. That's not relevant until nine months from now, but But yeah, so that's the other thing I do well But you know the thing I really want to bring to the show is is that market-based thing? How can markets help you make predictions and better bets? And I know that was a big part of your process with college basketball, too So definitely something we'll be touching on plenty throughout this podcast for me personally. I love the NFL We work with analytics a lot at number fire and I'll definitely be factoring those in also got analytics at number fire for college Football so looking forward to you know getting into those seasons and talking about those But I'm looking forward to the NFL draft from a betting perspective for next year in April I also I host a PGA DFS podcast. So hopefully I've learned something about golf in that time We'll see but I'll talk some golf bets for sure at some times NASCAR. I mentioned again. I'll put at the end I'm not gonna bore you with that But like I do love NASCAR betting I think that there's a lot more inefficiency in that than there may be in the NFL because it's not as popular of a sport to bet So those be the main things for me as far as our own specialties We'll have guys on guys and girls on who know other sports and can help us learn how we should do our process In those arenas podcast schedule going to try to record twice per week usually on Mondays and Thursdays Sometimes based on the schedule of our guests that may change and that will change during NFL and college football season So it makes no sense to record a college football podcast in a Monday So we'll be changing that up once we get to football season but two per week until then Ed I'm excited to have you along for the ride. I think this should be a lot of fun I think that hopefully it can be a useful tool for our listeners to yeah, absolutely looking forward to it All right We'll get with JJ in just one second to break down his projections But first if you want to get on in on the action check out the Fandall sports book and place your first bed today If you lose Fandall will give you a refund up to $500 in site credit visit sportsbook.fandall.com for more details terms and conditions apply must be 21 plus and physically present in New Jersey gambling problem call 1-800-GAMBLER and all of our odds on this podcast will be Fandall sports book odds make sure you check those out JJ Zachary's and of number fire and Fandall coming up in just one second Once again, follow them on Twitter at late round QB needs to host a late round podcast Which you can find wherever you find your podcast Covering the present Let's bring in JJ Zachary's and of number fire.com and Fandall JJ you're the first guest we've had here on covering the spread We are honored to have you here I'm sure you're not busy at all as we get into training camp season. So how you doing today? I'm good. I'm good. Thanks for having me on guys Absolutely. Thank you JJ and the reason we wanted to have you on here for today is that you build your own projections and projections Obviously have a lot of relevancy for fantasy But they're also applicable to prop betting in in gambling and so I think that what I want to do first I want to know about your process as far as building out your projections when you're building projections for individual players How do you begin that process? Are you starting with the individual players starting from the team level or where does that process begin for you? Yeah, it definitely it's a top-down approach. It starts at the team level My project plays that are run by the team in total and then you can split that up by by rushing and passing And that's based on a lot of different factors. You can look at offensive coordinator data You can look at recent history You obviously have to factor in personnel But then the other thing that you also have to look at That I that I factor in is is win totals and win total projections for those teams because obviously Teams that are better are going to be more run heavy. Just given what happens towards the end of games So once you sort of get that volume everything sort of falls into place Because you're you're then taking that volume and you're divvying up How that volume is spread around whether it be through target share or rushing share with wider sievers and tight ends and running backs and so on And then you know sort of separately from that Touchdowns are always very very difficult to project With any sort of mechanism In what you're projecting so for me I do project at the team level first and I split that up and it's generally The way that it's split up is generally correlated with how the teams pass to rush attempt ratio kind of comes together And then from there once I project the individual players yardage totals, which is obviously based on target share and rushing share I use the yardage total because yards do correlate to touchdowns. I use the yardage total To to project the percentage of touchdowns that a player is essentially going to score in his offense And it changes that that formula will change based on if it's a you know a wide receiver or a tight end Or a running back because tight ends for instance Typically don't need as many yards or haven't seen as many yards per touchdown scored And then from there you can sort of see the percentage of touchdowns that player's scoring And then compare that to the team projection and then split it out that way Very cool. So gg how much of that process is Automated and then how much do you kind of go in and make some adjustments? You