What else is in today’s newsletter?

• NFL Futures: Lionheart! Jean Claude Van Damme would approve this MVP bet.

• NHL Prop Drop: Flames forward in great spot against the Pens

NFL Futures—Can Jared Goff win MVP?

by Geoff Ulrich

Remember when Jared Goff was traded to Detroit? The Rams had to give the Lions two first-round draft picks and a third-round pick, just for them to take back Goff, who came with a $134M extension that he had signed two years earlier.

Now? After beating the Vikings, 31-29, in a game where he completed 22-of-25 passes and threw for 280 yards and 2 TDs (no INTs), Goff is sitting fourth in MVP odds, just behind Patrick Mahomes and Josh Allen. They all trail Lamar Jackson, who moved into the favorite chair (via the Fantasy Life NFL Futures Tool) after throwing for 5 TDs against Tampa Bay.

I don’t think there is any doubt that Goff deserves to be ranked fourth in the odds after Week 7 (if not higher). He ranks second in completion percentage, is third in yards per game, and leads the league in yards per attempt. He’s fifth in EPA +CPOE composite (via RBSDM.com), but is on pace for more pass attempts than all his competitors (outside of Joe Burrow, whose W-L record makes him a distant rival at this point). This gives him a chance to stand out to voters—and potentially outperform in TDs and yards the rest of the way.

He also set history this season already, when he pitched a perfect game (18-for-18) against the Seahawks in Week 4, a non-insignificant fact given that he was the first QB in history to accomplish this feat.

From a narrative perspective, Goff also has some things going for him that held back another elite pocket passer Brock Purdy from winning this award last season. Detroit recently lost a key player on defense in Aidan Hutchinson, so Goff’s likely to get a lot of credit for any further success (division win, 1st seed, etc) Detroit has this season, an opportunity Purdy wasn’t afforded with Christian McCaffrey stealing a lot of his thunder.

Goff’s also a former No. 1 overall pick (Purdy was Mr. Irrelevant), and while that may not mean much to fans, voters love a comeback story—and love it even more if it was a player most of them likely hyped as a “sure thing” at one point or another. Certainly, if Goff maintains this pace most voters will feel like he’s “paid his dues,” unlike Purdy whom voters seemed lukewarm to for the most part based on his smaller sample size and lack of pedigree.

The bet: Jared Goff to win MVP (+850; DraftKings)

I’m admittedly a little late to the Lions party this season but it’s not too late to join. After last week I view them as the best team in the NFC, and now that they have the same record as Minnesota (and the head-to-head tiebreaker) they control their destiny and have a clear path to the No. 1 seed and division win.

Detroit is now +130 to win the NFC North, and all the way down to +375 to win the NFC conference title in spots, but with Goff still available at +850 to win MVP, that’s a reasonable alternative to playing Detroit in the more traditional markets.

As I noted in my preseason MVP article, MVP winners tend to come exclusively from teams that finish first or second in their conference (in the regular season), and with the 49ers and Eagles struggling, the Lions have the fast track to the pole position in their conference. Detroit also plays Tennessee, Indianapolis, and Jacksonville in three of the next five weeks, so it’s very possible Goff will up his TD rate over this stretch, and his odds get cut further.

Regardless, if you’re like me and don’t have much Lions exposure yet, taking a piece of Goff in the MVP market is a good way to leverage this team in the futures market. Any continued success from Detroit will certainly keep Goff in the MVP conversation, and may allow you to profit big should he continue to outperform as a passer the rest of the way.

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The latest analysis and insights from our merry band of sports betting nerds:

👀 The Best of the Best: Get Dwain McFarland’s Industry-Leading Utilization Report before you hit Week 8.

🤬 Jayden Daniels where art thou? LaMarca and Ulrich go through the worst beats of Week 7, a slate where no player was safe from the injury bug.  

📈 King Henry did some late work to help these bets cash.

💪🏾 Lamar Jackson. MVP, Baltimore Raven, and owner of the NFC. Jackson’s inter-conference record is sick.

❓Bet the Colts? Here are the best teams against the spread in 2024.

NHL Prop Drop—Back Kuzmenko against defense-optional Penguins

by Geoff Ulrich 

The Pittsburgh Penguins have had a brutal start to the year defensively. Their record is only 3-4, which is far from a disaster, but they’ve allowed 4.4 goals per game (3rd worst in the league) and have ceded the most high-danger scoring chances against to date.

This Tuesday they’ll take on the Flames, who have been quite good at creating scoring chances, despite having a roster that lacks a ton of recognizable names. The Flames average only 27.2 shots on net per game, but are 8th in high-danger scoring chances. That should make this a great spot for some of their forwards to find the twine on Tuesday. And for betting, I’m going straight to their top six and targeting a juicy anytime goal line on one of their most prolific scorers.

The Bet: Andrei Kuzmenko anytime goal (+230; FanDuel)

Kuzmenko has just 8 shots on net and 1 goal through five games, but he’s been an incredibly efficient shooter since joining the league with Vancouver in 2022-23 and boosts a career 22.8 shooting percentage. While you’d be right to question whether or not he can keep up that pace, last year with Calgary he scored 14 times in 29 games and actually outperformed his career mark, landing a goal on 24.1% of his shots on net.

While he’s started a little slowly this season, his last two games have been solid, as he scored the game-winner against Chicago two games ago and played a season-high 23 shifts against Seattle in the Flames’ last outing.

From an odds perspective, Kuzmenko is as short as +165 at some books in the anytime goal market for this game, but was listed at +230 on FanDuel (in our NHL Prop Finder Tool), as of this writing. He’s also listed well behind Nazim Kadri (+185; FanDuel) in this market, whom he’s outscored over the last two seasons (0.39 gpg vs 0.32 gpg).

While the Flames are bettable as -115 home favorites, I don’t see any value in taking them as favorites as the Penguins’ poor start has already been baked into that line. Instead, I‘d rather get my Flames exposure through Kuzmenko, whose anytime goal prop I entered into our Free NHL Betting Tracker, where you can get our bets all NHL season long.

Looking for more NHL action this season? Check out our free NHL Futures Betting Odds below.

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