 This is Covering the Spread. Here are your hosts, Jim Sonnis and Dr. Ed Fang. What is going on, everybody? Welcome on into Covering the Spread. That's right here on the FanDuel Podcast Network and NumberFire.com. As we are taking a look ahead at week number eight of the NFL with Dr. Bob. Bob Stoll's gonna swing by and break down his favorite bets on the board for this weekend. My name is Jim Sonnis. I am a senior writer and analyst for NumberFire.com. Joined here as always by Ed Fang. You can find Ed over at thepowerrank.com and on Twitter at thepowerranked.com. Ed, we are on to week eight of the NFL. How are you doing today? I'm doing great. As always, excited for another week of NFL. And we got a lot of interesting games going on. We certainly do. And I think that there are interesting discussions to be had about replacement level of quarterbacks. And we're gonna talk about that with Dr. Bob today. You can find Dr. Bob on Twitter at Dr. Bob Sports. You can also find his analysis over on drbobsports.com. He covers college football, NFL, NBA, college basketball. We're gonna pick Bob's mind on week eight of the NFL, get his thoughts on all the big games there and also talk about his model and its evolution over time. And Ed, I was reading into, you know, Bob's history. And on his website, it talks about how he developed this model when he was, I think, a sophomore in college and was trying to pick games like a $2 NFL pool. And like I totally relate to this. Like I remember I was in West Virginia for my journalism residency during college and I was very bored. And I was like trying to figure out how to model NFL games during the playoffs. And like boredom leads to some really fun work for sure. Yeah, absolutely. And Bob's been so far ahead of the curve in terms of using analytics to look at football. You know, it's really remarkable. So yeah, looking forward to that conversation. Absolutely. Again, to find Bob's stuff, DrBobSports.com. Yesterday we talked to Ryan McChrystal of Number Fire and Bleacher Report. To preview week nine of college football, we talked Michigan Notre Dame, LSU Auburn, Wisconsin, Ohio State to get his thoughts on those and a couple of other bets that Ryan likes. And we got a little preview of the NFL draft in there as well as some Joe Burrow talk. If you wanna hear what Ryan had to say about week nine, make sure you check out Covering the Spread wherever you get your podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher. And while you're there, please leave a rating and review as well because those do help us out a ton. We're gonna talk to DrBob in just one second, but first let's take a look back at week seven of the NFL. We had Gil Alexander Avicenon to preview that one. Let's go through those thoughts there and then we'll get to week eight. Covering the past. All right, last week here on Covering the Spread, we had Gil Alexander Avicenon to preview week seven of the NFL and went through some interesting games here. So Gil wanted the 49ers minus nine and a half. Now we recorded this on Thursday before we knew it was going to be a monsoon and that changed things quite a bit. They did win by nine, but the monsoon factor probably would have changed things if we had recorded that later in the week. He also mentioned the Chiefs minus three against the Broncos. They lost Patrick Mahomes pretty early in that game but the Chiefs still covered. So good call by Gil on that one. Also wanted the over on 49 for the Seahawks and the Ravens. I wanted the under on that one. It did finish at 46, but Ed, I have to say there are very few things in my life that are more frightening than having to sweat Russell Wilson in comeback mode, which was what we had on Sunday. I, like it was at 33 points I think in the third quarter and I was like, I'm done. Like there's no chance that Russell Wilson doesn't put up 14 points here. That's the worst feeling in the world. Yeah, I think it's even worse when it's Russell Wilson 2019. Right. 2019 against the 2019 Ravens defense, which is not that good. Exactly. But it worked out, right? It did work. Yeah, it worked out, but my heart is probably not grateful for it. So it worked, but was it worth it? We talked about Houston plus one against Indy. Indy won that game outright. And Ed Houston's kind of a tough team to nail. They have exceeded expectations more often than not this year, but they're also, they seem like kind of a volatile team. What are your thoughts on that after that Indy game? Yeah, I mean, I think it's exactly right. They're very highly volatile of the team. I definitely like Houston plus one. I still think it was a good bet. Deshaun Watson threw a couple of picks that really could have changed that game. I don't think Jacoby Brissette's going to play like that every game, at least not according to his PFF grades. So, you know, I'm pretty happy with that. I mean, that's, so. Yeah, I don't blame you either. And I think that with Brissette, it's been positive matchups at home for him so far this year. He faces Denver this week and Chris Harris is a good quarterback who is going to do good things against T.Y. Hilton. And the one game that they played without T.Y. Hilton, that offense didn't do a whole lot. So I'll be very interested. I like Brissette broadly, but I am very interested to see what he does in that game because if he doesn't have T.Y. Hilton to lean on as much if Chris Harris Jr. is locking him up, it'll be interesting. So I think this game could tell us a lot about Jacobi Brissette as they face Denver this weekend. We're gonna break down Week 8 of the NFL in just one second, but first, if you want to get in on the action, check out the Fandall Sportsbook and place your first bet today. If you lose, Fandall will give you a refund of up to $500 in psych credit. Visit sportsbook.fandall.com for more details, terms and conditions apply. Must be 21 plus and physically present in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, West Virginia or Indiana. Now