A bit rainy here in the northeast, but I certainly beat my early alarm as I’m absolutely stoked for football. As usual, we’ll cover some tails angles (those not covered in other sections— SGPs + matchups have some within them!) some matchups the market is perhaps overlooking and mispricing, and we’ll hit on some SGPs. I will try and keep these as short and succinct as possible and apologies for any typos as I write this very early Sunday AM.
Tails Angles:
JAX-CAR:
As we wrote about in our divisional check in, this is a Jaguars offense I am high on relative to market. The short of it is that Lawrence’s in system grading has always been better than his realized production and I am a bit more bullish with Liam Coen at the helm— who just led Baker Mayfield to career highs in this area— than the Press Taylor days.
This is a Carolina defense that has holes up and down the roster and virtually no pass rush. Lawrence should be in system all day and this is the perfect spot for him to cook and for this Jags offense to put up points. Lawrence, with his usage as a short down back now, is also firmly in play for me for DFS.
ARI-NO
Think this is a sneaky spot for the Cardinals to put up a massive total yardage game, against a Saints defense with virtually no pass rush— 3/4 starting players on the line were not ranked within the top 100 of pass rush last year and is starting PFF’s 95th and 116th best CBs (out of 116). Mind you this was a run defense that was bottom 3 in basically every category last year and did little to upgrade the run D.
Outside of an expected efficiency on their drives, with Rattler at QB, who finished only behind DTR as worst in EPA/Play, accuracy rate and there is elevated chance Arizona sees huge play volume by virtue of NO being unable to move the ball on offense. I see some creative SGPs will multiple AZ legs and some deep alts firmly in play.
SF-SEA
I see this game having multiple different pathways here. Sam Darnold is one of the most situation dependent QBs in the NFL.
When the structure is good and he is in a positive game state, he can cook, and when trailing in games and in a less than ideal situation, he turns to swiss cheese.
With the state of his offensive line,( I am worried about Darnold in straight dropback situations against Bosa, Williams and this SF pass rush. But should they be playing from ahead, Kubiak’s outside run scheme is a terrific spot against a 49ers team that was dead last stopping those runs last year at 5.2 ypc allowed (granted they now have a new DC). But should the Seahawks be playing from ahead, I would not be shocked to see the Seahawks have an efficient passing day despite their being low volume (an obvious SGP angle there).
On the flipside, while this is a Seahawks defense I am bullish on, especially if CMC is actually healthy I think this is 49ers offense with the weapons to still beat them. This is a 49ers offensive line with no weak links— everyone finished above average in their PFF grades last season, and while not at 100%, Ricky Pearsall lined up against Josh Jobe (bottom 5 preventing separation) is a major mismatch, while Kittle, CMC, and Jennings are certainly candidates for production themselves.
All of this is to say, I think the 49ers are still a significantly better team and certainly should they be playing from ahead, I think they can beat down on this Seahawks team. But there is also a path for Kubiak to mitigate the effects of the terrible SEA O-line and use the run game effectively for the Hawks to win in a lower play volume but decent efficient offense. I’ll be crafting some SGPs to reflect these stories.
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