NFL Week 1: Ravens–Bills Blitz Plan, Player Props + CFB Picks

I'm Warren Sharpe of Sharpe Football Analysis and this is going to become your new favorite NFL betting podcast. Why? Well because I've assembled a team of experts that's going to deliver some of our favorite bets and fantasy information for you. Whether you're playing NFL or college football so that you can not only get smarter but also increase your bankroll over the course of the weekend. Tune into the games, have some fun, learn something, and make money while doing so. All of it's going to be here in this podcast. I can't wait to share it with you so sit back, relax, and let's get this show started. Welcome in guys. I can't wait to start sharing some of the best bets for college football and NFL this weekend with multiple guests and you're going to love it. Before we do that though we are going to break down the Thursday night game. I'm recording this Thursday night in the 1 a.m. hour. After having stayed up through the weather delay and watched the end of the Eagles-Cowboys game and I've got some great insights that I'm going to be dropping momentarily. But before we do that I want to make sure that you're subscribed to us over on YouTube. You know we're going to be delivering this to you Friday morning bright and early before anybody else is dropping some of these reactions with the data that we're getting on the Thursday night game. And you're going to want to make sure that you get this bright and early. So subscribe to us over on YouTube. Search for Sharp Football Analysis. Subscribe to us on your favorite podcast platform. We're there as well. Now let's dive into this game on Thursday night. Obviously the Eagles win 24-20. Lots of takeaways. First and foremost, I've got my notes here. The spitting incident, that was obviously ridiculous. We do know from our referee expert Joe Gibbs that the refs are absolutely cracking down on taunting and unsportsmanlike penalties this year. So it's going to happen. It's going to happen in more games. That was uncalled for. The whole DAC might have started it by spitting in the direction of the defender and then the defender spits back at him, Jalen Carter, and then ultimately gets ejected because he actually spat on DAC. It was ridiculous. The whole back and forth of it all, I don't know if DAC should have faced any penalties there or not. Maybe not. But Jalen Carter, obviously there's no room for spitting on your opponent in the game, even if DAC did sort of bait you into it. But just know that the better coaches out there are going to have their players ready for all these flags that the refs are going to be throwing this year. Just start making examples out of players taunting and doing their unsportsmanlike penalties. So good coaches, make sure your players aren't doing that. We'll figure out who the bad coaches are when we watch their undisciplined players get a lot of these penalties. Me personally, I thought that one flag for taunting was ridiculous. I mean, but that's what they're going to do this year. I don't like it. I don't like these penalties. I think these penalties are ridiculous, but that's how they're going to call the games this year. The weather delay. Okay, so prior to the weather delay, let's talk about it. In the first half, there were seven drives and seven scoring drives. All seven of the drives scored points. There were 41 total points scored in the first half of this game. No punts, no turnovers. Every single time a team touched the ball, they scored points. To start the second half, the first drive was a field goal. The second drive was a fumble. And the Cowboys were in scoring position, right? They could have scored there. I think George Pickens got a penalty, and that backed them up, and then they ultimately fumbled the football. So good job, George Pickens. But after the weather delay, when the Eagles got the ball back with four minutes and 44 seconds left in the third quarter, there were no points scored after that point in time. There were five straight drives that were punts. Then there was a turnover on downs, and then it was the end of the game by the Philadelphia Eagles kneeling out the game. So that was crazy. The weather delay absolutely tanked the scoring in this game, and I did some research here. This is just the fifth game since 1990 where there were over 40 points scored in the first half, and the game still went under the total. That's right. I know there's some over-betters out there. We weren't any of those, but there were some over-betters out there who obviously were very happy at halftime, having scored 41 points, just completely unlucky that the weather came in, allowed the defenses to reset, maybe change some strategies. Offenses got a little bit more out of sync, and no more points were scored. It had to be one of the worst ways to start a season. Now, we started it great from a betting perspective. We hit the Shipley rushing. We hit the Eagles in a teaser leg. We hit Dak Prescott passing yards under. We netted out positive on our props, and we're heading into the weekend with a strong teaser leg already locked in and trying to close it out on Sunday. So if you haven't joined us, we're going to be dropping some codes momentarily where you can get 77% off a weekly betting package. Starting off the season great. We're looking to roll into Sunday and keep that going. And if you want to join for the season, there's 25% off codes as well. So we're going to be flashing those up on the screen throughout the show, as well as we're going to show you guys exactly where to go, Sharp.Football, to get on board. Let's talk a little bit about some of the data on this game. There are some crazy things for the Philadelphia Eagles. Saquon Barkley faced a stacked box on 67% of his attempts in his week one opener. This was more than three times the rate that Barkley faced last season at 21%, the highest rate that Barkley faced in a single game since 2019. He finished the game with just 33 yards on 12 carries against stacked boxes, averaging only 2.8 yards per carry, including five runs where he was stuffed at or behind the line of scrimmage. I'm going to talk a little bit momentarily about something that I'm excited to see from the Dallas Cowboys and specifically Brian Schottenheimer. But keep in mind, number one, I have issues with the offensive coordinator for the Philadelphia Eagles calling so many runs when the defense was in a stacked box and just letting Saquon run right into that stacked box for nothing and just continuously repeating that over and over again. But credit to Brian Schottenheimer for stacking the box and anticipating that the Eagles might just run into it and they continued to do it and Barkley wasn't effective at all. On first down runs, Saquon Barkley averaged just 1.7 yards per carry on 11 rushes, an 18% success rate. Horrific numbers, horrific numbers. This was a very uncreative offense by the Philadelphia Eagles. And a lot of people, I posted a tweet out there that said, what do you guys think about the Philadelphia Eagles offensive coordinator? And the comments were he was good in the first half, but not so good in the second half. I didn't even think he was good in the first half. I am very discouraged by him. There's opportunities to make adjustments and fix some things moving forward. But I didn't think the Eagles offensive coordinator was good in the first half. The Eagles did have 216 yards at halftime. That is obviously