 This is Covering the Spread. Here are your hosts, Jim Saunas and Dr. Ed Fang. Welcome on into Covering the Spread here on the FanDuel Podcast Network. My name is Jim Saunas. I am a senior writer and analyst for Numberfire.com. Joined here by Ed Fang of thepowerrank.com. Ed, we are on to our third show, Evan Silva, coming up later today to talk NFL win totals. How are you doing today? I'm doing fantastic. You know, it's always awesome to talk to Evan. He knows so much about the NFL. I'm really excited about this show. Yeah, absolutely. And Evan, among the smartest minds when it comes to personnel. And personnel is a big key in betting win totals for NFL. So talk to Evan in just one second. But first, because we're a new show, we got to, you know, give that gentle nudge towards leaving us ratings and reviews. If you like what you hear from Evan coming up later, or if you like to hear it from Will Kapper back on Monday or JJ Zacharyson last week, please leave us a rating and review on Apple podcasts slash iTunes. I think it's still kind of called iTunes. I don't honestly know because I have a Google Pixel phone. But regardless, Ed, we got our first review for the show last week. Yeah, actually, I just looked. I think we have eight, but I don't want it. Yeah, I just looked. I don't want to send a shout out and thank you to Bethany. She emailed me. She's how much a fan she is of you, Jim and JJ Zacharyson. And she's been following my stuff as well. Just big thank you to her for just supporting us and she left us a review. So thank you. And if you guys enjoy what you're hearing, the reviews really help us get exposed to other people. It kind of works with the Apple podcast algorithms. So we pop up in other people's feeds that might be listening to other football podcasts. So anything you can do in that way would be awesome. And Bethany also asked the smartest questions on Twitter. And I always appreciate those as well. Make sure you subscribe to covering the spread on Spotify, Apple podcasts, SoundCloud, Stitcher. Wherever you get your podcasts, it is up there. Just so you make sure you get a podcast whenever we post one because next week, a bit of a different schedule because I am going on vacation to the most desirable vacation locales, South Dakota, Aberdeen, South Dakota, wherever wants to go for their summer vacation. I'll be there next week. So a bit of a different schedule. But if you subscribe to covering the spread, you'll get the podcast right as it is posted back on Monday. We talked NBA championship futures with Whalecapper. Make sure you check that out. We went through how good of a value a team has to be in order to justify tying up bankroll for almost a full year and betting NBA futures. We also discussed all the changes for the Warriors, Lakers, Clippers, Rockets and their outlook for this year, but also teams that Whalecapper thinks might be undervalued right now. Looking forward to having Whalecapper back on soon because he has a lot of fun to talk to. Of course, JJ talked NFL player props last week. You can buy it all those on the Covering the Spread podcast feed. Again, coming up in just one second, we're going to bring on Evan Silva of EstablishTheRun.com. His new site just started with Adam Levitan. Another super, super smart guy in the football sphere. You can follow Evan on Twitter at Evan Silva. No underscores there. We're going to talk NFL win totals, where the value lies for 2019 in just one second. But first, if you want to 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 of up to $500 in site credit. Visit sportsbook.fanduel.com for more details, terms and condition apply, must be 21 plus and present, physically present, in New Jersey or now Pennsylvania. Gambling problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER-EVAN-SILVA coming up next. Let's bring Evan Silva into covering the spread. Evan, you are in the middle of launching a brand new site called EstablishTheRun.com. We've got training camps ramping up. Preseason DFS just around the corner. Are you sleeping or are you just like running off of fumes by this point? How are you operating right now? Well, I'm taking naps. I'm sleeping 12 hours at night. I'm trying to get rested for the season, man. Your preseason DFS right around the corner, August 1st, man. That is like 20. That's your prime time to shine. That's the best ROI DFS sport on the planet right now, I think, unless you're like some WNBA or Tests expert. But yeah, I mean, if you like to play DFS and actually win money, because it's really hard to win daily fantasy money these days, just playing regular season DFS. I mean, it's fun and you can't win money. I'm not saying don't. Definitely do. I do. I play every single week. But if you actually want to win money, your chances at making a significant ROI are much higher playing preseason DFS than playing regular season DFS. I know preseason DFS is part of the whole package here at EstablishTheRun.com. So Evan, tell me about Establish The Run, what you're offering during the season, and kind of the game plan for the site as you gear up for your first year. Yeah, so Adam Levitan and I started this new website. We hired as writers Pat Thorman, long time of pro football focus. Josh Hermsmeyer of 538, maybe the best pure data analyst going right now in media behind you guys. And then we're trying to turn it into kind of a one-stop shop just for all football covers, because I try to cover the league year round. It's not just a fantasy thing. I cover