 This is covering the spread. Here are your hosts, Jim Sonnis and Dr. Ed Feng. What is going on, everybody? Welcome on into covering the spread. That's right here on the FanDuel Podcast Network and NumberFire.com. We're talking horse racing today with John Sheeran of FanDuel Sportsbook and getting an intro course in horse riding for those of us like me who have no idea how to do it. My name is Jim Sonnis. I am a senior writer and analyst for NumberFire.com. Joined here as always by Ed Feng. You can find his work over at thepowerrank.com. Ed, how is your shelter in place going up in Michigan? It's going, man. We're, you know, we're hunkered down. My wife and my two kids and, you know, a lot of family time, right? So it's interesting to think like we're not good. I mean, hopefully this all ends at some point. Right. Probably within the next month or so. But it's interesting to think that like, you know, this is probably the most time we'll spend together. Maybe the rest of our lives. Yeah. So, yeah. So it's interesting to think about that. I mean, the kids still have schoolwork. They've been doing schoolwork the last two weeks. And I've been trying to help with that. They're on spring break. So we're on shelter in place spring break next week, which should be pretty interesting. I don't think much changes except that they don't have schoolwork. So, so yeah, we're hanging in there. How are you doing up there in New York? Well, I was going to ask you, what has it been like trying to teach your kids? Like, that sounds intimidating. It's been in general pretty good. I mean, I do some volunteer teaching at their school anyway. So like, I have a little bit of, you know, a little bit of a background interacting with the kids. I don't know. I mean, relatively it's pretty fun. I mean, I wrote a computer program to get around some of the math that my three year old, my third grader had to do. We had a little math problem. And yeah, I mean, it's interesting because we're like, eh, we could probably figure out an analytical formula for this and what the pattern is. But like, I think a lot of times when you're going to want to solve that problem in the future, it's a matter of like just writing the code to do it. So I use it as an opportunity to write some code with him and we did it. And then once you get the answer, like the pattern is really easy. You're like, oh yeah, okay, fine, that makes sense. So things like that have been a lot of fun. I mean, I mean, you know, I mean, I would rather have my life be the way it normally was the last two weeks, but all things considered, it's been nice to have the time with them. Yeah, absolutely. I have time with my fiance and we have a wedding to plan and have done a ton, I guess like, I've just been like, I don't know, it's been weird to be like in this like the state of like, what are we doing? I mean, not like with the wedding, but like in general, because like, is the wedding gonna happen? Like, I don't know. Like there's like this, we're in August. So like- Oh, it's supposed to happen in August? It should be fine. But like that's 150 people. And like, when I see like old, there's been a lot of old games on TV, it makes me physically anxious to see crowds because it's like, don't do that. I know it's like from 2016 or like 1997, but like seeing it makes me nervous. So the thought of planning a 150 person wedding in August is like daunting to me right now. It's weird. Yeah. For sure. I feel like watching any television makes you a little anxious about the contact. You're like, oh, wait, we're in this. Oh, wait, sorry. Right. That was- You guys did this a long time ago. We were watching Crazy Stupid Love and like they have an assembly and I'm like social distancing. There are so many of you in this gym right now, so many germs that are going everywhere. Go home, livestream the eighth grade graduation, do whatever you gotta do and this now because it just makes me very, very nervous. So it's weird. Like how much your mindset can change in a couple of weeks, but if my- Yeah. Yeah. I was just gonna say like you're waiting in August is a very interesting thing because that's obviously right close to when football season starts. Right. And we're all sitting here being like, yeah, of course football is gonna happen. Right. The same way a week before selection Sunday, we're like, yeah, of course the tournament's gonna happen. Yep. And I think it's so, basically we have no idea what is gonna happen. It obviously depends on a lot of the response and how the people in authority treat this. I think the governor here in Michigan is doing a pretty good job. Like everything's shelter in place and it kind of sucks in some ways, but like it's kind of what you gotta do, but it's all, I mean, you can think of the light of the tunnel as having Jim Sonnis' wedding and having football. Right. We shouldn't need sports as a motivation, but if you do need it, the better we contain this thing, the sooner you get sports back. Like that, I know that like human lives should matter a lot more than that, but like for some reason, it seems like some people need better motivations. So like just think about that. Like the better we contain this thing, the sooner we get sports back, shelter in place, do whatever you gotta do so we can eradicate this thing and get back to a better sense of normalcy here and to speed up the timeline a little bit by being better about doing this thing. I think a lot of people haven't. So kudos to those of you who have, but we can accelerate this timeline by being smarter. So let's try to do that as much as we can. Now today, I said we're talking with John Sheeran of FanDuel Sportsbook. He is the director of trading at FanDuel Sportsbook. You can find John on Twitter at JSheeran1981 and we're gonna discuss the effects of COVID-19 on the sportsbook, the business side of things and then also get an intro to horse racing. Ed, I don't know anything about horse racing. We have had like Kentucky Derby pools at the office in the past. I won last year until the person got disqualified for blocking or whatever it was. Again, I know nothing about this. So I need to listen to John. Do you know anything about horse racing? Cause I know nothing. Nope. Yeah, I don't know anything at all. So I'm really looking forward to talking to him, picking his brain and obviously I'm always interested in the data side of things. So yeah, should be great. And John's fantastic. We