added to the fold as well. Gambling problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER. Let's bring in now Dr. Bob. That's Bob Astoll. You can find him on Twitter at Dr. Bob Sports. And again, his work is over at DrBobSports.com. We're gonna break down Week 8 of the NFL with Bob, get his thoughts on how his model has changed over time, tinkers he has made since then, and what he thinks of Week 8. Covering the present. Let's bring Bob Astoll into covering the spread. Bob, it is a pleasure to have you on the line for today to get your thoughts on Week 8. How you doing? I'm doing well. As I've talked to you about already, I have a newborn and so I'm a little tired and I tend to work about a hundred plus hours a week anyway this time of year and now it's gotten a little more difficult. So, but overall very well. Well, congratulations on the newborn. You know, interesting, it's tough to have football season regardless but then adding that on top definitely does complicate things. But congratulations on that. And, you know, you've been a busy guy for a while now, Bob because I was checking out your website, DrBobSports.com and it says that you started to build a model for predicting spreads back when you were a sophomore in college. So, clearly a long time and there have been some changes, you know? Since then I'm sure that you've made refinements. How are you evolving with your model to keep it up with the evolving sports betting landscape? How have you, how do you think you've improved your model since then? But what changes have you made overall over that time? Well, back then, we're talking 1987 back at Berkeley and using the mainframe to enter data into. There were no personal computers back then. There were there but no internet. So, it was not like the big data like it is now. We could just dump a bunch of data and do some analysis and so it was a lot different. Now, a lot of stuff I did back then was by hand. The first model I had, I just did simple, it was just NFL, I did simple compensation and then had a second layer of compensation which was just the difference between your opponents, opponents overall rating and just a simple, and then I used the compensated stats to do matchups which I thought was important and was probably left out of most people's power ratings. That model worked really well actually for the time. It was really easy. You guys would have been salivating if you were in the late 80s and early 90s that the simple math that you could do by hand and still win. I mean, those first few seasons, I was hitting 64, 65% and thinking I would never be below 60%. It was so easy. Obviously, the market has changed over the years and it has gotten tougher. But that didn't really happen, I would say until the mid 2000s. I thought it was the model I had in college football that I started with this simple sort of by hand thing. Around the early 2000s, I had a friend who was a database programmer in SQL and I said, well, I've got a model but I've got a better model in my head. Like the complete models in my head, I just can't do it all by hand. He's all programmed that for, he said, great. So we laid it down and he programmed it the way that I thought the model should work and we basically plugged it in and said, all right, here we go. And from that point on, it was nothing but for three straight years, it was nothing but wins. I mean, there's a college football and it was ridiculously good. And that's what you want in a model. You want to say, here's how the model should work, no backfitting, no nothing. Here's the way the model should work and it works. And it wasn't, you know, it was no backfitted regression, none of that stuff. It was just here's the way it should go. And it worked really great. And then that was 2002, 2003, four, five. Great, great, great. Then the odds started moving on the games I was releasing and we started dealing with all that stuff. And then people started to catch on to some of the stuff that I was doing. Not that people hadn't come up with before, but using, you know, yards compensated, yards per play analysis and different stuff like that. And basically predicting a box score and using the predicted box score to predict the final score. I didn't realize it was that much different, but apparently it was at the time rather than using scores to predict scores. I used everything else to predict scores because there's variance in scores, as you know, and not as much variance in predicting the things that go into the scores. So the model, you know, things changed at that time, around 2005, 2006. My college model is similar, except I've added pieces to it basically over the years. The NFL model is completely different. If you want me to get into that, I can certainly do that, sure? Yeah, yeah, actually that's what I was gonna ask you, Bob, if you could just talk about, you know, just high level differences between what you do in college football versus the NFL. Yeah, I think in college football, the biggest thing that my model works really well in college sports in general, because I think my method is very good at calculating the differences in schedule strengths, which I think is really important in college and not as important in the NFL and the NBA because schedule strength differences tend to be fairly even, relatively. Whereas in college, you know, you got two equal teams and one team might have played a schedule that's 15 points easier, you know, going into week five or week six. So that college model, I've pretty much kept the same just because of the ability it has to calculate differences in schedule strength per stat, which is important for what I do. The NFL model was very similar for a long time, then it basically stopped working and I wasn't really putting the time into it because I was having so much success in college. And the NFL had done well for years and then all of a sudden didn't do so well for about seven or eight years. And I thought, I mean, I just wanna do