free agency. I cover draft. I've had some pretty good success predicting the NFL draft for the past few years. I love to watch and study college prospects and podcast and write about them. And even after this season, my hope is that we'll be covering the XFL from a daily fantasy perspective. All right. Yeah, because I've heard word on the street is that XFL already kind of has lined stuff up with Fanduil and DraftKings. And I don't want to say that for sure, but I've heard. Yeah, I don't want to say that for sure. But I've heard rumors of that whispers, you know, little birdies talking. And I'm hopeful. I'll say that I'm very hopeful that XFL will become we'll kind of catch on as a daily fantasy sport. And so, you know, as I mentioned, I'm so excited for our preseason DFS package. It's going to be it's going to be top notch. We're going to crush it and you can find my top 150 rankings my tears, which are like extremely in depth. And then my weekly matchups column on establish the run.com where I break down every game and talk about every fantasy relevant player and going to try to incorporate more and more sports betting information as I myself learn more about how to become a better sports better. I'm not like I'm going to like I'm not going to be, you know, I'm not selling picks, you know, but as I myself learn how to become a better sports better than I will try to incorporate information that can help people in that respect. Excellent Evan. Yeah, and I remember when I first started reading your matchup reports, just impressed with the depth and every game and how long you spend in that. Want to thank you for coming on the show because we wanted to ask you about some wind totals and particularly just your process for how to find values in NFL wind totals. Are you looking at like fragility based on injuries or regression from the previous year? What is it in your process? Yeah, so on establish the run.com I have 30 of the 32 teams written up both from a fantasy perspective and then at the end I talk about wind totals and kind of, you know, where I'm leaning on each wind total and the wind totals kind of move around a little bit. They get that up. They get that down a little bit but yeah, I mean, there are a bunch of different metrics that I like to look at when evaluating the wind totals and most of them deal with regression. As you mentioned, I start with a team's previous season win-loss record in one-score games which tend to regress for the mean for better or worse. Football outsiders puts out some great metrics in terms of injury rates and those also tend to regress toward the mean the following year and I think that schedule strength has actually become kind of underrated as a metric because people kind of like look down upon it. People think that things change so much year to year. I think that that's wrong especially early in the season. We don't give ourselves enough credit for being able to predict how good or bad offenses and defenses will be. Look, you know, over the course of the season guys are going to get hurt. We're going to learn more about teams but early in the season you typically have a pretty decent handle on how good offenses and defenses are going to be after you study the coaching and the personnel changes, you know, realize how good or bad the team was in the previous season. And so I think that in the first six weeks of the season or first like four to six weeks of the season we can kind of have a little bit of an edge just by doing more work and outworking our competition. And a lot of that work does start now because we're going to learn things as training camps open. We'll see injuries, you know, find out which guys may not be healthy. When you're looking at win totals right now, Evan, are there any story lines that stand out to you that could be impactful when it comes to betting win totals for 2019? Any big stories you're watching right now? Yeah, and I'd say that it begins with the Ravens because I'm really looking hard at the over on the Ravens at eight and a half which seems to be kind of contrarian because the consensus out there is that Lamar Jackson can't throw because look like the last year last year the guy threw a lot of ducks and you know, we have like a highlight bias where big plays stand out in our minds. You know, those are things that we remember and bad plays stand out in our minds. Like Mark Sanchez will forever be a member for the black plumber, you know? And Lamar Jackson had a lot of bad tape a lot of bad throws last year but he also didn't even get first team reps until week 10. He averaged 7.1 yards per pass attempt as a rookie which was better than Andrew Luck as a rookie far better than Joe Flacco as a rookie better than Sam Darnold way better than Jared Goff way better than Derek Carr. So I think that that highlight bias you know, really it's a low light bias really it might be the best way to put it for Lamar Jackson. Influences the way that a lot of people evaluate him and actually Ed and I talked about this on his podcast but I think that, you know, especially with a remade pass catcher core, especially with you know an offensive line that is returning all five starters and you know, the the most established guys there are a second year tight end and Mark Andrews and the slot guy Willie Snead. I hope that they play Lamar Jackson a lot in the preseason. That's going to be they play first of all they played him a ton in the preseason last year but of course he was like you know