 This is covering the spread here are your hosts Jim Saunas and Dr. Ed Fang What is going on everybody welcome on into covering the spread? That's right here on the fan to a podcast network in number fire calm where today We are taking a look at the football outsiders projections for 2020 talking with Aaron shots the creator of DVO a the editor-in-chief of football outsiders and So much more to get you set for 2020 NFL. My name is Jim Saunas I am a senior writer and analyst for number fire calm joint here as always by Ed Fang You can find his work over at the power ink calm Ed We are a couple of weeks now into this weird overlap of MLB NBA NHL whatever else you may have it It's been a fun ride so far. How you doing? I'm doing pretty good. It's nice So first of all my kids are back at school So I get you know, I have a little bit more time You know kind of during the day sit down have some lunch like around one and hey, boom There's an NBA playoff game That's starting one of the first in the day and it's kind of what you know There's like these random little things that the pandemic makes that are actually kind of nice like getting a playoff game at you Know one o'clock in the afternoon. Yeah, so that's been pretty good And then the Champions League has gotten moved back to so That's been going on You know had some of the I guess quarter finals last week Had a chance to watch Bayern Munich just destroy Barcelona. It was a little embarrassing for for the Spaniards and then Yeah, I had to give I was giving a kid a hard time I had a Barcelona shirt on and I don't think he had any idea why I was doing him a hard time about his Barcelona jersey But it was kind of like But that that's been a lot of fun as well It's been a weird like this whole situation like my Twitter timeline is a mess because like I'm probably watching baseball because you know DFS stuff betting stuff. Someone else is watching They're watching Basketball someone's watching hockey and like everyone's tweeting about and someone's watching the bar so the Barcelona game And like I can't keep up with people what people are talking about on Twitter And I haven't had a feeling in a long time, but it's so nice to have activity on my Twitter feed again Like this is this is a delight. I love it. Right. Yeah, absolutely And you know, you can just kind of you know, I mean sometimes like you just jump on Twitter in Afternoons like oh, yeah, that's right. Not all the Champions League game is going on today Right or people complain about something else, you know And it's it's fun just to have things to try to catch up with once again So it's been fun to have activity with sports once again And hopefully get to have that for a very long time as mentioned We're gonna have Aaron shots on today if you don't know Aaron make sure you check him out on Twitter But you should know Aaron by now, but check him out on Twitter at fo underscore a shots Again, he is the editor-in-chief of football outsiders. He is the creator of DVO a so kind of this mythic creature I would say within the sports analyst community for the work. He's done there We're gonna talk to him about the football outsiders almanac year 16 of publishing that we're talking about there 2020 DVO a projections and his outlook for subcommittee NFL season If we see if we can find some betting edges based on what football outsiders numbers say before we do that though Quick reminder to subscribe to cover in the spread wherever you get your podcast We've had a lot of good stuff recently had Orlando Scandrick the former cornerback for the Dallas Cowboys on two weeks ago He talked about the impact of a lack of preseason what that does whether advantageous offense versus defense Orlando talked about that two weeks ago last week Drew Dinsick whalecapper was on to break down Also, not just the NFL but also the NBA bubble and you know, it's been an interesting couple of days with the the bucks Include the the bucks in the and the lake because I must have the Cavaliers. I think a LeBron, but adjustment apparently More than a year later. I'm still getting used to it But good thoughts from Drew there So make sure you check out both those by checking for covering the spread wherever you get your podcast And if you like what you hear leave us a rating and review as well before we get to Aaron Gotta go back to last week talk some NASCAR in covering the future recapping that then we'll dive into our discussion with Aaron covering the past Last week here on covering the future I was talking about the NASCAR race down at the Daytona road course and how I wanted to bet Martin Truex Despite the fact that it was kind of this weird race. He was six to one And I wanted him to win in Daytona I thought it was a good number despite the fact that it was short in a high variance race and Truex was Crazy fast early on he passed a Denny Hamlin for the lead and then led most of the opening stage He decided to pit to get track position going into the second stage and as someone who bets Truex I like that because I don't care about stage points. They don't benefit me So I was psyched about that he took the lead back during the second stage and Did the same thing during the second stage you pitted from the lead in order to give himself better track position for the final stage But while he was pitting he was penalized for speeding on pit road and because of the timing of this What usually would have been a pass through penalty was instead something that