 This is covering the spread part of the fan dual podcast network A lot of fun games coming up in week number three across the NFL Which means a lot of chances to buy some player props potentially betting some unders in these fun games Who can say we're gonna talk to JJ Zacharyson about these week three games and get his favorite props across the board for this week This is covering the spread right here on the fan dual podcast network and number fire calm My name is Jim Sonnis I am a senior writer and analyst for number fire calm joined here once again by JJ Zacharyson of Late round comm you can check them out on Twitter at late round QB and check out the late round a fantasy football podcast JJ Welcome back in. How are you doing today? I'm good, man? I'm good. I like this slate I feel like there's some really interesting games on it. So I'm really excited for week three I am too. I think it's gonna be a blast like a football fan But hopefully a blast from a betting and a DFS perspective as well We're gonna dive into what those game environments mean for prop betting We're trying to talk about some regression and much more and JJ's favorite props for week number three But if you're looking for a full like sides totals money lines breakdown of this week We did do that yesterday with Ryan Williams That is up now on the covering the spread podcast feed and a fan duals YouTube page also our college football betting podcast Dr. Ed Feng is up on the YouTube page and on the covering the spread podcast seed find that wherever you get your podcast and hit Subscribe twisted tea and fan dual have joined forces to bring you a one-of-a-kind Contest series gives you a chance to compete for your share of thousands of dollars in psych credit Introducing twisted teas college football picks a sports betting focused contest series That is entirely free to play the contest is simple each college football game will be assigned money lines spread in total markets With assigned point totals for each market all you have to do is make six selections based on those three markets and earn points For the each correct selection you may at the end of the day your score ranks among the best in the contest You'll be eligible to win your share of psych credit head to fandewald.com Twisted tea picks and make your picks and reminder, please drink responsibly fandewald.com Slash twisted tea picks let's dig into this week three slate Like I said JJ a lot of fun games on this late big totals tight spreads. I love that as a DFS player But I'm curious about that from a prop betting perspective. We go kind of nuts though with props Allah the Tyree kill Jalen waddle or shot Bateman Mark Andrews fiasco last week What role does game and environment play for you in betting props? Yeah, so I think the one thing to always keep in mind is that some players are game script dependent And and I think that we can get really enamored with what lines are saying about these games You know for instance the you know if you think that the or the line says that a certain game is you know a point and a half Or something and it's supposed to be close and maybe the total is really really high I think it's really important to not overstate what that says because obviously lines aren't perfect And it's not going to be perfect. And so the the easy way to sort of go about every single week Regardless of game environment regardless of game script is a fine players who aren't as game script dependent, right? You know, like I said, we don't know how these games are going to go down So it's just a lot safer and easier to go after after players who You know are gonna be on the field no matter what and you have a better idea of how to project those players Generally speaking I mean you can you know, there's still ways to to use game script to your advantage and use these game environments to your advantage in some way But you know, I think that you know, we can sit here and say that the Texans and Bears for for instance this week is gonna be a low scoring game I think that we would feel pretty confident in that But it could end up being that one of these teams blows out the other team I mean, it's it's a very possible scenario But if you don't have a player that you're betting that is necessarily dependent on one of those scripts happening Then then you're fine. And it's a little bit easier to project and predict how things will go down So, you know, I do think that that a lot of times too a lot of times the These these player props will align with what the total is saying, right? And so there's some value that you can find I'll talk about that a little bit later with with one of my bets But you know, there is some value that you can find when you know a game total is supposed to be really really high And maybe a player prop is just kind of out of whack But yeah, you know generally speaking there is some correlation there You know if a game is supposed to go nuts in terms of scoring and a lot of yards and stuff And that's gonna be reflected in the players line, right? So I think that that the big thing overall is to continue to find players who are likely not going to be super game script I think the key there is you're just you're giving yourself more paths to being right if they are not game script dependent You're just you're getting yourself out and I think