Week 5 Betting Gameplan Pt1

Leveraging Tails & Matchup Angles

Hey all, waiting on some SGP lines here so going to start with the Leveraging Tails & Matchup Angles for tonight. As usual, want to get this out before going offline tonight so apologies for the inevitable typos and will be back with the rest in the next 36 houts.

Leveraging Tails:

Den Alts

Let us begin, as usual, by looking at the team fundamentals to set the tone for our analysis and understand what the market is implying and where there might be some value. According to Impredictable, which tracks market based rating for teams, the Eagles are a +4.5 team on a neutral field with nearly equal value coming from the offense (2.2, 7th in NFL) and defense 2.4 (5th in NFL). The Broncos, meanwhile, are a 2.2 with the 13th best offense (0.6) and 8th best defense (1.7). While this uses current and lookahead lines to set pricing, the numbers are not exact but should set a reasonable estimate of market pricing.

Here we have a chart which reflects how well teams have earned their points (“Earned Drive Points”), a metric aimed at understanding the sustainability and reproducibility of drive success. A primer can be read here. But what we see from this chart is that the Eagles have not lived up to the billing of a top defense nor offense early in this season. While the Broncos have been the same dominant defense as last year, and a slightly above average offense, as the market implies.

Despite the 4-0 record, the Eagles have simply not played to the dominant team from a performance perspective whether using EDP, EPA, Success Rate or any metric of your choice. In this sense, the Broncos are perhaps undervalued even from a performance standpoint if buying into some of the underlying shorter term data rather than strict performance.

Matchup Angles:

But on both sides of the ball there are reasons to be bullish on the Broncos from a matchups perspective.

The Broncos pass rush has been particularly dominant this year, leading the NFL in pressure disruption rate, meaning plays in which the defense forces a QB off his read because of pressure. And whereas this was an Eagles team that used to be a dominant force stopping opposing teams pressure, the team’s offensive line has taken a massive step back in 2025 going from a 64% perfect block team the last few years to a 54% team early in 2025. The PFF Pass Block grades reveal a similar story.

And this is a problem given Jalen Hurts struggles against disruption pressure. Since the start of 2024, only C.J Stroud and Kirk Cousins have had worse EPA against disruption pressure than Hurts. This pass rush figures to be a major problem for Hurts, and certainly in a possible negative game-state.