a backup at the time and typically teams don't play their starting quarterbacks very much in the preseason. But I think Lamar Jackson needs those reps in the preseason. I wouldn't be surprised if he gets him, you know kind of and then the whole the holdout stuff which is mainly running back oriented and we know that running backs just don't move the needle. So I wouldn't factor that kind of stuff into my win-loss outlook for any team like I'm but I'm obviously tracking the Zeke Elliott Melbourne Gordon situations for fantasy. Absolutely. So we know the preseason could hold a lot of value for fantasy but does anything on the field influence you when it comes to betting win totals. I mean and actually this kind of maybe leads right into Lamar Jackson and how you're going to be watching him in those preseason games. Yeah aside from a situation like the Ravens where there is essentially you know a first year starter at quarterback an entirely new supporting cast. I'd say no preseason is a good time to learn about players that don't play as much in the regular season learn about the deepest parts of depth charts. See where guys are stacked up on the depth chart. You know you'll see a guy like one week he'll be with like the threes in the fours in preseason and then he has a big game and they give him a shot with the twos the next week. And that you know that kind of stuff will stand out not just from preseason DFS perspective but also for just like building our own depth charts and understanding hey you know if you know whatever running back goes down who might be next in line to get work. So I think it's not a good time to have takeaways about how good or bad a team is going to be in the regular season but it definitely can be very helpful in fantasy football. So let's talk about a couple of specific teams here Evan and dig into their win totals for 2019 starting off with a team that is near and dear to your hearts. Hugh Jackson is gone. The legacy of Sasha though does live with the Browns. He's got a job in the NBA now with the Browns win total but partially thanks to Sasha is now at nine and a half at Vanduul sportsbook with the under being minus 150 I think the Browns have gotten a lot of buzzes here Evan but I think that it's justified given the Odell Beckham edition given how much talent they have on their defensive line have sportsbooks done enough to account for the offseason changes the Browns have had or do you think the buzz has made the Browns bit overrated. Well from what I've seen they opened at nine wins flat and they've moved up to nine and a half in most spots but now you are getting some favorable juice on their wind total over and I've them projected as a nine to 11 win team and I like over on nine and a half still so I like that bet but I do have two pretty big concerns and I think that anytime that you make a bet whether it be you know just playing a guy in daily fantasy whether it be picking a guy in season long fantasy whether it be you know betting on a total or betting on a side you want to really look at you want to play the devil's advocate out in your mind and so what where you know what are some where some ways that this could go wrong our offensive line guru established the run dot com Brandon Thorne Thorne he has the Browns offensive line rate six worst in the lead and I agree that it's at very best a bottom 10 unit and then I'm worried about their depth as a team you look at a lot of the upper echelon teams the true upper echelon teams have kind of proven it whereas the Browns have not yet the Eagles Colts Patriots these teams have really impressive depth behind their starters the Browns have a great starting lineup but the bottom half of their roster isn't as impressive so I think that John Dorsey you know with the treasure trove of assets that Sasha Brown left behind after Sasha Brown you know laid in front of the tank and save the franchise John Dorsey has neglected two critical aspects of team building and that's offensive line play and roster depth and I think that those are two things that could prove to be the Browns Achilles heel with that said I still think they're good enough to get over nine and a half so that's where I stand with the Browns right now he mentioned the starters on the offensive line but even like the starters mean Greg Robinson was awesome for the second half of last year in the Freddie kitchens but the longer track record on him is questionable so if you've got that question mark at left tackle paired with you know the now questions they have on the right side as well I understand why there is some there's some pretty serious question marks up front for the Browns I agree that I would probably prefer the over there but I think that the offensive line mark is definitely one to keep in mind there with the Browns with Greg Robinson specifically does that does that worry you and are you trying to keep an eye on him early in the season to see if there is any regression for him from what he did last year or did you just want to kind of you know let it ride for a larger sample and trust what you saw the second after last year yeah absolutely I think they have two good offensive linemen two good offensive linemen and it's JC Treader the center who is kind of battle injuries in his career and it's a left guard Joel Batonia who's starting to get up there a little bit in age and then you have Greg Robinson who you know I've talked to like Browns like game tape analysts and you know they talk about