that that's kind of a key thing always whether it be more paths to an Under-oared over you want those paths high probability paths to be in place. Yeah, now a big part of your work JJ revolves around regression Specifically for touchdowns the most part, but they can apply to other fields as well What do you look to when you're trying to pinpoint regression when it's just a two-game sample that we have so far this year? Yeah, look almost everything in football and football statistics regresses like almost literally everything Touchdowns are the easiest way to sort of spot that regression because they really do have a lot of variants They can be random, especially in a two-game sample. I mean touchdowns can just be all over the place You know if a quarterback has a really really high touchdown rate A book might be reflecting that to start the season and then you can obviously bet the other direction Just because there is so much variance but I think that that people look at the player level a little bit too much with touchdown regression and with regression in general when you could look at the team level to for instance You know, I tweeted out a chart yesterday showing the number of total offensive yards that teams have had Versus how many touchdowns they've scored and generally speaking over the last decade or so We've seen a hundred and forty five point seven Offensive yards per touchdown scored. So if a team is way underperforming in that, you know Maybe they've had like three hundred and fifty total offensive yards per touchdown like the Broncos I don't know what their exact number is but they're high Javante Williams Melvin Gordon fumbling on the one that'll jack that number up real fast Exactly exactly and like that's the example in a two-game sample Where like you look at the Broncos and you see Javante and Melvin Gordon fumbling at the one wall All of a sudden if they didn't fumble at the one That's a total we have a totally different viewpoint on what the Broncos offense looks like right now more than likely And so that that's one thing to really keep in mind is at the team level it it goes beyond just like You know how or the amount of touchdowns that the team has versus the amount of yards They have you could look at how teams are scoring touchdowns, you know a lot of teams You know, you can see that that some teams like the Dolphins for instance They the Dolphins and the who do I have in my in my notes? The Dolphins and the Jets currently have a combined 12 passing touchdowns. They have zero rushing touchdowns That's not going to maintain that ratio does not keep up You know week over week over week over week And so what you can do then is obviously fade passing attacks a little bit in terms of touchdowns and then boost up The rushing attacks a little bit. I mean, this is a tails all this time I mean this happens every single year where people assume that no no this is the way that it's gonna be for this It's just not how it works. I mean there's gonna be outliers, of course But even if you look at, you know, the commanders right now have a seven pass to rush attempt ratio or a touchdown ratio Meaning they've thrown seven touchdowns and they have one rushing touchdown Over the last 11 years only five teams have finished with that high of a ratio So you know that things are gonna shift a little bit as the season goes on and sometimes books don't reflect that It could be different for the Jets given that their quarterback is elite in Joe Flacco You know, obviously you want your you want the the ball in his hands towards the red zone So I think that's maybe one spot where you can see an outlier, but other than that I'm fully on board now The other thing that we could look towards is ambiguous situations and the goal They're being because you're deep in the weeds of ranking players every week The idea would be that you have a better feel for Dept charts for roles stuff like that the bookmakers may have so any ambiguous situations You're looking to attack this week whether the prop markets are up now or not Yeah So one thing that you could always look at with this kind of stuff is you know Books will often just look at like final stat lines and they'll and they'll judge based on that But the running back position in particular can really throw you off with that I mean you can you can see it with the wide receiver position too If a guy's running a lot of routes and maybe he just didn't see a lot of targets in one game What have you but I think running back is the most interesting and a perfect example of that is New England right now Week one. We had like a three-way backfield split where we had Remondry Stevenson Damien Harris and time on Gumrie all seeing a Good number of looks Damien Harris ended up seeing more Carries than Remondry Stevenson at nine to eight in that week one game He actually out targeted Stevenson three to two He ran more routes than Stevenson He had ten routes to Stevenson's five time on Gumrie's then out in week two and everyone sees Oh Damien Harris was was able to maintain what he did because he had 15 carries Remondry Stevenson had nine and they had the same number of targets But Remondry Stevenson had a snap share of 62% in that game and he ran 23 routes to Damien Harris's nine Remondry Stevenson actually Absorbed the time on Gumrie workload last week It's