Intro by Yank
We spent the off-season staring at the ceiling envisioning gambling on football like Beth Harmon strategizing chess openings in her orphanage bed and now it is finally here! NFL football is back! The boys are back! We would recommend starting with our 2021 Intro Post where we explain the bit for this blog and our revised approach for the season in detail (spoiler alert: revisions were necessary). We are ready to put those strategies into action below. If this doesn’t work we may need to take up blogging about chess or the latest Netflix drama series, so pray for us and follow along all season.
The Strategies
- Watch line movement carefully. Sharps move the lines and we want to be on the side with them.
- Pick more underdogs. Even though many of them lose more than 50% of games, they still cover about 50% of the time.
- Put in bets earlier. Once you get to Sunday, the lines are close to perfectly efficient.
Week 1 Picks
The Collaboration:
Green Bay Packers @ New Orleans Saints ML (+160)
Yank: All year last year we blindly walked into a buzz saw. Spending hours of time researching teams, digging into data, putting together our own analysis. Meanwhile, somewhere out there countless people are literally doing this whole gambling thing as their job. As we explained in the intro post, trying to find out who those people like is our number one goal this year. Enter this matchup, which will be played in Jacksonville due to Hurricane Ida. It seems like the vast majority of squares like us like the Packers; Aaron Rodgers was outstanding last year and Jameis is starting for the Saints (he already has two picks somehow and the game hasn’t started yet). Publicly available data would suggest somewhere between 60-70% of bets are on the Packers confirming this theory. Meanwhile, the line dropped a full point to Saints+3.5 on Thursday after sitting at 4.5 all week. That indicates smart people like the Saints (say it with me: sharps move lines). You may recall last year in Week 1 we bet on the WFT when nobody thought they had a chance based on similar logic. Not only did they cover, they won that game outright. We got away from this theory after that. We shouldn’t have.
Sam: Yank provides a great explanation for why Strategy 1 applies for this matchup. We will also be following Strategy 2 by picking an underdog with a little more risk by taking the ML instead of the points. Rodgers and the Packers were excellent last year, but the Saints weren’t slouches either. While Brees was certainly a great game manager, he hadn’t thrown a deep ball in about 15 years. We know Jameis will let it rip, and it’s on Sean Payton to mold his new QB into a more refined QB. The other thing worth noting is that All-Pro LT David Bakhtiari will be out this game and the Saints defense is no joke. This defense has the players to make life hard on the Rodgers-led offense. Throw in a little motivation to represent the City of New Orleans and this has all the makings of a special win for the Saints.
Yank’s Play: $5.00 on the Saints (+160)
Sam’s Play: $5.00 on the Saints (+160)
The Confrontation:
The Chicago Bears @ The Los Angeles Rams-7.5
Sam: The more things change, the more they stay the same. If you’ve followed this blog before, you’ll know that this matchup is a Confrontation from last season and that my disregard for Sean McVay is a running theme/joke (the joke being on me, of course). In my opinion, Sean McVay has had more fluff blown up his ass for less success than anyone else I know. His offensive production has declined every season since they made it to the Super Bowl and yet we get all of these excuses and blah blah blah. The reason that they were any good at all last year is because they had one of the best defenses in the league! Now because the Rams added Stafford this offseason, everyone thinks McVay will magically turn it back on. But has anyone even watched a Matt Stafford game in the last ten years? I’m willing to bet you haven’t. I have and I can confirm he does like to sling the ball around the field. It doesn’t matter which team gets the ball, somebody will come down with it.
Yank: This one is relatively straightforward to me. Unlike Sam, I think McVay raises the floor in LA; their problems are in spite of, not because of him. Stafford may not be awesome, but you know who stinks? Jared Goff. Even if Stafford is replacement level (and I think he’s better than that) he raises their floor as well. Meanwhile, on the other sideline, we have Matt Nagy, who isn’t even smart enough to start the best QB on his team. I do think the coaching matchup matters for gambling purposes and it’s hard for me to envision a bigger mismatch on that front.