had John on for the NFL season to talk to him then, but I think, especially right now, it's interesting to get his perspective on all the stuff changing in the world and what it's been like on the sportsbook side of things. Obviously less important than the human side and we want to mention that, but it is interesting time for them as well. If you are looking for some NFL discussion last week, we had Kevin Cole, a pro football focus on to discuss a betting fallout of NFL free agency. We talked about Tom Brady going to the Buccaneers, Patriots plan going forward, their outlook, Philip Rivers in the Colts and much more to get that. Just search for covering the spread wherever you listen to your podcasts, Apple podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Play Store, anywhere you find podcasts, you can find us. Get Kevin's thoughts on NFL free agency. And while you're there, please subscribe, rate and review the podcast so you can get these right when they are posted. Before we bring in John, today's podcast is brought to you by FanDuel Racing. FanDuel is doing its part to continue to bring sports fans excitement by offering users the chance to bet on horse racing, user existing FanDuel DFS login credentials to gain access to tutorials to learn more about the sport, including understanding how the odds work and the various types of bets. And most importantly, how to win your bets. Watch all the races live across over 300 tracks and fill the void left in your sports fan today. For more details, visit racing.fanDuel.com or download the FanDuel app today. Eligibility restrictions apply and we'll get some of those thoughts from John as well. So let's bring on John Sheeran now again, follow him on Twitter, add Jay Sheeran, 1981 and get his thoughts on how we can figure out how to bet this horse racing thing. Covering the present. Let's bring John Sheeran into covering the spread to talk a little bit of horse racing. John, I know it's a crazy time in the sports betting world, so I really appreciate you coming on here today. How are you doing right now? Yeah, doing well, Jim, as you say, a crazy time. You know, I think of the grand scheme of things where we don't have it too bad. Obviously a lot of people out there are suffering and that's got to come first and foremost, but yeah, it's been a tricky time trying to invest a lot of time in identifying new opportunities for people to bet on, trying to do deals everywhere we can to get more content. And obviously, day to day the way that it changes, even hourly, not even daily, trying to keep across what's happening in the sporting world. And obviously, you know, with no kind of date for the comeback of the pro sports here in the US, we've had to look at a little bit wider and broader to try and find content. Yeah, it's been nuts. Yeah, so John, we know how good of a job you were doing. I was recently at the Sports Analysts Conference right before this whole situation hit us and unprompted one of my longtime sports better friends said, man, that fandom was sportsbook. They're really sharp. And just went on about, you know, telling me just how sharp the numbers were compared to a lot of other sports books. So I think everyone who listens to the show knows what a good job that you've been doing, but it's well into the community of sports betters as well. So kudos to you and your team. And I just want to let you know that's what people are saying out there. Yeah, I really appreciated that. I mean, we've always aimed to kind of have that perspective even internationally before the US opportunity opened. We've always wanted to be the ones investing in, you know, modeling and analytics and also in, you know, sticking to our own numbers where we feel that we have an opinion, a valid one. And, you know, we won't do that everywhere. We've got a lot more work to do, believe you me. But it's good to see that people are at least noticing it. And, you know, we'll continue to keep our heads down and work hard. You're making it tough on us here, John, because we're talking about your numbers and if they're good, it's harder for us to find good things. So just got to ease back a little bit. There's a lot of opportunities here, you can believe you me. Like I said, we've got a ton of work to do. You know, like you say, it's great to hear that, particularly from your community. But, you know, we're not losing sight of all the work we have to do that's in front of us. We've a lot of stuff to do, particularly once you get away from the NBA and the NFL, which were, you know, material sports to the rest of our business globally, to the other brands in Australia and in Europe. Maybe when you get away from them, we've got a lot more work to do, college sports, basketball and MLB or the two that we're really trying to concentrate on in the next 12, 24 months even to get to a place where we've taken them all in-house and we're doing a good job with them. So yeah, we've got a mammoth roadmap, but we're working through it as best we can for sure. Yeah, and it's definitely fun to look at the numbers because you can kind of tell that there's a lot of work put into them. So from my end too, I appreciate it, even though again, like I said, does make my job a little bit harder. Now, John, it's a rough time, obviously, in the sporting world, but I think it's advantageous that we have you on now to talk course racing and we'll get to that in a second, but I think also it's good to get perspective from you on what things have been like at Fandall Sportsbook given the spread of COVID-19. Obviously not a lot of sports going on right now. So what adjustments have you had to make as a sportsbook to adjust for the lack of live action games going on right now? Yeah, I mean, it's interesting. We touched on it earlier, Jim, around trying to identify opportunities for lower grade and lower tier sports. We've been really busy working closely with the regulators. Obviously we're on a state-by-state regulation basis as well. So that's been interesting, getting different perspective from each state as to what they'll allow and what they won't allow. We started off with a lot of kind of tier one material, things like politics, financial, market betting. We looked at some fixed odds for some of horse racing, actually, potentially even Greyhounds, which are popular in Europe that are still ongoing, or at least they weren't until yesterday where we lost the Irish racing