just that it didn't convert to actual production And so those are sort of the situations that I look at where I say, okay Books are probably be a little bit high on Damien Harris Maybe a little bit low on Remondry Stevenson. We can attack that way and you can do that with every single back But I mean obviously some backfields are gonna be more obvious when there's a bell cow And they're just gonna continue to use that guy But a lot of times, you know teams, you know, there's a lot more to the peripherals Then what's being shown in the production? Yeah, I think that with the Patriots to the ideal route there It would be looking at the rushing plus receiving props to the advantage of fully of like once they're posted They're not up yet But once they're up, I would take a look at those because it gives you again multiple paths to if you want over for Remondry Stevenson or an under for Damien Harris I think looking at that specific market to take advantage of that specific role That's why I'd want to play things right there. So, okay You got a decent number of props up actually already here on Friday morning So JJ when you look at the board at Fandall Sportsbook, which number stand out to you? Yeah, let's start with Travis ETN right now. You know, I mentioned the game script stuff earlier You know and how some running backs and some players are gonna be more game script dependent I think Travis ETN is a good example of that where in a negative game script You're likely gonna see him on the field a little bit more and what we've seen out of Jacksonville You know week one sort of neutral game script Maybe slightly negative for Jacksonville week to a super positive game script against Indianapolis And so we saw a lot of James Robinson this past week Against Indianapolis, which just makes total sense because he's the early down back for that team But if you look at how they've deployed ETN versus James Robinson to start the season ETN seen 66 percent two-thirds of the team's third down snaps at the running back position so far this year right now his line Receiving yards line is sixteen and a half at minus 120. I'm gonna take the over there Not only Because he's basically been able to do that to start the season already in both games But this could be a negative game script against the Chargers He's had a 10% target share in these two games despite, you know, relatively neutral to positive game scripts for Jacksonville You know, they're big underdogs. I don't know if that's gonna happen this week So I like Travis ETN to hit the over there And maybe that would lean some of the James Robinson unders if you if you want to go that route as well Another one this one's over on DK But Tom Brady his line and you know, we'll see what his line said at Fandle at this time, you know, it wasn't set there But you know, Tom Brady His line was at 245 and a half passing yards and that was at minus 115 I'm gonna take the under with that Brady's averaging 30 and a half pass attempts per game over the first two weeks of the season He was at 42.3 last year. I think that's kind of getting baked into this a little bit The Packers have a good secondary Brady's gonna be without probably Chris Godwin and definitely Mike Evans who suspended This game has a really low over under. I mean, this is not a Projected shootout game despite the quarterbacks who are playing So, you know, I think that this line really reflects Tom Brady having healthy weapons when those weapons are just not healthy So, you know, my projections actually have him a good bit lower like over 20 yards lower than what that line Is showing and then the last one that I want to throw out there on the yardage front is Joe Mixon I like the over 73 and a half rushing yards at minus 114 The Bengals are big favorites in this game. Mixon has seen 95.8% of the teams running back rushes this year, which is might be the best in the league I had to have to double check, but it's at least top three in the league He's hit he's hit this mark in one of two games so far this year when neither game that he's played in has been a Very positive game script now they get the Jets They should that's a way better match up in what they faced should see a nice positive game script in that game I've got him projected for almost 90 rushing yards and he's at 73 and a half. So there's definitely some value there I think this might be another DK one, but I'd have to check with with what what Fandals offering and I'll probably be around the same You know, but the other thing too, you know I just I think that people will just generally see what the Bengals have done the first two weeks this season and not really In the fact that they face two really really really good fronts You know, they got the Pittsburgh in week one with a healthy TJ Watt. They had Dallas last week Who's you know defense is strong. I mean, it's not that's not the weak part of that team right now And so I think Mixon has a good chance to hit the over Yeah, the Mixon number is up at Fandals 73 and a half over is minus one 14 there And we saw the Jets get shredded by Nick Chubb last week I think that defensive front is pretty good But I don't know if it matters enough against someone's good as Joe Mixon right now So we talked earlier about regression and a big part of regression is for touchdown props talked about that at a