the NFL until I can, you know, the model I have in my head, which is a play-by-play driven model, I don't have the capability to do that at the time or didn't at the time. I thought, well, I'll shelve it for the meantime. So I took three years off the NFL and then got around to finding a mathematician, database person to help with the NFL model with the play-by-play version of a model that uses success rates and expected points added and all that stuff. So the NFL has changed dramatically. So it's been three years of this new model, which is a combination, as you know, success rates was a place successful or not and using success rates takes the variance out of big plays and is more predictive in general. And but you still, there's still a portion of that's expected points added because explosiveness is part of the game. But now the model uses air yards, uses weather factors. There's all kinds of things that were thrown into the model now and it keeps on building every year. Like this is the year where air yards was added and we found that's very predictive in general. Teams that have more air yards, even if they haven't been successful with those long passes, tend to predict better going forward, even if so far those air yards haven't turned into anything. Stuff like that has been added to the model in recent years. Weather was added last year and our totals did started doing much, much better as you would expect with weather being added. And it helps the sides as well. So there's all kinds of things that continually are being added to it and tested quarterback pressures, different metrics like that that are available now, expected completion percentages that next gen stats sort of brought in, those things are being added. So it's always evolving as you know, Ed, I see your models are always evolving as well. Absolutely. So it's a constant evolution. I have a young guy working with me now that helps me with the models and I have my idea of what a model should be and that's what we started with. But he has great ideas as well and he adds things to the models well, runs them by me, yeah, let's run with that, test that and test well, then we add it. So it's been really good to have that help and someone who can understand the big databases that I never studied when I was in college 35 years ago. Yeah, well they were probably in their nascent phase then. Bob, I'm really fascinated with the air yards. So is the idea here that if an NFL team, so air yards is just the number of yards that the quarterback throws the ball downfield through the air, doesn't include yards per catch, yards after catch or anything like that. So you're saying just the fact that an NFL quarterback has the confidence to try a deep throw is predictive going forward that they may hit more of those, may get more yards per attempt in the future? Yeah, I think there's two things that go into it. But yeah, I mean, even if a team has not been successful completing deep passes if they throw more deep passes than normal team, then looking forward, they're likely to be more successful. Part of that could be that there's variance in deep passes and perhaps having thrown a bunch of deep passes and not connecting on as many as normal. Maybe that's just negative variance. Maybe it's not. Maybe this quarterback's just not good at throwing down the field. Nonetheless, it's also being put on film. And when a defense has to worry about being beat deep, it opens up things underneath as well. So it could be a little bit of that as well. And I think that makes sense too, because if you look at the expected points numbers behind a deep pass relative to a shorter pass, it's a pretty wide gap and that does account for expected points loss on interceptions. Like sure, you may be more likely to throw a pick, but if you're also gonna pick up chunk plays, that's pretty significant. So I think that's a really fun way to look at things and what kind of led to that discovery that air yards would be something you could look at and factor into your model? Well, I think part of it was trying to figure out why the Patriots were so darn good every year and outplayed their stats every year when they ranked in the middle to the bottom in yards per play allowed, but their defense and points was always really good. They have the bend but don't break, but how do I quantify bend but don't break? And the idea is, well, we're gonna let you dink and dunk us and eventually you're going to make a mistake. You're not gonna convert on third down and we're gonna force you to kick the field at worst they score a touchdown, but concept is we'll force you to earn it basically and eventually you probably won't at some point you're gonna make a mistake. And so part of it was trying to figure out what the New England Patriots were doing that was so successful and whether that was just you know, years and years of luck, probably not, or whether there was something to it. And air yards was a big part of that. They do not allow teams to throw over the top. That's a big part of what their defensive philosophy has been over the years is let people beat you underneath. And so that's where it sort of, concept sort of came in. And then when we got the data, then it was something like, okay, well, let's just test this. Let's see how predictive air yards are and whether it's complete or incomplete, let's just see. And so it's a combination of success rates, air yards, EPA per pass, quarterback pressures allowed. If you're not getting sack, but you're allowing a lot of pressures that tends to bode not so well for you in the future, you may be getting away with it now, but eventually that's not gonna work for you. So there's a lot of things that are very good predictive statistics that are available now that weren't available even five years ago. That is super interesting. Let's dive into some games here, Bob. Looking forward to week eight of the NFL. We get the Eagles at the Bills. Bills right now, two and a half point