good. They didn't punt the ball at all. That was obviously good. But 51 of those 216 yards came on that bomb to Dotson and they had a great, impressive scripted drive to start the game. But after that, it was just very safe passes to Dallas Goddard and Saquon Barkley. I mean, seven of their 10 pass attempts in the first half were to Saquon Barkley or Dallas Goddard. They only threw the ball to three other times to three other players. They had one target apiece to those guys. Everything was just underneath stuff to Dallas Goddard or Saquon Barkley. And Jalen Hurts scrambling the football. He scrambled in for two touchdowns, averaged eight yards per carry. Jalen Hurts was eluding defenders, hit that bomb to Dotson. Other than that, it was vanilla, basic, not creative from the Eagles offensive coordinator. And then the second half was obviously even worse than that. They had to be bailed out by Vic Fangio's defense yet again, who had to account for the loss of Jalen Carter, number one. But also the poor play of Adory Jackson. Adory Jackson allowed five catches on seven targets for 103 yards when he was the nearest defender. The most that he's allowed in a game since the 2023 football season. He was terrible last night against the Dallas Cowboys and C.E. Lamb. So I thought Vic Fangio, great. The Eagles offensive coordinator, not so great. And on the other side of the ball, I was very impressed. And this is what I really wanted to share with you guys that I'm so excited about. Brian Schottenheimer. So number one, they had a successful two-minute drill. They scored points at the end of the first half on a well-managed two-minute drill. That's something that Mike McCarthy would fumble all over the place and not hit consistently. Brian Schottenheimer, one for one, hit it the very first time. Either they had great adjustments out of the weather delay, obviously slowed down the Philadelphia Eagles offense even further. I thought that they did a great job utilizing their time in a difficult situation for a first-time head coach to make some adjustments out of that weather delay. Defensively, though, I loved their ultimate strategy. They deployed zone coverage on all 33 of Jalen Hurts' dropbacks in the game. They were just the second team to do that for 100% of opponent quarterback dropbacks since the start of 2024 season. So you ask, why did they do that? Well, here's why. I don't know if you can make this out super well, but this is where the Philadelphia Eagles are. Last year, offensively, Jalen Hurts' EPA per attempt versus man coverage down here at the bottom. He was one of the best, second best in the NFL. And then zone coverage, you can see, which is on the y-axis, he's below average. So the distance from this line is how sensitive you are to zone coverage. And Jalen Hurts was one of the most sensitive quarterbacks in the NFL to zone coverage. What does that mean? Well, here's the data on it. Last year, Jalen Hurts, when he was going up against man coverage, averaged 9.9 yards per attempt best in the NFL out of 42 qualifying quarterbacks. Third best in success rate at 52%, and third best in EPA at plus .36. But when he played zone coverage last year, 20th in yards per attempt, 9.9 dropped down to 7.6. 31st in success rate. His success rate dropped from 52% down to 41%. And EPA dropped from third best at plus .36 down to 29th at minus .03. So my guess is, Schottenheimer is looking at the data, sees this in there, decides that we're going to go 100% zone on Jalen Hurts' dropbacks. And it absolutely worked to slow the Philadelphia Eagles' passing attack down, knowing that Jalen Hurts struggles against this. So, multiple things here that we saw the Dallas Cowboys do that most teams were not doing against the Philadelphia Eagles. A new strategy based on data from last year. They stacked the box on Saquon Barkley, they played nothing but zone coverage. These are things that weren't happening to the Eagles last year that most teams didn't do defensively. And the Cowboys tried them out and had success in limiting the Philadelphia Eagles to just 24 points and giving their offense an opportunity. If CeeDee Lamb holds on to some of these balls, they are going to be able to potentially win that game. So, tough loss for the Dallas Cowboys and for CeeDee Lamb. Dak Prescott, I thought, played really well. It was a fun way to start the season, but just a really bizarre way to start the season as well. I've not seen a game that was that strange, I think, for a long time where you get the player ejected, you get the weather delay, you get all the points, then the no points. It was a crazy way to start the season. Fortunately, it was a winning way for us, and we're looking forward to get you guys more winning bets throughout the course of the show. So, let's dive right into it. The NFL season just kicked off, and if you want to win with us, here's your chance to jump on board. We're giving you an exclusive deal. Take 77% off any of our weekly betting packages. Use code SHOW77. You want to get in early. Last year, in Week 1, we went 29-14. That's a 67% win rate, with a $100 better profiting nearly $2,000 in just the first weekend of the season. So, don't wait. Head to Sharp.Football and use code SHOW77 to take 77% off any of our weekly betting packages. All right, before we dive into all of our best bets for this weekend, I first want to break down a couple of the matchups and storylines that I'm looking forward to most this upcoming weekend. And one of them comes on Sunday Night Football, where the Baltimore Ravens travel to Buffalo to take on the Buffalo Bills. And this game is extremely intriguing for two key factors for me. The first one is, how often is Buffalo going to man blitz Lamar Jackson? Buffalo, last year, during the regular season and during their early week matchup against the Baltimore Ravens, hardly man blitzed Lamar Jackson at all. In fact, they only blitzed Lamar just 10% of his dropbacks. However, in the rematch, in the playoff game, they utilized man blitzes on an insane 48% of Lamar Jackson's early down dropbacks and 37% of his overall dropbacks. Why does this matter, you ask? Well, it's because when Lamar Jackson isn't blitzed, he is the best quarterback in the NFL. He had 30 touchdowns to only one interception last year. He averages 8.9 yards per attempt. He's absolutely incredible when you don't blitz him. But defenses have figured out that when you blitz him and play man coverage behind it, this offense becomes very mortal. His yards per attempt drops all the way down to 6.5. And when the Bills used man blitzes against Lamar in that playoff game, Lamar averaged just 2.4 yards per attempt on 10 pass attempts, 10% success rate. That was one out of 10 passes were actually graded as a successful pass attempt. So they really took advantage of using that new scheme in the postseason game. Will they try to do the same coming out the gates week one? Keep in mind, the Buffalo Bills have a very easy schedule the rest of the way. This is one of their hardest games on the schedule. They've got one of the easiest schedules of any team in the NFL. They could stand to lose this game. They'll win probably more games than Baltimore might otherwise because Baltimore's schedule is definitely more difficult than Buffalo's the rest of the season. And they could then unveil this again in the postseason if they so desire. Or will Sean McDermott go with what worked before? Try to go for that number one overall