team level When you're looking at the touchdown props for this week, any standing out for you right now? Yeah, I'll throw some I mean, I like to just kind of go get a little crazy with touchdown props because it's more fun that way, right? I'll start with one player who I don't think people realize how decent his usage has actually been to start the year And it's Traylon Berks right now Berks is at plus 280 as an anytime touchdown score He saw target shares of 16% and then 29% and his first two games his route participation this past week week One wasn't great this past week. It rose to 63% They're using him more and more And then if you look at how he's actually performed of the players with 10 plus targets this year only Stefan digs Jalen waddle Rashad Bateman have a higher yards per route run than Traylon Berks does decent enough matchup against the Raiders It's at least better than what he saw in Buffalo I don't think we're at risk of them resting starters and not necessarily throwing their guys on the field So I think Traylon Berks is a pretty interesting anytime touchdown score this week with with decently long odds at plus 280 Another another actually pairing my final two touchdown scores. It's from the same game. They're actually from the same team I'm gonna go to this Minnesota Detroit game where we could see a shootout in this game, you know domed environment You know two teams two offenses that are Relatively decent or looking decent enough has the highest over under in the week Like I said, so points should be scored Detroit's the underdogs So Detroit could see negative game script which means more throwing which means that the the way they do score their touchdowns Could come through the air versus on the ground the first one I'm gonna say is I'm in raw same brown where on fandals at plus 105 but on DK you can admit plus 135 For for an anytime touchdown score for a month freaking St. Brown your almond raw same brown Yes, he has a 33.8 percent target share this season. He's a monster. He's four red zone targets That's one of the highest in the league as well. So I'm and I think over on DK plus 135 is unbelievable value But on that same team, I actually think that you could look to DJ Chark as well Because last week he throws out that goose egg. I understand how tilting that was for many people playing DFS and even betting 33% DJ Chark what could go wrong right everything everything go wrong. Yeah. Yeah, I mean he's a high variance player But that's sort of what you want for a prop like this at plus 230. He has two end zone targets this year He actually is underperformed and the touchdown column according to PFF's Expected touchdown metric. He has he should have 1.7, but he has won So, you know again in this game where there should be a lot of scoring I do think as my final bet that DJ Chark makes a lot of sense Yeah, going back to the Traylon Berks when I think the other advantage of that is that the thing that the Raiders do best to defensively outside of Rush the passer is they're pretty good against the run and I think that's going to make Tennessee Probably against their will be more passive than they typically would be Traylon Berks had a good good role in that game on Monday night Thought he looked pretty good too and it seemed like Tana Hill was going towards him early in that game So plus 280. I mean like that's pretty good for a guy of his body type And with the role that he has right now. Yeah, I mean I think they're gonna use him again more and more in this offense because he's a really raw prospect like he He wasn't like a polished Garrett Wilson or even Drake London. He's a very raw prospect And you know, he's filling big shoes with AJ Brown But you look at this offense and there's really not a lot to really rely on and go to and this team isn't necessarily gonna Gonna run a lot of love and personnel a lot of three wide receiver set Just the way the offense is set up and situated. So, you know, they have a really interesting slot matchup this week But they just don't use a slot receiver as much as other teams do so I do think that Traylon Berks makes a ton of sense I do too plus 280 a very good number for Traylon Berks can get that one over at Fandall Sportsbook again DJ Chark and Amon Ross ain't brown the other ones to look at but line shop for both those to get the best Number wherever you can that's all we got here for week number three from you JJ again Check out JJ on Twitter at late round QB. Check out the late round fantasy football podcast Wherever you get your podcast and late round calm JJ. Good luck to you this week I hope your props and all your season-long teams go well your DFS teams too, and we'll talk to you once again next week Thanks, man. Appreciate it. Alrighty, that is all we have for this week here on covering the spread as well Go check out our college football NFL betting podcast right here in this same feed by searching for covering the spread and checking out The Fandall YouTube page I am on Twitter at Jim Sonnis You can also follow the Fandall podcast network at Fandall podcast big Thank you to everyone for tuning in and good luck to you with your bets across the entirety week three We'll talk to you once again on Monday to get you set for some Monday night football This has been covering the spread right here on the Fandall podcast network