favorites at Fandall Sports Book. And the total in this game is 42 and a half. And one of the things you alluded to there in your process is trying to identify which early season performances will stick going forward. And some teams, I know we're seven weeks into the year, but some teams may be playing over their heads. Do you think that either the Bills or Eagles have played at their true skill level thus far, or are one of those teams doing some, for some regression one way or another? Well, I think a little bit of both teams, I think could be better offensively going forward. I mean, last year, Josh Allen led all quarterbacks with 46 added points on the ground with runs. And this year, he's outside of the top 10 in that category. Maybe based on the game situation, he hasn't had to run as much, or maybe he's chosen not to run as much, but for whatever reason, the Bills offense could be better if he decides why I'm gonna go back to run on the ball more. As far as the Eagles go, if their secondary gets healthier, they're gonna be better when the Sean Jackson comes back. They're gonna be better. Jason Peters has been out. That's gonna help. So I think both of these teams should be better later in the season than they've been so far. And the Bills defense is something that the metrics going into the season, we do priors just like Ed does, and I'm sure you do, Jim. And there are market priors. We're not as good as what we thought that the Bills defense should be. And the defense has been better than almost everybody's priors. And we kind of thought that would be the case. And so I think that's gonna continue. I think the Bills defense is legitimately very good because we had that defense better than most people's prior rating on their defense anyway, and they've lived up to that so far. I think of these two teams under the Eagles have more room to improve because they've had some injuries. And Jackson's a huge loss to that offense. Talk about air yards being lost. And since he's been out, Zach Ertz's numbers have not been as good which makes sense, the safety doesn't have to be sitting 20 yards back anymore. You can sneak up on Ertz and so I think the Eagles have a lot more room to improve here. Interesting, Bob, do you have any opinions on the side? One of the things I've seen about the Eagles is just, they really haven't gotten it done this year for multitude of reasons, having to come back against Washington week one, losing to Atlanta, two games that just look worse and worse every week. Yeah, do you have an opinion on the side? Well, the model leans with Buffalo actually. I mean, they're less than a field goal favorite and we have Buffalo favorite by more than a field goal by a bit in a 3.8. So it's not enough of a difference, even though it's over key number, the model needs a certain difference from the projection to the actual line to make something about it. And if it crosses a key number, then obviously that, we take that into consideration, but it's just a lean with Buffalo at this point. But nothing that I've weighed around the game. So a fairly efficient line there with Bills minus two and a half. Let's move now to the Panthers at the 49ers. 49ers, five and a half point favorites here. The total is 42 and the 49ers haven't had the toughest road, but they've really come through in a big way. So how legit do you view the start of this 49ers season being given what they've done so far? I think they're really legitimate. The defensive metrics have been really good. I mean, they played a pretty easy schedule thus far, but they also went down to LA and beat up on the Rams and allowed seven points. They've had some, you know, the weather last week, obviously helped the defense, but at the same point, it hurt the offensive metrics too, because they played in a puddle. But I think they're legit, you know, right? The defense, it's interesting how this team has changed from what it was perceived to be. It was perceived to be, you know, Jimmy G and Shanahan's offense and now the defense is so good. And I think Shanahan knows it to the point that he's calling the game differently and making Garoppolo more of a game manager sort of, you know, quarterback because he doesn't need to make big plays down the field for them to win with this defense. So I think the defense is legitimately good and it's incredible how they put this together at all three levels. The draft picks have worked out. The defense of line is maybe the best in the league right now. They're going to get better offensively when the tackles come back. I mean, both starting tackles are currently out. The full backs out and he makes a big difference in that offense, actually it's kind of an underrated thing with the full back out. So I think that the Niners can be even better than they are right now once that offense gets fully healthy. So I think they're legit. I don't think they're, you know, 14 and two or anything like that. But I think they're a really legitimate team and their defense is obviously proven itself by going down to LA and shutting them down as well. So I really think the Niners are, let me check to see my current ratings. I might have them now at the top team in the in New England. Very close to it. I still Green Bay higher and I still have the Rams higher. That's because of the priors. Sure. Because San Francisco's prior wasn't as good. So my ratings taking into account in season stuff and the prior rating, how you were expected to be going into the season and as the season goes on, less prior and more in season, et cetera, et cetera. But right now they're in that mix with Dallas, New Orleans when they're healthy, Minnesota. So they're right in that range in that third to fifth best team of the East right now. But this year only, they're as good as anyone in that, in that, in that, in the NFC. So Bob, I want to ask you real quick about how you make adjustments for starting quarterbacks. Something that matters in this game, Kyle Allen's been starting for