seed in the AFC and ensure that he puts his best foot forward to try to win this game. I'm going to be fascinated to watch it because of how Lamar Jackson struggles a ton against these man blitzes. The other thing that I'm really interested to see is where does Patrick Ricard show up on that final injury report? You're watching this show on Friday. Is Patrick Ricard listed on that final injury report? Will he miss this game? He's the fullback for the Baltimore Ravens. And there's no team that like to utilize fullbacks or tight ends at a higher rate than usual than the Baltimore Ravens. In fact, the Baltimore Ravens utilized three wide receiver sets at the lowest rate of any team in the NFL last year. If they're without Patrick Ricard, and we already are aware that they are going to be without Isaiah Likely, their tight end, that's going to put the emphasis on other guys to step up in those shoes if they still want to try to maintain heavier personnel, such as tight end Charlie Kolar, or they're going to utilize more three wide receiver sets. When they did use three wide receiver sets last year, their efficiency declined very tremendously when they tried to run the football specifically. When they were in heavier personnel, whether it was a fullback out on the field or multiple tight end sets, they were number one in EPA and number one in success rate. However, when they decided to go with running Derrick Henry or other running backs out of 11 personnel, that efficiency dipped to number 10 in EPA and number 22 in success rate. So they're better when they have those heavier personnel groups, but is the personnel injuries for their starting fullback, for their starting tight end going to cause them to utilize more 11 personnel? I'm going to be fascinated to watch both of those aspects. And we're going to be talking about the referee in this game later on in the show with our ref expert, Joe Gibbs. So you're not going to want to miss that. Stay tuned for more on this game. All right, next up, I want to talk real quick about Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs down in Brazil taking on the L.A. Chargers, and there's something about this game that has me fascinated to watch it. And it's the performance of Patrick Mahomes this preseason. You see, unlike a lot of other quarterbacks, Andy Reid, the Chiefs head coach, likes to play Patrick Mahomes in the preseason and try to work on some of the things that they're going to be utilizing during the season. And over the last two seasons prior to 2025's preseason, the Kansas City Chiefs passing attack looked very similar in the preseason to what it looked like in the regular season. In 2023, Patrick Mahomes was averaging just 5.1 air yards per pass attempt. That ranked 91st out of over 100 quarterbacks. In 2024, he averaged only 7.3 air yards per pass attempt. That ranked almost 60th out of, once again, 100 quarterbacks. But this pass-off season, Patrick Mahomes was averaging 11.6 air yards per pass attempt. In addition to passing the ball significantly deeper down the field in this year's preseason, he was also holding onto the football longer in order to achieve the time needed to throw those deeper routes. Patrick Mahomes this preseason averaged 3.4 seconds per pass attempt. That was the third longest of over 100 quarterbacks that played in the preseason this season. So we saw a new and defined Patrick Mahomes coming out and trying to intentionally hold onto the ball longer to push the ball deeper down the field. This was something that the Chiefs were not doing whatsoever last year. In fact, the Chiefs were doing the exact opposite last year. They had the lowest target depth of any team in the NFL. They throw the ball more behind the line of scrimmage than any team in the NFL. This was a team that was very happy with getting into third and manageable and converting on third down and sustaining long, time-consuming drives to slowly matriculate the ball down the field. That's how they ultimately got to the AFC Championship, won the AFC Championship game, and played in the Super Bowl. Obviously, it didn't work out for them in the Super Bowl. They lost their opportunity to three-peat, and now they're starting over from scratch. But what I'm seeing from Patrick Mahomes this preseason tells me a little bit of some of the whispers that have been coming out of KC that those might be legitimate, and that is that this Chiefs offense is absolutely looking to get a little bit more aggressive and explosive down the football field. How will that offense perform against this Chargers defense in Brazil? How will that field hold up if some of these receivers are trying to get down the field further for Patrick Mahomes? Will the pass rushers be slipping it all on the field and give Patrick Mahomes even more time in the pocket? These are all questions that I'm excited to see the answers to in tonight's Chiefs at Chargers game, but I can't wait for this one, and let's both pay specific attention to how long Mahomes is holding onto the football and how deep he's passing it. Now joining me is our college football betting expert, Ryan McChrystal. You can find all of Ryan's game previews over at sharkfootballanalysis.com. Ryan, you started the season really hot 4-1 so far with your college football betting recommendations, and you tend to always start the season hot. You're going to give us some of your favorite bets for this upcoming weekend momentarily, but before we dig into that, talk to me a little bit about what is it about your process that allows you to get such a head start on the betting markets and typically start the season out very quickly? Yeah, I think there's two factors. The first is that college football is just a little bit easier to find an edge than the NFL to begin with. There's a much wider range of schemes that teams run in college compared to the NFL, where kind of almost everyone's doing slight variations on the same thing. You know, you could face Lincoln Riley's offense one week in the Big Ten, you know, big, wide-open spread offense. The very next week, you could face Kirk Ferentz in Iowa, which is very traditional between the tackles power run offense. That range of schemes can cause the same team to look very different from week to week. So you kind of start out with a little bit of an edge you can sometimes find in college football across the board. But then early in the season, since we've seen the transfer portal just break wide open and there's so much turnover, as many as 70 players on some teams like North Carolina this year coming into the program, it becomes really hard for the sportsbooks to set accurate lines. They rely so heavily on their algorithms to set the lines or at least to sort of get them. starting point for setting the lines and then make some adjustments here and there. But if you follow the transfer portal really closely and you follow the coaching carousel really closely in the off season, you can pinpoint where certain teams are going to get a lot better or a lot worse. So in those first few weeks of the season, as the sports books, algorithms are still learning about these teams, get gaining a larger, um, data set, larger sample size, you can find a pretty good edge, especially if you identify certain teams, are you going to be really wrong? Sometimes the one game I missed last week was picking Alabama against Florida state. Sometimes you're just going to miss with those early preseason predictions, but