NFC Over/Under Wins: Best Bets (Ep. 1)

Pennington told me that I had great hair. That really I have lived on that for several years at this point. Number three the time that the lady at Coldstone Creamery said that I could just reuse the buy one, get one coupon every day for the next three days until the coupon expired. Number four the time that Marshaw Lynch did that insane run in Week sixteen against the Cardinals at the end of the game, and that capped off my most dramatic Fantasy win of all time. Do you

remember that one? Like Chris Collinsworth is literally just laughing at the time that it was my avatar for my fantasy leagues have literally just been Marshall Lynch jumping backward into the end zone making a pretty inappropriate gesture.

to deliver today. Are you okay with that?

best bets for the season. But for our next show, we're actually going to take a quick step back and give you kind of a primer on the landscape of sports betting, because most of you probably think that, well, sports betting is legal, so that regardless of your state, you can just Google bet on sports and place a bet on whatever website pops up. That's that's not the case.

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refund your wager up to one hundred dollars. So just download the play MGM app, use the promo code Harris, and head to New Jersey to place your first wager. So tag's the first thing I want to do is talk a little bit, because you obviously are a fantasy analyst, I want to talk a little bit about how sports gambling impacts you as a fantasy analyst generally. So why

don't you you know? Because I read your primer every week, which everybody should be doing, and I know you talk about things like implied total So I just want to know generally, how you know the lines at Vegas or any sportsbook sets kind of impacts how you think about fantasy.

the over under that was set for the game. I had never rese I've never released that release research that I did because I didn't want I wanted to like fine tune it and get a bigger sample size. But it definitely has an effect on fantasy output as you would expect, and it's definitely a curve. So like, as a sample in the twenty one games, when the total was in between fifty two and fifty three and a half points, that game netted on both sides of the

ball one hundred and seventy nine fantasy points. By comparison, if we drop that down ten points to forty two to forty three and a half a point spread, it actually average one hundred and thirty eight point five fantasy points. So you're talking about a difference of like forty fantasy points just over forty fantasy points just because the game's over under was up ten points and we're not talking

like the over under was sixty. Vegas has this locked down to the point where it's like the odds makers they set these lines, they know exactly what they're expecting, and most of the time it's going to pan out to where if you're ever torn between you know two players, you should definitely use the over under to help you decide that, particularly in DFS, because as we've seen, you know, in this research that I've done, that small sample size, is that it does affect fantasy football and if you

and again if you're torn, choose the player that's got the higher over under in his game.

I mean, you know they are you know, you mentioned the lines that Vegas sets and those you know, they know more about football basically and how to set those lines and where they go than anybody else in the world. But in the end, you know, the lines move, you know, during the week and stuff like that. Does any of that impact you essentially as a fantasy analyst or a fantasy player.

point underdog. The correlation with that is terrible in terms of like four running backs. On the flip side, if you have a team that's sitting there as a favorite by two and a half points and then you see the line shift and all of a sudden it's up to five and a half points, the running back on the big favorite should be bumped up in your rankings a little bit and you should be more you know, open to playing that guy.

So why don't we then get into the bulk of the show. Now, we decided to go with the NFC because you know, i've tags as a Bears fan, as everybody pretty much knows, and so I I assume that he's got relatively strong opinions on some of the teams. So tags, why don't we do this? Why don't you start and give me what you think your best over under is for the NFC.

there's no push in this situation. Seventy one percent of experts actually agree with me on this one, So it's not like, you know, I know there's gonna be put some people out there listening saying, oh, well, he's a Bears fan. I am one hundred percent. I leave those take I leave my fandom outside my job. But Detroit. You know, when you look at the division, you see that the Bears are projected to win nine or ten games. You look at Green Bay, they're projected to win nine

or ten games. Minnesota the same exact thing. So where is Detroit getting their free wins? You know, the NFCS as a conference has turned like brutal, like in terms of like sheer top end talent. I would say the NFC is a tougher conference now and Detroit under Matt Patricia unfortunately, you have to be one of two things

as a head coach. If you want to if you want to be you know, a nine to sevent team or whatever that is, like just like a winning coach, you have to either be a an offensive mind that your offense is so good to overcome some defensive struggles. Because to be fair, I'd rather have an offensive minded coach because the NFL is going that way they want. You know, it's like the chicks dig the long ball.