forced him to restart at the end of the longest line So instead of you know, like a 20 second penalty, which given the way things were running at that time Would have been about four or five spots. It was instead about 20 positions And that was tough But because his car was so good. He was able to battle his way back up there We started fifth on a late caution and gave it a run Worked his way back up to third but couldn't quite come through he and chase Elliott clearly the fastest cars in the race They both had the the one and two cars in fastest laps total run. So I think the process was good didn't work as he finished third another race where pit lane bit me But couldn't quite get over the top, but I am okay with the process They're an ed if you're wondering ryan blaney finished 31st. So I'm glad I was not on there this past weekend So we picked a good spot to jump off of ryan blaney. Sounds good Before we take a look at erin shots and discuss his football outsiders projections for this year The nba playoffs are upon us and fan duel has you covered Compete in the mountain dew nba free play now through september 4th For your chance to win your seat in a virtual event with nba legends gary patin and ray allen With each entry you'll be entered into the king of the mountain three-point bonus for your chance to win a share of $15,000 brought to you by mountain dew official sponsor of the nba For more details as a fan duel.com or download the fan duel app today Eligibility restrictions apply. Let's bring on erin shots now find him on twitter at f o underscore a Shots he again is editor-in-chief of football outsiders the creator of vvoa We're talking about the football outsiders almanac for 2020 if you want a link to the almanac It is in the notes for this podcast over on number fire.com directly into that you can find that there Let's talk some nfl though with erin shots Covering the present Let's bring erin shots into covering the spread to talk some 2020 nfl erin. I appreciate you coming on for today How are you doing? I'm doing about the same as everyone else That's that's my answer during covid 19 because saying oh i'm doing great is a little It's a little wrong there, but you know i'm not doing any worse than anybody else is right now If you were doing great, we'd have some bigger questions to ask you at that point because it's like how much do you like your house? Right exactly It's a very deep question. I think that there are more questions that come from i'm great than i'm terrible So I I appreciate the i'm as good as everyone else. I think that's a a good way to handle this And I think it's been weird for me here and because like we're talking football with you But like it doesn't feel like football season yet I know we've had some like training camp tweets and stuff like that But do you feel like disoriented with no preseason going on? Does it feel strange right now? Yeah, it feels it feels a little weird first of all it feels weird because we're the one sport that's gone on at its usual schedule Yeah, right all the other sports had to stop Restart some sports are in bubbles sports without fans college football Some conferences are canceling the nfl is the one sport that's basically gone ahead Almost at its regular pace So even that is disorienting because the whole rest of the sports calendar has been off But then the fact that there's no preseason games Is weird like the rhythm of the preseason is off Yeah, it's been strange and I was like so I was looking at the the football almanac and like You published this in like mid july correct? Yes Was there like trepidation for you when you're going through all the countless hours of editing this thing about like You know because you were probably doing this back way earlier when we didn't really know what the nfl Is going to look like how nerve wracking was that for you to put that work in not knowing what things would look like What else was I going to do with my time? We went forward like the season was going to happen the way the season always happens and it was you know I mean if it's not going to then all this work is for not but This is what I do for a living so you know, I'm very lucky actually that in everything that's going on I was able to continue to do for a living what I do for a living So we just kept working on the book like there was going to be a season and Hope that we weren't going to have the rug pulled out from under us already I mean there's a whole college section of the book. That's basically an alternative history novel of support Yeah, you guys put a lot of work into the college I mean, I think it's the top 50 teams that you have summaries on Yeah, and number projections for all the teams that includes all of their original schedules So even the teams that are going to play aren't going to play the schedule that we have them listed as play right That's tough. So 11 and a half No, nobody's getting 11 nobody's getting 11 wins this year, right But this is the 16th year you've done this. Um, so congratulations on that. That's really cool What brought about the idea of publishing this almanac yearly and has gotten you through 16 years Well, it started out actually as pro football perspectives So when I first started football outsiders in 2003 We were approached by baseball perspective and they were doing books in other sports with their publisher at the time There was a basketball book that was written by john Hollinger And there was a football