calendar. So we've been really busy kind of interacting with the regulator, identifying opportunities, working with our partners and suppliers, like SportRadar, for example, who cover an awful lot of lower grades, lower tier sports that are now our premium content. I mean, if you had told me last week at any stage in our lives, we'd ever see Australian rules as the number one sports from a handle perspective in America. I would have committed you, I think, at that stage. But that's what happened last week. We've since lost all the Australian sports. So this week, undoubtedly, our number one sport is going to be soccer, and more than likely the extreme heights of the Belarusian league, believe it or not. Yeah, that is kind of amazing, right? So I mean, you're putting out these lines for soccer and Belarus. I find it remarkable that they're even playing there. What is that like? Maybe take us through the process and then how you feel about the lines that you're putting out there. Yeah, it's actually a little bit of an advantage that we probably have over some of our competitors out in the US, where we can rely and lean on our colleagues in Europe. Obviously, where soccer is one of the top three sports for them from a handle perspective. It's done really well here. It's in the top six sports in the US since we've been live and actually passed hockey. So there's now the three core US sports, including college. Then we've got tennis and soccer as four and five before you fall to hockey, which is the sixth in terms of overall handles. So despite that kind of being a big demand, relatively speaking, in dollar amounts, we've leaned heavily on our counterparts in Europe where they've invested all of the time that you guys will have, and we have here in the US on the US sports. And they've got pretty solid numbers, even for leagues as low grade as Belarus. And we're even looking at things like Tajikistan and even lower than Belarus. Belarus will look like Champions League by the time we're finished. But we're confident in the numbers. We just wanted to give people an opportunity. I've said it repeatedly. This is about giving customers choice and letting them have the ability to be able to wager. And right now that's what's on. So that's what we're looking to provide to everybody. I'm not too worried about how accurate the numbers are. It's not about revenue for us at this stage. It's really just about giving customers something to engage with. We started trying to do a couple of social media pieces as well, trying to keep people engaged and just trying to keep them interacting with Fanduil as a brand until we get the core sports back. Absolutely. And one thing on the DFS side that I found interesting, I'm gonna talk about in our cover in the future segment, is they're offering League of Legends now and we have different esports going on. There is iRacing. What is the regulation around those things that are done, they aren't like, I guess, played on an actual field but rather played via simulators and stuff. Are those things regulated to the point where you cannot offer those, something that's being explored? How do those all work? Yeah, I mean, we're exploring every opportunity. Esports is actually probably one opportunity where there is significant growth potential in the gym. It hasn't been widely exposed. There's been some issues around integrity globally. It's kind of hard to police from an age perspective with a lot of participants under 18 as well. So there's some of the challenges that we have when we deal with the regulators around trying to get approval. I actually think we may get approval in the next week or two in West Virginia, for example. New Jersey are actually, they have, I think I have six submissions pending for League of Legends and things like that with them that they are trying to establish their internal stance on it before they grant us approval. I expect you'll see it sooner rather than later but a difficult one for us to police when it comes to individual events and anyone familiar with it, with teams and substitutions and rosters, very difficult for us to police with the age of the participants. So it'll come with challenges but we're definitely looking at it. I think New Jersey has been on the front foot and supporting esports in general anyway, Jim. And I think there's some potential pressure from the governor's office for us to kind of get out the ability to be able to support it with a betting product as well. So I think, watch this space, we've got challenges but I think we'll get it here at some stage this year. Man, that better needs sports even more. All right. I appreciate the honesty there, John, for sure. So let's talk about some horse racing here because it's one of the youth sports still going on it. At least for now, obviously it's a very evolving landscape but we're gonna pick your brain on horse racing today. Let's start with some basics here. For those of us who, like me, haven't really bet on horse racing before, what are some of the bets you can make on those races? We're gonna keep things. Talk to me like I'm a five-year-old, John. What can I do when it comes to horse racing? Yeah, I mean, I'm fascinated. I think horse racing, for me, my history, my background is pretty much all in horse racing from an odds-making perspective and also from a trading perspective. That's what I grew up in and have a good affinity for. I follow US racing very, very closely as well. So I've always had a close affiliation to it and I'm surprised by the general betting public and how distant they are in terms of being brought to the sport in terms of either attending or actually just betting on it. I think we notice it specifically in the meadowlands when you look at a simulcast area of the building and then the sports book which are side-by-side and I always say the difference between the two is about 30 years because you've got a much older population betting horses compared to the sports book. You can bet on loads of things. I think the obvious basic ones are which horse will win the race to places to finish in the first two and to show us to finish in the first three and they tend to be the best of the vast majority of people will focus on on an individual race basis. Those along with the exacta, for example, where you've got to pick the first two in the right order and you get an increased level of payoff, obviously, because it's much more difficult. I