know based on fraction of targets and things like that. Yeah, that's a great question Um, yeah, I would say, you know, I don't know what the exact Ratio would be per se, but there is a decent amount of automation from the perspective of of the starting point and where I'm Where I'm getting the the amount of passing plays and rushing plays And utilizing history and pulling that information in but then I think that the one thing that that folks should recognize and need to recognize Is that there is subjectivity to doing some of this? It's not it's not as automated as you would see Let's say a game projection in season For a team, right? So if you're you know at obviously you do a lot with march madness Once you you hit march madness, you know how these teams generally are performing It's a lot, you know, it's a lot cleaner to bring that together and say this team is does this it runs at this pace yadda yadda yadda Whereas with this, you know, we're really Using an educated guess based on some information that we can find through the media based on player history And in how we're divvying up the volume because in the end volume is driving a lot of this, right? Volume volume is far far more than efficiency And if you can get that volume equation correct, that's really going to allow you to hit Excellent. Yeah, one thing I like a lot jj from a fantasy perspective and from a betting perspective is trying to identify positive situations or situations where there may be inefficiencies and you mentioned a lot of team level stuff in building your projections When you were doing that were there any teams that stood out as being drastically different entering 2019 than what we saw last year And what teams were those and how does it influence your Your willingness to bet props around those specific teams? Yeah, so I think you can approach this in sort of two different ways One way is by looking at who over and under performed in the touchdown column last season So if you go with that approach you can look at yards versus touchdowns as a team and see who over perform Let's say so a good example is Kansas City They obviously over performed in the touchdown column based on the number of yards that they had But actually the team that over performed the most in the touchdown column last year was New Orleans based on the number of yards that they had So we should actually expect New Orleans to dip a little bit from a regression standpoint Here in 2019 last season they scored a touchdown on 38 percent of their drives Of the 17 teams with it with touchdown rates around the 30 percent mark since 2011 All of them declined and touched on rate the following season So we're going to see that with New Orleans more than likely and then there's a team like Seattle That's really interesting. Seattle was 18th in the league last season in offensive yards, but they scored 50 touchdowns So that's another team to at least keep an eye on a lot of that was driven By russell wilson's really really high touchdown rate at an 8.2 percent touchdown rate Such touchdowns about it by attempts that was almost as good as patrick mahomes last year And obviously everyone's screaming regression for patrick mahomes. We should also be screaming regression For russell wilson. So you can look at things from a touchdown perspective With that, but I think the other Angle that you can take is when you look at at plays run Because again volume is going to drive a lot of this So the obvious example the go-to example is going to be arizona You have a team. I think actually in arizona We're going to see the biggest change the biggest increase year over year in plays run per game in nfl history Because arizona was running at a very very slow pace last season It was it was awful for fantasy purposes, of course But now you get cliff kingsbury coming in he's going to run that air raid He's when he was in college and coaching in college He consistently had a top 10 offense in pace and plays run per game So because of that, you know, I think that you can take that information if you see some some obvious Low props for someone like christian kirk or larry food sterile or even david johnson to a degree I think that you can attack that and then there's there's two other teams who are kind of interesting too I think baltimore is definitely a very very tough team to project this year I would argue that baltimore is the most difficult team to project this year because you have natural positive regression coming With the way that they ran that offense. It's almost It's almost a lock that it's it's an unsustainable and what they did last season was an unsustainable way of running an offense Um, but then you have to ask yourself how run heavy can they possibly be in 2019? So I think baltimore is just just difficult To project, you know, they ran the fifth fewest plays while trailing when lamar jackson was under center last season They lose pieces on defense. What happens if they're trailing more I think that's definitely a question that you should be asking and then pittsburgh's another team in that same division They were the most past heavy team in football last season since 2011 only at lana in 2013 Had a higher pass to russia temp ratio than pittsburgh did last year Um, and and they were the only two teams with a past to russia temp ratio of two or higher So they were throwing a lot. Um, but even of the 18 teams since 2011 who've had a ratio above 1.7 This is significantly lower than where pittsburgh was last season All but one of those teams saw a dip in ratio the following season