if you follow it closely, more often than not, you can find a little bit of an edge the first few weeks. Well, you certainly have done that. That's a great explanation as to why, uh, let's start breaking down some of your best bets for this weekend. And first up, you've got Michigan at Oklahoma, Michigan heads to Norman this weekend for a huge non-conference clash with Oklahoma Sooners are coming in undefeated, looking like a playoff contender while the Wolverines have been explosive as well. Both teams are looking to make a statement. What do you like about this game and what makes it one of your strongest bets of the weekend? Yeah. You know, I think if I were betting this game against the spread, I would lean towards Oklahoma, but the over is really the bet that I like the most 44 and a half. I think it's been out there. It's been trending down too. So I will say off the top, if you're interested in following me on this, it might be worth waiting another day or two, see where the line goes. Cause I believe it opened up at 47 and a half and it just keeps getting bet down and down. But I think that these two offenses, which undeniably were two of the worst in the power conferences last year are going to be so much improved because of the off season that they changes that they made. Both teams are bringing in new quarterbacks and new coordinators on the offensive side of the ball. Michigan has Bryce Underwood at quarterback, chip Lindsay at offensive coordinator, Oklahoma went out and got John materia quarterback, Ben Arbuckle as their offensive coordinator. And I think it's both teams are going to be really dramatically improved on that side of the ball, not to interrupt you, but no VIG just went to 45 and a half on this game, uh, at even money. Uh, we still have 44 and a half here available though. Bookmaker fan dual draft Kings MGM. So while there are a few 45, 45 and a half, there are some better numbers out there to be had, but keep rolling. Just wanted to show people kind of what we're looking at here on this odd sham screen. Yeah, absolutely. It's definitely worth keeping an eye on this line. Cause who knows if it drops a little bit further, it just becomes even more enticing to take the over. If you're following my logic on this, you know, with, with Michigan, the past couple of years, you know, last year and Sharon Moore's first season at the helm and obviously the previous few years with Jim Harbaugh, they are a old school power run offense, not throwing the ball very often. Even when they had JJ McCarthy, a good quarterback, they were just running the ball between the tackles over and over. Now they bring in chip Lindsay as the offensive coordinator, Lindsay, you know, he's bounced around a bit in his college career. He worked, he's worked with some good quarterbacks have gone to the NFL. Most recently in North Carolina, where he worked with Drake may at the end of Drake Mays career, which may has some similarities to Bryce Underwood, big quarterback and certainly throw the ball downfield, but also capable of running has that type of athleticism, you know, two, four, seven sports and their recruiting profile with him compared to Vince Young from a physicality standpoint and a running ability. So it gives you an idea of what Underwood could become. Now, last year, Michigan had a pass rate. Um, their, their space on situational data, their pass rate was 8% below expected. So an extremely run heavy team in week one, we already saw chip, uh, Lindsay's influence with a 10% above expected pass rate. Now it'll probably shift a little bit back lower than that. Some of that was probably just trying to get Underwood comfortable against the lesser opponent in week one, but it gives you an idea of what they're going to try to do. Lindsay is going to have us put his stamp on this offense and they're going to throw the ball more as for Oklahoma. Very similar. They ran the ball a lot. Their pass rate was 4% below expected last year, but they brought in Ben Arbuckle and John Matir, the quarterback OC combo, both coming over from Washington state where last year their pass rate was 4% above expected. And again, in week one, we saw a huge jump for them. Last week, Oklahoma's pass rate was 17% above expected. Again, some of that is probably trying to break in the new offense and get everybody comfortable in week one, but it gives you an idea of where these offenses are trending to become more pass heavy. So I think this line is being pushed down because there's a little too much emphasis on what happened last year. Now I do want to point out a big concern with John Matir is his sack rate. He takes way too many sacks, ranked third worst sack rate in the country last season against Washington state, not even playing a very difficult schedule. Michigan obviously has a good defense. You know, they lost a lot of guys to the NFL, Mason Graham, Kenneth Grant, Josiah Stewart lost from that front seven. We still expect them to be good though. But even last year with those guys converting pressures to sacks was a weakness of that Michigan defense. They ranked 77th in sack conversion rate. So even with all those NFL dudes on that defense, they were not creating a lot of sacks. So it's maybe less of a concern than you would think for John Matir in this particular matchup. So, like I said, I kind of lean Oklahoma. I like Oklahoma to win the game, lean Oklahoma against the spread, but I really liked the over, especially with it trending down because I think both of these offenses are going to throw the ball more, be a little bit more explosive than you would expect due to these quarterback coordinator changes we've seen. All right. So there you go. Ryan's first bet of the card this week is the over in Michigan, Oklahoma, and you can find that a 44 and a half right now, if you shop around using that odds jam screen, uh, that we've got for you over, uh, we've got a deal on that as well. Uh, if you go to odds, jam.com, there's a deal for you on gym.com slash Warren, I believe is what it is. But, um, the next bet that you've got Ryan is Illinois at Duke. And in this particular game, you've got Illinois traveling to Durham to take on Duke in a big 10 ACC showdown. Both teams faced appetizers last week. This is going to be their first true test of the season. What has you confident in Duke being able to cover the spread in this one? Yeah. Sneaky, good game here between two teams that I think are playoff dark horses, Illinois, obviously ranked 12th. They're obviously expected to kind of be in the playoff mix in the big 10, but Duke has a favorable schedule in the sec. You never know. They could, you know, if they put together a 10 win season, a win here against a ranked Illinois team would certainly do a lot to boost their profile nationally. So I think both these teams are a lot at stake in this game. I like Duke and it's one of my, it's easily my favorite play of the week. Probably one of my favorite will end up being one of my favorite plays of this early season, because I have a really hard time finding any area where Illinois has an advantage in this matchup. It's just a clash of styles where basically everything that Illinois likes to do and does well, Duke matches them and does it a little bit better. And on the reverse, Illinois' weaknesses kind of match up really well with what Duke does well. So, you know, two areas that I want to highlight, there's a number of different areas. If you check out the article