 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's right here on the FanDual Podcast Network in NumberFire.com where today we are taking a look at the 2021 college football season and breaking down the futures market with Drew Martin getting his thoughts on some wind totals, conference odds, and the national championship to get you set for this year. My name is Jim Saunas. I am a senior writer and analyst for NumberFire.com. Joined here as always by Dr. Ed Fang. You can find his work over at thepowering.com and Ed, you have been the dedicated host for today. You have moved to a friend's house because your power is out. There is a cat joining you. It is awesome. I'm in a good move because of this. How are you doing? Yeah, you know what? I've had better days. Yep. I've had better days, but you know what? You got to do what you got to do. I was going to do this on the internet on my phone, but it seems like everyone in Ann Arbor is using that network. So, yeah, zero internet there, zero internet from the landline, and yeah, make and do. Do you know the cat's name? Do you know the cat's name? We can get a little word of it. I think it's Koko or Jojo. I really don't know. Okay. Well, we have a third co-host today. I also don't know if I can just push the cat off, right? No, no, no, no. Bring the cat in your lap and make it a third co-host the entire time. I feel like that's the only way to do this here. Yeah, I don't know if the cat likes me that much. It's hanging out with you. That's a good sign. It's hanging out. It's chilling. We're just rolling with it. I've got my dog over here. She is exhausted from a 12-hour car ride from Chicago out to Syracuse. So, we're just a pet-friendly podcast. I guess so. I guess so. So, we are clearly at our best as we head into the month of August. NFL preseason underway, college football just around the corner, of course. We're breaking that down with Drew Martin in just a bit. You can find him on Twitter at DrewMartinBets. You, of course, know Drew from being in this podcast many a time, but also via WagerTalk and SportsSpurtGrid. What we're talking about is his process. He's been in the futures market and college football, letting you know what keys you want to know before you make some bets, what research you can do to try to optimize things and try to streamline things as well. We'll talk to Drew about that in just one second. But if you want some NFL talk, we do have a couple of podcasts posted. We talked to JJ Zacharyson two weeks ago on NFL player props, his player projection, building process, all that stuff, and his favorite process this year. And also, last week, we had Aaron Dolanon talking about the divisional outright markets. So, plenty of stuff on the Cover In The Spread podcast. You can find that by searching for Cover In The Spread wherever you get your podcasts. And while you are there, make sure you leave a rating and review as well. Before we dive into the college football futures market, though, we got to go back and wrap up the Olympics where I think we need to make a pivot in what this podcast covers pretty regularly. Covering the past. So, we will get to the good side of the Olympics here in just one second. But first, we do want to close the book on, we had Drew Dinsick on to talk about medal count or medal counts and things like that. And kind of wanted to bring this up because it's some rough luck for Drew. He had under 26 and a half gold medals for Japan. And it looked really good to start. He was talking about Judo and how they needed a beast out there to get over 26 and a half. And their overall medal count was 58. But 27 of 58 were gold medals. And that could be due to home field advantage. You're talking about that being a thing. There could be an element of that in this. But it still feels like a tough beat, Ed. When you have 58 total medals, 27 of those, almost half are gold. That just kind of feels like a bad beat. But the process overall is still quality there. Yeah. And the last gold was that baseball the very last day, right? Yeah. So it looks good for a very long time. Yeah. No, I was I kept looking at that. And I actually thought he had 27 and a half or 28 at the number. So I thought I thought he was still good. But yeah, that's a bummer. Bad beats happen. I think we're going to be talking about some more. He might have gotten it before it dipped when we talked it was 26 and a half. But I think he may have gotten it. So let's hope, let's hope at least that Drew got 27 and a half because that would be tremendous for him. But if you got 26 and a half, that does feel like a bad beat with the way the medals were distributed for Japan. Yeah, for sure. And I definitely remember all that chatter the first day about, yeah, the first night we were talking about how Japan missed on a bunch of golds that they should have gotten. But home field advantage, they managed to figure it out. So clearly that that one hopefully got the good number there on Japan with the gold medals where they did wind up with 27. But Ed, on a happier note, you were on Joshua Chypteky. Is that how you say that? Chyptaguy. Chyptaguy. Chyptaguy. Joshua Chyptaguy a plus 430 to win the men's 5,000 meter that Ugandan won. So Ed, you had that. You also had the steeple chase win. Do we need to pivot to becoming a track and field podcast? Yeah, I would love that if John Cherey gives me the markets to talk about. I would love to come up with some models. It was an interesting experience for me because I didn't have my typical analytics. It was more knowledge of the sport that I was going on. So, yeah, I would actually I would love to create some models and figure out what, you know, in races in which you have a lot of data, like 1500 meters and lower, I think you could do some really interesting things. We do need to talk. I did talk about a couple losses as well. So, I did not get Rai Benjamin in the 400 meter hurdles. I did not get Timothy Chereyot, the favorite to win the 1500 meters. But the two men that beat them ran all time great. I talked about those on this show, right? You talked about the