 This is covering the spread. Here are your hosts, Jim Sonis and Dr. Ed Fang. What is going on everybody? Welcome on into covering the spread. That is right here on the FanDuel podcast network and numberfire.com as we're taking a look ahead to week five of the 2019 NFL season letting you know our favorite bets on the board with JJ Zacharyson of numberfire and FanDuel. My name is Jim Sonis. I am a senior writer and analyst for numberfire.com and joined here as always by Ed Fang of thepowerrank.com. Ed, we are on to week number five in the NFL. How are you doing today? I'm doing great, man. It's that time of year where the air gets a little less humid. It gets a little crisp as we get into October and we start figuring out who the contenders and the pretenders are. So it's an exciting time. We were putting out our Halloween decorations last night which I think is like, I like putting out Christmas decorations because there's a lot more but the Halloween decorations like, they remind me of fall. I get to wear sweaters. I get to wear, you know, like warm socks. I get to eat candy corn. I get to have apple cider and not feel guilty about it. Like it's my time of year. This is my time where I feel good. I feel great. Excellent. Yeah, so do I. I definitely like it when it gets a little cooler. Little more fun to be outside and sweat a little bit. So yeah. Do you still run outside when it's like in the fifties or so? I mean, I run outside when it's in the single digits. So I kind of, it's actually nice in the Midwest in the winter because no one else is outside. You got the whole place to yourself. That is fair. I will, you know, I'll leave that. You want to go out? I know you're up there in Syracuse, New York. You get a little bit of a... I like going out, but I don't like running. I would not run outdoors. I will flop around in a snow pile but I'm not going to go running. So I'll leave that to you and... You're warm. You'll never be cold. That's a valid point. You know, you make good points and I'm saying that your argument is logical but I'm not going to do it. There's a big disconnect there for sure you can find Ed on Twitter at the Powerache. I am at Jimsonus, J-I-M-S-A-N-N-E-S. Coming up today, we're in talk with JJ Zacharyson, the editor-in-chief over at Fandall and at Numberfire. You can find him on Twitter at LayRoundQB. We're going to break down week five of the NFL and talk about how JJ changes player outlooks during the season to account for role changes. We're going to talk about three of the biggest gains on this week five slate and get his thoughts on the totals and spreads in those games. We also had our college football preview earlier this week with Eli Hershkovich of You Better, You Bet. Breaking down week six of college football, we gave some breakdowns on Iowa, Michigan, Michigan State versus Ohio State, Auburn, Florida. Eli talked about Illinois versus Minnesota as well. And if you want to find that podcast, just search for covering the spread on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, the Google Play Store, I Heart Radio. Wherever you get your podcast, you can find covering the spread and get Eli's thoughts there while you're there. Make sure you subscribe, rate and review the podcast. All those help us out a ton. We really do appreciate it. Before we bring on JJ though, gotta take a look back at last week and go through our NFL picks here and our guest whalecapper had a pretty solid week. Covering the past. All right, so in the week four preview of covering the spread, he had whalecapper on and he did really well. He won the Browns plus seven in that game against Baltimore and the Browns played really well, won that game outright. He also wanted the under for Patriots Bills at 43 and a half and that game was a super low scoring affair and it wasn't just because Josh Allen left. It was a low scoring game even before that so he got that one there. Also wanted the under for Saints at Cowboys at 47. That game was way under as well. Did have the Chiefs minus six and a half and that game was tight the whole way. The Chiefs did come back to win but the Lions did cover but overall a really nice week there for whalecapper going three and one there. Ed, you and I didn't do as hot. I had the Texas. Well, I'm just saying, we didn't even have to sweat three of those games, right? No, there was no, I think the Browns plus seven they won by like 12 so covered there by like 19. Patriots Bills went under by almost 20 points and Cowboys Saints went under by 25 points. Yeah, that was, there wasn't much going on in that game. Yeah, so find whalecapper on Twitter at whale underscore capper because he deserves your follow. I was bad because I wanted the over on the Texans Panthers. That game went way under. Kyle Allen fumbled like 17 times. Deshaun Watson didn't have his best game. That was a bad pick on my part. Ed talked about the Vikings plus two and a half against the Bears and the Bears won that one. Mitch Trabisky got hurt. It was a very strange game. There were fumbles in that game too. It was a weird week. And I think that was one of the weirder games on there. Now, Stefan Diggs is MIA. Yeah, I mean, the line movement was great because I think we talked about it, Minnesota plus three or plus two and a half. It ended up being a pick by game times. Trabisky goes down. What's his name? Chase Daniel comes in and it was pretty good. I don't know how long that's gonna last. But I wanted to say that we got to start reevaluating this Minnesota team as like a sleeper Super Bowl team because that's not looking so hot right now. It's definitely something I talked about in the preseason. I thought a guy named Kirk Cousins could get his act together