on the website, you know, I go through all the different matchup points, but the two that I want to highlight are the offensive line, defensive line on both sides of the ball. Based on when Illinois is on offense, their offensive line against Duke's defensive line, based on opponent adjusted data last season, Illinois ranked 120th in press rate allowed. One of their major weaknesses was the offensive line and pass protection. Duke's defense, which returns three of its top four pass rushers from a season ago, they ranked 14th in pressure rate generated. This was a very strong pass rush going up against a very weak offensive line in pass protection. Now, Illinois returns all of their starters from last year's offensive line, so maybe there's some growth, but you can't take a terrible pass protection unit and make them a good unit just by coaching them up in the off season to flip it, put to flip a unit like that, like we see some, some teams do in recent years, you got to dip into the portal and Illinois didn't do that effectively. So that's going to be an obvious advantage for Duke. Now, on the other side of the ball, looking at the same stat, Duke's offensive line ranked eighth in opponent adjusted pressure rate allowed and Illinois' defense ranked 83rd in opponent adjusted pressure rate generated. So again, Duke is going to dominate on both sides of the ball in the trenches. Also got to mention, Duke got a big upgrade at quarterback. They went into the portal and made a big splash adding Darian Mensah from Tulane. One of the biggest surprises of the transfer portal is to see a program like Duke go out and get one of the big names in the portal. That should be a big upgrade, make them a little bit more of an explosive offense than they were last year. So I see a lot of areas where Duke has an advantage specifically in the trenches. So I like Duke to cover this spread as the underdog probably even went outright. Well, there you go. And if you go back, you can put the Odds Jam screen back up on the board. I just want to call this to people's attention that if you look here, Novig has got the best line on this one, plus three and a half, minus 121. Hard Rocks at minus 25, Fandles at minus 22 for that three and a half. And other books just have the three. So if you're looking to place the bet there, that is the best line. And we're going to have a great deal for you guys to sign up for Novig if you're interested at the end of the show. So, Ryan, that's a great breakdown. You got two bets this week. Some weeks you might have three, some weeks you might have two. You're four and one, as we mentioned at the top of this segment. You're on a roll. You've got it over. You've got an underdog. Let's hope that Duke wins outright. Maybe sprinkle a little bit there on the money line. Pulls the upset at home over Illinois. We're looking for another great season out of you. It was great last year. This year's show is going to be more improved and even more fun, in my opinion. So thanks for sticking around with us another season. And we're looking forward to getting all your great insight all year long. As a reminder, make sure that you guys go over to SharpFootballAnalysis.com where not only can you read the detailed write ups that Ryan has for these two games, he's also going to continue to be dropping more games and analysis over at SharpFootballAnalysis.com throughout the course of the rest of the weekend. So for more college football betting insight, you can find Ryan's written work over at SharpFootballAnalysis.com. Now joining me is our fantasy football expert over at SharpFootballAnalysis.com and loyal member of the Sharp Prop Squad, Rich Rebar. You can find all of Rich's insanely great fantasy analysis over at SharpFootballAnalysis.com. Rich is going to be joining us this year, giving us a few player props or some other bets that he likes each week in the NFL season. And we're going to start off with a guy that's near and dear to a lot of people's hearts, and that's James Conner. James Conner has been the heartbeat of Arizona's offense, grinding out tough yards and keeping defenses honest against a defense like the Saints that struggled to stop the run. You like James Conner to eclipse his rushing total. What has you so confident in this one, Rich? Yeah, absolutely. James Conner, still a very effective and efficient player, which you always love when betting player props. You're just not relying on volume of getting there. He was still fifth in missed tackle rate per rush attempt last year. He was fifth in all running backs and explosive plays as well. And when that efficiency lines up with a matchup, that's when we want to attack it when we're catching him as a six and a half point favorite, albeit on the road, not at home. We would love if it was in Arizona. But when Arizona had the lead last year, they ran the ball 54% of the time. That was seventh in the league. When James Conner ran the ball with the lead, he was second in the NFL and success rate in wins for the Cardinals last year. He ran for 87.4 yards per game. That was seventh in the NFL and losses. It dropped to 53.6 yards per game. He went from seventh to 17th. We mentioned that New Orleans struggled to slow down the run last year. They were 30th in yards per carry on the running backs. They were 31st in success rate. They also add Brandon Staley, who notoriously would like allow teams to run a little bit on him. We'll see if that continues to be the case. He does need to make up for some moving parts in a secondary that he takes over in New Orleans. But it's also the types of runs James Conner got last year. He ran for five yards per carry on inside zone runs. That was fifth in the NFL last year among running backs. And the Saints had 5.6 yards per carry on those inside zone runs by running backs. That was the highest rate in the league. So with lining up all of those things, I just look at James Conner's total. And I want to hit that total and maybe bet it up to 80, 90 yards even. Well, there you go. So that's the first one. I like laddering when you feel real confident about a particular yardage prop. So that's the first ladder of the season on the show. Let's go to the next prop that you like. And in this particular one, you're going with Chris Alave. Same exact game, but on the other team, the New Orleans Saints are going over four and a half receptions. Alave is clearly the go to option for the Saints passing attack. And if they fall behind, which seems likely based on the betting spread, this could come down to the accuracy of his quarterback and connection with Alave playing catch up. What stands out about this prop to you? Yeah, nice little correlated prop to, you know, playing off of James Conner, you know, running the football heavily in this game and the Saints being pushed into trailing game script where they're going to be throwing the ball. I also love this transition under Kellen Moore, who notoriously has moved his lead wide receiver around and gotten them more of the air quotes like free squares types of looks. And we already saw evidence of that a little bit in the preseason. To this point in this career, when Chris Alave is played in the slot, he's been targeted on 28% of his routes. He's over two yards per out run. This is a reception prop, not not necessarily an efficiency based one here. So we're just looking at those targets. And in the preseason, he played in the slot on 39% of his snaps. His career rates so