and the average dip was 0.33 So we should expect pittsburgh not only because of antonio brown being gone There's going to be natural regression for pittsburgh to not be as past heavy as they were last year Well, and pittsburgh was maybe a little past heavy because they were in a bunch of close games and down, right? Right. I mean one more games than they actually did Yeah, and you know, they were a team also who from a record standpoint underperformed, right? They were if you look at almost any metric, uh, pittsburgh was a top 10 team in football last year But obviously the record didn't didn't reflect that So if the record reflects that a little bit more than we should we should just see natural, uh, a more natural run heavy offense Yeah, yeah, and I like how you mentioned seattle and russia wilson They've been so into they ran the ball more than any other team in the nfl last year So russia wilson gets to actually throw the ball at all this year Uh, it would be a good thing if you have those guys on your fantasy team for sure Uh, so jade, I wanted to ask you kind of a little bit more about kind of the specific adjustments that I asked you about earlier Like when you're looking for value, is there something that you tend to look for? In terms of like, you know, if there's a role like a scheme change or uh, Offense coordinator change is is that a way that you can look for value? Yeah, I think that it definitely is I would say, um, you know There's probably two things to look at if you're looking at uh individual player prop value One of them, uh, is sort of what I already alluded to it's just general regression for particular guys You know, I a lot of times we'll just see uh, we'll see analysis That says something along the lines of like this guy has done this one thing two years in a row Therefore it's going to happen this next season But we're working in small sample sizes and we have to recognize that these are very small sample sizes And that one thing could be happening over and over again for a couple seasons due to due to variance, right? Um, so I I think of if anything that plays mostly into touchdowns Uh, so if if you can spot, uh, you know, someone like tyler locket for instance who scored, uh, 10 touchdowns And only having 70 targets last year And if there's some correlation or if that touchdown total let's say is close in a prop entering this season It's very easy to spot that that's a that's something that you want to target from an under perspective And then the other thing too, you know, I mentioned earlier that a lot of of what you do with a target share in a rushing share Uh perspective, it's it's not an exact science It's it's more of an educated guess because that's that's as far as you can go Um, and and you know, there is there is some automation to that But there is some subjectivity as well And I think fading hype is always sort of an important thing when it comes to that So, you know, like I said earlier, we're projecting volume for these players and there is that subjective process to it So, for example, when you hear stories about dante moncrief being the number two receiver in pittsburgh We heard that from a from a beat writer earlier this off season You have to look into that and see how substantial that actually was was it coming from mike tomlin's mouth? Was it coming from a beat writer who saw dante moncrief performing well to what he saw? Dante moncrief looks like the number two receiver and that's really what it was It was the beat writer in particular. He's a good beat writer But it was a beat writer in particular saying dante moncrief looks the part of being a number two wide receiver So you have to dig into those news and notes and see if it's if there's something substantial there because sometimes there is A lot of times there's not um, and if that hype sort of it changes the way that people are betting these players It's important to kind of go in the opposite direction then So let's take a look at some individual props here jj starting off with the guys Who are most likely to lead the league in rushing yards this year And it's pretty much zeke elliott and seyquan barkley in a tier of their own right now Fandall sportsbook zeke is three to one seyquan four to one It's a big drop down to the rest of the pack as no one else is shorter than 13 to one When you look at your projections, are you willing to bet either zeke or seyquan at their numbers or Are you looking to take someone who has a little bit of a longer shot here to potentially lead the league in this number? Yeah, so my projections have zeke and seyquan Pretty much in their own tier. It actually zeke has is a way better bet in my model than seyquan barkley is A lot of that just has to do with the the question marks around that giant's offense But it makes sense that they would be one two from a from a rushing total standpoint Um, and then the next tier sort of behind them includes, you know Joe mixon who now has question marks with all the offensive line injuries there You have david johnson who has his own question marks because we don't know exactly how the cliff kingsbury offense is going to be run Lavy on bell and then there's two guys After that in that same tier sort of who have pretty strong odds over on fandall sportsbook That's derrick henry and nick chub And I think that they're pretty reasonable bets Especially nick chubb who's even further down than derrick henry The browns are projected to be good. So that's a good thing You know that they're going to have some positive game scripts and that's going