Rai Benjamin one, I think, like maybe before the Olympics. And then we talked about the Chereyot one like the first week. Okay. So, yeah. So, those didn't pan out. But they were all-time Olympic performances to beat them. Rai Benjamin broke the world record by over a half-second. I just got bested by someone that hadn't even better day that day as well. And then, Jacob Ingebritzen beat Chereyot. I thought Chereyot actually had the perfect strategy. He tried to do exactly what he did in the 2019 World Championships where he won by, I think, two seconds. He just obliterated the field. He tried to do that again. He ran the same time that he did again. But the 20-year-old from Norway just managed to peak perfectly. And running 328 in an Olympic final in that heat is insane. It's unheard of. It's kind of mind-blowing. If you would have told me that before the Olympics, I really wouldn't have believed you. But that's what we saw in the 1500 meter final. Yeah. It was fun to watch for sure. And a lot of good individual performances at the Olympics for this year. Any final thoughts for you in general on the Olympics and betting it specifically that we learned from this year? I think I learned that I was kind of sad this week with no adrenaline first thing in the morning with these finals happening. It's just such a blessing to wake up at 7 a.m. Eastern time and get an Olympic final. I think overall, I think I did all right, but it obviously would have been a better, if a couple of bets would have gone my way. I still think the process of liking runners that have done it consistently over the last couple of years is still my way to go. That worked out in the 5000 where the favorite wasn't even wasn't anywhere close in that race. So yeah, I think the process is still fine. I think I would like to add some analytics to it at some point, maybe next year for the world championships. Talk to John Sheeran about that. And then yeah, we'll go from there. Yeah, but it was a lot of fun. Are we adding any winter Olympics this coming year? Are you going to start pumping out some like speed skating or something like that now? That would be fun. I am less into the winter Olympics just as a fan. So we'll see. Yeah, but I mean, wait, that's next year, right? So next, yeah, we definitely have some fun with that. I think it's 2022. So it should be this winter, unless I'm totally off 2022. That would be next winter. Oh, no, that would be January of yeah, it starts on February 4th of this year. So right after or right like during Super Bowl, okay, or between then. So we're going to have winter Olympics, Super Bowl, Daytona 500, obviously on the exact same level of those two things for me. So that's going to be a fun little sprint there. And that is kind of the time that I was thinking about starting to talk about NFL draft bets as well. Okay, because that's the kind of time where, you know, those markets start coming out and that's the time to jump on them, especially for those first the top picks as well. So yeah, it's good to know that we have a wide range of betting options to talk about on the show. We won't be bored. And that is that is for sure. We're not going to be bored right now because we have college football coming just around the corner. We're going to suffer that by talking to Drew Martin, follow him on Twitter at Drew Martin bets, check him out on wager talk and sports grid as well, getting his thoughts on the college football futures market who is in contention to win the national championship who realistically could do so for this year and much more. But first, Hey, sports fans, Fandal is offering an exclusive promotion for new sports book users. Join Fandal Sportsbook today and make your first bet. If you lose, we'll give you a refund up to $100 or $1,000 in site credit within 72 hours. Your first bet after depositing will qualify. If you have multiple selections on one bet slip, it will be the first selection you made. Head over to the Fandal Sportsbook today and place your first bet must be 21 plus and present Colorado, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia or West Virginia. New users only max refund $1,000 site credit. See full terms at sportsbook.fandal.com. Gambling problem called 100 gambler in Colorado, 105 to 247 hundred in Iowa, 100 bets off in Indiana, 1809 with it for confidential Michigan, 1-800-270-7117 in Tennessee called the red line 1-800-889-979 or in West Virginia, 1-800-gambler.net. Let's bring Drew Martin back into covering the spread once again. This untaxed some college football futures, Drew. It's been a minute. How are you doing today? Jim, I'm doing good, man. I guess since the pandemic happened, it's been a good road since. Been down in Mexico for a while here in Las Vegas now, planning on spending most of the football season in the state of Florida, so just trying to chase the sunshine and find some winners and always good to be on with you and Ed, two of my favorites in this industry. So thanks for having me, guys. You're going to be in Vegas and Florida in the hottest parts of the summer and you were in Mexico before. I feel like you might have this backwards. Wait, why? You got to say why backwards though. What do you mean? I sweat way too much to live that lifestyle, man. Oh, I see what you're saying. I mean, I got to put it in context. I grew up in South Florida, so I am just to the heat. Actually, Jim, I moved to Alabama, to Auburn, Alabama, and then to Atlanta, Georgia for my college and post college years. I thought that was a little bit too cold. So I will take a Vegas 110 day summer day over the December 50 and cold and rainy 10 out of 10 times. I'd love to visit cold, Jim, but in terms of where I want to live, I'll take the Vegas or the South Florida heat any day. So you take that I'll take Alaska during the summer and then like Nashville during the winter. I think that then I'm probably cooking. That's like, that's my wheelhouse. We're about 50 degrees or so off in our calibration here. But you know, hey, whatever works for you. Where were you in Mexico when you were down