how he was very much helped by the scheme helped by having tight end help last year and they're going to need to help him they signed Demetris Harris from the chiefs and he's going to essentially act as a six offensive linemen but when you have to devote another you know another guy who could be running a route to blocking on the offensive line essentially you know you're putting yourself at a little bit of a disadvantage Chris Hubbard went from their right tackle went from you know playing under Mike Munchak with the Steelers and really being a sit like a swing offensive linemen Pittsburgh to being a full-time starter last year right tackle wasn't very good and they traded away their best offensive linemen Kevin Zeitler and they're trying to replace him with you know the potential bus that John Dorsey drafted last year with the 33rd overall pick Austin Corbett and I mean this guy has not even been able to beat out Kyle Kalis an undrafted guy so there's definitely some volatility involved in this offensive line and they're going to have to work around that the good news is that they did work around it to some extent last year they had the same set of tackles in the second half with you know after Freddy kitchens replaced Hugh Jackson as the and Todd Haley as the offensive mastermind and also Todd Monk in their offensive coordinator worked with a kind of sub par offensive line last year in Tampa Bay and they finished top four in the NFL in yards per play so they do I think that they have enough like smarts in the coaching staff to work around this but it's still a concern. Yeah so having the the chiefs learned that Tyree kill will not be suspended they've added a past Russia Frank Clark to the defense they're 10 and a half wins there's plus one 15 juice on over where you sit with the chiefs right now. Yeah added Tyree and Matthew to their defense although they did lose Dee Ford and Justin Houston and Chris Jones their stud defensive tackle looks like he might hold out and the chiefs were one of the healthiest teams in the league last year I think there's a good chance that the chargers overtake them this year is the best team in the AFC West Division we remember you know Phillip Rivers and the chargers had a comeback win at Arrowhead last season one of the best games of the year and that was in a game where Keenan Allen went out of the game after like 12 snaps and based on opponent with wind totals the chiefs face the seventh toughest schedule in the league this year so I think I would generally not just I just wouldn't mess with this bet and you know but I but I think if you were you know gun to the head I'd probably take the under on 10 and a half because I think that they're more of a 9 to 11 win team then 10 to 12 and so that's kind of how and that's scary as hell though because Patrick Holmes is so damn good. Yeah and a big part of betting is knowing when not to bet too right yeah I mean they're just some wind totals where you just want to be like you know pass you know you really want to pick out like five to six you know last year picked out like five to six and hit on like you know four of the six and that's what you know that's where you want to be because you're not going to be able to get everything right you know because this stuff is hard to predict and games are decided by like fumble recovery rate and you know crazy shit you know and but yeah I think that the best way to do it is just pick out like the in the five or six that you like the most and bet the bit bet those and the chiefs would be like bottom five. So one of the busiest teams right now is the Cardinals they brought in Cliff Kingsbury they drafted Kyler Murray Kyler Murray the most efficient quarterback consistent season in the history of college football the over on their five win total is minus 120 and I think for fantasy we're going to love the Cardinals I think that Pat Thorman is going to talk about the Cardinals pretty often and his column on establish the run but it's a rookie head coach a rookie a rookie quarterback some shakiness on their offensive line as well and though Patrick Peterson for the first six games when you get the win total here for the Cardinals do you see any value in either side of that line. So here's the thing I think that the only bet here pretty much is over you know it's a pretty rare circumstance where betting the under on five wins is a plus expected value move in general because the NFL has so much variance because of the damn fumble recovery rate you know and the one score outcomes go so much into determining final record so I think it would just very rare circumstance where betting the under on five wins would be smart. So I think if you're going to bet him at all you pretty much have to bet the over but with that said you know this would be like a middle of the pack team in terms of not in terms of how good I think they're going to be although they might be in the middle of the pack but in terms of like if I was going to rank teams to bet based on their win totals it wouldn't be one that I'm super excited about but I wouldn't be afraid of it but losing Patrick Peterson for six games. I mean that really really hurts here from a win total perspective. Absolutely. Evan the Rams has some big changes on their offensive line but there's got to be optimism around this team. Year three with Sean McVeigh hopefully getting a healthy Cooper cutback. What do you think about them at 10 and a half wins with minus 150 on the under. They talk