think the one that probably appeals to a wider base is actually the multi-race horizontal. So you're placing, you know, pick threes where it's three races in a row and you have to create a ticket around what horses you think of chances of winning those races. And obviously, if you get the right combination through your picks on your ticket, you get, you know, what tends to be decent levels of payoffs. Surprisingly, actually, they're not as bad a proposition as you might think they are. The takeouts in those actually tend to be, you know, less than what the takeout in the individual pools from a race-to-race perspective are. So they're the best of what can be perceived from a shrewd perspective to be bad bets because you've got such a high takeout rate and you need to have such an edge to be able to beat that takeout level long-term. It's going to be difficult to be profitable. And I think that's why people like to play the exotics to have a smaller investment, you know, 20 cent unit stakes with 36 lines or whatever and basically try and hit a big lottery-style ticket. And effectively, that's what appeals to a lot of people, particularly new people who are in, they pick three or four horses in each of the three races and hope that they have the right combination in there somewhere. Excellent. So we love to think about the data in any kind of sports. So what kind of data would you guys use for horses in trying to set these lines? Yeah, I think QS Racing's interest in it. I mean, buyer speed figures for me, Andy Byer, for everyone not familiar with him, he came up with a strategy decades ago where he was able to try and equate performance of horses to time. And the big advantage that obviously he had was when you had different form lines coming in from different parts of the country as the championship meets moved from state to state in the U.S. He was able to equate a performance in Maryland and Laurel against a performance in Gulfstream in Florida. And he had a good feel for which was the stronger form line. And without those numbers, the public didn't really have the similar sort of assessment of those performances. And he had a massive edge as a result. So he didn't have any problem with the 15% takeout. He was well able to beat it. He's since published them and they appear in all of the form lines, particularly in things like the DRF, Timeform US, do their own speed figures. So I would encourage people who are new to the sport to kind of look at those performances, assess why horses were able to achieve them if there was any kind of anomalies that led to those performances and try and tie them all together when you get a feel of horses together. I think that's probably data-wise. And that's all related to sectionals, things like that edge, performance against the clock, where how long has it physically taken the horse to run between point A and point B effectively, with lots of kind of sectional data and splits between that. And you can then assess who's performed well or not in a certain race, despite maybe where they've finished. Excellent. And does the surface matter, like it does in NASCAR? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, weather is obviously the biggest impact that you have on the surface in the US. Obviously, we concentrate mainly on two, two. There are three surfaces, but two surfaces predominantly being the dirt tracks and the turf tracks. There are poly tracks as well, which is kind of a less forgiving artificial surface. But the weather impacts the first two significantly. Obviously, the more rain, you get sloppy conditions or wet conditions on the dirt. And then on turf, you get soft ground. And it tends to each surface and each kind of variation in the surface within that tends to appeal to different horses, different run styles. So some days you may have bias towards front runners, where you physically can't make up any ground. And that's getting a little bit deeper. And people that look for those sort of trends or horses that have run against a bias tend to do well out of that. So you might have a horse that looks on paper, like you got beat 10 lengths by a front runner. But in fact, that track that day may have just been like a carousel, where whoever was on the lead went on to win. Therefore, that horse was at a distinctive disadvantage. So you got to try and break all those different things down. It's really about trying to identify your own edge. If it's a surface related one or a time related one, and being able to equate that into whatever the pick is that you want and going with it, I guess. It's really interesting. And the other issue with that is that weather obviously changes a lot. And weather impacts NFL lines. It impacts a lot of sports, obviously. But how much do lines move once you get a better idea of the weather, which may advantage one horse over another? Do things shift pretty significantly if the weather changes leading into a race? Yeah, I think so. I mean, if you look at the futures, obviously there are things like the Kentucky Derby where it's difficult to assess. Obviously we don't know what the weather's going to be in September now, the first year that it won't be run in March in a long, long time. So, or in the first weekend in May, I should say not March. Yeah, so very, very difficult to project that far out. But on a day-to-day basis, and what you tend to see in the pools in general, Jim, a race-to-race so the volumes don't really get to the levels that you expect them to be close to the off until the 30 minutes beforehand. So people have a good idea about what that weather is going to be in that situation. In Europe, for example, with fixed odds, a very different case where you may be betting the night before for a game, for a race the following day, you may have some idea of the weather, but it may change and you could end up with a really bad value on your ticket. And that's definitely something we've all been on the wrong side of previously. I can relate, that's literally true. Now, how much do those splits matter for you from an odds-making perspective? Let's say that you do know in advance how a track is going to be. Are those things that significantly impact the way you view things? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think the vast majority of races in the US are a function actually of the pace of the race. I think for 90% of the races that are running the US, you've got such a close filter between the levels of ability, between horse A and horse C, for example, that really what happens is it's just a function of the way that the race is run as to who crosses the line in the first place. So I would always try and prioritize trying to understand how the race is likely to be run, what horses are likely to be on the lead, what horses are likely to be closers, and whether or not there's a significant anomaly in terms of four forward-placed horses and one hold-up horse in a five-race field to me, I'll always start with a hold-up horse because I think he's much more likely to be advantaged by the way the race is run and it's trying to kind of decipher what that looks like, which can be trickier than you seem because sometimes you expect a strong race, a pace-on on the race to advantage that hold-up horse and the jockeys obviously are humans who are able to analyze that, they're able to talk to each other and understand that if they do that, they're going to advantage a different horse. So you've got a lot of kind of things to get across and understand what's likely to happen when it comes down to actually the race being run. So yeah, I would concentrate on pace. I think it's the first place to start when it comes to trying to pick a winner. Excellent. Is there any other thing that novices like us should know before they start getting into horse racing and placing some bets? I think we've touched on a lot of them. I mean, I would always look to, as I said, pace first. I think jockeys and trainer combinations, which you'll find in the daily racing form at the bottom, they'll give you the strike rates and the ROI on a $2 stake as to whether or not they're profitable. So for example, you might see a low-grade trainer who doesn't really train at a high percentage of winners and then he books Jose Ortiz, who's probably the best jockey in the country. And you can see that five times out of nine when he's booked Jose Ortiz over the last two years, they've teamed up for a winner and the ROI is $4.26. I mean, if he books Jose Ortiz, regardless of what the horse's form is like, I would pay that kind of extra attention to be able to understand, why is he booking them? Is there a switch here? Is there more interesting information that I can find? Has he been working really well lately? And all of a sudden he's changed the horse around, is it a change in surface? Is it change in distance? Is he better drawn? Does he usually run well at this track? There's so many variables in horse racing. I think it's one of the big appealing factors to me at least it feels almost like a puzzle on a daily basis. And the good thing is you get the answer that day. So jockeys can make that big an impact? Yeah, I mean, the difference between, it is something that data-wise we have in Europe in particular spent a lot of time trying to assessing what the upgrade or downgrade is depending on the jockey chains that you have. The likes of Ryan Moore in Europe I touched on Jose Ortiz compared to a low level journeyman is significant. I mean, they just make better decisions. They're more tactically aware. It's effectively like subbing out a quarterback. If I take out Tom Brady and put in Nick Foles, how's that going through that? Yeah, for sure. That's really interesting. And what has the interest been like in horse racing? And we have Fando racing now, has the interest level changed given the absence of other sports to bet on recently? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we've huge jumps even both of our businesses, TVG and Fando racing where people are able to turn on TVG and you've got live sport. And in today's world where we've all been stuck at home for weeks on end, having live sport is actually a really good escape. I found myself watching more horse racing than I would ever normally do, given my day-to-day job isn't really predominantly based around horse racing. And I think everybody that I see on my social media threads are all in timelines. They're all of the same opinion. So happy to have it. Unfortunately, I don't know if it's going to last. I think we're down to about 12 tracks here in the US that are still running. Goldstream probably being the best quality in Florida. Tampa Bay are running today as well. But I hope they can keep it going. Obviously the safety of everybody involves got to come first. Yeah, absolutely. That's a good mindset to have too, even though it obviously affects a lot of your business. But I will wear my TVG hat that I have for the grocery store. If I ever venture out, I'll be sure to get TVG the plug there. That is John Sheeran. Make sure you follow him on Twitter at JSheeran1981 and check out all the odds over there. Fandall Sportsbook and Fandall Racing. John, I appreciate the time. Stay safe, stay healthy, and hopefully we can talk to you here again soon. Sure, Jim. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it. Thanks, guys. Thank you. Thank you very much. Covering the future. One final big thank you to John Sheeran for swinging by and breaking down intro to horse racing again. I know nothing but Ed. The thing that I like about John is he actually gave us resources we can go to. And we are both people who like data a lot and having access to data, I feel like I don't like betting on things. I don't know what I'm doing. Just to get action out there. For GFS, it's the same thing. So having that data I can look at is a big mental relief to me that there is that data out there. Yeah, and the story of Andy Baer is pretty interesting. A guy who was obviously betting on these things and now puts his data out there. That would be really interesting to look at. I always think about when I do my ranking algorithms, I'm looking at margin of victory and adjusting for who you played. And I think there's an analogy there between horse racing and how much one horse beats another one. So in terms of a time lag, it's kind of like a margin of victory. So it might be interesting to think. You can apply these ideas to lots of sports that in which you're racing around a track. And I'm sure there's some similarities with stuff that you've been doing with NASCAR as well that potentially could be applied to horse racing. Yeah, it's interesting because the speed figure it's called. By B-E-Y-E-R, that's how you spell Andy's last name. Baer's speed figure is the name of it. And with NASCAR, that sort of thing doesn't work because margin of victory is