and be the, what, $175 million guy that he was signed as. So far hasn't gotten it done. And the defense doesn't really look great either by some of my success rate numbers too. So I'm in the process of reevaluating what I thought about that team. Well, one thing we talked about with Minnesota was that we didn't think they would go as extreme as this when it comes to running the football because they had Kirk Cousins, they had Adam Thielen, they had Stefan Diggs. When you have personnel like that, you're probably not gonna go as extreme as they have gone. But for whatever reason, they have taken it as far as you possibly can. And we've seen Kirk Cousins be not a great quarterback but he's been a very competent quarterback in years past. And suddenly, despite having good personnel around him, that's not there. So I think like the thought process behind liking the Vikings, a large part of it was the Vikings were 30 to one to win Super Bowl. That was a very good number, I thought. I think that the thought process behind it was still not bad. It's just that they went to the polar, they went as far as they could in the negative direction, I think. Right. Well, I mean, they are running the ball well. Right. There is that but yeah, I mean, I agree. I think the thought process was right. I think a lot of people kind of agreed with that but it's time to reevaluate. It's October. Absolutely. And that's the only way we can do. We've got data, we can change our minds. We should change our minds. Once we get more data and get better information, we should change our minds and it's looking like it's that time for Minnesota. We're gonna bring JJ in in just one second. But first, if you wanna get in on the action, check out the FanDuel Sportsbook and place your first bet today. If you lose, FanDuel will give you a refund up to $500 in site credit. Visit Sportsbook.FanDuel.com for more details, terms and conditions apply. Must be 21 plus and physically present in New Jersey or Pennsylvania. Gambling problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER. Let's bring on JJ Zacharista now to preview week number five of NFL. Once again, follow him on Twitter at LayRoundQB. Covering the present. Let's bring on JJ Zacharista now to preview week five across the NFL. JJ, welcome back to Covering the Spread. How are you doing today? I'm good, man. I'm good. I'm ready for week five to get going. And it's already week five, which feels like insanely weird to me. Like we're already into October. It feels like we were doing pre-season podcasts talking about player projections that you like five minutes ago. So like I have no idea where the season has gone so far. Yeah, it's nuts, nuts. Yes, let's break down week five here with JJ. And JJ, when we had you on back in July, actually for our first show, we were talking about player projections, talking about player props and stuff like that. And now that we actually have some data, we've got thoughts on what guys' roles may be. But those roles also change from one week to the next like David Montgomery in week one. Didn't have a big role, but that has steadily increased as the year has gone along. And obviously those role changes are gonna play a pretty major role in prop betting. So how do you account for role changes when you're trying to project what a player will do in the coming week? Yeah, so I think that there's probably three main buckets to sort of look at here. The first one is sort of the news that beat writers are saying. I know that you sort of have to sift through that and see what matters and what doesn't matter. And that's not always an easy thing to do, but I still think that that information is helpful in some way. You can look at peripheral numbers as well. You know, peripheral numbers, meaning numbers that aren't really being shown on their end of game stat line. But if you're looking at things like snap rate and if you see that increasing but the numbers don't match with their end of game stat line, then you know that better numbers are coming. But even still, you know, a good example of this, even if a player isn't seeing that many snaps, a good example of this is his usage when he is on the field. You can look at that two ways. You can look at it as that player is going to regress and he's not gonna see such high usage on the minimal snaps that he played. Or you could see it as they wanna give this guy the ball. He's only played 25% of the team snaps, but maybe if he sees more snaps, then all of a sudden he's gonna see the ball more. Or, you know, they're giving him the ball for a reason, if you will. So I think those are two things. Then you could just look at general talent and how well these guys are playing. I mean, there's a lot of statistics out there. And even if you're just watching film, you can see that Ronald Jones looks really good in the Tampa Bay backfield. And I think that we can confidently say that Ronald Jones at least deserves to see more work in that backfield. Now we're also working with the assumption of rational coaching, which isn't always the case. But, you know, at the same time, more often than not, coaches are rational. And as a result of that, you know, you can utilize that for player prop purposes. So how do you weigh those two things? Because let's stick with the Ronald Jones one as an example here. Because we've seen Jones perform pretty well, I think, the entire year. And they've kind of had this hot hand approach. Bruce Arian still says that he wants to mix Peyton Barber in there. So how much do you weigh player evaluation in what you think should happen versus what coaches are saying and things like that? Yeah, I mean, you know, you obviously have to take a leap of