about their losses up front it's pretty concerning the replacements to the guys that they lost up front on the interior offensive line. Roger Saffold and John Sullivan are Joseph Noteboom and Brian Allen. These guys have combined to play 110 career snaps in the NFL. Roger Saffold and John Sullivan 236 career starts and you know the difference between Jared golf's performance when he was kept clean versus when he has been under pressure is really stark last year he was number four in the NFL in passer rating in clean pockets but he was number 22 in the NFL out of 30 against pressure and his 2018 trajectory I think is concerning at least on paper from December on eight game sample like all of December in the playoffs completed just 57.7 percent of his passes you average six and a half yards for pass attempt and he had a 7 to 8 touchdown interception ratio and he was under a pressure a lot more than usual during that time span he did not have Cooper Cup which also you know people draw straight line between that and his production and I get that but is Cooper Cup going to come back and be you know the quick twitch slot receiver coming off a torn ACL that he you know has been early in his career I'm not entirely sold on that so I'm very much in the camp that believes that Jared golf is a product of the sum of his parts as opposed to a true like field general and orchestrator and I think the parts around him are worse this year and so I kind of like the under where you can win even if they just win 10 games I also think that every team in the NFC West or at least the 49ers and Cardinals for sure are going to be better than last year I'm not sure about the Seahawks they might actually be worse but they still have Russell Wilson as their quarterback so not the easiest division to play in. Yeah definitely not and Joseph no boom also transitioning to guard and Drachen has a tackle so an extra little obstacle in there for them as well you mentioned the Ravens is a team you're watching closely here early on any other team stand out to you when you were doing your team previous Evan as potentially having inefficient wind totals that you know are in those top five or six you're looking to bet for 2019. Yeah so and I know I just talked about how betting the under on low wind total teams is dicey and probably minus expected value but even after the Dolphins wind total dropped from five to four and a half I think I still like the under because so you're getting it with plus juice now after the total drops so the plus you know you're getting good juice on it and I very much think that this is a zero to four wind team Brandon Thorne again our offensive line guru has the Dolphins with easily the worst offensive line in the league like there's like a gap between them in the Texans on paper and we already know pretty much that multiple quarterbacks are going to play this year the past rush is honestly hilarious Charles Harris and then like they have no one in terms of past rush they're not stopping anyone on defense they faced one of the ten toughest schedules in the NFL based on opposing wind totals and I think this team is worse than that Browns team that went 0 and 16 in terms of personnel in terms of coaching doesn't get worse than Hugh Jackson and Greg well but in terms of personnel I think that this is it's a way worse team in terms of personnel than that 0 and 16 Browns team. Alrighty that is Evan Silva of establish the run calm Evan we're going to let you go so you can get some sleep get one of those naps in get yourself ready for some preseason DFS looking forward to reading all your content up on establish the run will hopefully talk to you again soon thanks for coming on thanks for having me fellas covering the future one final thank you once again to Evan Silva of establish the run calm for joining us again to follow him on Twitter at Evan Silva and all this work is up on establish the run.com let's move now to cover in the future of the segment we take a look ahead and look at our numbers look at our processes and try to find some bets that we view as being plus EV as of right now and we've been talking about your college football rankings your college football wind totals up on the power rank calm trying to find some value there we're going to go more in depth on those next week on Tuesday when you look at those numbers right now is there one that stands out to you that you really want to hammer home right now yeah I mean the team I really want to talk about as the Nebraska corn huskers so this is a team that doesn't necessarily look great in my preseason rankings they're 50 second and there's a really good reason why they don't look particularly good I have a linear regression model that does these preseason rankings and they look over a four year period of team history and the way I measure how good a team has performed is through my team rankings they essentially take margin of victory in games and adjust restraint the schedule now when you look at Nebraska over the last four years it's not a rosy picture they were 50th last year in 2018 that was Scott Frost first year they were four and eight they were definitely a better team than four and eight which we'll get into but the year before that they were 68 the my rank rankings 2007 that was good enough to get Mike Riley fired 49th in 2016 so again you know not a great team 46 in 2015 and my you know my model doesn't take that long 2015 too seriously but but it's in there because teams tend to