dependent on how long the green flag run was before the end of the race, et cetera, et cetera. But in horse racing, there are no cautions. That doesn't matter. So I think it's really interesting to have that advantage that you don't have when it comes to stuff like NASCAR. So I think that's really interesting. But again, if you want to learn more about that, just search for B-E-Y-E-R speed figure and that is how you need more information on that. Let's dive in now to covering the future. Ed, going back to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, signing Tom Brady to join the team. Anything pop up to you there when you look at those numbers at Fandall Sportsbook? Yeah, so I was looking at some of the Tom Brady props that they had and obviously, something that people would be interested in betting on right now. Just did some simple analysis. Just, I mean, I kind of see it as a way that the market can tell us how he might perform over this upcoming year. So if you look at total passing yards, Fandall was at 4,349 and a half. And if you take Tom Brady's last five full seasons, he averaged 4,374. So those two numbers are very similar. They're off by only about 25. And so essentially the market is saying that, we expect Tom Brady to throw for as many yards as he has the past couple of years. And there's probably a lot of things going on here. I mean, if we could get a good grasp of the aging curve, obviously we don't have too much data for guys that are that old. So his performance might be a little bit less, but I think a lot, we would all agree that he's gonna have a better receiving core down there as well. So that's an interesting thing. How do those two things balance out? If you just look at the yardage total, the market's saying, he's gonna perform like he did over the last five full seasons. Touchdowns, Fandall is at 29.5. Brady has actually thrown 30.8 touchdowns over his last five full seasons. So pretty similar there as well. Interesting, Interceptions, Fandall is at 10.5. Brady's averaged about eight and a half Interceptions over his last five full seasons. And Brady has really been fantastic at eliminating turnovers. I think that has been a huge part of how he's been able to drive this team as he's gotten older over the last five, six seasons. I think with a new system going under an area system, Fandall is expecting a couple more, just missed plays, learning a new system and a couple more picks there. So anyways, I think it's interesting, with the touchdowns, that would be a kind of thing you wanna ask JJ Zachary recent about because he's gonna have his models because there's a pretty good relationship between passing yards and touchdowns. There should be a ratio between that and any kind of deviations to that should strongly regress to the mean. So it'd be interesting what he, I would be very interested to see what he had to say about that as well. But in general, the one thing this thing makes me wonder about it seems like a lot of these totals are assuming that Brady plays 16 games. And I just wonder about the actual probability that he actually plays 16 games. He's older, obviously, I think he's 42 now or will be 42 during the course of the season. He hasn't really been hurt over the last however many seasons, he's played every single game. But I mean, there is a small chance that he's gonna miss a bunch of games. So if you had to put a gun to my head on any of these, like I would definitely take the unders on these just because of the injury factor alone. Tampa Bay also has issues at the offensive tackle position. I think most people recognize that as a place where they need help either through the draft or free agency. So I think a lot of questions there, I think just with age and with issues of protection and just the dangers of the NFL probably some decent luck for Brady having played so many games over the last couple of years. I think the unders is definitely the way I would lean on some of these things. Funny you should mention JJ, because when Fandall posted, these Tom Brady props are at a piece for Number Fire or comparing his projections to what Fandall's sportsbook had. And like you said, the best number was on the under, is actually on the under and the interceptions because at that time, it was plus 106 on the under for interceptions at 10 and a half. That has moved, the under is now minus 102. So it has moved against that number or it has moved as if people are betting the under on that one. And my rationale for back in that was exactly what you said. These numbers all assume we play 16 games because JJ's numbers are right in line with them. It's 4,476 passing yards, 29.9 passing touchdowns. And those are assuming he plays all 16 games. If he misses one game, all those unders could hit including the interceptions. And there was value on the picks even if we assume he plays all 16 games. But if he misses one, the odds that he goes under even better. So I like hearing you say that because like it, I don't know, it's nice to hear smart people think along the same lines, I like that. Well, and you also have to think like, what's the chance that a 42 year old is gonna have a breakout season? Right. And just like obliterate these things. I mean, it's certainly there, but I think that chance just kind of goes down the older you get, right? Right, exactly. So anyways, I'm pumped that JJ has that same analysis. Yeah, if you want those projections, just search for number fire, betting Tom Brady's player props with the Buccaneers. And that will have that there. I also talked about the same one from last week that we talked on covering the spread about the Bucs win total versus the Patriots. It was plus 130, they are now minus 110. So that number's gone. So if you wanted to get that one, you should have done so already. And sorry if you did not, but hey, do you wanna get the Patriots? You can do them at minus 110. My cover in the future is also NFL. We're gonna talk some win totals because Fandals Sportsbook posted win totals for 2020 last week. And these assume there are 16 games, otherwise the bets are avoided and that might not happen. So I'm just gonna put that out there right now. But the one that stands out to me right now as the Panthers, right now at Fandals Sportsbook, they're at five and a half wins. And there had been some talk about them potentially tanking for Trevor Lawrence. And I think that narrative and that discussion has driven