It's just like chickstick touchdowns. That's basically where we're at now and Detroit they really don't have that, and now they're talking about running the ball a whole lot more. Matt Patricia is not an elite defensive coach, you know, like if you have someone like Pete Carroll who continually puts out the best team on the field, that's an elite coach in terms of he might not be an offensive mind, but his defense comes out to play every single week. We didn't see that out of Detroit last year.

I don't think they have the talent and the roster, and again, they play in probably the toughest division in football, So to say that they'd win seven games, I think that's a stretch. So I'd say Detroit was more like a five and eleven or six and ten team.

on some of the other teams in the North. But I do want to point something out because you brought up a good point which kind of leads me sort of to what I wanted to talk about here, which is you mentioned that seventy one percent of experts are with you on the under, And just to be clear, that number comes from bettingpros dot Com, which, by the way, if you love Fantasy pros, you're really gonna love Betting Cross because it does a lot of the same things.

Part of what it does is it pulls together expert picks from across various platforms, It rates the advice, and it then turns it into consensus picks. So at Betting Pros, for example, you can get consensus picks from over one hundred and fifty experts, either for over unders or against the spread. You can see accuracy ratings for everyone who's

submitting picks. You can compare expert picks for any game you want, and you can see consensus odds across sports books to make it easy to compare the various odds that are out there. We're going with six and a half, as you saw for the over under for the Lions wins, and that is the consensus over under. Now it lists a bunch of different sportsbooks, and frank they're all happen to be at six and a half. But that's another thing that you're going to be able to see at

Betting pros do com. So if you go into betting pros dot com and you go and you look at what the over unders are for the season, and you click on analysis under Betting Pros, you'll see seventy one percent of experts have the under including tags which you can see right there, and only twenty nine percent have the old. So that is one of the things that we're gonna be doing at the site now. Sticking with the North one of the ones I have, I'm not let's just say this, I don't expect to lose this

bet with. This is the Vikings over nine wins, and the thing is, I nine wins to me feels very safe, and so I'm looking at this as the worst case scenario as sort of a push.

them getting to ten, possibly eleven. They brought in Gary Kubiak, who I don't even know what his exact job title is at this point, quarterback whisper, whatever it is, is an offensive advisor, but he's basically like a guarantee to have a top ten offense, and he emphasizes play action pass and I really think that that's gonna benefit Kirk Cousins. So I do expect the offense, which really sort of

struggled later on down the stretch, to be better. And the team drafted Garrett Bradbury out of North Carolina State. To me, that really really bulks up their offensive line. And best of all, he is familiar with the zone blocking scheme that Kubiak likes to implement, you know, and I think Dalvin Cook as well, he's familiar with his zone blocking scheme, so he's going to be back healthy.

I'm really excited about it. And the defense, which was you know, i'll say maybe not elite but definitely above average, is largely intact, so sort of for the same reasons that you do not like the Lions. In the end, I kind of think that the Vikings are probably going to win both their games against the Lions to start, and I really expect them to have a strong season this year.

was really up and down in his performances. But you know year two in that offense, you know, upgrading the offensive line. You know, the defense won't be on the field hopefully as much. If they can run the ball with Dalvin Cook, if he could stay healthy, I think nine wins is right. It's about right for them. Again, they play in this tough division, tough conference. But if they get everything together and if Kubiak, if they do pick up that offense, I could see ten wins out

of this team. It's just it's really tough to do that in the NFC now, And which kind of like it's like a good segue to my next team that I would have as under is ten and a half the New Orleans Saints ten and a half wins. I'm going to go under that. The Saints are a good roster, but their defense is a little suspect. Okay, Sean Payton's

always been an elite play caller. We know that that offense is going to show up losing Mark Ingram probably not going to lose anything in that offense, replacing him with Latavious Murray, losing their starting center, that's not ideal on the offensive line. That's going to downgrade that a little bit. But it's not so much about the offense.

This is more about the inconsistency on defense and particularly in their secondary outside of Actually, I should say Marcus Latimore took a step back last year and then they traded for Eli Apple, who he's just a mediocre guy. I just feel like that defense, I know they've added a few pieces to it, is a little too inconsistent for them to for you to say, oh, I'm guarantee, I'm gonna say they're gonna win eleven games. They're gonna go eleven and five. Atlanta is a really good football team.