the Panthers, I think came in and only played two games this year. And it's going to be important when we talk about the Chiefs and Packers in a sec. So is there, how do you do the quarterback situation with these injuries? Well, there's a couple of ways to do it. We have an interesting one, I can get to Carolina in a minute, but we have an interesting one with Kansas City. Yep. So they, Matt Moore has got up, there's a lot of data on Matt Moore. He's been around the league for a long time. He's had his time as a starter. So the question is, do we compare Matt Moore's metrics, which is success rates, EPA, et cetera, to Patrick Mahomes? That's one way to do it when you have enough data, but there's another layer to it. And that layers Andy Reed's offense and all those weapons they have there. So it's kind of like, okay, it's an interesting problem. I mean, obviously there's a huge difference between Matt Moore's career metrics and Patrick Mahomes. But Matt Moore hasn't had the luxury of playing with all these weapons in a great offensive system in Kansas City. So a lot, some of it is just purely taking the difference and plugging it in. And some of it is an art form. And it's like, okay, well, how about we do this? How about we look at Alex Smith's career numbers before he came to Kansas City, compare that to Matt Moore's numbers before he came to Kansas City, take the difference in that and then take the difference between Alex Smith and Mahomes in Kansas City and then figure it out that way. Just a different way to do it. Sometimes who you're playing for makes a difference. If, you know, like if you played for New England, all these quarterbacks that were pretty good in New England all got a little worse when they left New England. They're all, you know, weird. Yeah, weird. So that's something to consider. It's not just the pure, well, let's just take the difference in their lifetime, you know, career EPAs and that'll be it. It's, well, who did they play for? How does that coach, you know, how does the coach factor into that? So it's a little bit of an art form with quarterbacks. Some other positions are a little more straightforward. But with quarterbacks, and now with Kyle Allen for Carolina, I'm shocked, honestly. I didn't like this guy in college. I knew he had a lot of talent, but he was a bust at A&M. I, you know, it turns out like a lot of people were bust at A&M because Kyle and Murray was terrible on the same team. Right. When he was in Oklahoma, became the Heisman Trophy winner. So, you know, maybe, maybe it's the coaching staff, you know, maybe, maybe that needs to be looked into a little bit. You know, for Arizona's now got the, got the same coach that they had at A&M at the time. So maybe they have some issues that are upcoming. But nonetheless, I was shocked that Kyle Allen's been as good as he's been. And it turns out that going into the season, we had the Panthers offense expected to score 24.16 points with Cam Newton-Healthy. Well, our metrics now with Kyle Allen is 24.17 points. So in this case, there's no difference. Obviously, at first, there was an adjustment that needed to be made, be made based on, you know, certain metrics that we have. You know, one of the things that has proven to be shockingly accurate for quarterbacks that are unknown and even players that are unknown are the Madden NFL ratings. That's very interesting. Our correlated very well to how well unknown players will perform. It's very interesting. This is something my, you know, the guy I worked with, you know, kind of came up with. Yeah. It worked really well. So when we don't know, we sort of look at the Madden ratings. That's awesome. That's interesting. And we have formulas to use the Madden ratings to predict how many points somebody's worth compared to someone else. How do they do the Madden ratings? I mean, have you gotten, have you looked at that or did you just kind of know a big picture of that? It works? Well, he, you know, the guy, Tanners, the guy that works with me, he said he had read something that they were very predictive and that the Madden ratings were better than the NFL line for the first three weeks of the NFL season every year. Wow. Over many years. Not every year necessarily, but over many years. And he built a model for FIFA, for the World Cup, using player ratings for Madden. Wow. You know, Madden, but the EA sports soccer ratings. He used their player ratings to build a model for the World Cup and it worked. And then, so that's when he got the idea to test the NFL ratings and he's got Madden ratings going back to, you know, 2002 or 2001 or whatever. And basically built a model based on Madden ratings. And it works. And so we sort of use that as a baseline for players we have no idea about. That have no NFL statistics to compare. So we started that. And I think we had Kyle Allen, for whatever reason, rated a little higher than the market. And he's been better than the market. And now it's a loss. I mean, at this point, it's the same as it would have been with Cam Newton. So. I think 2002 was the year that Dante Culpepper was on it. I played that one a lot on my computer back in the day. So the 49ers, five and a half point of favorites over Kyle Allen slash Cam Newton, since it makes no difference at this point. Do you think the Panthers can cover here or are the 49ers good enough to cover five and a half at home? The model likes Carolina actually. Okay. You know, the offense, the Niners offense is struggling a little bit because of those injuries I mentioned. The offense are tackled. They're giving up more of a past Russian. There's been more underneath passes for Garoppolo, which, you know, which is what you want. You want, you want to force short passes and runs in the NFL, as Bill Belichick knows. And that's right. You've already talked about that. So that I think has a lot to do with it. So our, you know, our adjustments on the Niners are negative compared to Carolina's injury adjustments. And so I think