faith if you're gonna go really hard in a particular prop where you're having faith that this is gonna be the week that they end up throwing this guy under center a little bit more. So I think that that, you know, it's risky. It's risky here. I think that, you know, overall, if you just look at, you know, if you combine those two things and if you look at Ronald Jones's increasing Snapshare, for instance, and you see it getting better and better each week, David Montgomery, another good example where week one is Snapshare didn't look great. His running back usage out of that back field from a production share standpoint didn't look great. But then you see that increasing week over week over week, you can feel more confident that that sort of trend is gonna continue into the coming week. So I think it's just kind of combining all of those things. Excellent. So JJ, a lot of your work centers around regression when we had you on in the pre-season, you did a lot of, told us about a lot of nice things with regression in the mean in terms of touchdown rate and other things that are gonna regress pretty hard from season to season. How can we apply that to the current season? You know, we've only had four weeks of the season. Regression is gonna hit pretty hard. Who are you trying to monitor the next couple of weeks? Yeah, so the way that an easy way to look at touchdown regression actually, in particular, and obviously that can play into player props as well, but an easy way to look at touchdown regression is to see how many yards a player has versus how many touchdowns he scored and see how frequently players score based on those yardage totals over the last half decade, decade, however long back you wanna go. And the main reason you can do that is because the two correlate pretty strongly together. You know, obviously a player who's seeing more yards is likely to score more touchdowns. And if there's, you know, if you're looking at that and you see a player with a really high yardage total like Leonard Fournette, who hasn't found the end zone yet, you can spot regression and say this guy has positive regression heading his way. I mean, if you look at Fournette in particular, based on his yardage total, and this is both receiving and rushing, he should have about three and a half touchdowns this year, but he hasn't scored at all. And obviously this is all situation dependent. You know, someone like Todd Gurley of last year, for instance, is always gonna outperform in this particular metric in the way that we're doing things here, but it at least gives you a high level view as to how players should be performing versus how they are performing in the touchdown column. And we know that touchdowns are a little bit fickle and it's a way to sort of play that market and see where things are at from a prop that standpoint, because we know that, you know, Leonard Fournette, seeing this usage that he's seeing, which is really only being seen by like Christian McCaffrey to start the year and Levy on Bell, eventually he's gonna find the end zone regardless of the offense that he's in. So you can utilize that to your advantage and realize that regression is going to hit as long as he continues that production. Yeah, the thing with Leonard Fournette too that's helpful is that they don't have anyone else to put in to like take away a goal line carry, which I think can make you even more confident about those yardage numbers too. Yeah, and the other thing too that I think is really important and often overlooked is a team level regression. You know, a lot of people just look at the individual Leonard Fournette and say he should have more touchdowns, sure, but I like looking at the way teams are scoring touchdowns and by that, I mean what's their pass to rush touchdown ratio? So if you look at three teams this year, the Falcons, the Jags and the Lions, all three of those teams have eight or more passing touchdowns and one or fewer rushing touchdowns. So not only does that mean that we're probably gonna see some sort of regression hit where that evens out a little bit more, but then you can kind of carry that over to what happens with the quarterbacks and what happens with the running backs on those team and then utilize that information for player props. Interesting, so that'll be applicable for the Lions next week potentially when carry on Johnson comes off a buy. So interesting guys to monitor there for sure from a prop betting perspective, but let's dive in to three pretty big games. On tab for week number five, starting off down in the Superdome where the Buccaneers are squaring off with the Saints. A lot more interesting than this game appeared like it would be. A couple weeks ago when Drew Brees went down, the Saints are three point favorites here. The total is 46 and a half and the Bucs got a huge win last week on the road against the Rams. Do you view this Buccaneers team as being legit JJ? They've been kind of close in every game so far or will that game look like an outlier against the Rams by season's end? Yeah, it's really interesting. I think that entering the season, we could have looked at this Buccaneers roster from a personnel standpoint and say that they were a bottom 10 roster in the league. But I think that we're seeing what the impact of coaching can have in the league, especially on the defensive side. Todd Boles is really doing good work with that defense. But it's sort of hard to get a read on them because losing to the Giants at home makes me think that they're kind of not for real. So yeah, I mean, they're kind of in this weird limbo stage where they're probably the toughest team to read. But at the same time, I do think that we can feel a little