Tampa Bay is now coached by Bruce Arians. I would I would assume that Arians Indivision is gonna win one of those games against them. Breeze when he plays outdoors again, maybe that game is at Tampa Bay. When he plays outdoors, he's not as good. Carolina is always competitive under Ron Rivera, So to win eleven games. I don't see how anybody could take the over on New Orleans. I would have set that line of ten and made someone pick. You know, are you gonna say, are you willing to lay that

rake in order to bet New Orleans? But the ten and a half is just too high?

But you're right, you know, the Panthers I like a lot. I may talk about them if we get there, you know. And again, yeah, Bruce arians certainly making the Bucks better. So I'm definitely a little worried about the Saints right now. I would also go under with that. I don't think it's one of my best bets necessarily, but it is something where when I choose it, when I put it on the site, I am going to be going under ten and a half for me. My second is the

Giants under five and a half wins. Now, that is a really, really low total, but I cannot see any scenario where this team even remotely succeeds. The best thing I can say about them in terms of basically having that bet lose is that they get to face the Redskins twice. That's really it. And they obviously don't have Beckham anymore. Golden Tate is suspended, Sterling Shepard is dealing with his broken thumb. Corey Coleman's out for the season.

I mean, I love Saquon Barkley, I love Evan Ingram, but I mean, come on, on the defense, I mean, maybe Lorenzo Carter is gonna emerge, you know, maybe Marcus Golden's gonna get back to it, but it's certainly not overly impressive. The offensive line has absolutely no depth. I mean, Nate Solder and Mike Grammars are probably they're already battling injury. I don't even know if they're going to play in the preseason. If they have an injury there, they're really

going to struggle. And the only thing that makes me even remotely think about this bet for me is that their schedule, they certainly have winnable games. They've got the two against the Redskins, as I said, they're home against Buffalo, They're home against the Cardinals, They're at the Jets, which obviously is not an actual away game. They're home against Miami. So there are some winnable games out there. But for me, betting against David Getleman is a pretty good bet, and

I feel just. I mean, six wins, it's not a big number, but for me, even them getting there, it feels like almost everything needs to break right.

have continuity there, it means a lot. And you know, when you have two new safeties, or even if you replaced one, it's they're playing as a new group and there can be miscommunications over the top, And uh, yeah, I am with you on this one. I actually had the Giants there, they weren't there. They would have been my like number four pick the NFC teams. But I'm definitely with you on that one.

nothing you can kind of fall into it. But you know, this team is almost kind of historically bad in the way that I look at it. So that's certainly one of my strong ones. How about you, what's number three for you?

to the wide receivers. There were so many things that anything that could have went wrong essentially for the Eagles last year, did go wrong, and they still went nine to seven. Doug Peterson has proven that he's a phenomenal coach. He has this team well prepared. Next man up on the depth chart, Okay, you're gonna step in, You're gonna do this, and they do it. But they've upgraded their roster. They're actually they're going to walk in healthy. They have

Miles Sanders now, who's a true three down back. They don't have to necessarily rotate and be predictive with their running backs. Carson Wentz seems to be like fully healthy. Adding to Shawn Jackson is massive for that offense. He may not be the best fantasy player this year, but in terms from a real football standpoint, DeShawn Jackson changes

the way that you approach an offense. And if he's able to stretch the field and pull a safety his way, that means Alshon Jeffery is going to be in man coverage, Nelson Agler is back in the slot where he belongs. You know, they tried pushing him outside when they traded for Golden Tate last year. The Eagles just tried to doing everything that they possibly could last year, and they just they came up short, and they made it a lot

further than a lot of other teams would have. But knowing that Dallas is probably gonna be without Ezekiel Elliott, it seems right now, knowing that, you know, the Giants, as we just talked about, not a good football team, the Washington Redskins are a terrible football team as well. It seems like they're gonna be starting Colt McCoy. We've seen this story before. So I think the Eagles I

would take the over. And I was surprised to see that seventy one percent of experts agree with me on that one.

of course there's a possibility. But for the most part, there are a handful of teams that you're gonna be able to really pick on this year, and you know, the Eagles are in a division with two of them, and you know the fact that they get four games against them really makes a difference for me. You know, again, this is one where I think most people are gonna look at the number and they're gonna think the number is pretty on and that's the Packers over nine. Again,

this is not a half, this is nine. So again part of my thinking here is if you hit the number when it's not a half and you push, you're fine. You haven't lost any money or anything like that. So this is one of the ways that I like it, and I do expect them to go over Now I'm not I'm not going overboard with this one.