there's some value on Carolina here actually. Okay. Interesting. Let's finish up here with them with the Packers and the Chiefs. Packers here, four point favorites. The total is 47 and a half and you were talking about Matt Moore. So when you looked into whether it be the Madden ratings or made the Andy Reid adjustment, how much of a downgrade is it to go from Patrick Mahomes to Matt Moore? We don't need like a specific number, but how big of a downgrade is this for Kansas City? Well, now, like I said, we've already talked about how, you know, we, we took a different tact and we looked at Matt Moore versus Alex Smith and then how much of a, how much of a bump up did Alex Smith get when he came to Kansas City? And then we added that to Matt Moore's career EPA numbers and compared that to Patrick Mahomes. Now, I think the markets around eight and a half or nine point move based on what the prior spread was on this game and we have it around seven and a half. So we've got a little, you know, our, our model, our adjustment for the injury to, to Mahomes is a little less than the market. And, and our numbers lean with, with Kansas City as a home dog, they're plus three and a half now. So our, our, our model leans with Kansas City there, not enough to make it a bet, but I think we think the markets overreacted a little bit to, to the injury. And generally, and I haven't done this research someone else did years ago that the, the concept was in the first game after a quarterback injury, the team tends to cover the spread. And I think at the time they said it was 60%. And then maybe that was 10 years ago I read that. And I thought, all right. So, so mentally I have to sort of make a note to that. And it seems like that's about right. You know, the first game after a quarterback like Ben Rothesberger went down, I went, when Newton went down, Carolina covered. I mean, you look at it and you're like, yeah, that, that seems about right. So I tend to always shade a little bit toward the team in the first game after they're starting quarterback goes out. So it's the public making a little bit of an overreaction probably. And the rest of the team going, okay, Patrick Mahomes, now come on, let's pick it up. So all the other units on the field pick it up. There's more intensity. I'm not saying, I'm not saying something for that defense. I think there's something to that. I haven't done the research. I hope someone does the research and emails me. So, or keep it to yourself if it's really good. Yeah, I think, you know, when, when Aaron Rogers was out a couple of years ago, the, and you know, I think it was Brett Hunley as the backup. The marks kind of shifted about seven points. So as good as Patrick Mahomes is like a shift bigger than that seems too large. Yeah. And we agree. Any other bets you think of that you like on the board for week seven here, Bob? I believe it's week eight now, but Oh, sorry, week eight. Yeah. I'm thinking week seven would be very easy, Jim. So let me give you some winners. We'll give you 100% here right here. There's not a lot of sides that really jump out. I took the, took the charges early in the week plus five and a half against Chicago. That line has gone down to four. We, I think there's still some value on the, on the charges in that game. I mean, Chicago's offense is just nothing like it was last season. Teams have realized if you, if you make, if you make Trubitsky beat you by staying in the pocket. Right. He cannot do that. So his, his next to, next to Josh Allen at Buffalo Trubitsky had the most points added with his feet of any other quarterback and he has not had that at all this season. So I think teams have kind of figured out how to defend that. So I still think there's value. I'm glad I jumped on the plus five and a half early in the week. And I think there's some matchup advantages here. The Bears do not defend tight ends well and Hunter Henry's having a great year and talk about air yards for tight end. I think he's first or second in the league and how many yards down the field he's targeted among tight ends. So that should work. They don't, the Bears don't defend running backs particularly well. Austin Neckler is second in the league at 2.8 yards per route run for running backs to second in the league and the Bears defense doesn't defend, doesn't defend running backs out of the backfield particularly well. So I think there's some matchup advantages for the Chargers here too and our model favors Chicago by only one. So there's some value as well. So even at plus four, I'd still take the Chargers. Awesome. That is Bob Stoll. Bob, it was fun talking to you. I loved the Madden rating discussion. That was a lot of fun and the evolution of your model over time. So really enjoyable conversation. I wanna thank you again for swinging by and chatting with us for a bit about week eight now week seven and happy to have you on again some time to talk college football. Yeah, I love that. Thanks a lot, Jim. Thanks, Ed. Thank you. Covering the future. One final thank you to Bob Stoll for swinging on by and breaking down week eight of the NFL and Ed. That was a fascinating discussion all around but the Madden rating portion of it, I feel like was just so cool. Like, I would have never thought to do that. That's awesome. I love it. Yeah, I know. I love how, I mean, I love doing World Cup and international soccer stuff too. So that I think that's also area that I'm probably gonna look into. I know over at 538, they have some player grades too. It'd be interesting to kind of break down the Madden ratings compared to PFF grades. Yeah. And I gotta think they're pretty highly correlated but that should even give you a little bit more confidence. Maybe a little bit of combining those could be super powerful. And knowing, I mean, I've played Madden like every year for like the entirety of my life basically. I know that like the work they put into it from a scouting perspective, like they have legitimate scouts who help