far in the NFL are 21% in the slot last year, 32% the year prior and 38% the year before that. So we're looking at a career high slot usage rate. And when he was in the slot this preseason, he was targeted on 37% of his routes. So we're looking at a lot of those first read targets, getting a lot of those targets that come with a high level of success rate efficiency, no matter who the quarterback is. But it also lines up with this type of defensive approach that Jonathan Gannon has historically run. Arizona and Jonathan Gannon from his Philadelphia days, he loves to play a lot of zone coverage. He loves to give up short completions, come up and make tackles. As a byproduct of that, Arizona has actually allowed the 12th most receiving receptions per game to slot receivers since Jonathan Gannon's been in the NFL. They were eighth in slot rate of usage last year, our eighth in zone rate usage defensively last year. 41% of all receptions that they allowed to wide receivers last year were from the slot. That was the 11th highest rate in the NFL. And if you're worried about Spencer Rattler, Spencer Rattler, who famously had to quote, if I'm in the game, my job is to get Chris Alave the football. It is one game he played full with Chris Alave last year. He caught eight passes of 14 targets over 100 yards. We don't really care about the yardage. We just care about the value here. But everything kind of lines up here to make correlated play off of our James Conner bet for Chris Alave to stack some receptions in this game. Yeah, and that makes a ton of sense. And also your logic, therefore, with the way that Gannon plays defense is why you decided to go receptions as opposed to yards, which is an important distinction that we always look at when we're betting player props is like, what exact market do we want to attack? We think a player is in a good situation based on game state potentially and other factors. But what's the market that we want to attack that might have the most value? And speaking of value on this particular one, if we bring up the odd screen one more time, I showed it here. But you can see that Novak has the best line when you're looking at your odds jam screen. You can see which book has the best odds here. And right now, Novak, if you want to bet over four and a half, that's plus one or two, which is better odds than any other book that's out there. And keep in mind, we got a special that we're going to get to a little bit later with Novak, but you can get 10 percent off your first purchase up to one hundred dollars savings if you use code Warren over there at Novak, just download their Novak app and use code Warren. So great value on that particular one. Now let's go to a different game, Rich, and we're going to talk about Brenton Strange, and this is playing on his team and the new coach and the play caller that I've been the most fascinated with in terms of what I think he can do to elevate an offense. And obviously, we're talking about the Jacksonville Jaguars. And so Brenton Strange is the guy you like. And here we're going to go yards over twenty seven and a half receiving yards. He's becoming a bigger piece of Jacksonville's offense quietly, especially on third downs and off of play action. And the defenses are now going to be focused a little bit more on those outside receiving threats, obviously, with Travis Hunter being there on the outside as well. So I might have some more opportunity for Strange to work inside the field. What do you think about Brenton Strange and what has you looking towards the over on his yardage prop? Yeah, I love this game environment, and I expect the Jaguars to be, you know, more of a pass heavy team due to their backfield ambiguity. Also, it lines up to with where Carolina's also kind of allocated their resources this offseason. They've spent a lot of money on the front seven this year, but not made a lot of changes on the back end. Their only addition in the secondary was Trayvon Morick from the Raiders, and they still brought back their defensive coordinator from a year ago. But what we're really excited about, Brenton Strange is not only are the Jaguars going to throw a lot, they don't really have an established wide receiver three. Diemi Brown did not play a lot with the first team in the preseason. They may not have been happy with this performance, either, making the 11th hour trade for Tim Patrick with the Lions. And it just gives Brenton Strange more of a runway to targets. We saw him last year with Evan Ingram off the field, get targeted at 19 percent of his routes. And on this limited sample of the preseason, he was on the field for just under 70 percent of Trevor Lawrence's dropbacks, caught three passes for 33 yards. But he's also getting this matchup against this Carolina team that was 28th in yards per target, allowed to tight ends. They allowed 54.1 yards per game to tight ends. 14 different tight ends hit this number a year ago against the Carolina Panthers. And obviously that may not roll over into this year. But like I said, they didn't really make a lot of changes to change their secondary. They keep the same defensive coordinator. So Brenton Strange, I look at just being able to hit like even a chunk player or two can easily clear this. And he's another guy I would be kind of maybe even getting kind of a little bit of cute with maybe looking at like, you know, upwards of like 40 yards, maybe even 50, low 50s if you want to try to ladder this thing, too. But he's going to be one of my favorite DFS plays to the weekend, given his price. Yeah, this was this was another player. You and I were in alignment there when you sent over a list. He was also on my list as well. I think it's a great opportunity for them to exploit some of those weaknesses, as you mentioned, of the Carolina Panthers defense. So another player that we're looking at. So as three props from Rich, one of which he's going to ladder up and maybe you can decide to ladder up the strange one if you want to as well. But Rich is going to be joining us every single Friday show, and we're going to be breaking down some of his favorite looks of the card that weekend. And of course, Rich does outstanding work over at sharp football analysis dot com. I highly encourage you to check it out. And speaking of which, you know, if you want to get on board for seeing what Rich has to offer with a fantasy insight this week, one you right there on the screen, you can see go to sharp football and you can sign up. We've got a promo that's running right now. You can take 77% off any of our weekly packages. Just use the code show 77. You can get our all access package, which has all of Rich's information and my information. You can just go fantasy if you want, but I highly recommend getting on board, trying it out. 77% off is a pretty insane deal and pretty tremendous value. You're not going to want to pass that up because we're only doing that this week. Week one, that's the only week that we're going to be doing 77% off. That'll end once the Sunday games conclude. So might as well try it out. There you go, Rich. Thanks so much for joining us and good luck this weekend. Good luck, everyone. If you're betting this season, it is absolutely crucial that you are always getting the best number. That's why we partnered with OJJAM this season. They have an odd screen that shows you the real time lines at every sports book. So you can always lock in all of your bets with the best possible