there? Veracruz, Mexico, which is southeast of Mexico City on the coast town, their biggest port. It was a great experience down there at my girlfriend's family's house and just being able to kind of see how they live down there, bet some sports, Mexican baseball as well, and actually found a dog that was near death and did one of the greatest things I'm actually proud of in my life in terms of saving her. And she's actually right here in my hotel room in Las Vegas. So she's now an American dog and doing well. So that was kind of the backstory behind why I was in Mexico so long. That's awesome. Good for you. This is, this sounds like a productive couple of months for Drew Martin. This is awesome. Yeah, thank you, you know, doing some good things. I figure it will bring hopefully good karma, you know, whatever is out there. I've been trying to bet more underdogs and baseball, which favorites have been covering unfortunately, but now that she's in the United States, I feel like that might change. I'm looking for some plus price underdogs on the diamond. I love it. Well, let's transfer that good karma now to college football and talk about the futures market there. And Drew, with so many teams, so much turnover year to year, it's tough, man, to try to identify and catch up in terms of research and college football heading into the upcoming year. And I want to talk to you about your process in terms of trying to identify what numbers matter, any shortcuts, what research, what resources you rely upon, what are you doing to try and streamline your offseason research when it comes to college football? It's a great question because actually things have changed in the last two years, Jim, at least for me personally in terms of how I'm wagering on the sport. This is my favorite sport to kind of dig into as a fan. In terms of a sports better, it's good. I wouldn't say it's as good as college basketball just because I think the sports better has a little bit more advantage in college basketball, but I put it right there with it, Jim, you know, the amount of teams, the amount of information that odds makers have to dig into in order to put out a sharper number is just a lot of work. And so coming into college football, I think, especially in the beginning of the year, I've gone back over, you know, multiple years now, it seems like weeks two through about weeks, eight or nine is where I do my best. And then it kind of trails off there at the end because there's more opinion out there, more numbers to make the lines for all of these teams. So that's kind of how I go at college football, really heavy in those weeks. And in terms of futures or season win totals, given the pandemic, and, you know, you always got to keep in mind, if they're not playing the games, most times that's going to kind of void the bet. So therefore, you know, you're giving up your money for the full season. And if you get it right, you're not getting, you know, the winning portion of it back. So that's why I pump the brakes a little bit in terms of futures. But, you know, I'm still digging away. And sure enough, I'm going to fire away on a couple here. So yeah, we can get into that. For sure. Before we get into that, Drew, I didn't want to ask you like, how do you evaluate like a team like Connecticut that didn't even play last year? Like, does that make it impossibly hard? Are you just waiting for a couple games on them? Or do you go by what happened in 2019? You know, it's a great question. It's a great question. And actually, I think with Jim's question, I left out a little bit in terms of just where I get my information from, you know, I do look at the different, you know, like Phil Steele, I think is great. But a lot of that is already factored into the market. I like to kind of go down and break down the beat writers, you know, the guys that are following these teams around, know the roster, know what's going on better than really anybody out there. So when you're getting their opinion kind of firsthand opinion, that's the stuff that I think can give you an edge in the market. So that's what I try to do, just a lot of reading, a lot of researching, the local newspapers, the local beat writers. And then Ed, do your question, you know, with Yukon? First off, you know, I put kind of put Yukon in the bucket of, you know, the Huskies, ULM, UMass, where these teams are pretty low on the totem pole, you know, you got to know what you're kind of betting when you're getting in there. These backup linebackers, they're not exactly like top top high school recruits here, you know, these guys are just kind of getting out there on the field, you know, and you just got to know what you're looking to bet. So be careful kind of tread lightly in that, really know your stuff when you're going into those teams, Ed, is how I would put it. And in terms of specifically towards Yukon, I can't see that as a bet on opportunity, not playing football for a full year here. Like, especially with given the ability for college kids now to be able to transfer when they heard they weren't going to play, how many of those kids that are really good football players stayed on a roster like Yukon? I don't know, Ed. So I would use that as a negative. Yeah, kind of off that same point with a lot of teams specifically like the Pac 12 and the Big 10, we have smaller samples from last year. And football is a small sample game to begin with. So I mean, the good thing is it's conference gains generally, you know, tougher opponents and stuff like that. But does that worry you at all to trying to identify, you know, just because like the already small samples got even smaller for a lot of teams last year? Oh, absolutely. I mean, I would meet personally and how I'm going at this gym. I actually want to use that like 180 degree angle the other way, maybe look for teams that really struggled last year. Like maybe the Cal Golden Bears and look to bet on them this upcoming year, like not putting too, too much in the last season, especially remember that the preseason last year was terrible. And Cal went into that first game, I