book and they asked us to take over the football book starting in 2005 So our first four books are actually called pro football perspectives and they were done by actual publishers And then starting with 2009 We started to self publish and we changed the name of the book to football outsiders almanac So there've been 12 almanacs and then the four perspectives before that That is a lot of publishing and a lot of work and a lot of editing that has gone into that So congratulations on getting that far But the other reason we want to talk to you today outside of just the almanac, which we'll get back to But the inventor of dvoa dvoa is a number that a lot of us lean on when it comes to discussing the nfl trying to judge strength and all those things When did you first concoct dvoa and what led to that creation as well? Well, I was playing around with things in 2002 And I ended up with a database of every play in the season And I was just trying to think of some ideas of what to do with So it starts with the basic idea from the book the hidden game of football of success points that each play is successful or not successful based on the down and distance and then that eventually developed into needing to compare Success points to some sort of average because we ended up with mike allsdott as the most valuable running back in the league in 2002 And the reason why is that mike allsdott tended to get the ball in situations where success was likely right He was carrying the ball in third and one. He was carrying the ball at the goal line So there needed to be something to control for the fact that most running backs have success on third and one, right? That it's not like third and ten So that's where the over average came in and then the system has developed gradually over time since there Excellent So we're going to talk about the football outside of the almanac I've used it every year to do my nfl prep. I highly recommend that anyone interested Check it out. You have each team's dva dvoa projection for the upcoming season. Can you just give us a bird's-eye view of how that comes about? Sure, there's a number of variables that go into it. It starts with their dvoa from the last three years With last year counting about six times as much as either two or three years ago But we do account for two and three years ago because teams do tend sometimes to settle back into their like longer term pattern And starting with dvoa means we're already filtering out a lot of luck Based, you know differences that you know The reasons why a lot of people are high on the cowboys this year, right? Is because their underlying performance last year was much better than their actual win-loss record Well dvoa already You know controls for that because their dvoa was much better than their win-loss record would normally Suggest so by starting with dvoa We're already starting with you know Dallas up and Green Bay down and the teams that their underlying statistics last year didn't match their win-loss record Then there's variables for things like coaching continuity offensive line continuity performance in a couple of specific places and then personnel changes So we do account for personnel changes on both offense and defense and then the quarterback on offense We do a specific quarterback projection That way when a team changes quarterbacks like for example going from james winston to tom brady We can try to account for what that different quarterback is going to mean although it's you know, you can't ever Project a quarterback without including Some sort of team, you know the team is going to play some role in those numbers We can't pot. You know totally separate what brady's done the last couple years from who he had on the patriots You can't separate winston from who he had on the bucks and so on and so forth Aaron um, you've been on my podcast and talked about uh, the statistical significance of a wade philips being your defensive coordinator What is your reaction to the fact that he is jobless right now? Yeah, I I mean, I hope he's jobless because he wants to be because he shouldn't be jobless because He should be he's he's one of the best if not the best defensive coordinator of the last 30 years So people ask us about whether we control for specific coaches And the problem is there's very few coaches who have been with different organizations with enough different organizations That you have a real sample size that you can use to judge What their impact is on teams, right? How much is um, Sean mcvay How much is it Sean mcvay and how much is it the rams or jarragoff or? You know Right So if mcvay suddenly went to another team you you couldn't say oh well This team is going to be x better because of mcvay because you don't know how much of mcvay was mcvay philips has been with so many teams by this point that you can actually look and see That defenses get better when wade philips shows up You can't account for that in a way. You can't for other uh, especially for other Assistant coaches Yeah, do you get a 35 year old andrew whitworth along with sean mcvay when he moves like is that a situation? So yeah, I think that that makes a lot of sense and a lot of factors And that's the issue with football is a lot of factors not a lot of sample size pretty much anywhere It definitely makes things tough for you, but then makes it more impressive when the numbers bear out So let's talk about other stuff along with the dvo a projections in the almanac You have