persist in college football so Nebraska is going to get preseason top 25 hype and and I actually think this team does have a lot of upside and it all kind of starts with a quarterback position Adrian Martinez was was really really good as a true freshman last year in 2018 led this team and the offense was pretty good but the other reason that I think this team has a lot of upside is the quarterback coaching so the quarterback coach is named Mario Redusco and he's an interesting character who's Bruce Feldman recently profiled him in the athletic and you know this is a guy that has like motion control textbooks on his bookshelf right next to Bill Walsh and and Nietzsche so he's a very intellectual guy but but what's really interesting is his results so he was in northern Illinois for a while he joined Scott Frost at Oregon and you know we're not going to give him credit for coaching Marcus Mariota in his last year in college but then the two of those guys went to central Florida and in their first year they had a freshman quarterback named Mackenzie Milton and their past offense was terrible they were a hundred 18th when I look at adjusted yards per attempts not good bottom 10 type FBS stuff the next year after a year of tutelage under Redusco they were second in the nation and that's when they really made that leap I think I'm pretty sure this year they were 13 and 0 national champions baby yeah exactly and you know a jump from bottom 10 to top 2 is is remarkable and you know I noticed that jump back in 2017 and you know it's like oh well Scott Frost is great you know you got the quarterback playing his game and throwing and but when you really look into it it's probably the quarterback coaching with Redusco and the things that he's doing and the way he's training these guys and above and beyond that like it's really Adrian Martinez the kids clearly talented if he can take any kind of leap beyond what he did last year I think they're going to be pretty good and and that's why you're going to see this team in top 25 polls this year they do have some issues on defense especially the interior of the defensive line they weren't particularly good last year and all those guys are back this year but you know it's my model says 6.6 wins and this is an example of where you don't say oh my model has under 8.5 wins let's go bet it actually don't think that's a bet at all and and I just want to be clear about you know where analytics comes in like you it is a great objective baseline for you to start evaluating these teams but you really need to know the story behind these teams and I don't really like 8.5 wins I think Nebraska is going to be very interesting team and one I'll be watching very closely in 2018 and again like we discussed with Evan there's value in knowing when you shouldn't make a bet and I think that that's potentially one of the cases here I know you're in Big Ten country out in Michigan now have you ever been to Lincoln for a game? I have not I hear it's pretty remarkable you got to go so I grew up in Minnesota and Minnesotans like to claim that they are nice like Minnesota nice as a thing right they have nothing on Nebraska people interesting like yeah I remember yeah like I was I was doing radio with Northwestern and fly with the team and stuff and they had defeated Northwestern on a Hail Mary and as we were walking back to the bus with the Northwestern players all the Nebraska fans were saying oh you guys played great we hope we do well the rest of the season and I was like so confused I'm like used to like Michigan State fans like right flipping me off across the street and the even the Nebraska people are just like hey hope you have a great rest of the season have a nice flight back and I'm like I want to live here and it's like I've never had the urge to live in Lincoln Nebraska until that exact moment yeah that's really interesting I've heard that they're even they even treat Texas fans that way from back in their big 12 rivalry days that's a true test yes yes exactly yeah I mean there you know that T that fan base went through some remarkable turmoil last year in terms of an oh and six start and what was interesting about that oh and six start was that you know they had better yards per play in five out of those six games I mean they got they got stomped by Michigan game I was at here at the big house but besides that game they actually played pretty well and when you get better yards per play then an opposing team you went about 80% of the time so a lot of bad luck in that stretch obviously were better four and six down the last games and and you know I you know I talked about last time about Texas I don't see a lot of optimism there kind of believe my model there it's just not the case here I mentioned agent Martinez we may be talking about him on Monday actually yeah because Edward e-gross is going to join us on Monday to talk Heisman betting some bets he likes whether he likes betting to a tongue of ILOA and and the favorites or if he'd rather go a little bit longer this bet up on Fandall's sports book about Trevor Lawrence or Tua versus the fields we'll talk about that as well so follow Edward e-gross on Twitter as well we'll talk to him on Monday and Ed you talked about some times where you want to go counter to the analytics and I actually I'm not a similar vein here from my cover in the future segment because if you go to Number Fire right now and check out the team rankings they they project the Atlanta Falcons as having 