I headed into last week with a sense of confidence in the plays I put out that felt higher than most weeks but again it was one that lead to some pretty brutal results.
Looking back it looks like there were a lot of things that felt like just didn’t go our way and a few plays really stood out to me.
Rachaad White’s under was pretty brutal as he had by far his most carries on the year and was actually pacing well for the under until he saw 15 second half carries for 74 rushing yards.
Jonathan Mingo’s over at 34.5 yards was brutal especially watching the game as him and Bryce Young couldn’t get on the same page. At the end of the half Bryce missed Mingo on a wide open post down the middle that would’ve resulted in roughly a 40 yard touchdown.
We knew Mingo’s efficiency was a concern and that ended up being the dagger for us as he had zero receptions on his first seven targets on the game and finished with 22 receiving yards.
I wanted to see how unlikely it was that a WR would get 9+ targets and fail to hit 35 receiving yards this year and there were 18 such instances where this happened for an average of 1.28 times per week. Mingo’s 22 yards on these targets was the third fewest this year.
I was all over Dameon Pierce and his overs this week in a weather game, but it turns out I was on the wrong running back in that game! After Pierce saw 62.5% of the rushing attempts in the Texans backfield in Week 13 he only saw 21% last week.
The two plays with Mingo and Pierce could be looking at in hindsight of “these are the things that can happen when betting on bad players” and I think it’s fair to an extent, but if you told me before the games that Mingo would have 9 targets and the leading RB on the Texans would have 13 carries for 65 rushing yards I’d feel extremely confident that both the bets smashed.
Some plays I generally try to stay away from are running back receiving overs due to the natural variance that comes with them and it’s not exactly a perfect science. Regardless, when I have attacked these this year I’ve felt confident in them but we went 0-2 on the week on these.
Gibbs didn’t hit his over and it was just one of those games where it didn’t happen. He still ran 23 routes, his fourth highest on the year and Goff missed him on a wide open screen that certainly almost would’ve been a chunk gain but honestly thats going to happen in games so it wasn’t that unlucky.
Roschon Johnson’s was a little frustrating as the roles for the Bears RB suddenly changed with Foreman running his most routes of the season despite Roschon being the pass catching RB ahead of him.
Still Roschon was in on 15 passing plays, but the main issue is they turned him into a pass blocker this game and he only ran six routes. His 40% route participation was by far his lowest on the season as he previously wasn’t under 64% in any game.
Mostert’s under was a complete whiff as the Dolphins started hammering the ball on the ground when Tyreek ended up gettin hurt mid-game. Regardless even without the Tyreek injury Mostert was pacing well for his over on attempts as he had by far his biggest workload with Achane in the lineup.
With Achane seemingly being banged up every week I probably could’ve taken that more into account with Mostert’s role, but still when Achane played meaningful snaps Mostert had failed to reach even a 50% RB rushing share in the backfield in any of those games. And last week Mostert had a whopping 75% rushing share.
Story of the week last week unfortunately and the year.
In fact I’ve had this weird feeling that whatever play I put out is just gonna automatically lose.
Like I didn’t watch the Bengals game and we had bet on Mixon rushing unders so far this week. Despite me personally feeling like the process was a banger and one of my stronger plays in recent weeks, when I went to check the box score I was literally thinking “I can’t wait to see how this play lost”.
Well, thankfully it ended up winning and it sucks that I really even had that thought process before hand. It’s something I personally have never experience before as I generally am expecting to win every play but this year has just chiseled away at some confidence I’ve had.
I write a lot about this stuff in the Substack to either personally hope to have someone relate to what it is I’m saying or take something of value away from this. But a lot of times I also write this personally for myself to help gather my thoughts and just be open about what this process and journey looks like. And I hope by being able to do that there is value to be gained by it from someone else.
But like I talked about in the previous post was that we just have to look ahead and continue to grind out plays that we feel we have an edge on. So that’s what we are gonna do.
Underdog Pick ‘Em of the Week
Attack something here that both defensive teams are extremely good - the Jags against the run and the Ravens against the pass.
The main play here is Lawrence and Edwards and I don’t necessarily have as strong of a take on the Engram under, I think pairing with another under for a WR on the team is fine.
Underdog recently has changed some of their potential payouts when it comes to correlation. The “hack” we found with correlating fantasy points is no longer available and even correlating thing such as passing yards and receiving yards are accounted for.
So the best way to do this is to do something along the lines of this where a passing yardage under and a receptions line under.
There’s going to be plenty of times where Lawrence has an inefficient day and Engram still gets his over, but on average it’s more likely that both their over or under together.
Best Bets
Trevor Lawrence under 230.5 passing yards -113 (FanDuel)
Baltimores passing defense has been absolutely lights out this year. Opposing QBs have been under this number in 10 of 13 games.
In two of the three games where a QB went over this number they still had 5.5 and 5.4 YPA respectively and it was due to high volume.
Even after last week vs Stafford, the Ravens are still 2nd in pass D DVOA, Pass EPA/play and explosive pass rate allowed.
Lawrence has faced three top five passing defenses so far this year and has a -.267 Pass EPA/play in these games. For reference the Jets have by far the worst pass EPA per play on the year with -.219.
And yes, Lawrence did go over his prop last week with 257 yards against Cleveland but this was with 50 passing attempts.
Expecting an inefficient day here for Lawrence against a top defense.
Risk 1.13 units to win 1 unit
Play to 225.5