think it was like a 10 a.m. Pacific kick, and then they lost that one. And it kind of steamrolled on them. So maybe a team like that looking to bet on. But yeah, about last year bringing it into this year, I don't know. I don't know that I would put too much into it, especially because we're likely going to get more fans in the stadium. So home field advantage likely to be more. But at the same time with the Delta variant going on, that could change as well. So it's just changes going on. And I'm actually putting less into last season's results, then probably a lot of people out there. So let's talk about the markets because you talked about wind totals and how there's a lot of like downside, I guess, or a lot of potential for opportunity costs and betting wind totals. Do you avoid wind totals altogether? And which markets do you like most from futures perspective? Which ones do you find you yourself have the biggest edge traditionally? Well, you know, I never like to the to point people off of, you know, what's exciting for them to bet? You know, if you're heading out and with some friends and you're wanting to put a wager on your favorite team to win the national championship, have at it. I'm not going to tell you not to do that, Jim. But if you're looking to do this to make money long term, you always want to look towards, you know, the vigor is how much you're being charged to make these bets. And the smarter bet in my opinion, and really I would tell you the numbers are telling you this, it costs more to make the futures bets, you know, where there's plus and then the numbers next to it and only one team is likely going to win that bet. I tend to stay away from those type of bets, Jim. And I'm more towards, I gravitate more towards season wind total bets where it's still the minus 110 model. It's like you're betting week one, like you're betting week two, both sides and totals where you're having to risk $110 to win 100. They're only charging you that much to make the bet. So when you make a season wind total bet on team A over eight wins and they get nine wins, you get paid appropriately. And when you lose it, you're only losing the 110 on the $100 bet. So I would point people towards season wind totals over the futures type bets. But Drew, I mean, part of the reason that you are getting better prices at wind totals is probably because it's a sharper market, right? Books feel a little more confident in that as well. And then they feel less confident in the futures market, right? So I mean, I agree with everything you're saying, but you know, how do you balance that, right? I mean, you know, if there's something that you really like in the futures market and you know that it's a little bit weaker, obviously it just kind of depends on the situation, I would guess. Yeah, sure. I guess there would be times and there has been in the past. I haven't really been the type to take advantage of that, unfortunately, and get those huge scores for a national champion that's kind of like off the radar, not the Alabama's or Georgia's of the world. If you're going to tie up that money for that long, I'd want to get a little bit more return on my investment. But yeah, sure, there's guys out there that probably do that, Ed. Unfortunately, like I haven't, I guess, made a huge success in doing that and tying up, I guess a big portion of my bankroll for that long. I think the tougher part about trying to bet a long shot is that a lot of teams are long shots or a reason and don't have the upside to international championship. And that's a tough thing for me when I'm betting NASCAR and betting other things is trying to judge upside and say, okay, I don't want to write off a team because they haven't done it, but I also want to make sure that they have the requisite upside to actually claim that national championship when to playoff games. It's a very tough thing to do. So Drew, for you, what process to use to determine quote unquote upside, which schools actually have the ability to have a season where they can, whether it be win a national championship or win a tougher conference and stuff like that. Sure. I mean, in terms of getting the upside, you know, you want to look for teams that might be riding under the radar a little bit, not getting the huge national headlines as much and a team that has a path to get there that maybe the majority of people aren't looking at. Plus you got to keep in mind, Jim, recruiting is so huge in college football. So you want to look back at, hey, what does this roster look like? How much talent is there top to bottom? If they have injuries, can they kind of overcome them with the guys stepping in? So if you're looking to take a shot at a national champion, one that I kind of circled here would be a team that has that recruiting advantage. And the question marks are going to be there, or else they would be the Alabama's and the Georgia's of the world. But you also want a good coach as well. So I guess look off the beaten path in terms of teams that might be surprising to the upside and have the talent and heck, just fire away on one of them. So basically you judge talent or upside based on the talent of the individual players and the coaching staff. Is that the correct takeaway there? Yeah, I would go to recruiting rankings. I would go towards the coaching staff. Yes, Jim. And then if you want to dig even deeper, I would go towards the offensive and defensive lines and really kind of concentrate there. We can go back to the, I guess, an American football, the last competitive American football game played the Kansas City Chiefs and the Tampa Bay Bucks in the Super Bowl. And if you remember going back into that, it was Patrick Mahomes, Tom Brady, everybody talking about that. And then very early on, you know, about before halftime, it became very evident that there was a mismatch in the Chiefs offensive line in the Bucks defensive line. There was an advantage one way towards the defense and it absolutely affected the game. So if you can read the trenches, I think you're ahead of the eight ball a little bit. So