21% odds making the playoffs and if Fandall's sports book the Falcons are plus 138 to make the playoffs which is an implied probability of 42% which is double what Number Fire has but I still think I want to bet the Falcons to make the playoffs because I think those odds are too long for a quarterback who is as efficient as Matt Ryan has been and who is as efficient as I expect Matt Ryan to be this year because he finished sixth last year in net expected points per drop back he was third in overall expected points added as a passer and if you look at Ryan's career that's the fourth time in 11 seasons he has been the top five in total padding passing net of times throughout his career and those guys don't miss the playoffs very often he has been in the top 10 in net expected points added as a passer five straight seasons and now he gets a beefed up offensive line Chris Lindstrom and Caleb McGarry are on the right side of that line that generally leads to an increased offensive efficiency it's a second year of Calvin Ridley though he did get looked like he pulled this handy in practice on Thursday fourth year of Austin Hooper it's keeping on Ridley but this is an offense that's probably going to score a ton of points this year and it's a defense that's set for pretty major in injury regression because last year they're ranked 25th in adjusted games lost on defense according to football outsider isn't it wasn't just that they lost you know game today injuries they were big losses Keanu Neal Dion Jones those are two of the biggest players in the defense and they both got hurt early on and Jones came back later on but Neal did not and that's a big loss for a defense right at the middle of the field if their defense can with how good I expect this offense to be personally they can win a lot of games so yes the numbers you know at number fire don't give them the best odds to make the playoffs but I think that when you combine injury regression defensively with how efficient I expect Matt Ryan to be with that beefed up offensive line and the receivers that he has I think it does make sense to bet the Falcons to make the playoffs at 138 the NFC South has an aging Drew Brees there one not sure they'll be good though and Cam Newton some questions around his shoulder too so I think the Falcons are actually a pretty good bet to make the playoffs and even though the numbers don't back it up I kind of like him at plus 138 and any thoughts for you on the Falcons here for 2019 I mean I completely agree with you about what I think about the offense Matt Ryan Julio Jones and everything you said I'm a little bit worried about the defense aside of the ball sure I feel like you know last year when I look at success rate adjusted for strength the schedule they were 29th the previous years it was one of those things where they kind of looked okay in my numbers when I was looking at yards for past attempts adjusted for schedule but it never really felt like a great defense and then obviously with some injuries last year and then not a lot of you know big acquisitions on that side of the ball in the off season right so that that's the only thing that concerns me about that team right now you know get win totals and back out NFL rankings from them you know Falcons are 11th 12th so I think that's about right you know and and you know really depends on the defense aside of the ball you know like how how great can the offense be you know can the defense get to mediocre I think that's what you got to be the balance there is really going to decide their fate the season and I think that the the points that backs up what you were saying there is that it implies our defense is fragile and there's a lot of fragility there because there's not enough depth and that's a concern for sure so I think that that is a good counterpoint to make for sure and something to keep in mind here at the Falcons but plus 138 I'll take that for sure that is all we have for this week on covering the spread and anything for you over at the power rank this week or anything on your podcast yeah actually I had Gadoon Corollos he goes by Spanky on Twitter he's a professional sports better and you know I've known Spanky and I had him on the show and I learned a ton I was like I walked away from that my mind was really changed I mean not necessarily changed but his approach is so different from kind of what you hear a lot in the sports betting world I think it's worth a listen whether you bet on games or not I think it was just that interesting and he's so passionate about what he does right and you don't often get people who do this for open about his methods you know when this when it could potentially affect his business I thought he was super generous with with his information and football analytics show most recent episode yeah and you can find that wherever you get podcasts I was listening on Spotify today so you can find it there that's my preferred place for podcast so make sure you find that there and follow Ed on Twitter at the power rank you can also subscribe rate interview wherever you get your podcasts covering the spread is up there I am at Jim Saunders J-I-M-S-A-N-N-E-S you can also follow the Fanduel podcast network at Fanduel podcast we want to thank everybody for tuning in for today two episodes next week Monday and Tuesday talking a lot of college football and I am pumped to dive into that we'll talk to you all then this has been covering the spread here on the Fanduel podcast network