DIV Round Betting Gampelan

Tails & Matchup Angles + SGPs

A glorious weekend of football ahead, we are truly so blessed. With only 4 games on the slate not too much to add outside of the regular columns, so we’ll stick mostly to that. I’ve also linked the podcasts from this week for some more thoughts on each of the games.

Tails Thoughts:

KC:

• As we spoke about last week, this is still a Texans team that filters passess deep (3rd highest deep attempt % + highest ADOT) and has been on the right side of variance with their results (leading the NFL in drops/uncatchable deep passes.) Mahomes was not throwing deep the last few weeks of the season nursing an ankle injury and throwing within 2.5 seconds on average. Now following nearly 3.5 weeks off, the ankle should be healthy and the offense figures to see an increase in its vertical passing attack as Mahomes gets back to an average Time To Throw closer to 3s. Not to mention, with Hollywood Brown fully back healthy—where in the small sample Mahomes has thrown deeper— and there is reason to think the Chiefs will unleash the vertical attack. Given potential for huge volume (see matchups below) there is a decent case to be made for the Mahomes alts + Brown and Worthy as the deep threats that can take advantage of the Texans propensity to allow deep throws.

PHI:

• I’m not dying to place this angle— and certainly not if weather becomes an issue— but the Eagles base numbers, I think, are largely influenced by the positive game-states they’ve had all seasons. Following the WC games no team has had fewer plays from behind than the Eagles. Naturally, your defense is going to look better in positive game states and their run first tendency is magnified playing from ahead. But if the Eagles find themselves in a less positive gamestate, given how little volume is expected from the passing game—again, building in medians from overwhelmingly positive game states— and there is value to playing out the scenario in which the Eagles don’t control the game and are instead forced to throw. And this is a Rams defense neutral in their tendencies but having struggled to defend WRs all season where their 2 of 3 statings CBs are below 20th percentile in separation with similar numbers allowed on a route basis. This is still a defense allowing the 3rd highest YPA for the season. I am intrigued by Hurts passing and Rams builds or Hurts alts in a script where the Eagles come back via the pass (and especially if we can get alt attempts markets).