bit confident about Tampa Bay just given the coaching staff and the changes there and how that has looked so far. The other thing too is we're always going to have games during the year where we look back and we're like, what on earth happened? Why was that game? Like, how is this game such an anomaly? And I think like that Rams game, there was a lot of weird stuff that went down. There were a lot of weird turnovers or a couple of defensive touchdowns. And I think it's hard to put a lot of stock in what we saw there. And you can say it's anything about the Saints in the first game with Teddy Bridgewater where they had a couple of defensive or special teams touchdowns against Seattle, but then had an interesting game plan again against Dallas. So any thoughts on this game, JJ, whether it be the total, the spread or just the Saints in general? I think the total is a little bit too high. You know, we saw New Orleans play it pretty conservatively really both weeks. The main reason why you might not think the way that they played it conservatively two weeks ago against Seattle was that the defense played well. And the rest of the unit played well. They were able to play from ahead. And that's not likely to happen week in and week out the way they started that game. Teddy Bridgewater throwing a deep on only 6.9% of his passes. That's by far the lowest in the NFL to start the season. I just don't love that. And on top of that, you have a game in New Orleans where they play better defensively. And as a result, you know, you have the defense that'll play better, lower scoring contest in general. So I could easily see this going under. I know that there's been some line movement focusing on the under there and I think it makes sense. Excellent. So we have another big game with Green Bay going to Dallas. Dallas is a three and a half point favorite. Green Bay couldn't get it done on Thursday night, but actually the offense probably had their best game of the year. This total is sitting at 47 and the Cowboys struggled last week. What do you see in this game and your analysis on both of these teams? Yeah, so if you look at the Cowboys in particular, what we saw last week was that they're reverting back to more of this early down run heavy offense, which is not what we want to see. We want more points. We want them to air it out. That's when we see more offensive points for these teams. And Cowboys stats on Twitter, he said that they tweeted that they have a 39% success rate when handing it to Zeke on first down this year. It's a 53% success rate when Dak is throwing it. So I do have some concern over the play calling as a result. And look, the Packers defense has looked good this season, but you also have to look at who they've faced and where they've been. They've played a lot of games at home this year and they've faced Chicago. Really the only game, the only contest where they didn't look that great was last week when they finally played a pretty competent offense in Philadelphia. So overall, I think that just given the fact that the Cowboys are running the offense the way that they're running it, there's some ambiguity as to how this Green Bay Packers defense might look. But one of the things with this Packers defense is that they've been really bad against the run, and that might force the Cowboys or make the Cowboys want to run the ball a little bit more in this contest. And if that's the case, it would speed up the game, not from a play calling standpoint, but literally a time standpoint. And that could cause lower scoring in this contest. So the under might end up hitting, especially without Devonte Adams. Yeah, we've seen some live movement here too. It was 47, it's now 46 and a half. So backing up your point there, JJ. And you mentioned Devonte Adams, probably going to miss this game. Tyron Smith also out for the Cowboys. So impactful offensive injuries on both sides. I think, again, goes towards the under here. Do you think the Packers can cover this spread? Or is it more about the under for you here? I think it's more about the under. I might take the Cowboys, just because of what I mentioned about the Packers defense and the fact that, sure, this game might end up being slower paced because they can run the football on Green Bay. And that's not necessarily a great thing. It might keep the game closer. But at the same time, Green Bay has had really advantageous matchups defensively with their road game being in Chicago. And anytime you get a defense at home, they're gonna play better. So that's really my fear with Green Bay here. And then on top of that, you have no Devonte Adams more than likely. So that just makes it easier to side with the Cowboys if you're gonna side one way or the other. All right, let's move on here to the Colts at the Chiefs. The spread in this one is a Chiefs minus 11. Total here has come down. It was 57, is now 56. And as of this recording, JJ, we don't know TY Hilton's status for this game. I believe he sat out practice both Wednesday and Thursday. How much does TY Hilton's availability influence your view of this Colts team here against Kansas City? I mean, I would like the Colts offense more if TY Hilton were active, but I also think it's easy to overstate what TY Hilton would end up doing to this line in this total. I just am not feeling the Colts offense, at least from the perspective of how they've performed and how they should be performing. Jacoby Brissette so far this season has a 7.4% touchdown rate, which is third highest in the league behind only Mason Rudolph and Lamar Jackson. That's a really high touchdown rate for a backup quarterback who, I get it, not a typical backup quarterback. He's better than average, but