this number down a lot. But if you look at the moves and follow the moves the Panthers have made, it shows that they're not tanking. It's not just signing Teddy Bridgewater. When they traded Trey Turner, which is kind of I think what started this tank for Trevor discussion, they didn't get draft picks back. If you were tanking, you'd want picks back. But instead they got a 32 year old left tackle and Russell O'Koon. And that's not the compensation you seek if you're tanking. Russell O'Koon when he was healthy last year was still a good player. And it means that they now have pretty solid players at left tackle, center and right tackle. And those are the three most important spots at least to me along the offensive line. There are also some decent interior linemen available on day two of the draft. And I think they're gonna be all right on the offensive line. That is in addition to the good targets they have around Teddy Bridgewater, that's DJ Moore, Curtis Samuel, Robbie Anderson, Christian McCaffrey, Ian Thomas. That's one of the fastest conclamerations of players in the entire league. All three wide receivers ran a 4-4-2 or better at the combine. So yeah, when you look at Teddy Bridgewater's numbers last year, they are tainted. You cannot put a lot of stock in them because he had arguably the best offensive line in football and he had Michael Thomas. That's gonna inflate numbers. But he's also, I think, gonna have a pretty good situation this year too. And because of that, I'd expect Teddy to perform pretty well. And if he does that, it's easy to see this team winning six games. The juice here pretty heavy at minus 130 on the over at five and a half. So I would recommend doing some price shopping here to see if you can get a better number elsewhere because you might be able to. But overall, I think we may have overreacted to the tanking speculation and it creates a buying window on this team. So the actions of the Panthers drawing me towards the over here on five and a half wins. Ed, any thoughts for you on the new look Panthers on your Teddy Bridgewater? Yeah, I mean, I think five and a half seems very low given that you're gonna have a veteranish quarterback with Bridgewater and at least the league average defense. Everything regresses towards eight wins in this league. And I mean, it seems like a pretty bold statement to say five and a half wins there. Yeah. I think it was largely derived from the anecdote, I think. I think we overreacted to it, even though their actions have gone in very much counter to that. Now, we got to do our quarantine corner. And anything you would recommend for this week, people who maybe caught up inside, don't have a lot to do, anything you're looking at there to recommend to people? Yeah, well, I'm gonna stick with books. And if you're the history kind of person, I highly recommend checking out Grant by Ron Chernow. He's a historian, probably most famous for writing Hamilton biography that inspired the musical. And that's certainly how I found out about him. Learned about the musical, wanted to get more, read the book, and Hamilton the book is kind of brilliant in its own way. Obviously not like the musical, but it's an amazing story. His most recent project was Grant, that came out a couple of years ago. And just an amazing story. I mean, Grant went from a complete loser in life to the most famous man in America in a short span of about two years. That's what war will do for someone who has a talent of leading men and being in general. And then a lot of interesting stories with his family, the presidency, trying to uphold the union after the Civil War. So a lot of interesting things in there. Chernow's great. He's just a fantastic writer. And he, so he actually called this his favorite book, which he's like, you know, you're not really supposed to do that. It's like picking amongst children. He called it his favorite book. And I would say like, it's like the most readable. It's like more readable than Hamilton. You know, a lot of these like scholarly types tend to write in long sentences and big words. And you get through it because you want to get the essence of the story and what they're getting through. Grant is the least like that. I guess I've only read two of his books, but it's less scholarly and pretentious than Hamilton at least. So yeah, if you're into history, definitely recommend checking that out. Have you seen Hamilton in the play? The play? The musical. The Broadway play. Musical? Is that actually the proper terminology for it? Okay, the musical, yes. Yeah. Have you seen it? Yeah, we went through a huge Hamilton phase in the family, whatever year it was. Yeah. Okay. Was it good? Yeah, it was fantastic. I mean, it sounds like I've never seen, I've listened to it obviously, but like it's always been intrigued. They were supposed to do like a movie production of it. I think it was just going to be like the play except filmed. And I'm wondering what the timeline on that will be now given that. I heard October 2021. Okay, so hopefully they can still get there despite all this COVID-19. They already filmed it. I mean, you just got it. That's true. So I think they're just holding on to it. Yeah. Launch it at the right time. I don't know if they're trying to, you know, maximize revenue for live performances or whatnot, but that should happen. Yeah, he had another play Lin-Manuel Miranda did called in the Heights, which was supposed to come out. I think this summer, but that got pushed back to and Stephanie Beatriz from Brooklyn Nine-Nine is in that. So I was like, oh, excited. Like, oh yeah, Rose is going to be in a movie, but now that's pushed back. It makes sense. But like definitely a bummer there. So I'll take that out once it does come out. My quarantine corner for this week relates to Daily Fantasy because there's nothing in Daily Fantasy right now except for League of Legends. As we discussed with John, like I said earlier, I am very hesitant to go into, to play DFS sports around events I don't know, around sports I don't know. I don't bet things I don't know because I am very protective of my money. And I want to make good investments rather than just bet for the sweat. And I think that's fine if you do that. But like for me, I want to make sure I'm going to have a positive ROI. I'm not going to do that in sports I don't know. But last week I was really bored. And so Fandal just launched League of Legends. And my co-workers