as a coach, but I don't really care. More so even than the offense, although the offense is something, is that the defense. I mean, they were allowing twenty five points per game last year and they just added a heck of a lot to that defense. I've got Zadarius Smith and Preston Smith, Adriana Mike Daniels. For whatever reason, right, that was a little weird. I don't know, Tags, actually, I've been meaning to talk to about it. Do you have insight into why they did that?

know Rogers is getting up there. I just have this feeling, Tags, I think he's gonna come out and he's gonna go nuts because I think that he is so motivated to basically show that McCarthy was really the cause of the is Now he was injured, of course, and he gets injured fairly regularly, but I think that this is going

to be a ginormous year for Aaron Rodgers. Again, the schedule is tough, I completely agree, but I think with that defense sort of, you know, getting so much better from last year, and with Rogers being motivated and with Aaron Jones for the entire season, I really think that this is going to be a big year for them.

you know, I think nine is a good number. I know why it's set there, but I'm I feel pretty comfortable that they're going to get to ten wins.

also a big question mark. Again, they drafted. They drafted some players in the defense, which should help, but again in that tough division. Don't I don't know why Matt Leafleour got a head coaching job. I mean, I'm gonna be real honest about that. Like, I'm not saying that he won't turn out to be a good coach. He could. He could, but I just don't understand how he got that job. Like, did anybody watch the Titans offense last year? It wasn't good. And I know that people want to

blame Marcus Mariota, and that's fine. I remember when people were blaming Jared Goff for being bad under Jeff Fisher and then like Sean McVay came in. That's where people are going wrong with Matt Lafleur is that they're believing that he had something to do with the Rams. Now he was under Sean McVay, he hit the title of offensive coordinator, but he was not calling the place. Sean McVay is always called the plays there, and then Lafloor he just got too cute, like trying to do things

like mixing and matching Dion Lewis and Derrick Henry. And I thought he may have learned his lesson at the end of the season by you know, like when you watch Derrick Henry, I know they had good game scripts in them, but he kept Derrick Henry on the field and good things happened because of it. And now that he went to Green Bay, I'm like, Okay, he had to have learned right. And anybody that's watched football knows that Aaron Jones is the best running back on that

roster and it's not even all that close. And Mike McCarthy was all about, oh he's got a past block and this, and it's a bunch of garbage. Mike McCarthy was a terrible coach.

I'm like, it's it's really easy to say that when you have Aaron Rodgers and Brett Farv like throughout your career, like you've you've literally been handed a gift on a silver platter and you've done nothing with it, Like Rogers has won Super Bowl. That's pathetic.

and let him do what he wants. I just think, especially with the increased defense, you know, with how good they're gonna be there, I really just expect this. They're gonna I think they're gonna, you know, surpass expectations. I remember, they do have a lot of tough games on their schedule, but you know, they also play the East, they get the Giants, they get the Redskins, are they get the Raiders? You know, there's a ton of really winnable games out there.

And you know, look, I mean neither one of us. My guess is you're probably gonna come with me. I believe the Bears are set at eight at the over under eight?

because I just don't know if he's competent enough. And granted he has what I consider to be the most talented quarterback of all time during the football And that's the part of me that's like it really sucks because, like Aaron, I've had Rogers and far of in my in the division with the Bears for such a long time, and I appreciate the hell out of both those guys. Like Brett Favre is a warrior, he was more of a gunslinger, But Aaron Rodgers the most talented quarterback I've

ever seen play the game. And I would love nothing more than Rogers to like show the world like I am an elite quarterback, Like what do you like? People are like so downplaying Aaron Rodgers this year, Like even in fantasy football, he's falling to like the fourth or fifth quarterback off the board this year, and I'm like, did you guys forget who this guy is? Like just because of one bad year? And and by the way, we're calling it a bad year. He had twenty five touchdowns and two interceptions.

Matt Lafleur fan, but I don't really care. I just think that things are going to be so much better for them. And again, I think Mike McCarthy has been a terrible coach for a long time, as you said. And they were still, of course a very successful football team. I mean, they didn't win they only won one Super Bowl, but they were a good team year after year, and I think Rodgers has enough to do that. Now I'll back with a good defense. I really think that they're

going to get over the nine. And again I really to me, I could be wrong here, but I really just I don't see them being a five hundred football team. I see them at least getting to nine wins, which again to me, means fine, I'm safe. It's a push. No matter what happens after that, I think we're gonna be out.