I don't know if he's a better than average starter in the league. I don't think we can confidently say that. And that's a far too high touchdown rate for a player of that caliber. And then on top of that, the Colts are scoring a touchdown at the highest rate or the fifth highest rate in the league per drive. So that's another reason that we could look at this team and this offense and say they're bound to regress. Well, that happened this week, maybe not because the Chiefs defense is that bad and that they have that many holes, but the fact that it's in Kansas City, that's why I think that it could hit this week. So I'm not really that optimistic about this Colts offense, even though they're going into Kansas City and playing a pretty mediocre Chiefs D. Excellent. What about the Chiefs against the Colts defense? I mean, they should be able to do what they want for the most part because they can do that against any defense. But the Colts defense usually schemes pretty well. And we saw some of that at least, at least some of it parts of the game in the playoffs last season. So I'm not, you know, I think overall, I'm not looking at this game and feeling confident that the over is gonna hit. I'm more confident in the under more than likely. But I think that, you know, overall, a lot of that has to do with me believing that the Colts offense isn't gonna be able to move the ball as well as they have so far this year. And then as a result of that, the Chiefs might just end up being a little bit more conservative. Is the pessimism around the Colts offense enough to get you to bet the spread of KC minus 11? Or is that number appropriate in your eyes? I think it's pretty appropriate. I always get scared off anytime you see a double digit spread in the NFL. It's tough, especially with a team in the Colts. It's not, that's well-coached and it's not, you know, the personnel is not bad. So it's hard to bet a number like that. I think the number that you wanna bet here is the total and just go the under. All right, any other spreads or totals you see on the board that you like here for week number five over at Fandals Sportsbook? Yeah, I'm really intrigued by the Cardinals-Bangles game. It could go in a lot of different directions just because we know the offensive lines for both of those teams are very, very bad. So it wouldn't shock me at all if we see like a 13 to 10 game after everyone's super excited about what could happen in fantasy and this hitting the over. But I still think the over is still a decent bet mostly because these two teams have run at a really fast pace to start the year. Arizona's first in the league in seconds per play. Cincinnati ranked seventh. They're both in top 10 situation neutral pace. So a higher pace means more plays. More plays means more points. And then that would hopefully result in the over being hit. Yeah. And I think that's kind of the way you wanna view it. You wanna go for fast-paced games where the clock will stop often given Kyler Murray's success recently. The clock will stop pretty often there and given Andy Dalton's lack of success, same thing. So I think that the thought process definitely there for sure. That is JJ Zacharyson again. He is the editor-in-chief at both Fandall and at Number Fire. You can follow him on Twitter at late round QB. JJ, thank you for stopping by once again. Talking a little regression, talking a little week five. We appreciate it. Good luck in week five and we'll talk to you again soon. Thanks guys. Appreciate it. Covering the future. One final big thank you to JJ Zacharyson for swinging by and breaking down week number five of the NFL. And we talk a lot about spreads and totals here on the show. We don't talk as much about player props. And most of that is because player props are not always posted by the time we record on Thursdays. It's kind of hard to give a lot of analysis there. But it's a really fun market. And I love player props from a betting perspective. It's just hard to do from an analysis perspective, but from an actual like betting perspective, I think there's a lot of edge there, but they're also just really fun to follow. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think a lot of professional seasoned betters will tell you if you're trying to get started, start with some player props. And I think we're seeing those more and that's probably some pretty good advice. And it's also a huge overlap between my research for daily fantasy and player props. So it makes sense. Like from a strength perspective, I should skew towards player props and glad to get JJ's thoughts on role changes there. Ad and I always preach searching for the best value and betting on games. Well, look no further than the new odds comparison our engineers have developed over at numberfire.com. Oddsfire is the premier odds comparison experience across major bookmakers in the regulated U.S. market. Compare odds, quickly identify the best value and even examine first party fan dual data all in one place. Never settle, always get the best odds. Check out the experience for free now on numberfire or at oddsfire.com. Gambling problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER. Let's dive in now to covering the future, starting off with you, Ed, and you're looking at that Monday night football game between the 49ers and the Browns. And the Browns looked really good last week, but you wanna focus on the 49ers and some really interesting numbers you've seen from them through the first couple of weeks. Yeah, I think San Francisco is really interesting. I mean, we came into them this pre-season and I thought they were kind of getting overlooked. That actually doesn't turn out to be the case. I was