What else is in today’s newsletter?

• Tuesday Night Charts

• The New York Prop Exchange

Tuesday Night Charts—🏈📊

Each Tuesday—during my only chance to catch a midweek breath—I’ll be presenting the league through the lens of a single image. I find simple visualizations extremely helpful, particularly in tracking outliers.

While no one picture or advanced expected stat can truly shoulder such a load, learning to take the temperature of each team’s offensive and defensive expected points added (EPA) will sharpen your game. This per-play metric defines the value of each play by the effect it has on the offense's likelihood to score. 

It provides an analytically dense, perspective-laden snapshot that is absolutely worth familiarizing yourself with.

NOTE: Positive EPA is ideal on both sides of the ball—so in this specific case below, the closer to the upper-right corner, the better a team’s combined performance on both sides of the ball.  

THE GOOD
NO—The Saints keep marching in, popping off the EPA leaderboard on both sides of the ball. Eventually, we’ll have to take this seriously. In fact, Sean Payton’s odds for COY have actually gotten worse. Go figure.

BUF—Every question on offense thus far has been answered by Josh Allen shouldering the entire squad in his own version of hero-ball. It sure as heck isn’t pretty, but as long as he’s upright who’s going to stop him? 

MIN— What a start for the Vikes. Kevin O’Connell leads one of only four teams above league average in both phases plus a win over the vaunted 49ers. Sam Darnold detractors seem painfully silent at the moment. He’s got to be in the early consideration for Comeback Player of the Year.

THE BAD
DEN—A decent D can only get you so far when the offense stinks this bad. The Broncos are lucky Carolina is soaking up all the negative attention in the room.

WAS—A decent O can only get you so far when the defense stinks this bad. And I imagine things continue to cascade when not playing the hapless Giants.

NYG—I promised Matthew Berry no swearing, and I’m still too tilted after Sunday’s kicker fiasco to be unbiased. Malik Nabers rules, burn down the rest.

THE UGLY
LAR—Already presenting as an outlier, bad will definitely be going to worse after a slew of serious injuries during a rout by ARI. Abandon ship.

CAR—It’s over. The Panthers decided to shift to the Red Rocket Andy Dalton. While this might improve them in the short-term, it’s a massive capitulation for what has to go down as a historically disastrous front-office run.

BONUS CHART! Team Yard Differential

You can also track all of my NFL bets for every week of the season as well as futures with our free NFL Bet Tracker!

The Best Sweat in Fantasy Football

Guillotine Leagues is fantasy football, with a twist or two...

It’s simple:

• Create and draft like any league

• Each week the lowest-scoring team is eliminated

• Their entire roster becomes free agents

• An all-out FAAB war ensues

• Survive each week and be crowned champion

Guillotine Leagues is completely free to play and since it is points-based, you can start your league at any point during the season.

But why wait? Now is the perfect time to start your first Guillotine League!

Available on both iOS and Android Apps.

The New York Prop Exchange ⚾️🏛️—It’s Over, Johnny

Scoring is down across MLB, this much is true. That said, offensive suppression has put books in the strange spot of lowering lines to a point generally reserved for aces. I’m not exactly sure I’d use that word for either starter in today’s tilt between the A’s and the Cubbies. Mitch Spence faces Jordan Wicks at Wrigley—and while I’m not necessarily expecting double-digit runs scored, my Moving Averages model is nearly a full run over the First Five Inning Over/Under 4.

Don’t get me wrong, Spence can be OK at times. That said, if anything I love selling this rip and attacking him coming off a 7-inning masterclass versus the Phils. We’re still talking about a starter who has surrendered 4+ runs in 8 of 21 starts (38%), going up against a Cubs offense that’s top-3 vs. RHP over the last 30 days in team Runs, BA, OPS, BB%, and wOBA. 

Meanwhile, Chicago’s rolling out lefty Jordan Wicks and his 5.27 ERA, 1.61 WHIP combo. He’s not only walked 4 batters in each of his last 2 starts, but given up 11 earned runs in only 13 innings since getting promoted. 

Despite being a bit of a disaster offensively, the Athletics can hit for power, ranking top-3 vs. LHP this season in ISO and Barrel rate. So the hopeis pretty clear that we need a bloop and a blast but given the line is at 4 even, we’re still afforded the possibility of a push.

THE BET: OAK/CHC First 5 (F5) O4 (-110) 

You can search for MLB Player Props for today’s slate with our MLB Prop Bet Finder!

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

🏈 It’s the Week 3 College Football Recap and looking ahead to the Week 4 Early Lines.

🤬 Yes, the hurt still stings. Let’s relive the Week 2 Bad Beats one more time before moving on.

🔮 Look ahead to player props in Week 3 after diving into Dwain McFarland’s Utilization Report to learn how players are being deployed.

🚀 How much have the Saints’ Super Bowl odds jumped since the star of the season?

📈 Who are the best NFL teams against the spread? You’d be surprised at a few.

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