lot of injuries to his key players. But it's very possible. Like think about it, Hugh Jackson was considered a really good offensive coordinator, and he was like one of the worst head coaches of all time. I just think certain guys would just handle the jobs so much better when they could focus just on their offense. I hope Kyle Shanan's not one of those guys, because I wanted to see him succeed in that role. But seven and a half wins, I mean, when you have the Rams, the Seahawks,

I mean, the Cardinals are whatever. They could be a surprise team this year if that offense takes.

run heavy team. The Baltimore defense lost a lot of pieces this year. I think they can potentially surprise Baltimore, not saying they will win that game. Carolina, again, that's a team that's re building. Get like they've gotten a lot younger. They should. That should be a pretty good game between those two teams. They have Cincinnati and that, so it's like if they get off to a little hot start, it's like they could build some momentum. I could see six and ten for them one hundred percent.

But it's just do I want to put money on it? Because I don't. I So when Kyler Murray was drafted the number one overall, I didn't think that he in most draft classes, he would not have been number one overall. I think this is a week class. I'm not a huge Kyler Murray guy. I might be wrong on that, but what I saw in college was a guy that didn't anticipate his throws very much. He basically had he

bought time with his legs. He did have a good offensive line there, he had a receiver that can shake loose if any defender and Marquis Brown if he bought some time and he just waited till players were open too much. There was no anticipation like in a route. And I don't know how that's gonna work. I know Kingsbury people are excited about it, and it might work, you know, the air raid offense, the four or five

wide receiver sets, whatever you want to do. But that's where it's like the whole Chip Kelly business where it's like, you know, nobody really knows what they're doing and they are gonna They're not showing anything the preseason from what we understand, so.

beat the Bucks. You know, you we really don't necessarily know what that's gonna be, and they really can kind of surprise you. But it is again another one where I just said, I just can't do it because I just I don't feel confident enough in what's going to go on. And again the rest of the division, as you said, the forty nine ers, I kind of feel the same way as you do. But what I mean, look, the the Seahawks are at eight and a half. Would you go over under them?

mark around Gurley's knee. But I mean even last year, man CJ. Anderson like just you know, just came off the street kind of and just rumbled for one hundred and sixty seven yards against the Cards and one hundred and thirty two against the forty nine ers, and we cut back and you know, they they I know they've lost some Dominican Sue and la Marcus Joiner, but they added Clay Matthews and Eric Weddle. To me, I just I kind of feel like they're gonna have another big season.

You get another year from GoF, You've still got Wade Phillips on the defense, still got Aaron Donald. I kind of just feel like they're gonna go over. But again, this is one all of these on the NFC West, they're all where I feel like I have an opinion, but I can't really do it, you know what I mean, I can't pull the trigger on being like this is one that I feel confident in.

that offensive line. They lost two starting offensive linemen this offseason. That's a problem. Like there's things that are changing with that team. And it's just to me, it's like ten and six is cool, but like eleven and five, you're like, man, it's You're like, Seattle's gonna beat you one of those games. You know, you just know that's gonna happen. It's like,

does Arizona eke out a win against them? And I know that LA actually has a really easy schedule at the start the year, and then like it gets tougher at the end. So I don't know, man, it's just so tough to project somebody for That's why I went New Orleans under ten and a half because I just can't. I can't project them for eleven.

a full sized autographed Christian McCaffrey helmet. So all you need to do to be entered into the contest is to leave a review for the show on either iTunes or Stitcher and send a screenshot of that review to contest at Bettingpros dot com. At the end of August, we're gonna randomly choose a winner. And guys, understand this. This is literally the inaugural episode, which means absolutely nothing to Tags, but is like the highlight of my life. You don't start a podcast with a ton of reviews

that are already sitting there. I mean, if you guys go to leave a review, you might be one of the first ten people to leave a review. So it's not as if there are hundreds of people right now who are going to be entering this contest. Go ahead, leave a review and screenshot it and send it to a contest at bettingpros dot com at the end of August.

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I'm out here, you know, obviously bidding to try to you know, pay for signed memorabilia, and if you can win it for free, there's really no reason not to so tags. I mean, I'm a little miffed because this was obviously not as important to you as it was to me. But I really I can't thank you enough for joining me today. You know basically about as much about football as pretty much any personal live except Chad Pennington, who not only knows football but also great hair. As

I said, but I really love getting your take. I really hope that we can talk more this season, and again, thanks for coming on and for probably being wrong on the RAMS bet and giving me something great from Christine Auction.