looking at their win total both last year and this year with a healthy Jimmy Grappolo each time. Last year there at eight and a half wins, shading the under. This year there at eight, shading the over. It pretty much the same price. And so the market was essentially saying that this is a pretty average NFL football team. But they've been really good. I'm looking at success rate, which I define as half the necessary yards on first down, 70% of the necessary yards on second down and all on third and fourth down. I adjust this for strength schedule with the algorithms that I have. And on offense, they've been really good. They've been fourth with pretty even balance, fifth passing the ball and second running the ball. It's been interesting, when you look at the PFF grades, a bunch of the top players on offense are they're running backs, which suggests that it's not necessarily the line. It's the play of some of the running backs. So they've been really good on that side of the ball. And also on defense, overall their adjusted success rate is third and they're really excelling in pass defense. Their first in adjusted success rate, not so good in running the ball at 27th, suggest some problems with the interior of the line. But the pass defense has been really good. You know, led by Richard Sherman back there. Some of a kilo of witherspoon has actually gotten some really great grades. He's actually hurt right now, which is probably gonna hurt them over the next couple of weeks. So San Francisco 49ers, I mean, I don't expect them to be fourth and third on offense and defense by the end of the season, necessarily you're gonna expect some regression, maybe some injuries, but this is certainly a team I'm looking for to find some value over the next couple of weeks, especially on the side. My numbers, which include all these success rate numbers make them about a 3.3 point favorite. So suggest that the line at three and a half is pretty fair this week. I would lean towards San Francisco just because they're coming off a bye week and Cleveland's coming off a pretty emotional divisional game where they beat Baltimore. So maybe a little bit of a lean towards San Francisco, but heading into the future, these Niners are a team I'm looking to back. And I think it's important to know when early season success is legit because the 49ers have won a lot of games. You know, they did really well heading to their bye week. And sometimes we may be looking at them as a spot for regression, but I think it's helpful to know that your numbers say no, this is pretty legit. I think that with Kyle Shanahan, it's not surprising because he is a great schemer. And we talk about how rushing is less efficient a lot of the time, but with Shanahan I think that's less so just because he doesn't do inefficient rushes. If you look back at last year, I think it was three of the top five teams as far as not running up the gut because running up the gut from a success rate perspective or sorry, from an expected points perspective is more inefficient than outside runs. The 49ers I believe had the lowest run up the middle percentage and other teams that were near the top were Washington and Atlanta, both places Kyle Shanahan has coached very recently. So I think that he kind of leads an imprint where he is, you know, he does run, he does skew towards run a bit and the 49ers offense so far this year has been a little bit more run heavy, but they run in a smart way. I think that's probably the right way to phrase it is they don't run stupid. Like last year with the Cardinals, David Johnson up the gut never worked but the 49ers don't do that. They run in a smart way and I think that does matter too. Yeah, and I think it's important to like not run into eight man boxes, right? I mean, that's what we always talk about pass rate on first down when, you know the typical NFL defense is gonna put a lot of guys down in the box to stop the run. So yeah, that just all the more reason to think about backing the team in the coming weeks. I couldn't do it this week cause I can't bet against my guy Baker, but going forward. He's your guy? Yeah. You believe in Baker? I have a lot, oh yeah. Okay, so I do a lot of research into the stickiness of college metrics for quarterbacks and how well that projects to the next level. And Baker was like, he checked every box because he had gobs of collegiate experience which is something that has been good for quarterbacks as they transitioned to the NFL. He was hyper efficient in college. And when you combine those two things, quarterbacks don't fail very often. That's kind of why I've been so disgruntled with Marcus Mariota's lack of success in the NFL's because he also checked both those boxes. Hasn't done a whole lot. It's why I'm hyper defensive of Jared Goff because he wasn't the best college prospect but people ragged on him. I thought unnecessarily for a lot of reasons. So Baker's kind of been like the major success story. Pat McHomes actually checked a lot more boxes than people may have thought as well cause he was actually pretty efficient in college too and played a good amount. So I believe in Baker a lot. And that's why I want Freddie Kitchens to keep doing what he did last week and stopping a dingus like he was back in week three. Well, yeah. And I think we all saw especially the Rams game where when he got the ball out quickly, he got it there accurately. They were breaking off some big plays. When he goes to his first, second read and just kind of pulls it down and starts bumbling around the pocket, that is not a good thing. And you're essentially seeing the exact same behavior from Shay Patterson of Michigan. And a lot of people in Ann Arbor are down on Patterson