to force a little bit more run for their offense But then nick chubb Also, you know, I think that that folks are a little bit scared of chubb for what happens when kareem hunt gets back But there's a world where when kareem hunt gets back that he's not that involved in this offense So right now with the threat of kareem hunt and with that all factored in so the average essentially nick chubb is projected in my model For 261 carries, you know nick chubb, you know, if you think from a fantasy angle, let's say The downside with nick chubb is his pass catching. It's it's it's the amount of volume that he can get through the air It's not what he's going to do on the ground. So I think nick chubb is a really interesting bet For most rushing yards this season with that that revamped browns team and browns offense and then derrick henry I think is the other Favorite bet that I have, you know, it's a different looking team this season with a new offensive coordinator Derrick henry is entering a contract year. So they might just ride him You might end up seeing That subjectivity there with the with the coaching staff and they're just saying, you know what We don't know what we're going to do with derrick henry next season We saw what happened with derrick henry at the end of last season the final four games. He went he went berserk So I I think that there's you know The hesitation that I have with derrick henry is that tennessee Might be a pretty average team to below average team potentially So, you know, if tennessee is trailing derrick henry is not going to be the guy who's on the field for them Yeah, so Yeah, I wanted to ask you about that right because I mean he did go crazy at the end of the year I think I saw that you only had 211 carries last year. So it wasn't getting as much love in the beginning But you got to love like almost five yards of carry So Yeah, I mean it's a balance of all those things for him, right? Yeah, exactly and and the thing with nick chubb too, you know, just to go to compare and contrast chubb to henry We now have a sample size of henry consistently not seeing volume through the air Whereas with nick chubb, you want a guy to be a three down back That's the allure with seguan barclay and in a zql a because they they're always on the field when you're on the field more snaps correlate strongly to to how many How how much volume these guys are going to see? So there is the downside with henry with the fact that he's not their primary pass catching back or he hasn't been historically He's likely not to see 40 targets this season because he hasn't even gotten close to that Throughout his career But last season, you know when they had those positive scripts last year when they were performing fairly well as a team Derek henry dominated he he showed that he has that sort of upside So just given his odds he makes sense, but I would lean of the two I would lean nick chubb just given those odds over derek henry One thing that's very interesting with derek henry is that He had that berserk run at the end of the year with jack conklin out their right tackle And I believe they averaged like 0.7 more yards per carry when jack conklin was on the field So he did that even with jack conklin out at the end And I think that that's why I I'm not saying I would take him over chubb necessarily But I think that that I would think that legitimizes henry as being a an interesting bet Where he's currently going. So I think both those guys definitely worth monitoring I think that henry is the one who did stand out to me. He is 17 to 1 right now at fandall sports book Let's move now to the passing side of things patrick mahomes a favorite to lead In both passing yardage and passing touchdowns and jj as you mentioned everyone is saying Regression is coming for patrick mahomes and we have the tyreek hill situation some ambiguity there. So Would you be willing to bet patrick mahomes to lead the league in either passing yards or passing touchdowns at plus 360 on fandall sports book So I think it makes sense for patrick mahomes to be there to be the favorite for a lot of reasons, right? I mean everyone's going to expect that that that he's the the player who's going to lead the league in passing and passing touchdowns I just don't think the the the odds are are there for you to place a bet there I'm really more inclined also to bet something like passing yardage since touchdowns do have more natural variants You know if you look at year over year the the the quarterbacks who overexceed in the touchdown column It's because they had an outlier season in some way and touchdown rate. That's just how it works So it's usually something that i'm going to i'm going to shy away from You know if there is a touchdown leader that I think Is most interesting this year it'd be like karson wence, right? Because he has the the weapons there the teams should be good yada yada yada, but it's it's not something that's very scientific But when it comes to to leading league and passing You obviously want volume and you want someone who's going to have a high average depth of target Who's going to throw the ball down the field and if there's one player who has that it's james winston He's he's he's really really really intriguing In this passing yard category bruce arians. I think that there's this misconception about bruce arians He's not necessarily a pass heavy coach, but he's a pass friendly coach His his average depth of target for his quarterbacks generally is very very high He loves to throw the ball down the field And if you look at