Sam: While my irritation with McVay makes this bet a whole lot easier, I think the team on the other side has more going for it than public perception. Everyone, including myself, wanted the Bears to suck last year. And you know what, they kinda did. But they must have sucked less than most teams in order to make the Playoffs. Like the Rams, the Bears actually have a good defense. They’re a bit on the older side, so they might not make it through a full season, but they’ve got their health going into Week One. On the head coaching front, Yank is right to point out that there is no reason to have faith in Matt Nagy. That dude stinks, but at the end of the day he’s coaching for his job and Andy ‘the Red Rifle’ Dalton is playing for his job. Throw in two guys playing for their football lives, some exciting upside playmakers, and a system that allows the QB to get the ball out quickly and some of you might be surprised. I’ll wrap up by referencing the strategies. Strategy 1 – unfortunately, this line hasn’t moved. But what that means is, this is the right line for the Sharps. I feel as though public perception thinks the Rams are way better than the Bears and they’re only favored by a touchdown. I like getting this line at 7.5 and being on the side of the Casinos. Strategy 2 – Pick more underdogs. Well, I’m playing the underdog in this one, and as I pointed out in the intro, underdogs end up hitting about 50% of the time over the course of a season. For my sake, let’s hope this is one.
Yank: I know I am taking some risk here, the Rams are the exact type of mid-level favorite we lost money on all year last year. Every Joe Shmoe gambler you know will probably have the Rams in a teaser which is always a warning sign. That said I believe three things matter – 1) the Rams will definitely be better coached 2) this game is the grand opening of the brand new stadium in LA to the fans on national tv which should be a boost to the home team 3) I got decent value to get -6.5 to try to protect myself from any backdoor chicanery. That said, even if I was forced to take Rams-7.5 I’d still like this bet; the Rams offense is poised to explode out of the starting blocks here and I can’t envision the Bears keeping up.
Yank’s Play: $5.25 on the Rams-6.5 (-132)
Sam’s Play: $5.25 on the Bears+7.5 (-105)
The Isolation:
The Seattle Seahawks @ The Indianapolis Colts+3 (-120)
Sam: I’m really taking Strategy 2 to heart this week. This marks the 3rd underdog I’ll be taking this week and the one I feel most confident about (which is probably a bad sign). Why are the Colts, who finished 11-5 with a noodle-arm QB, 6 point underdogs to a Seattle Seahawks team who completely folded in on themselves the last 8 weeks of the season last year? I get this game being close, but 6 points off seems like a lot. Furthermore, as crazy as it sounds, I actually believe in a Carson Wentz-aissance. He gets to play in front of a real offensive line instead of those weird cushion things the Eagles chose to run out there that most teams use during training camp. Unless Wentz really is that bad, I don’t see how adding Wentz over Rivers is anything less than a wash (and should have way more upside). Other questions to consider: Did the Colts defense lose anyone? No. Did Frank Reich leave? No. My intuition is backed up by a fancy mathematical model created by The Athletic’s Ethan Douglas. While Douglas’ model doesn’t account for roster changes (meaning that the results of this model are based almost entirely on last year’s Colts), it has the Colts as -2.4 favorites! And if it’s not clear enough how I feel, this team should be as good as last year, if not ultimately better.
Sam’s Play: $6.00 on the Colts+3 (-120)
San Francisco 49ers @ Detroit Lions ML (+295)
Yank: Do you know anyone outside of “the mitten” who likes the Lions in this spot? I can tell you for sure I don’t. All week we’ve heard about how excited Kyle Shanahan is to have Jimmy G back and how last year was so full of unlucky breaks for San Francisco. Everyone is sure this team is destined for the playoffs and quite frankly they may be right. Meanwhile, Dan Campbell spent the offseason really driving home that he is a complete lunatic and it is unclear how much he knows about “football strategy.” The Lions will be rolling out a starting QB that I have already said stinks in this post. What on earth am I doing here? I’m trying to shoot the moon, friends. I mentioned above that the Rams are an easy teaser team this week, the 49ers are their counterpart. Teasing their two games together to get Rams-1.5 and 49ers-2 seems like free money. Having lost money on teasers that felt this easy a bunch last year I can tell you what tends to happen, one of these teams will win and cover the full spread and the other will lose, or come close. I’m taking a big swing that the Rams will cover and the 49ers will find themselves in a dog fight. While at first glance it seems crazy, the 49ers are traveling from the West Coast for a 1 pm start, the game is in Detroit in an indoor stadium where the fans will be stoked to be back, and the Lions should have an interesting defense and run game. I could just be snorting the super espresso Dan Campbell uses as rocket fuel, but I am going to take a big swing at long odds.
Yank’s Play: $3.39 on the Lions+295
The Bank-Week 1
| Yank | Sam | |
| Starting: | $100.00 | $100.00 |
| Risk: | $13.64 | $16.25 |
| Potential Earnings: | $22.00 | $18.00 |
| Record: | 0-0 | 0-0 |
| Record Against The Spread: |
Authors: Sam Mattson and Michael Yanckello
One Last Line 