and I'm trying to tell people like, look, this is like Baker Mayfield, right? Like it's the same and I wouldn't necessarily have given up on Baker Mayfield. So let's not quite give up. Let's have a little bit of confidence. Well, I mean, we'll see where it goes. Right. The other thing too is the Brown's coaching staff adjusted after week three. They realized that they were putting Baker in bad spots. Baker was not helping. He was very much a big part of the problem as well. But they adjusted. They changed the personnel. Warren Sharper's noting that on Twitter, how they were running more two tight end sets than they were the previous week where they were mostly in three receivers that week before that, they changed up their personnel. They lowered Baker's time to throw about like a half second on average from his full season number. They made adjustments. And if Michigan can make adjustments to help Shay Patterson, I think that we could see a continuation what we saw against Rutgers. Like it's not going to be that Rutgers game, but it can get better. No, I mean, that's exactly what they did. I mean, they really simplified the game for Shay against Rutgers. Some rollouts, some quicker decisions, just simplified everything. And I think, you know, it's been interesting because a lot of the talk around here and on my radio show this morning was like, well, they just can't do this for the rest of the season. And part of my argument was like, well, Mike Leach has been making his offense simple, like forever, right? And I think sometimes we don't put enough emphasis on the execution aspect of football. And especially when you're Michigan and you just have three NFL caliber wide receivers, like why not make it simple? Just beat the guy, you know? Right, put the ball in their hands and let their talent shine. Yeah, exactly. And you know, it's gonna get tough for Iowa. But yeah, we'll see. I mean, it'll be interesting to see what Baker Mayfield does on this morning night game. So looking forward to it. Hoping that Jarvis Landry is healthy because he seemed to be a pretty big key for that strategy of get it out quick last week. And he is currently a concussion protocol. So having or losing him might be a big loss, especially for Shart Higgins can't go. But broadly, I believe in Baker. I'll have to move on to my cover in the future. You're actually talking about a game we discussed with JJ and I also want to back up what JJ was saying and I want the under for the Colts and the Chiefs. This game opened at 57 and it has already gone down to 56, despite 78% of the money being on the over. So we could see this total back up and I don't think it'll go down too much more. So you might be able to hold off here and see if you can get a better number on Sunday, but I like the under regardless. I think it's probably like three ish points too high because think about this anecdotally. If you are the Colts, what do you want to do? You want to run the ball this week as much as possible because you want to lower this sample when you're an 11 point dog and you want to keep Patrick Mahomes on the sidelines. And the Colts have seemed pretty obliged to do that and they've been pretty good as a rushing offense so far this year. They rank second in schedule adjusted rushing offense based on number fires metrics. The Chiefs are 24th against the rush and they want you to run the ball on them because it prevents you from passing. And Ed, this is something you've discussed before and I'll talk to you about this after we're done here but it's a smart strategy as you've discussed. You want teams to run against you because it means they are not throwing. But the Colts, in their two road games this year when they weren't on turf, which is a big difference for this team, they were super run heavy. They threw 57% of the time on first and second down in the first halves of games the first two weeks. They ranked 19th in pass rate in those situations. So a lot more run heavy than they were last year with Andrew Luck. While the Mac did mispractice on Wednesday and T.Y. Hilton didn't practice, Paris Campbell didn't practice. And if Mac can't play, then they may skew more towards the pass but his injury on Sunday didn't seem too serious and Hilton, I don't know if he's gonna play but Hilton was healthy in weeks one and two and they still skewed toward the run. So I think that's why they're just gonna be run heavy when they're not indoors this year. It sounds like they believe in their offensive line. They believe in Marlon Mac and they might not believe as much in Jacobi percent in this passing offense when they're outdoors. The Chiefs defense also does play better when they're at home because Arrowhead is a very hostile environment as Lamar Jackson showed a couple weeks ago. So I think the under is very much the play here. I'm not sure if the Chiefs will cover because I think again this game should be a lower story which makes it harder to cover an 11 point spread but I think that under on 56 makes a lot of sense just because if you're thinking about this like Frank Reich, you wanna lower that sample, you wanna increase the variance and the way you do that is by keeping the clock going and running the football. So I think that's the way I would skew here Ed but I wanna talk to you because I've seen you talk about this before where teams may incentivize their opponents to run because they know it's less efficient and I find that mindset genius first of all but it's also super interesting. So what did you find when you were looking back at this? Well, I mean we know that throwing the ball is more efficient than running the ball in general and you find these interesting cases where Bill Belichick