projected win totals. You got playoff odds super bowl odds, etc. etc for every single team And that's always tough to begin with but now this year we have Additional uncertainty with covet 19. So do you have to make any manual tweaks to those to adjust for? Potential additional uncertainty relative to usual Well, obviously you can't include covet 19 in your projection system If you're doing statistical projections because there's no past covet 19 seasons to use as an example. Thankfully Um, we made a decision not to make any subjective changes based on covet 19 And I think the reason why is our projections are naturally very conservative like our projections the way that we Simulate wins and losses End up with teams averaging very close to eight and eight like teams get very clustered around eight and eight Almost every team in the league ends up between six and nine wins as their average for example And so I think that we all believe that the effect of covet 19 is going to be to group teams closer together because You don't know which players are going to suddenly disappear in the middle of the season It's going to have sort of a random effect on certain teams and you know It's not going to treat the good teams any different than the bad teams, but good teams will be losing better personnel So it's going to bring things closer to eight and eight. So since we already had a really conservative system We didn't feel like it made sense to make a subjective manual change that would bring the team even closer to eight and eight But it's certainly it's tough to balance It's not a good year to play favorites and that at the same time Our projection has three teams far and ahead away from the rest of the league So by our projection system, we really like three favorites, but it's not a good year to play favorites Um, were you surprised can you can you go over those three top teams and and whether he's whether you're surprised that any of them were there No, I think the teams make a lot of sense. They're teams that are uh, in particular two of them are very balanced between offense and defense Um, and the other one has the best offensive projection because they have the best quarterback So the three teams that we have ahead of everybody else are new orleans kansas city And then a little bit behind them baltimore Baltimore was the best team in the league during the regular season last year So it shouldn't surprise anybody that we have them Very far ahead New orleans has been really strong in the regular season for years now on both offense and defense. It's they've had these crazy playoff losses But the fact is that the team has been very strong in the regular season and then kansas city has the best offense And offense is easier to predict than predict than defense So for example, all three of those teams make the playoff at least 70 of the time And no other team we have above 60 percent All three of those teams win the super bowl at least 10 of the time and we don't have any other team above five percent That's very interesting And I think that that's even with the conservatism of the of the projections Which shows you how optimistic the numbers are about those three teams and erin along those same lines You know talking about surprises relative to expectation like we all have our thoughts about teams before we run These numbers and stuff like that Were there any surprises for you personally before you ran the dvo a numbers for this year? Were there any teams that popped up as being different from where you expected them to be going in? I think if if I had just Ranked every team subjectively at the beginning of the process I probably would not have ended up with indianapolis as high Or jacksonville as high As I ended up with by jacksonville as high. I mean not last They're like 26 through 27th, right? Like they're not good Right, but there are reasons to believe that they are not the worst team in the league like people think now There's a subjective reason to believe that they are the worst team in the league There's a subjective reason to believe that they might be just tanking the season Right like I can't control for that in my number, right? But they were something like the 26th best offense last year. I don't see why We should expect that they're suddenly going to become the worst offense when they were 26th last year I think it's more likely that they're like 26 again um But indianapolis for one thing they have the easiest projected schedule Uh, and then for other reasons about sort of the way things bounce back and you know The fact that we use three years of data rather than just one their defense ended up a little bit better than I expected and uh, you know, the way that we treat the aging quarterbacks is It's tough you because there haven't really been a lot of quarterbacks at this age in the future I mean in the past we're not looking at age as much as we're looking at performance over the last two or three years So you it sees raffles burger rivers and brady all bouncing back a little bit Which affects like indianapolis's projection. So we ended up with indianapolis Higher than I think I would have expected they end up. I think if In projected wins it might be sixth now after seattle added jamal adam Uh, but but having the easiest schedule in the league is part of that Excellent So the full almond act shows uh, how often each team is going to Finish in a different win range from super bowl contender to you