value. And right now you can get an exclusive two week free trial by going to OJJAM.com slash Warren. That's OJJAM.com backslash Warren. Don't leave money on the table. Make sure you are getting the best line every time. And to make this offer even sweeter, when you join this promotion, not only will you get two weeks of access for free, you also get $20 off of their monthly subscription. So go to OJJAM.com backslash Warren today and get on board. All right, now joining us is referee expert Joe Gibbs. You can find all of Joe's ref previews and insight written up weekly over at sharkfootballanalysis.com. And Joe, before we get into some of the games that stand out to you this week, one of the key points of emphasis the NFL is looking to introduce and made mention of over the course of the offseason is unsportsmanlike conduct, penalties and taunting. Talk to us a little bit about what we can expect this weekend during the games and why these penalties could be a big factor. OK, so those two penalty categories kind of saw an uptick at the end of last year, it bled over into the offseason and he'll be five. The NFL has this thing about it's very abstract, the whole thing. They don't like gang signs, supposedly, and certain dance moves that they find offensive. And so, as you mentioned, those two penalties don't even made a point of emphasis or so we're told. I think it's absurd. I don't think those penalties should exist to begin with, but they're here and the problem is they're not actually enforced during the course of the game. And what I mean by that is, you know, it's not a defensive holding where you're holding someone during a play. This post play and these are significant penalties that are impacting the game that really for nothing that has any bearing on the actual game as far as X's and O's. And so to me, it's absurd to do it. It's not this is not America's Got Talent where we're judging a dance after a touchdown. You know what I mean? Yet that's what we're essentially doing. And putting your thumbs on the scale of the game to favor one team over the other. And I think it's very interesting. There's three referee assignments this week, Warren, Sean Smith tonight, John Hussey on Sunday night, and Alan Eck, who's a John Hussey clone on Monday night. Three primetime games. Those three officials, and I'll get into some numbers here, no referee is called more offensive holding taunting penalties than combined to John Hussey since 2018. Sean Smith ranks second. He's on tonight's game with the Eagles and the Cowboys. And then Alan Eck is on Monday night's game, Vikings Bears. So I don't think it's coincidence. The league put those three referees on those games to send a message to the league in these primetime spots. Yeah, no doubt. I mean, this is all has to be driven by marketing dollars, right? And their ability to keep advertisers happy and keep advertisers thinking that there's not going to be any issue with the games and the players. But I tend to agree with you in that regard. The hardest part about this is going to be trying to identify, well, was this guy crossing the line? That guy didn't cross the line. How far can you go? When's the subjectiveness of it all come into play? And that's the part that's going to bug me because it's not cutting, you know, clear cut as to what they might be looking for, what they're not looking for. And that's going to be a problem in my view. Let's dive right into your first game, Joe. Your first game is the San Francisco 49ers versus the Seattle Seahawks. And the referee on this game is Sean Hockley. The 49ers head to Seattle for a divisional clash. A lot of fireworks in this game. But Sean Hockley's crew having this assignment, they are going to be potentially favoring the San Francisco 49ers physical style. But Seattle has the home field advantage. So where do you fall in this particular game? Yeah. So anyone who's followed us over the years, Hockley, point of emphasis, always the offensive side of the ball, OK? Divisional games like this in his career, Sean Hockley, 27-15 and 1 to the under 65%. Divisional home teams with Hockley over that same time, 17-24 and 2 against the spread. So he's not a home field referee and his game skewed to the under. He was a league leading 11-6 to the under last season. The issue for the Seahawks, their offense was a mess last year. They ranked second behind Cleveland in offensive penalties per game. They bring in Sam Donald, new quarterback into the system. Donald has had issues with pre-snap penalties in his career, and he did last year in Minnesota. So look, maybe they gel immediately and it all works out, but you have to believe there's going to be a learning curve with Donald and the offense. Compare that to San Francisco, who have all their players back. They have far more continuity with Shanahan, Purdy, Kittle, McCaffrey. Most importantly, Trent Williams is back for the 49ers, and you take him out of that offensive line and it's a disaster, but with him in there, it's a totally different outfit. And I just think for that reason, that offensive continuity that San Francisco has will serve them well with this officiating crew that does tend to focus more on the offensive side of the ball when it comes to penalties. And then as it relates to the total, obviously this total has dropped down a little bit. We're looking at our odds jam screen and we're seeing the best number out there. If you want the over is a 43, but if you like the under, you can go 43 and a half. And this game did open higher. It opened at 45 and a half. So it's moved down two to two and a half points on the betting market so far this offseason. You think that that line movement is generally correct in terms of this being a lower scoring slugfest? Oh, absolutely. Yeah, that's the right way with the money. The problem is now if you go on better than 43, you know, you're losing two and a half points, but this stuff, all this information could be applied on the in-game weight as well. You get a kickoff return for a touchdown on the first play of the game. And then all of a sudden you get an in-game total of, you know, 47, something like that. So just keep in mind the way these guys approach it and the emphasis on the offensive side of the ball and try and use that to your advantage. Okay. So next up, we've got our old friend, John Hussey, who you did mention before when you were talking about the unsportsmanlike penalties and the taunting penalties, he is on the Sunday night football game. You also alluded to that the Ravens at the bills, which is a game that I'm really looking forward to. We talked a little bit about it earlier in this show, obviously a rematch from the playoff game, rematch from a regular season game last year, two of the best teams in all of football. And the Ravens are going to head back to Buffalo for a rematch in this game with John Hussey on the call. What makes this game intriguing from the referee's perspective? What is he going to do from a factoring into the end result of this game in your opinion? Okay. So, yeah, we mentioned the taunting unsportsmanlike that he's on there for that reason, in my opinion. And just as a word of warning, most of these penalties with Hussey will go against the road team. So Baltimore, be on your best behavior Sunday night. Hussey's a great home field referee since 2016 home teams, 89, 53 and five against the spread 62 and a half percent. That's number one out of all the referees that were 