talked to his New York Giants defense when he was the coordinator there for the Super Bowl, thinking 92 and he basically told him to let Thurman Thomas rush for 100 yards which when I first read that I was like what, what, what, what and but when you start thinking about it in terms of the efficiencies, I mean Belichick understands analytics kind of instinctively I think and- I think he uses them, I think he's trying to play Koi when he says he doesn't use them. Yeah, well, I mean he stopped going for it a lot of fourth down, so you know. Okay, maybe not. You know, we'll see, we'll see exactly but like, you know in terms of just, you know, you know, running a 235 or 236 or whatever kind of defense to let teams run but really hopefully shut down their pass attack. That's not, that's probably a positive expected value type strategy. I'm actually looking at some of my notes for the Colts right now and it's kind of interesting because I predict them to get, their rush offense has been great. I predict them to get 5.2 yards per carry against an average rush defense and that's actually a little bit better than the 4.8 yards per pass attempt but that's because they have such a good rush offense behind that offensive line and Jacobi Prasett might not be as good as his touchdown rate suggests. So it's always gonna be team dependent. You know, obviously if you flip those numbers or I mean, even the average kind of NFL team is gonna be more efficient during the ball than they are running it, that's just kind of the truth. So yeah, so anyways, that's the analysis. So last year, the worst team against the rush on a per attempt basis based on number fires metrics was Kansas City. I think this is the route they're taking. We've also seen this with Wade Phillips all the time. He's always been someone who has allowed teams to run against him. The Rams were 10th worst against the rush last year. They were a great team. And I think that that's part of it. Like it seems like it is intentional because it's so consistent with Wade Phillips defense where he consistently doesn't grade out very well against the rush, his defenses don't. Andy Reed is the same thing and they're both very smart coaches. So I think there's a lot to that. I think that Frank Reich is smart enough to know that they're trying to bait him into running, but I still think they'll do it because that's what they've done when they've been on the road this so far this year. And that might actually be the good strategy with their personnel. I was just pulling out my numbers on Kansas City. So last year it was very interesting because they were basically worse than the NFL at run defense and middle of the pack in pass defense, which, you know, if you're gonna suck, that's the way you wanna suck. You don't wanna flip. And it's pretty much the exact same thing. I mean, I have them at 32nd and adjusted rush success rate on defense, 18th on, for passing. So yeah, it's not, yeah, it's, that's what they do. And it'd be interesting. Like we didn't see them make a lot of moves to upgrade their position, their situation at cornerback during the off season. So, you know, if they had kind of done that, it would more support kind of that strategy. But, you know, the numbers look very similar from last year to this year. Yeah, they did get Frank Clark, defensive end and Tyra Matthew add safety to try to help. And those are both past defense moves. So you always ask on your podcast on the football analytics show, if you could have lunch with someone or dinner with someone, I think Andy Reed would be a really fascinating guy to talk to. Yeah. Talk about football. Yeah, I think so for sure. He had a macaroni and cheese recipe that came out at one point. So you could have some good talk with Andy Reed. And I would be, I'd be inclined to talk some football with him. I think it'd be fun. Yeah, absolutely. And to figure out like what happened at the end of his Philly tenure. Yes, that I think, yeah, you as a former Eagles fan too, I'm sure that would especially interest you as well. That is all we have for this week. Before we close up shop though, add anything big going on over the power rank for the rest of this week? Yeah, I mean, you know, the free email newsletter, you get a sample of my best predictions and some analysis. So members actually have access to all the success rate adjusted for strength of schedule and numbers that I've been talking about for the NFL. I think like especially the next couple of weeks, it's kind of an invaluable tool to figure out how to get off your preseason priors and start doing some analysis. So yeah, that's available for members of my site. You can check it out at thepowerrank.net. You can find Ed's podcast, the football analytics show, wherever you get podcasts. And I think that it is important to look at those numbers to kind of know where we meet, maybe to reevaluate teams now that we have seen them with their current personnel groupings. If you have any questions for me, I am on Twitter at Jim Sonnis, J-I-M-S-A-N-N-E-S. You can also follow the FanDuel podcast network at FanDuel podcast. Ed is on Twitter at thepowerrank. Big thank you to Calvin Theobald for producing for today, as always, and chopping up the videos for the at FanDuel Twitter account. Thank you, Cal, for that. And a thank you to those of you who tuned in for today. Thank you to JJ Zacharias and Eli Hershkovich, our two guests for this week, talking college football and NFL, to get you set for this weekend. I hope that all of your bets go well for week six of college football and week five of the NFL. Back at you next week to talk more football. This has been covering the spread right here on the FanDuel podcast network.