know, worst team whether that's jacksonville Which team do you think is going to have kind of like the most high variance results? Like what's what's the most intriguing team to you? So I looked this up earlier which teams had the highest variance and I don't have any variables in here that specifically try to create variance I've actually thought about doing that in the future. For example, I wonder if It might make the system more accurate to have a variable for the backup quarterback As well as a variable for the starting quarterback because in the you know, when you do end up with the backup quarterback There's a big difference between having james winston And having some fifth round rookie who nobody's ever heard of or like logan white side or something wood side logan wood side um So uh tampa bay though had a wide range Pittsburgh had a wide range and new england had a wide range. Those were the three widest ranges A lot of that has to do with um defensive regression that's expected from Pittsburgh and new england because their defenses were so dependent on turnovers Last year, but a lot of it also has to do with sort of the not being sure what you're getting at at quarterback with those teams Yeah, and they're easily the three most drastic ones And I think that the the pittsburgh one is pertinent too as you were just talking about the back of quarterback because There's a pretty massive gap between ben rothelsberger and mason rudolf regardless of you expect mason rudolf to be somewhat better than what he was last year It makes sense. So I'd be interested to see how that would work as well Let's talk about playoffs here because over at vandal sportsbook You can bet yes or no on the playoffs for every single team and like we mentioned You have those literal numbers available to you uh via the the projections Any teams seem to present a bunch of value in either direction based on the current odds at vandal Yeah, this is one where I think we're going out a bit on a limb compared to everybody else But the san francisco 49ers to miss the playoffs at plus 300 Really like that one not that I think they're gonna miss the playoffs I I have a feeling we have them a little bit too low, but In they only make the playoffs in about half of our simulations Because of the fact that we account account for the last three years Not just the last year San francisco last year was the first team in 35 years of dvoa To improve by 20 percent on both sides of the ball It had never happened before that a team had improved by so much on both sides And there's a little bit of this thing called the plexiglass principle Which suggests that for most teams when they improve dramatically from year one to year two They have some retrenchment in year three when you combine that with some of the personnel changes that they've made Losing a manual standards on offense losing the forest buck they're on defense We're expecting them to come back to the pack a little bit and then also a hard schedule being in a really hard division Right. Like we have all four nfc west teams projected with an average over 8.0 with So, you know, if you ask me to bet You know even money, I would say san francisco will make the playoffs But if you're getting plus 300 on them missing the playoffs, I think that's a really good bet Yeah, and san francisco's defense was so good and you already talked about how defensive performance is not very predictable from your year As much as you're pretty A lot of the offense is everybody's like shanahan shanahan shanahan the offense can't possibly You know not be a top 10 offense The first two years shanahan was there. It was not a top 10 offense Not every year that he was mid-lander. Did he have a top 10 off like shanahan does not have this impeccable record Even though the fact is that film geek swear by his design Right. Yeah, and that's and also grapple. I still think has a lot to prove Good year last year, but Yeah, I mean he's still he's got to do it again before I'm a full believer I agree So let's talk about the Super Bowl odds because you mentioned how the uh, the chiefs the ravens and the saints are kind of outliers And they are above the pack from a Super Bowl odds perspective Are there any teams you're looking at here in a year where we may want to fade the favorites because of the uncertainty Is maybe being better than their odds would indicate to win the Super Bowl Based on the odds that you guys have at fan duel absolutely new orleans saints plus 1200 Okay, perfect I would I would have the new orleans saints with kansas city and baltimore right kansas city is at plus 650 baltimore's at plus 700 We actually have new orleans as the favorite to win the whole thing right now Okay, but even if but even if you don't have them as the favorite If you had them third out of that group It still would suggest that their odds should be with baltimore and kansas city Not like twice not almost twice as much at plus 1200 So looking at the Super Bowl odds at fan duel the one I would like is to put on new orleans saints at plus 1200 And they don't have to compete with the chiefs of the ravens into the Super Bowl, which definitely helps too Right those two teams we have ahead of the rest of the afc, but they have to compete with each other Whereas we have new orleans I mean their projection has a pretty good gap between them and the top other top teams that we have in the nfc Which are dallas seattle and tampa bay Yeah, absolutely. Well, that is