them try to formulate these numbers. And I think that there's a lot of value in that because I can't watch every player of every game but one way or another they probably do. So it's nice to lean on what the insights they have, the insights that pro football focus have. Like ideally I'd watch every player at every game but like that's just not realistic all the time. No, no, it's not realistic at all. Like I can barely watch all the players on Michigan watching these games, right? So yeah, no, I think you kind of have to lean on the data. I think it definitely is all in line with what we talk about on the show and using those types of metrics. And just more broadly, like the more interesting and diverse sources of data that you can get, the better you are overall in the end. I mean, there's a lot of research on this in terms of wisdom of crowds, but there's a diversity factor. And I don't think I've heard anything recently that adds to the diversity factor, quite like Madden. Right, and even the Ariards thing. I use Ariards a ton for DFS but using it in a betting model might not have crossed my mind. So really fun conversation and big thank you to Bob for swinging by and educating us. I enjoyed that. Ed and I always preach searching for the best value in betting on games and 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 US 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 take a look at covering the future now and talk about a couple more games on the week eight NFL slate. Ed, you also want to talk about the Chargers and we heard Bob's thoughts on the Chargers but it sounds like your model's leading the exact same way. Yeah, absolutely. It was kind of an interesting week, Jim. I mean, just not a ton of things that really jumped out at me. And I do like Chargers plus three and a half. I agree with Bob. You know, we actually talked about the Chargers last week. We talked about liking them plus two at Tennessee. The market went the other way, honest, Jim. They would have won if it weren't for Melvin Gordon. Yeah, yeah, and exactly. And they had a chance to win at the end. A fumble kind of cost them. And let's face it, like the Chargers have not been good this year. Their defense especially. I mean, the defense has been terrible. Like the past defense was really good last year. And now with a couple injuries and just, you know, different players. They're 31st when I look at success rate adjusted for strength of schedule. I mean, that team is all about Phillip Berber's and that offense. But you gotta remember that they're playing the Bears and the Bears are interesting on offense. Shubiski clearly hasn't been good. I feel like whenever I watch him play, he seems pretty accurate on the short balls. And I feel like that's reflected. Like they're 15th when I look at passing success rate. But they're 31st when I look at yards per pass attempt adjusted for schedule. So he really has an inability to get the ball downfield. He's very limited in many ways as a pastor. And, you know, the defense has really fallen off this week as well. They were elite last year. This year, they're in the middle of the pack 17th when I look at adjusted success rate. They got the injury to Akeem Hicks on the defensive line, not a unit that was very deep to begin with coming into the season. So, you know, a lot of the things that we think about we expected with the Chicago team, anyone that even knew what a football number was was expecting regression for the Bears and we're basically seeing that. Still, you know, taking a charger side makes me want to throw up in my mouth a little bit, as I say it. That's not something, but I do feel like it's the right side. I mean, it was four and a half when I looked at this yesterday and decided I want to go with it. Today, it's three and a half now. I think I like it above three. My number, pretty similar to Bob Licks, likes the Bears by a point and a half in this game, would not be shocked to see the Chargers win this outright. But yeah, we'll go with that for this week. And one big thing for the Chargers too is that they're getting Russell O'Koon back. He is their left tackle. He is, when he went to Los Angeles, I think it was San Diego at the time, but when he first went there, it was this huge need and he filled it, their offense immediately became more efficient, Melvin Gordon got better and it shouldn't be a surprise that they've struggled when he's been out with this blood clot issue that he had entering the year. And we've seen them try to run the ball, they have not. Part of that's because Mike Pouncy, their center is out. Forrest Lant, their left guard is out, but he wasn't playing that well to begin with either. So I don't view that as being a huge loss. I think the regaining of O'Koon offsets the loss of Forrest Lant at left guard by a pretty significant margin. So I think they're a very interesting team because one of the Chargers has been as healthy as they are right now. It hasn't been this year. They've got O'Koon, they've got Mike Williams, Hunter Henry and we can debate whether or not Melvin Gordon adds anything to that, but they've got the assets that they haven't had ever, basically, like it's been a very long time since all, because Hunter Henry missed all of last year except for one playoff game. We can very easily forget about that. I think two playoff games actually. So this is the healthiest they've been on offense in a very long time. And I think that that makes it advantageous to buy low on them, despite what you mentioned about the defense. I'd agree to. Excellent. All right, for me, I want to talk about the Jets again, but I don't want to talk about their spread. I want to talk about their pace and the total in this game against Jacksonville. They're facing the Jaguars down at Jacksonville and if you were looking at the full season numbers here, you would not bet the over on this game. The Jaguars are 28th in situation neutral pace according to football outsiders. The Jets are 30th