his offenses and teams historically after he left pittsburgh's this is back in 2012 When he went and he coached the the colts for the one year with andrew luck as a rookie that season They were seventh in the league and passing yards with a rookie quarterback And then he goes to arizona And he was always a top half team in passing yards He always coached the top half team in passing yards when he was in arizona And then obviously we remember that 2015 season with karsten palmer where karsten palmer was second in the league in passing yards Um, and that includes a season with drew stanton and ryan lindley you guys I mean this is this is this is not something that that is some anomaly This is what bruce arians likes to do so, you know Given the fact that winston has the weapons and mike evans christ godwin and and oj howard That defense should be a little suspect I think that we should see a lot of negative game scripts for tampa bay and that that would include, you know A lot of passing and a lot of passing volume Yeah, no, I definitely think tampa bay is not going to be a very good team. So that even supports even more Um, you know going with james there So jay jay when I looked at some of these receiver props in terms of leading the league in receiving yards Uh, two guys really jumped out at me. Um hotel beckham jr. And judo smith schuster I feel like both these i mean hulio johns has the highest odds to lead the league in receiving But beckham's getting a new quarterback a new system. He doesn't he doesn't have a lot of manning throwing to him anymore And then juju's moving up to the number one receiver for ben rothensburger What do you think about these two guys? Yeah, so I think if I you know if I were to choose one of the two I know that their odds are really close from a from a yardage total standpoint I would lean juju over obj Um, my projections have them very very close juju's at 1310 yards and obj is at 1282 So this is a very very close projection Um, but the main reason for that I know that I mentioned that the Steelers will likely be more run heavy this season That's definitely true. Um, but juju has the target share advantage over odell beckham Not so much from a floor standpoint. I think both of them will easily, you know, if they're healthy Elite players elite wide receivers historically Will will continue to see a large target share no matter their environment, right? So you're going to hit 25 percent As a target share no matter what with these guys because they're that talented But given the the other weapons in these offenses, you know, juju has literally nothing I mean, it's it's vance mcdonnell. Who's who hasn't been this this big primary pass catcher throughout his career You have dante monkry who's a question mark you've james washington is a question mark So really I look at juju as someone who has a crazy crazy ceiling from a target share standpoint Where he can get over that 31 32 mark realistically Whereas obj, I think that the ceiling from a from a volume standpoint Is there a little bit more because you have jarvis landry you have david and joku So as a result, I think that I would lean juju there But like I said, there's only like 30 yards between the two from a projection standpoint for me So I think you could realistically make a case either way and then where would they be where would they rank By your projections by yards So right now juju's third in the league from a projection standpoint and obj's fifth So I have hulio first deandre hopkins second juju's third mike evans is fourth Who I actually think is arguably a better bet than than both juju and obj maybe maybe just depending on you know, what kind of bet you're getting And then obj would be fifth Yeah, mike evans is 12 to 1 right now at fandall sportsbook. He is third behind hulio and deandre hopkins So pretty in line with your projections, but juju Fifth in odds. He is 13 to 1 behind obj and evans So I think that does present an opportunity there any longer shots You could see jj potentially jumping up here or is receiver one of those positions where We just don't see guys come out of nowhere and leave the league in receiving yards Yeah, so I look I think that the two that I would target as like pretty pretty decent odds would be juju And mike evans as we just talked about but if you want a little bit deeper Of a shot of a player to target. I would look at aj green He obviously hasn't been able to stay healthy, which is a huge issue The bangles defense likely won't be very good this season There's an offensive mind and coach that's coming to town who's had experience under shan mcvay If you look at how mcvays run the rams, I know that that's uh, I feel like everyone everyone that's touched shan mcvay You gotta love that offense, evidently, but But if you look at what mcvays rams have done They have been pretty run heavy overall, but in neutral game scripts last season They were about average in the league two years ago. They were actually sixth and past frequency in neutral game scripts So I think that you know in order to lead the league in receiving you obviously need health on your side So aj green right now I think has the 14th best odds over on fan duel To to lead the league in receiving my projections have aj green ranked seventh right now In receiving yardage. So you're really just playing the numbers there Obviously health hasn't been on his side like I said, so there is some some question marks there But I think aj green is a very interesting longer shot If you want someone with with lower odds Interesting any