erin shots We have a link to the football outsiders almanac in the show notes over on number fire So if you want to link to that go to numberfire.com and check that out Aaron, I appreciate you taking the time to talk some football with us to get sent for the season there You've got it again. There you go in full print as well. I think it's like 500 pages. That is Yeah, that's a lot of that's a lot of football knowledge in there Jonathan can the city chief's colors to celebrate their victory. All right I love it. Well, erin. Thank you so much. Uh, congratulations on 16 years of the book and have fun as nfl season We'll talk to you again soon. Thank you so much for having me on the show and yeah Here's to a season that lasts 16 games and is sort of kind of normal. Let's make it. Let's do it That's all we can ask. Thank you so much Covering the future Big thank you once again to erin shots Make sure you give him a follow on twitter if you don't already I'm sure a lot of you already do but at fo underscore a shots to check out his work there and ed that almanac There's just so much goodness in there from front to cover like it's just it's a lot of work Yeah, for sure And I really like the almanac for the context that it gives you on teams, right? So whether it's a coaching change whether it's like how a particular pass rusher is performed And whether you know because sometimes a guy will get a lot of pressures and not necessarily report a lot of sacks And we know that will probably you know regress for the better and he'll get more sacks the next year You know football is all about context, right and we've been a lot of statistics to try to account for that context But especially in the nfl in the preseason I think you really need to know about player situations and you know how each individual player is performed And they really do a good job with that Well, it's not just that context but also the context of showing the range of outcomes in wins and how often they spit They fit in specific ranges because we talked about this with whalecapper and his the way his model works Like that's so key in helping you from a betting perspective knowing That variance because there's a big difference between a high variance team with an eight and a half wind projection versus a low variance team And it's important to know that and they do you know put that out there within each individual team preview So context is Critical critical crucial critical whatever you want to call it and they do provide that So make sure again if you want to find they go to numberfire.com We have a link there. Otherwise just search for the football outsiders almanac and should pop up that way too Let's move into covering the future and we had whalecapper on last week drew dinsic to talk about the nba Sounds like you've been running some nba numbers since that discussion What did you find when you were crunching things over at the power bank? Yeah, in some sense. I wanted to check like his idea and see what Uh, it it gave me so the idea is like let's look at the markets and what they've said since the all-star break on these teams And normally like I I try not to trust a small sample size and I wouldn't trust, you know You know efficiency numbers and that sample size or whatnot, but the markets are a little bit different, right? We know it I tend to trust that and I spent small sample size more just because it is the market It is kind of the gold standard or prediction and what I do is I put those games I adjust for who you played and it gives me rankings just like It gives me rankings and and and point spreads on on neutral courts, which is exactly what we're seeing in the bubble so I ran those numbers and uh Got a team ranking for every team looked compared it to the markets and found who is actually garbage Uh, it wasn't it wasn't anywhere near where these projected point spreads were so Usually point spreads were a lot less Than what the market spread was and I was like, oh, okay. Well, we need to dig a little bit harder So so what you need to do is you need to again control for context, right? You can't just take every game you need to take, you know If you're trying to get the box you need games in which they have Yanis and they have chris middleton if you want the lakers you need to have games in which they have Lebron in which they have anthony davis as well So if you just do the team analysis by taking You know these closing point spreads in the market and and coming up with team rankings after you adjust for who you Who you play if you just do it the simple way you get that the bucks and the lakers are both about seven points better than mba average when you just isolate the games in which uh, you know Their top two players play then you start seeing a separation with milwaukee and this is what uh, drew was talking about last week I think I talked about it a couple weeks ago You know milwaukee's the best team in the mba when when they have all their guys Uh, they're about 10.2 points better than mba average And now when you start looking at it, orlando is about minus a point and a half Worse than than mba average and you're getting a point spread of about 11 and a half And and that's pretty much what the markets are giving you at 12 So suggests not any value there um With the lakers, they're 8.3 points better than mba average when they have lebron and anthony davis That's obviously pretty good. They're they're a serious title contender Um, and I actually