Brandon Cadulla and Calvin Theobald, Calvin's our video producer so he's listening to this. They were trying to teach me about League of Legends and I don't think Brandon's ever been as mad at me as he was when we were discussing this because I was like the live stream got messed up because I think if someone's internet was messed up, I don't know what it was honestly. It was super weird because they were talking about chicken nuggets on the broadcast trying to burn time. But the daily fantasy aspect of it was really fun. Hopefully Cal is not listening because I don't want to admit that it was fun but it was kind of fun. So I think my mission over the next couple of days because there's another slight coming up on Friday would be to learn it a little bit. So I can actually feel better about having some DFS lineups around it because it was kind of fun to have a sweat again but I'm still so hesitant to go into a market that I don't know. So my goal is to learn more about it so I can play daily fantasy around it because I need the itch honestly. So working on that, have you ever watched League of Legends or any e-sports I guess? No, but it definitely interests me from a data embedding perspective for sure. I mean, I think it was interesting. We've kind of heard about the growth of e-sports over the last 10 years essentially. I remember having a conversation with a friend at CBS like eight, 10 years ago and she was very excited about it then. It was interesting to hear John share and say that it hasn't really taken off from a betting perspective but I feel like that's only a matter of time. So I think having interest in that, I don't know, I mean, it's tough for me to watch video games because I don't really play video games and I guess I kind of watch my kids play them but I mean, there's a clear passion amongst the young people for that kind of thing and just watching my kids watch other people play video games on YouTube, like not even League of Legends type, high end players type stuff. They definitely like that, so. Yeah, I know, I don't play, like I'm terrible with those games, so I don't play them but like watching it was still really interesting and hearing people talk about it because on the broadcast, like you could tell the depth of knowledge they had about this thing, which is intimidating because I know nothing about it so it's hard to catch up but it's also cool to see people like with such deep knowledge of all these things, talking about it. So I gotta catch up so I can understand it better. Cal already snitched on me and told Brandon that I said that it was fun so if we have a new producer next week, you know why because Cal ratted me out to Brandon but it was kind of fun so I'll probably give it a shot again this week. Brandon's doing some helpers for it up on Number Fire so you can definitely check that out but it's interesting. I also watched, they have an iRacing League which is like eSports for NASCAR and they had like actual NASCAR drivers in it. It was really fun. Like it was a good race. Yeah, I saw that. It was cool. It was cool. They had like the actual broadcast crew there like Mike Joy, Jeff Gordon were calling the race. Clint Boyer was in the race but they had like a feed of him and he could like talk to them whenever he wanted to basically but it was like legit drivers like Dale Earnhardt Jr. almost won. Denny Hanlon did win. He won the Daytona 500 this year too so it's really interesting because you can tell which guys have done it before and there's clearly better at it but I don't know. It's cool because it's the actual sport. I wish they had DFS around it because I would totally play that but it was interesting and they're gonna keep doing because their ratings were actually okay. So I guess people are starved. I'm starved too, I get it, it was fun. So League of Legends and iRacing for me this week. We'll see how that goes. Should be a whole lot of fun. But that is all the time we have for today here on Covering the Spread. Big thank you once again to John Sheeran for swinging by and talking some horse racing. Follow him on Twitter at Jay Sheeran 1981 and also getting some insights on what it's been like inside the sports book with all the cancellations due to COVID-19 and where can people find your work over at the PowerRank? Yeah, I'm at thepowerrank.com. There's literally nothing going on right now. So, you know, I'd ask you to sign up for my newsletter but it might be a little while. I mean, I'm just kind of hanging out, trying to figure out once we get some clarity about football season. I mean, I'm definitely working on some stuff. But, you know, there's probably not gonna be a whole lot going on there until we get a little bit more clarity on what's going on with sports in general. Yeah, absolutely. It's a weird time where we are certainly at a interesting time for sure to try to find things to talk about. Hi, I'm at Jim Sonnis, J-I-M-S-A-N-N-E-S. I've been doing some offensive line, combine, testing, betting. Like, you know, looking at how combine numbers correlate to draft stock of offensive linemen. And there actually are some workouts that do correlate to draft stock. Like the, if you adjust for weight, the 40-yard dash among tackles, pretty relevant. So, did some work on that as it relates to betting the numbers at Fangirl Sports Book. I will probably discuss some of the offensive line props they have posted next week on Covering the Future. So, we'll check back in for that then. It's been fun. I like offensive line stuff. So, it's been a fun time for sure. I am on Twitter at Jim Sonnis as well. Make sure you follow the FanDuel Podcast Network at FanDuel Podcast. Big thank you to Cal and Theobald again. Cal, you had a good run, but you have to find someone else who won't rat me out for saying good things about League of Legends. So, Cal might not be here next week. We'll see. But thank you to Cal as always for keeping us on the air and chopping up those clips with the atFans on Twitter account. And thank you to everyone for tuning in. Hopefully you are sheltering in place. Hopefully you are being safe. Hopefully you are all healthy. And hopefully things are going well for you in what is a really difficult time for a lot of people. So, good vibes to everyone listening and thank you all for tuning in. We'll be back again soon with more Covering the Spread. This has been Covering the Spread right here on the FanDuel Podcast Network.