other prop bets that stand out to you aj when you look at fan duel sports book and their odds Anything that stands out to you just personally or based on your projections Yeah, I mean look, I don't think either of these guys are going to lead the league in receiving per se But I was a little confused to see that adam felon Had far far better odds to lead the league in receiving than stefan digs If you look at the splits last season about halfway through the year And a lot of this had to do with the fact that adam felon moved out of the slot more and they started shifting him around And after that happened adam felon's target share dropped stefan digs target share rose a little bit They became a little bit more equal. I mean realistically most projections you almost have to give them an identical target share It's really it's really how that offense looks. So just seeing the difference You know if you if you're really bullish on on what this passing offense can do for in minnesota, which I wouldn't necessarily be because I think they're going to be more run heavy this season Just given the coordinator changes and what they want to do Uh philosophically, but um, you know, if you want to target one of those wide receivers, definitely look at stefan digs over adam felon Interesting. Yeah, I've been looking into those guys too. I mean, you're not worried. I mean digs only had about 6.9 yards per target last year A little bit below his uh, his career average. I mean thielen's been pretty consistent at nine yards per target So you you you have to like digs to kind of get more yards per target this year Yeah, I think it's a combination of that and there's also the age curve, right? I mean adam felon broke out a lot later in his career And so there's there's also the the uh, the fact that stefan digs is sort of like Planted right in his prime right now. Um, and I think objectively You know, a lot of people maybe not objectively But I think a lot of people would say that that that digs is the more talented guy and usually talent Uh demands volume, you know volume is not a statistic that just comes comes the players way volume is a talent statistic And so with a guy like digs, it's more so The fact that you're buying into that a little bit. Um, and just the discrepancy between the two is is really really large That it really caught my eye Alrighty, I think that is all we have for you today jj I just want to thank you once again for joining us here on covering the spread It was fun to talk to you fun to hear your process I think that's the best takeaway here is kind of how you build your projections How you get to these conclusions too But reminder everyone to follow jj on twitter at late round qb subscribed to his podcast the late round podcast as well JJ good luck as nfl season gets closer Hopefully, uh, don't get too crush with work over there and we'll talk to you again soon. Appreciate it. Thanks guys Thanks jj Covering the future One final thank you to jj. Zacharyson for joining us today to talk about nfl profetting now Let's transition into covering the future the segment where ed and i get to look at our numbers And tell you what they say is a profitable bet as of right now ed Covering the future week number one. You got to start us off in a high note Where are you looking uh based on your numbers right now? Yeah, one thing i'm really interested in is uh, I mean i'm deep into football right now both college and pro And one thing i've been thinking about a lot is in minnesota vikings So last year they came in with pretty high hopes. We're definitely considered a super bowl favorite When I look at my kind of my nfl preseason rankings This is something I take market win totals and I back out A ranking from one to 32 of all teams Minnesota was the second super bowl contender behind new england, which I think have made a lot of sense to people But then they really struggled last season the offense just didn't come together with new quarterback kerr cousins The defense was kind of uncharacteristically bad kind of got embarrassed on that national tv game against the rams but Now that we're stepping into 2019 when you look at this roster like that super bowl contender is all still there I mean we can we can talk about kerr cousins Uh, we talked about stefan diggs and adam thielen the two incredible wide receivers that they have There's all the tools there to be a really good pass offense JJ talked about how I think he was purposely trying to freak me out by talking about how they're going to run the ball this Which would be a bad thing. I've read that in a couple places. I you know So they they fired the offensive coordinator john deflapo they promoted I think the qb coach and You know kevin stefnowski is going to be the oc this upcoming year and he ran the ball a bunch in one game I don't know if that really translates to what he's going to do, you know for the course of the season Um, but there's definitely the tools for that offense to be pretty good top 10 top five type type passing offense And then you look at the defense I mean these they have all the players that have been a really good pass defense over the last couple years So when I look at adjusted, uh, yards per attempt on defense So that's that's taking yards per attempts and adjusting for strength to schedule You know the past offenses you played, you know this Defense has been fourth in 2016 second in 2017 and dropped off a little bit to eighth in 2018 But they got a lot of the players to to make this a really good defense You talk about defensive end erison