had to change my calculation a bit For portland because I wanted both the amion lullard and uh, nerkich the big guy who who hasn't played in every single game When they have both of those guys the markets think they're four points better than mba average So that suggests that um That the point spread in that game should be about four four and a half It's been six in the first game So, you know, is there value there? Maybe. Um, we had the result where Uh, portland one game one, uh, but there was a couple of things going on that game The lakers couldn't hit a shot at all Especially from three. They shot really terribly from three. They shot anywhere near what, uh, they would shoot In a game. They probably win that game And potentially cover as well but I mean portland came out and punched them in the mouth and and the lakers didn't Didn't I mean The portland was the more active team the more energetic team and that was clear kind of from the get go So, um, I think a lot of people expect the series to be a little bit closer Maybe potentially even competitive. Um, you know, especially if portland can get another win in game two or game three So, um, also looking, uh, another series that I've been kind of looking at as the clippers, uh, versus dalis So, you know, if you have, uh quite Leonard and paul george for the clippers if dalis has, uh, both donchich and, uh, porzingas playing It suggests that the clippers should be about a four and a half point favorite in that series Um, the markets have been about six and a half And so it's this is interesting to me right because it's a direct check on Yeah, you know what the market should do going forward based on what they've what they've done in the past Um, so that's another thing i'm keeping an eye on Um, and um, yeah, we'll see how this analysis goes. It's very interesting I was checking you were talking about the bucks magic and how it was still very heavily slanted towards the bucks I was like, oh like cool. Maybe people are going to be Off the bucks give them what happened last year in the playoffs given You know, maybe there's this perception that they can't win So I went to fandal sports book and looked at the odds and like 12 told them to have They're minus 6 000 to win the series still, uh, the magic are 15 to 1 to win the series So if you wanted to buy low on the bucks, you don't really have a chance to do so Like the the markets are still there, but I think that the data on Specifically with nerk itch, uh, that's really interesting too because it does change the context That's one thing that drew mention too when we were talking last week Is the difference nerk itch makes so I think it's smart that you have those numbers where you can isolate when they have Those two key players in there Yeah, absolutely. And and I don't know if adam stanco talked about it on our show, but He's he's very high on nerk itch and he thinks he is a difference maker on the court Um, you know, he's a big he actually has a pretty good looking stroke Even though he doesn't shoot a lot of three-pointers and um, yeah, I mean that could that could really be a fascinating series Yeah, and if we can get good series from both the la teams right off the jump that would make things pretty pretty exciting We'll see how things play out there and I'm sure get more updates on the nba as we go along for my cover in the future I want to discuss something we were talking about with erin before which is the playoff bets over at fandall sports book because I've kind of flirted with this one throughout the entire off season But I want to fully commit to it today and bet the bills at plus 144 to miss the playoffs For 2020 the implied odds of the bills missing the playoffs at that number are 41 Percent which means their odds before the vig of making the playoffs would be 59 percent You're going to have a hard time Finding projection systems that will buy that number at the bills at 59 percent to make the playoffs at number fire We have our power rankings up They have the bills 15th the power rankings with a projected 8.6 wins Which gives them 53 percent odds to make the playoffs. So you're getting about 6 percentage points of value there if we look at football outsiders and their almanac There's even more value going against the bills there because they have the bills at just 43 percent to make the playoffs And that's right in line with the detroit lions who for context are minus three 10 to miss the playoffs Whereas the bills are plus 144 So maybe this should actually be make bet the lions to make the playoffs But uh, we're talking about the bills here because I think this one Yeah, fair enough As a detroit guy or a michigan guy you probably know a thing or two about that But as far as the bills go I think it makes a lot of sense that the projection systems will be lower on the bills because josh allen Did get better last year But it's easy to get better when your baseline is so low and they did add stiff on dig steps should help them a little bit But allen was still 27th in per drop back efficiency last year according to number fires metrics He was a couple of spots behind elie manning and right ahead of marcus mariota and sam darnold great company to keep for josh allen So even if he does get better with stiff on digs He needs big improvements to be a top 20 quarterback in terms of efficiency And there's also the chance that he goes the other way I mean like after improving last year We can't just assume