In our Discord, I played two plays for the Thursday and went 1-1. It was a weird game where it became clear around halftime that Dak Prescott was highly unlikely to go over his pass attempt total and for Devin Singletary to eclipse 60 rushing yards.
This is a friendly reminder that if you’re a subscriber to Stealing Lines we recommend being in our Discord as that’s where all of my plays get sent out in real time. 75-80% of the plays I make in the Discord never make it out to the Substack due to lines moving by the time I put this out. The link to join should be in your “Welcome to Stealing Lines” email.
Week 3 Review
Last week I went up 1.91 units, marking three straight profitable weeks for the season and 12.36 units up for the year so far.
I feel fortunate to walk away with a positive week last year where it felt very in line with a lot of what we saw last season with a bunch of blowouts and weird games around the league.
Each week I want to go through a review and look at some of the plays.
I know a lot of times it’s naturally when betting to complain about the times where we got unlucky so I want to go through an exercise where I go through each week where we got “lucky” and “unlucky”.
Good variance
NYJ/NE game
We had bets on both Brissett under passing attemps and Breece Hall under rushing yards. Our biggest concern for these bets were a Jets blowout that forced the Patriots into negative game script while the Jets ran the ball a ton while preserving their lead.
Well, early on it was clear this game was getting out of hand and the Jets were going to cruise to a win.
While the Jets did continue to throw while up, Breece Hall was inefficient in the 2nd half while backup RBs like Braelon Allen and Isaiah Davis played enough to keep Hall from getting over this number.
Even though the Pats were forced to throw the ball, they were extremely ineffective doing so and had 7 sacks on the game depleting nearly all of their drives.
At the end of the game Drake Maye entered in for Brissett.
Nine times out of 10 in this game script we lose both bets but here we somehow won both in a blowout.
Gardner Minshew under 32.5 pass attempts
Again another game where things got out of control with the Panthers coming out to a quick lead and seemingly scoring on every drive with Andy Dalton at QB.
The Raiders played from negative game script the entire game and we got absolutely bailed out when on the last drive they replaced Gardner Minshew with Aidan O’Connell at QB. Minshew had 28 attempts at the time and almost certainly would’ve gone over his 32.5 line on the ensuing drive.
Super lucky.
Bad variance
DJ Moore under 62.5 receiving yards
I thought I had some very interesting nuggets about DJ Moore vs cover 3 and zone last week and how he struggled a ton in these matchups.
Even though he was targeted frequently they were all on on short passes and screens for the most part.
At the end of the first half Caleb Williams threw up a hail mary that bounced off a colts defender and into the arms of DJ Moore where he caught the ball and was immediately down at the 1 yard line.
It was a completely insignificant and fluky play where Moore gained 45 receiving yards.
Moore proceeds to finish with 77 receiving yards in a game where Caleb Williams threw for 363 passing yards.
If it weren’t for that play we would’ve comfortably won our bet.
Aaron Jones under 50.5 rushing yards
Part of the process here was the game script factor at play. I don’t think anywhere in my process did I expect the Vikings to absolutely manhandle the Texans and blow them out.
Because of this lopsided game the Vikings got into heavy positive game script and just pounded the ball.
I knew this one was going to lose in the first quarter as there’s nothing we could do here in this game script and certainly a result that felt impossible to predict.
Travis Etienne over 12.5 rushing attempts
The same thing goes here for Etienne where it was clear in the first quarter this game was going to be a blowout. It sucks in these scenarios because it’s pretty clear that these bets are going to lose early on and certainly have no shot of winning simply because their defense couldn’t have one stop.
The Bills scored five touchdowns on all of their drives in the first half forcing the Jags to abandon their entire gameplan and play in catch up mode.
Things to consider for Week 4
I’ve touched on a bit how the trends of running the ball were likely here to stay but that there were other variables at play early on. Our run heavy focuses offenses had been some of the least productive through a couple weeks in the season in almost 20 years.
Thankfully last week we saw passing get a bump back to normal where we saw 20 teams have a pass rate over expected last week.
This is encouraging for the week.
It’s funny even without this being my base process for Week 4, I found myself naturally leaning towards betting more on passing and less on rushing.
I think this is a product of sportsbooks adjusting properly to the run heavy offenses and the current state of the NFL.
There’s still a few matchups in the passing game across the league to exploit and we’ve seen success against certain teams. This week a lot of good wide receivers and passing attacks have great matchups.
Best Bets for the week
Zay Flowers Under 51.5 Receiving Yards -110 (BetMGM
Reasoning:
Matchup problem vs. Bills defense:
Bills run zone and two high safeties at near league-high rates
Flowers' splits against two high safeties (2023):
Two high: 18% TPRR, 19.1% target share, 15.8% air yards share, 1.12 YPRR
Single high: 23% TPRR, 25% target share, 28% air yard share, 2.07 YPRR
Favorable matchup for tight ends:
Mark Andrews has historically performed well against this coverage
Isaiah Likely excelled in Week 1 this year against it
Bills' defensive strengths:
5th in Pass D DVOA
4th biggest run funnel defense
Ravens' offensive tendencies:
One of the biggest run-heavy teams (-9.9% PROE this season)
Bills' performance against top WRs:
Brian Thomas: 48 yards (9 targets, negative game script)
Tyreek Hill: 24 yards (Waddle 41 yards)
Marvin Harrison Jr.: 4 yards (194 yards in next two games combined)
Conclusion:
A run heavy approach and rough schematic matchup for Flowers indicate a more tight end heavy focused passing game against the Bills this week where they’ve effectively shut down opposing top WRs.
Recommendation:
Risk: 1.1 units to win 1 unit
Play to: 46.5 yards