you always want to like look at how good each offensive and defensive line is at the right behind quarterback. Those two need to be very far up there, Jim. Yeah. So we do have, I know you told us not to bet the futures market, but we do have them over in sports. Maybe a team that that you think might has an outside chance. And yeah, I mean, again, I want to fire away on the national championship. If you're looking at it and look at a Fandall sportsbook here, plus 4,000 on the Texas A&M Aggies. And Ed, I'm going at this one because obviously the upsides there, you know, plus 4,000, you're looking at Alabama at plus 250. Those are almost two drastically different bats here. We're getting a lot more kickback. Now granted, we're taking on more risk here, Texas A&M in terms of national champions, at least that's relevant to the conversation. There isn't any in Alabama with a bunch. So we're up against it that way. But when you look at their kind of path to get there, Ed, if they're able to get to the playoffs coming out of the SEC West, I'm liking this plus 4,000 ticket a lot. And looking down at their schedule, you look at their out of conference, Kent State, Colorado, New Mexico, likely going to be three and O heading into SEC play. They also have pre-review A&M later in the season. So those are four wins I'm marking off in my schedule. They start off with Arkansas. I like Texas A&M against Arkansas here, Ed. And then looking down the schedule, sure, even if they drop one to Alabama, I think that there's still a path for an 11 and one SEC team to make the playoffs. So I'm using that in my back pocket, even though the Alabama game is at home for Texas A&M. So watch out there. They get a buy before Auburn. They do have at Mississippi. Look, we're taking a shot here at a plus 4,000 ticket here. So we're taking on some risk at LSU as well. We're going to need these games that are definitely toss ups. But overall, I think Texas A&M at plus 4,000. We get the coaching staff here. We get the recruiting as well. I think there is a path here to take a shot at a big plus price with the Aggies. I like the schedule analysis there too and determining the path like you alluded to before. Now, let's talk about the conference championship markets, the divisional markets as well. Any teams you believe are undervalued in those markets with where things currently stand? Well, actually, I wanted to talk about this, Jim, in terms of you look at Texas A&M plus 1,200 to win the SEC and then plus 4,000 to win the national championship. I like that discrepancy from plus 1,200 to plus 4,000 because if they win the SEC at plus 1,200, you're going to even like this plus 4,000 even more. So I like that ticket there in analysis towards that. But in terms of taking a futures stab here at the conference, I would look towards the big 12, actually, and a couple teams that I would point towards. One being West Virginia. Neil Brown, the head coach for West Virginia, first off, we get plus 2,500. So risk 100 and you win 2,500 on the kickback with West Virginia. Couple things I wanted to point out here, Neil Brown, if you followed him in the Sunbelt, he was great for Troy. He built this program. I like what he's doing. He's getting multiple years here of recruiting at West Virginia. And whenever you're taking a shot in conference, you want to make sure to get a team with that big plus price. And also, they don't have to climb over too many teams in the big 12. And of course, Oklahoma has ran through the big 12 and it's showing in their price here. You're having to lay a price for Oklahoma to win the big 12. And I think West Virginia, you know, this isn't a ticket I really love. I'm not betting a lot personally on it. But the fact that they play and people know this in the market, you know, it is a tough travel for the opponent. Now it could be a tough travel for West Virginia on the other side, playing the away games. But if they get good quarterback play here, I think that the recruiting has taken a notch up. I think they get the coaching as well. And heck, a puncher's chance here at the Oklahoma Sooners and plus 2,500. Again, they're going to have to kind of knock off Texas as well. Oklahoma State's pretty good. TCU and Gary Patterson never going to count them out. But at the big plus price of plus 2,500, I think WVU is worth a look in conference futures. Awesome. So, Drew, let's go to who the markets you like best, Wintotals. Fandal has Wintotals posted for almost every team. Is there anything that you're liking there? Yeah, so this is one, and actually I need to give a shout out to a guy that we've run with a couple times, Ed Fang, and actually he's done some work with Fandal, Gabe Marenzi. He's a guy that pointed me towards this one, guys, very entertaining guy. And actually, he's had some success with futures tickets. The Miami Hurricanes, okay? They're getting a lot of pub here. They got the quarterback, the offensive coordinator combo here. It kind of sets up well with the mobile quarterback. And of course, Red Lashley is their offensive coordinator, a disciple of Gus Mouson. And it's kind of translated well to performing well. Manny Diaz in his third year, that's kind of a circle bet on. Miami has recruited well. The only problem I see with the Hurricanes, and their season win total at nine and a half at Fandal, is when you look at this schedule, it's pretty tough. And let's kind of remind everybody, the ACC, the middle of the pack, is really good. I actually think it's underrated looking at the ACC. Everybody knows about Clemson, and they're going to put in a new quarterback here. We'll see what happens with that. But outside of Clemson, I think people kind of just wash over the ACC. But really, it's a quality conference. And I don't think there's a lot of wins that are just checkmarked up. That's a win here. So Miami also starts off with Alabama in Atlanta. I'm counting that as a loss. Now, if they knock off Alabama, watch out here. The Miami Hurricanes might have a shot at the national championship. And this ticket might be in trouble. But I don't think they're knocking off the Crimson Tide here. Then they come home and play AppState. AppState's a tough team. I'm not counting that as 100% win. But even if they win that, watch out. Michigan State as well, I think the Spartans are actually going to bounce back a little bit in the big 10. So that's three out of conference before we get to Central Connecticut that is likely a win here. So out of their four non-conference games, I don't know, what do you guys see that at? Three-in-one, maybe two-in-two. If it's two-in-two, we're looking real pretty going into the ACC games. I mean, they get Virginia short week at North Carolina. Watch out for that. Sam Helen UNC State. I view that as a toss-up game. Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh's a tough team. That's on the road. October 30th around Halloween. Another sharp angle. Or I like to think it's sharp. Growing up in South Florida, looking at Miami Hurricanes, it kind of ended this season scheduling guys. When they travel up North, watch out because such a big percentage of their roster is Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach County recruits. And really, when they come into college football, a lot of these kids have not played in a football game under 50 degrees. I'm not making that up. So watch out for that later in the season. And sure enough, they're at Pitt. They're at Florida State in Tallahassee. That could be cold as well. And at Duke, we all know the Duke Blue Devils, ATS at times. Well coached team could be not definitely a for sure win. They got Virginia Tech, Georgia Tech as well. There's just a lot of teams coming up in the ACC. So nine and a half. The Miami Hurricanes are going to have to win double digit games. Alabama out of conference. I don't like that at all guys. I think it's too high. I like the Miami Hurricanes under if you can find an alt number under nine as well. I like that. So I'm under on the Miami Hurricanes. Yeah. And a very public team too. A team that people enjoy a lot. You're going to get some tough numbers on them if people want to be optimistic on them. Minus 145 under nine and a half. So the alternate numbers there definitely attractive as well. That is Drew Martin. Make sure you check him out on Twitter at Drew Martin bets and follow along as we get set for some college football. Once again, hopefully a less chaotic season of coming for the college football betting landscape. Drew, welcome back to the US. We appreciate it. Hopefully everything with the dog goes well and everything with your bets goes well this fall too. Absolutely Jim. Thanks for having me and Ed. Thanks as well and best of luck to you guys this college football season. Let's get some winners, guys. Awesome. Thanks, Drew. Appreciate it. Covering the future. Big thank you once again to Drew Martin for swinging by and breaking down his thoughts on the college football futures market for this year. And Ed, I've been looking forward to the NFL for a long time getting my stuff ready, trying to build out my wind total projections and stuff like that. But college football is kind of sneaking up on me. But you know, hearing Drew talk and talking about it is getting me excited for the upcoming year when things should be less chaotic than they were last year. Or just we can return to the normal chaos of college football, not the chaos in which games get canceled and postponed and so on and so forth. I am also looking forward to a college football season with out of conference games. That's one of the big things that we were missing last year. And I'm both excited about those games and the fact that the lack of them don't mess up all my ranking methods and predictive methods. So yeah, it should be good. And I think everyone's excited about it. So yeah, watching the games is secondary. It's more about getting the good data that we are concerned about here for sure. Let's move now into covering the future where we are both talking at Fallen Ed. You're focusing on quarterbacks and mistakes that they make. You're talking about fumbles for today. So might we get some Danny Dimes discussion going on here? So, Jim, let me ask you. So, fumbles, lost fumbles. So what fraction of them do you think happen on runs versus after catches versus quarterback sacks? Quarterback sacks probably account for 70 percent. Of the total fumbles lost? If I had to guess. Well, that's a lot. So the other 30 is like after the catch run stuff like that. Yeah. So it's not quite that high, but it is significantly high. So over the last six years, 31 percent of fumbles lost in the game of football in the NFL are on quarterback sacks. I was way off. Well, you were way off in kind of the other direction, right? Because sacks only happen on about 3.6 percent of offensive plays. That's true. And so that's what I found surprising. Well, I mean, I guess part of me has kind of known this for a while based on some other people's work. But I went back and ran the numbers. And when you look at fumbles lost, about 32.2 percent happen on running plays. And that's only a little bit more than on sacks, which is 31.1 percent. But 41.3 percent of offensive plays over that time have been runs. So you get significantly higher, you get significantly higher sack rates on fumbles, right? So when you look over the six year sample, quarterbacks fumbled on 13.4 percent of sacks, compared to fumbles that happen about 1.6 percent of run plays. So those numbers are all fumbles. You lose about 54 percent of fumbles on sacks, simply because these tend to be surprise, stripped sack kind of plays. And the offense is like, oh, what's going on? Defense has a slight edge because at least one guy knows that the ball is loose. On running plays, the defense only recovers about 42.2 percent of fumbles. So you want to get an edge embedding. We're talking about quarterback fumbles. So maybe the stat is to look at how often quarterbacks fumble on the sack place. And I've looked into this and I found that, you know, that wasn't really predictive when you look at the year-to-year quarterback sack fumble rate. Your square is pretty small