because he's young he continues to get better So josh allen could prove me wrong and the talent is you know at times there the defense Could be solid again But if I can get plus 144 on a team quarterback by josh allen to miss the playoffs I'm gonna take that I think that you know, maybe things could have gotten better with them Uh, you talked about the market rankings with the patriots and all the opt outs they had maybe that does help the bills But even with that being accounted for I still think the bills are a good bet to miss the playoffs at plus 144 right now Ed what about you? What are your numbers saying about the bills as we sit here in mid august? Yeah, I mean the I mean the numbers think that the bills are better than nfl average team Um, I I think you you're right to have questions about josh allen. Uh, I thought his performance last year was remarkable I don't know if he can do that again, but what does give me pause is i'm starting to rethink my analysis on new england I have been high on them just given the bellichick factor given how good their defense is But then when when i'm really thinking about my process for like evaluating nfl wind totals It it really comes down to the quarterback I you know, I I I'm just not going to go against the team with a good quarterback Right with with with a reasonable wind total number And then when you think about you know, I've been saying so much about the strength of their secondary And that's certainly true, but when you think about how much past defense it regresses from year to year Uh, that makes me worry there Bellichick is still the best and and we'll see what he can do But I guess I guess I'm having uh, I'm having questions about the patriots And that's the only reason I would doubt like going against the bills to not make the playoffs I mean, obviously we just bet like we said we bet the dolphins then like, you know, just Let's just dive fully in get on the tua train and uh bet the dolphins. What are the dolphins here? I think I looked this up last week But the dolphins plus four tend to make the playoffs easy money there If you're a huge adam gaze person plus 430 on the jets, what could possibly go wrong? This is this is great. This is this would be fine. We don't need the patriots to to get the bills out of there. We'll be fine Yeah We'll see that would be huge shake up in the mcs I am looking forward to the bills fans. Uh, I'm sure taking this very well There are a lot of reasonable bills fans So, uh, I have faith in in bills mafia to handle this one well And that is all the time that we have for today I want to give a big thank you once again to erin shots of football outsiders for talking about the football outsiders almanac Make sure you follow him on twitter at f o underscore a shots to get all this stuff there and check out the football Outsiders almanac. It is well worth the read there for sure. Ed. What's going on for you over at the power egg this week Yeah, you can get uh my nfl preseason rankings based on fandoms wind totals This is something that is part of my numbers all year long Obviously with decreasing weight as the season goes across But like, you know, it's such a small season in the end of such a short season in the nfl You really do need a good preseason prior. This is the biggest part of my preseason prior Uh, and you can get it right now So sign up for my free email newsletter at the power bank dot com And you mentioned last week. Yeah, jay j's acorice on the football analytics show as well So uh, make sure you check that out uh to hear you talk to jay j about projections. I assume right Yeah, I'm really dug into his model We talked about how he builds things from the team first and then gets down into individual players and and looks at target share and just how that's a combination of both science and and art Sometimes he has to make little tweaks and things. Uh, really good conversation I've had jay j on before to talk about games and playoffs and stuff But it was really nice to have him to talk about his bread and butter, which is seasonal fantasy football projecting, you know fantasy points projecting You know and things that matter when you're when you're betting player props to right in terms of touchdowns and yards and and all that stuff as well So, um, you know, we found out how good his models were last year when with some of the things he had on a show Probably need to have him on again to talk nfl player props soon so yeah, it was it was um It was really nice to have him to talk about his forte Awesome, make sure to check that out over at the football analytics show and check out uh, Ed's rankings at the powerank.com as well. I am on twitter at jim sonnis j i m s a n and e s you can also follow the fan dual podcast network at fan dual podcasts as a reminder As we get close to nfl season make sure you are subscribed to covering the spread to get the podcasts right when they are posted So you can dig in and try to find some betting value big Thank you to calvin theobald our video producer for running the video side of things to you today Thank you cal as always and thank you to everyone for tuning in good luck with your bets Uh, hopefully everyone is healthy and safe as we get set for nfl season We can sit back enjoy and just watch some football and continue the sports wonderful time We've had over the past couple of weeks. We'll talk to you again soon This has been covering the spread right here on the fan dual podcast network