and that plays well for an under. So it looks like a super slow game between two middling at best offenses. But the full season stats of the Jets are pretty misleading because before the season, we talked about Adam Gase, how he may be up in pace a bit with Sam Darnold. And when Darnold has been there, they have been a much faster team. In the three games that Darnold has started this year, they have run a play once every 28.3 seconds. That would rank 17th in the NFL if it were their full season number. But in the three games without Darnold, they ran a play once every 31.4 seconds. That would be last by one and a half seconds. Nobody else is above 30. So they were outliersly slow, which makes sense because you don't want to increase a sample on Luke Faulk at quarterback. Terrible idea. And sure, one of those games of the Jets was when they were down big to the Patriots. They ran a play every 24 and a half seconds there, but they had second half leads against both the Bills and the Cowboys. And they still ran at a faster pace in those two games than they did when Darnold was out. So they're not a crazy slow team. They're more middling. And this total kind of seems like they're treating them as being a super slow team. Neither defense here is great right now. The Jaguars are 12th against the pass based on number fires metrics, but they're now without Jalen Ramsey, Marcel Darious may not, or will not planks. He just had surgery and that's going to allow the Jets to move the ball better. The Jets are 17th defensively and they're likely without CJ Mosley. Seems like he aggravated his groin injury on Monday night and I think both teams should be able to move the ball here and the pace isn't as bad as it seems. Right now, 54% of the Bets and 57% of the Money are on the under per odds fire and it's at 41 points at some other books. So you don't have to grab it at 41 and a half. It may come down to 41 at Fandall Sportsbook before we get to Sunday, but I also think that if you look at 41 and a half, you're getting 41 and a half with no juice right now. So effectively, it's about the same. So either way, I like the over here though I don't think you need to bet this one right now. So I want the over on the Jets or the Jets and Jaguars at 41 and a half. I have no lean on the spread because the Jets offensive line is atrocious right now and the Jaguars still have talent on the defensive line but I do like the over here at 41 and a half. Any thoughts for you on that game, Ed? Yeah, I mean, I'm looking at some of these numbers. I mean, Jacksonville, overall their defense has been somewhat poor, 23rd and success rate, but it's two different stories, right? I mean, they're 10th in passing success rate and 30th in rushing success rate. So there's a big dichotomy there and obviously without Jaylen Ramsey, that changes the equation a lot when you're missing one of the best cornerbacks in the league. So those numbers definitely support what you're saying with this game. There's no Bill Belichick to confuse that God of Sam Darnold. And yeah, we'll see how many points that happened in this game. It is terrifying to bet the over on a team that looked that bad on, or for a game involving a team that looked that bad. It's just six days earlier, but... Well, you can throw up in your mouth too as you give your... Right, well, we're both gonna feel great about our bets entering Sunday. So that is the Chargers plus three and a half. I have the over on the total for the Jets and the Jaguars. That is all we have for today and this week here on Covering the Spread. Again, we had Ryan the Crystal yesterday talking some college football. We had Dr. Bob today. Ed, anything big for you over on the power rank for the rest of the week? Yeah, and that my site is up and you can check it out and you can sign up for my free email newsletter. If you want this week's newsletter, just when you sign up, you can hit reply when you do that and ask for what the newsletter was this week. And then, oh yeah, there is something very exciting, Jim. What's that? So I started to get success rate numbers for the NFL last year. And finally, I've got them for college football as well. And one of the things that I'm really good at is adjusting for strength of schedule. So all these strength of schedule adjusted success rate numbers are on my site. I wrote about it a little bit for members this week. I will start talking about it a little bit more generally, probably to my newsletter next week. But from the research that we know, like success rate should be one of the most predictive statistics. And I'm very excited to be adding it to the college football arsenal that I already have and making my predictions even better. So just another thing you can get over at the newsletter. All right, that is over at thepowerrank.com to sign up for that newsletter. Also you can check out Ed's other podcast, the football analytics show talking with Edward Egros earlier in the week. So make sure you check out both of those. I am on Twitter at Jim Sonnis, J-I-M-S-A-N-N-E-S. You can also follow the FanDuel podcast network. We also add our week eight NFL DFS preview. Myself and Brandon Cadulla earlier today, breaking down the main slate there, all the injuries that are still up in the air. So an interesting discussion there. Make sure you check that out by searching for the number fire, daily fantasy podcast feed. One final big thank you to Bob Stoll for swinging by and talking about week eight of the NFL. Thank you, Dr. Bob and Ryan as well for college football thoughts this week. And thank you to Calvin Theobald, our video producer for keeping us on the air all throughout today and chopping up those clips for the at FanDuel Twitter account. Thank you, Cal, as always. And a big thank you to everyone who tuned in for today and yesterday to get said for this weekend. I hope your bets go well. We'll talk to you again next week. This has been covering the spread right here on the FanDuel podcast network.