and not anything that I'm very confident about using as a predictor. You know, it was kind of interesting because you did see some of your running athletic quarterbacks have lower sack rates. The Russell Wilson is the Sean Watson's of the world. You did see some of the pocket passers have higher fumble rates. But so instead, like, let's think about how else we can potentially use this. And I think kind of a, I mean, not super precise, but a way that I'm thinking about, and I'm going to be testing this upcoming season, is to look at sack rates. And when you think about sack rates, you know, you often think about how important the offensive line is. But one of the things that I've discovered is that the quarterback actually owns sack rates a lot more than we often think. And so one example of this is when you look at the sack rate, so basically how often a quarterback gets sacked per dropback. You know, the R squared year to year for that is about 24%. And that is competitive with things that we know are sticky from year to year like completion percentage at 25% and bad ball rate, which I talked about is actually about 28%. So sack rate is one of these stats that tends to be pretty sticky from year to year. Basically, the decision making process of the quarterback is pretty critically important in determining sacks. I'm not trying to say the offensive line doesn't matter because that's certainly not true. But, you know, a lot of the evidence does suggest that the quarterback's contribution to sacks is tends to be more sticky than even that offensive line contribution. So what can we do with that? Well, let's look at how we can use path sack rate to predict the future. And I did some research, you know, the nice thing about the NFL is we can get bigger sample sizes on some of these guys. And my research shows us that about five year average of sack rate is probably the best, not probably is the best predicting forward for 2021. And, you know, you get some you get some interesting names. So the quarterbacks that tend to get sacked the most that will play this year are Russell Wilson 8.2%. And that's compared to an NFL average of 6.2%. Tyrod Taylor is one and 9.4%. A guy that could be starting this upcoming season. And then, you know, then we got to talk about the guys that actually really do a good job avoiding sacks, getting rid of the ball. And, you know, one guy that comes up is Tom Brady. So he has had a 3.9% sack rate over the last five years. And he was good in New England for the first four of those years. And then he kind of came into Tampa Bay. And there were a lot of question marks about whether that offensive line could protect for him. You know, the offensive line did okay last year. So when you look at PFF's pass block grade, they were 14,000 32 teams. Right now, the fat media middle average part of the NFL. But, you know, Brady only got sacked on 3.5% of his dropbacks last year. So that's kind of exhibit A of how quarterbacks definitely impact these sack rates and evidence about how, you know, that's something that I will be looking at to see if that impacts turnovers and see if something that can help my predictive models. And I think that you can also see this from looking in season when there have been quarterback changes. If you look at whatever year it was, Daniel Jones as a rookie, you look at the Giants, Zachary, Eli Manning, a quarterback versus the Zachary, Daniel Jones, a quarterback. It's like triple. It's a massive, massive difference. And that doesn't mean that Eli Manning was better. Obviously, there were other things Jones did well. But like, that's that also Joe Flacco versus Lamar Jackson. The year that Lamar Jackson took over, it's the same thing. And it's not just you who has found this. Dr. Eric Hieger has had a study up on PFF, seen the same thing. I played offensive line in high school. I love offensive line. I will advocate for the importance of offensive line always. But if I can pass the blame to someone else, I'll take that too. So I think that the evidence says that quarterback backs play a role in their sack rates. We've seen anecdotal evidence as well, not just looking at overall data as well. And it makes sense to, you know, you just think about different quarterbacks, hold the ball, hold the ball longer, may have different awareness, stuff like that. It does matter a lot. And we can see guys improve in this area. You know, Deshaun Watson has been much better at avoiding sacks recently than he was in the past. But Russell Wilson has always had this issue, no matter how good the offensive line has been. So I think that looking at that in terms of just trying to find sticky metrics and sacks matter a lot in terms of predicting how an offense will perform sacks are massively detrimental to an offense. So I think that looking at it that way is a smart way to view things. We're trying to find numbers we can lean on and trying to be predictive this year. Yeah, absolutely. Another example is Drew Locke. So not the greatest quarterback, but actually had a really small, has had a really small sack rate since he started with Denver. And it was a big difference between him and the backups that played for a couple of games. Denver's allowed sack rate was pretty bad. The offensive line didn't really grade out that well. But Drew Locke, for all his faults, didn't get sacked much. Funny you should mention Drew Locke, Ed, because my covering the future for this week is about those Denver Broncos. And I think that they've been an interesting team overall this year. Their futures market has been interesting, been bouncing around all over the place. They had some super short Super Bowl odds at one point due to the Aaron Rodgers buzz. And obviously that's not happening now. But I don't think sports books have adjusted enough to account for the fact that they're not going to get a quarterback upgrade via someone like that. Maybe Teddy Bridgewater, but they have not changed quarterbacks. And I think that the under here in eight and a half wins is enticing at minus 115. Most that is due to quarterback play because