griffin He's hurt a little bit last year with a pro bowler the three years before Uh, daniel hunter has been was a pro bowler last year Xavier Rhodes has been a pro bowl cornerback not last year, but the two years before that You know anthony bar and harrison smith and and it kind of goes on I mean, they didn't really get gutted at all on that side of the ball. So When I look at 2019 and I again one of my preseason rankings I take market win totals and I back out how good that team is from 1 to 32 so minnesota's ninth and I think that's kind of a little bit on the low side I think I think I think they can definitely potentially be better than that They're at nine wins in the win total market But I think the place that's really interesting to me is is in the in the super bowl futures So right now the 30 to 1 at the fandal sports book And so you're saying, you know, if if you said that each team had an equal chance to win The super bowl, they would you know be a 1 and 32, right? So you're saying minnesota's only a little bit better than even odds to win the super bowl I think that's uh, I think that's a little tall And I think that's where there's could potentially be some value And you were talking about ever some griffin, you know missing part of the year not just like injury But it was also like, you know mental health related and that's like a tough thing for a team to deal with The day where he had that issue initially was the same day They got blown up out of the bills and I don't think that was a coincidence that that happened the same day Yeah, that's additionally like the reason that that offense crumbled was because of their offensive line But you bring in Garrett Bradbury and Garrett Bradbury is an upgraded center. That's one position But they also move pat elf line out to left guard. That's an upgrade at two positions over what they had last year so essentially by drafting one guy you're upgrading two different spots and I think that if you give Kirk Cousins sufficient time, he has shown in the past You know not in the playoffs necessarily but like he's shown the regular season He can be an efficient quarterback and so they're not just bringing back all the key cogs from last year Outside of Sheldon Richardson. They're they're adding to it by improving that offensive line I think that that's why I would be inclined to agree with you that the Vikings are an intriguing bet at 30 to 1 Yeah, no, I mean I I I think when when when you look at kind of the Super Bowl odds That's the one that really jumps out at to me right now Absolutely, so that's Ed talking about the Vikings winning Super Bowl 30 to 1 as of right now I've got a couple I want to focus on here. The first one is some MVP voting in In the American League and that's probably going to be Mike Trout Mike Trout minus 400 F. Andrews sportsbook and he's also dealing with a calf injury And I think that that calf injury is a minor thing But it also shows you that there is some more uncertainty here than the odds may allow for and that could open the door for someone else so In the world where Mike something happens to Mike Trout whether it be an effectiveness injury something else And then we need to find someone else here who we can back Who has a somewhat realistic chance at winning that MVP and my bet would be alex bregman He is currently 13 to 1 at fan double sportsbook And I think that's probably a bit too long The astros are currently third in the american league in winning percentage despite having You know key players miss a lot of time this year. George springer. Jose al-Tubei carlos korea They've all missed time But they're still the third best team in the american league and good teams tend to get more favorable mvp voting Bregman is also fourth in the american league and fangrass wins above replacement That's always something that tends to correlate well to mvp voting and that is despite Having just a 250 batting average on balls and play He's going to have a lower babbit because he is a fly ball hitter But he's projected by zips to have a 279 babbit the rest of the way So regression in the positive form could be coming for bregman He's a guy with more walks than he has strikeouts and he has tremendous bad at ball data He's the only member that's astros seem to be healthy all year. So let's say something happens to mike trout I think that that's going to push voters to choose a good team in lieu of uh, you know other things And I think that would help alex bregman and if they go to an astro Bregman's probably your top guy right now. He's also not unknown to mvp voters He was fifth in mvp voting last year. He was the all-star game mvp last year He was in this year's home run derby. So name recognition is there for alex bregman So if trout falters or gets hurt, I think that alex bregman is the best bet to snatch the award He actually has shortened. He was 14 to 1 yesterday a fandal sports book. He is now 13 to 1 So not as much of an edge as I was hoping for initially, but still I think uh bregman a good pick add Any baseball takes for you or is that not an area where you dabble too much? Oh, I do do some baseball stuff. I was just saying I think someone got a hold of your notes for the show jim I know They were down this they were down this morning. I was like, huh? What's going on here? Why are they down? Yeah, so I gotta I gotta keep this this google doc on lock here. Yeah, um, I do I do do some baseball numbers. I mean they say the Dodgers and the astros are by far the two best teams in the majors Maybe see a repeat of their world series um