10 and six against the spread last year with Hussey home team. So 60% in 2024, that favors Buffalo, obviously. But having said that, you know, Buffalo had John Hussey week one of 2021 and they lost outright to the Pittsburgh Steelers. So it's not a guarantee as far as he's officiating style. This is the positive for Baltimore, who had issues last year on the road with penalties, particularly as it pertains to offensive holding. Hussey's crew generally don't focus as much on offensive holding false starts as other officiating crews would. So that does, in theory, help Baltimore in this game. I'm going to let you, it's just going to be a great game. My gut says Baltimore. Maybe I'm in the minority here. I don't think the Buffalo roster is that great. I think it's a solid roster with a great quarterback, whereas Baltimore is a stacked roster with a great quarterback also. And I don't trust Sean McDermott. So you know, I don't have a strong opinion one way or the other, but I would lean, I would lean Baltimore here and Buffalo could lose this game and they can still end up going 12 and five. I've got a cupcake schedule. I'm just curious to see how it's officiated because we saw last year in the first game of the year, Baltimore at Kansas city and they came out and they emphasized illegal formation and Baltimore got hit three times on their first drive and then another time on their second drive for a penalty that was never called. And all of a sudden they're, they're bearing the brunt of that. So let's just keep an eye on the sportsman, like unsportsmanlike conduct and 20 penalties on Sunday night and see what happens. Yeah, indeed. Look, if you, if you do like the Baltimore Ravens, uh, the place to bet that would not be at Novig. Novig is a great place to bet the Buffalo bills right now. You can see from the odd screen, you're getting plus one and a half minus one Oh five at Novig, which is the best odds on the board right now. So if you're looking to take the Buffalo bills, Novig is the spot to go and keep in mind, you can use code Warren when you sign up and you get a 10% up to a hundred dollars on your initial deposit there over at Novig. So, um, all right, Joe, that was some great information. Obviously we're going to be joined by Joe every single week, uh, on this Friday show, breaking down some of the ref assignments, breaking down what those ref assignments might mean to some of our bets and what we should be looking at to potentially bet as a result of ref assignments. I think Joe is very much like me that it's not just a, a, a one factor handicap that is not just because of the ref, we're going to definitely bet this. It's a factor into these things, but it absolutely is something that you should be looking to account for. Joe also writes an outstanding article for us over at sharp football analysis.com every single week that breaks down the ref assignments and it breaks down some of the key, uh, positions of value potentially based upon some of these ref assignments. So make sure that you guys are checking that out over at sharp football analysis. Thanks Joe. We'll see you next week. Great. Thanks a lot, Warren. Good luck. Today's show has been outstanding. I hope you're going to agree. This will be your favorite NFL betting podcast as we roll into the weekend, giving you outstanding insight and best bets from three of our esteemed experts in college football, NFL player, props, referees, the works. And we've got a lot of bets for you every single episode, but we're going to conclude each episode with my turn. And this is my Novig value of the week. And for that, we're going to turn to the rushing props market and we're going to look at Baker Mayfield. And Baker Mayfield, his rushing prop number right now at Novig is 13 and a half minus one Oh six, which is a better value than 12 and a half for minus one 50 at a couple of these books. And certainly better than 14 and a half minus one Oh five or one Oh six at a couple of the other books. So Novig has outstanding value on Baker Mayfield's rushing prop. Now he's exceeded 13 and a half rushing yards in 11 games last year. The games that he didn't exceed it were primarily against teams that didn't get a whole lot of pressure. We're talking a couple of games against the four against the Carolina Panthers and a game against the San Francisco 49ers teams outranked number 31 and 32 in pressure rate on early down dropbacks. That in my opinion is going to change up here because the Atlanta Falcons who he's going up against have Jeff Ulbrich, who's a new defensive coordinator. And Jeff Ulbrich when he was with the Jets where he was the last three seasons ranked number four, number five and number six in pressure rate on opposing quarterbacks. Now those are rates that are much better than what the Falcons were performing last season. But I think Ulbrich is going to figure out a way through new personnel that Atlanta's added through the draft as well as through his own scheme to try to get more pressure on quarterbacks and especially Baker Mayfield in week one. Now Baker Mayfield does have a tendency to scramble more when he plays in the road. In fact, if we're looking at this number of 13 and a half, well, Baker played eight road games last year and he exceeded this number in seven of the eight games. In fact, in those seven games he went over, he hit 20 plus rushing yards in every one of those games. And it's in large part because it's easier to get a little bit of pressure when you're playing at home and you're the defense and Baker is on the road as the road quarterback. It's harder to hear the staff count. It's harder to communicate. And so defenses have a little bit of an edge when they're playing at home. That's why our Baker Mayfield is going to probably get a little bit flustered in the pocket. In addition, he's playing without his left tackle, Tristan Wirfs. That's going to cause him to potentially scramble a little bit more frequently and run. Because remember, Baker Mayfield is not the type of quarterback that's doing designed runs very frequently. He's more so dropping back to pass and scrambling with the ball. Then you take into consideration some other factors that are at play here. And one of them is going to be that Baker Mayfield is down several of his wide receiver options. Baker is going to probably want to get some of his younger receivers in a little bit more involved, but there will be times that there's a communication issue and they decide that they need to scramble a little bit more. On the road, Baker Mayfield averaged 28.6 rushing yards per game. He ran more often, he ran more frequently, and he ran for more yards per game. In fact, when he was at home, he was only averaging 17 yards per game. So with higher pressure from the Atlanta Falcons in this game than they were able to deliver last year, and with Baker Mayfield playing without his left tackle on the road, I believe that we're going to see Baker Mayfield go over 13.5 rushing yards. The best line is over at Novig, and this is my Novig value of the week. And keep in mind, download the Novig app and enter code WARREN and you'll save 10% on your first purchase. All right, guys, that'll do it for our week one edition of the Sharp Football Show. Make sure that you guys are subscribed to us over on YouTube at Sharp Football Analysis. Make sure that you're subscribed to this podcast on your favorite podcast platform. We'll see you guys very soon. Good luck in week one.