Drew Locke, despite the lack of fumbles, lack of sacks, finished 36 and passing net expected points per dropback last year. That's out of 44 qualified quarterbacks. Teddy Bridgewater was 23rd, but that was with Joe Brady calling the shots. And Joe Brady, I think we've gotten enough data here to say he's pretty good at his job. I do have them projected to take a step forward this year in terms of passing efficiency because it's another year with Drew Locke. Teddy could be an improvement. They get Cortland Sutton back and stuff like that. But even the improved offense ranks 29th in projected passing efficiency based on what I've got here. And with that projection, they're at 6.9 wins. That's 1.6 lower than their mark of 8.5. If I want to get them to eight and a half wins, I would need to boost their projected passing efficiency to 0.113. That is in line with what Teddy Bridgewater did last year. And it's not an outrageous number. It'd be about league average. But I don't think league average would be the baseline assumption given the pieces they have in this offense. I think that 0.113 is about a 75th or 80th percentile outcome in terms of passing efficiency more so than the median or mean projection in terms of their passing efficiency. So could Denver be really good this year? Yeah, they could. They've got a lot of pieces in place. That defense should be really solid. And they don't need superstar level quarterback play to get an eight and a half wins. They need to be average in that department. But from a probability perspective, the most likely scenario to me is that they don't quite get there. They're a below average passing offense. And I don't think that's going to be enough to get them to be at eight and a half wins. So you put that in division with the Chiefs and the Chargers, who I do like quite a bit. And the Raiders team that I think is a little bit undervalued right now, I'm fully comfortable betting the Broncos under eight and a half wins at minus 115. I think the Drew Lock discussion is interesting here at because despite those good sack numbers, he still had really bad expected points numbers, but do account for sacks. Those are baked into that number as well. Because everything else was so bad. So what are your thoughts on the Broncos here entering 2021? Well, I mean, I think I think you might have a rough time if they get to average pass offense, because I think their past defense could be really good. They had, you know, Vic Fangio is a defensive guy, had some really good performances from the cornerback, Bryce Callahan last year, drafted a high floor cornerback in Patrick Sartan this year. And so I think that unit could be really good. So you give on Millerback and pass rush. So, you know, I kind of expect a lot of pretty some good things from their defense. I don't expect much from the pass offense. So we'll see about that. What do your numbers say about the defense? So I have them projected to rank 12th overall defensively and seventh against the pass. So that's with them being an above average unit, because they did make some some improvements there and they were already good to begin with. So I do expect them to be a good defense. But even with that, because, you know, I view passing offense being more predictable, therefore it gets more weight in my projected wind totals. That's the reason why I do skew towards the under and view them still negatively despite the fact that I do think that defense, I agree with you, could be really good this year. Yeah, no, and you definitely should wait the offense because it is more predictive. Preseason in season. Yeah, I mean, in a league of unstable statistics, pass offense is the one thing that we can lean on a little bit. And I would not mind if they were good because I previously have had like man crushes on drew lock and Teddy Bridgewater. So just not good enough to get to nine wins. If they could avoid that, you know, play well, get me eight wins and cash out will be good there for sure. That is all the time that we have here for today on covering the spread. Big thank you once again to Drew Martin for swinging by and breaking down his college football futures thoughts. Find him on Twitter at Drew Martin bets and check him out on wager talk and sports grid as well. Make sure you are subscribed to covering the spread wherever you get your podcast. We're on Apple podcast Spotify, Stitcher, Google podcast, you name it, you can find us there. And while you're there, leave us a rating and review as well. Ed, what is going on for you this week over the power ring? Yeah, so I'm writing my email newsletter, sports betting based on analytics and all my research. I'm striving to be valuable, concise and entertaining in that service. So check that out at thepowerrank.com. What I talked about with the hidden importance of quarterbacks today was part of that. You can check that out over on my blog at thepowerrank.com. And then also I had Aaron shots on a football outsiders on the football analytics show, my podcast. So awesome conversation, definitely worth checking out. And yeah, lots of other things going on as well. Yeah, we had Aaron shots on this podcast last year, really fun to talk to him and all the knowledge that he has sort up there from years upon years of covering the NFL from analytics perspective. So check that out on the football analytics show and check out the quarterback numbers over at the power rank. I am on Twitter at Jim Sonnis, J-I-M-S-A-N-N-E-S. Big thank you to Calvin Theobald, our video producer for chopping up the clips for the FanDuel Twitter account for this week. Thank you, Cal, as always. And thank you to everyone for tuning in. Good luck to you with your bets, whether it be NFL preseason, college football futures or whatever else may be. We'll talk to you once again next week. This has been covering the spread right here on the FanDuel podcast network. Aaron Dolan here. Thanks for watching and make sure you click below on that subscribe button for more great FanDuel content and check out some of our latest uploads and playlists right over here.