from two years ago But you know another thing about houston is is one thing that I've done is is look at something called cluster luck which essentially looks at You know how lucky a team has been so if you look at baseball teams like the number of runs they score is should be should correspond with Kind of their power numbers and their home run and batting average There's there's a base run formulas for how you translate a team's underlying stats to how many runs they should score and then conversely, uh, how many runs they allow And astros have been the worst in terms of cluster luck All year so they've been incredibly unlucky as a team. So, um, wouldn't be surprised to see them surge Towards the end of the year and and make another run towards the world They've been unlucky They've been hurt and they're still the third best team in the american league That is a good indicator for some positive regression I also want to talk here some nascar because it's me and I love nascar So we're going to start covering the spread off in a good way by talking alex bowman I think that his odds to win the cup series championship are a bit too long right now because when you look at recent races There have been three guys who have pretty long odds to win the cup series championship Who have elite current form and those guys are kyle larson alex bowman and eric jones and all those guys are 28 to 1 or longer to win and initially i wanted to bet larson But he's actually the shortest of the three at 28 to 1 and alex bowman Is the one of those guys who has a win so far this year, which is five Five playoff points, which is huge in nascar larson has just three playoff points and jones has zero And i think that's an edge for bowman. He's also run well on all track types Especially recently he had a string of three straight finishes Three straight runner-up finishes this year And they came at a super speedway in talladega a high banked one miler in dover and a moderately banked One and a half mile track in kansas and that moderate banking at the one and a half mile track is key because In homestead where the championship race is it's the exact same track type similar to kansas where bowman finished second He led 63 laps in that race. He also won in chicago another similar track to homestead bowman has had a top 10 average running position in six of the past 10 races So i think you could consider larson at 28 to 1 He leads david smith's central speed rankings over on the athletic over the past five races He has done well at tracks similar to homestead was fourth in kentucky last week But i think that bowman's a better bet to make the final four between those two So backing him at 30 to 1 pretty intriguing for me and i'm going to dive in there ed Any nascar interest for you? Can i get you to make a nascar bet before the end of the season in november? Uh, can i can i push you that direction? Sure. You can definitely you can definitely give you make a bet Alrighty chris busher every week is my strategy and it's it's worked out once in his entire 100 and something race career. So Clearly plus ev there for sure and that is all we have for this week before we wrapped up though Anything big coming to the power rank this week or on your podcast this week Yeah, absolutely. This week the big thing over the power rank was releasing my college football win totals report So this is based on a regression model that i use for preseason rankings Based on past team performance and a couple other factors Straight up over the last five years It in looking at only fps versus fps games The model is predicted over 70 of game winners So i use this to predict win totals And you can get that over at the power rank.com. There's a lot of interesting stuff in that report I break it down by conference. If you're a texas longhorns fan, I perhaps suggest not looking at it But uh, but yeah, it's a good resource to kind of get into college football get into kind of an objective baseline of where you can start your analysis Uh, and to figure out, you know teams that you want to support this year and teams that you don't want to support Do i want to look as a northwestern fan or should i avert my eyes with clayton thorson being gone? Well, I was never so I never liked thorson. I mean no I mean hunter johnson's pretty fun Exactly you got but they're they're only returning two offensive line starters and that makes me a little little nervous here Ed Yeah, but the division isn't so good No, it's it's pretty bad. So i'm intrigued there So make sure you check that out over at the power rank.com and again follow Ed on twitter at the power rank I am at jim sonnis my offensive line rankings for 2019 are going up I believe friday morning so you can check that out over at numberfire.com also have a daily fantasy baseball podcast every day nascar podcast and pga podcast once a week as well We want to thank you all for tuning in for today But before we close up quick reminder and a an ask that you subscribe to covering the spread We are already up on apple podcast spotify stitcher soundcloud wherever you get your podcast You can find covering the spread ratings reviews so much appreciated if you like what you heard from ed or jj today Make sure you let us know about it there on apple podcast and subscribe Everywhere else as well I want to thank you all for tuning in for this inaugural episode back again for two episodes Once again next week. We'll talk to you all then and good luck with your bets until then this has been covering the spread You're on the fan dual podcast network