Total Domination: Week 6
A weekly look at games that could exceed or fall short of betting market expectations. Bettors can leverage recommendations at the sportsbook, while DFS players can use the specific player recommendations mentioned to their advantage. Steve Repsold deep dives each recommendation and advises us the level of bet confidence expressed in units (example: 2u = 2 units).
Week 6
Indianapolis Colts at New York Jets (-2) Over 45.5 2u
At the start of the season, I was skeptical of Andrew Luck. He was seeing his first action after not playing football for so long that I doubted he would ever play again, much less play well. Well, I’ve been proven wrong. Okay, okay – I’m still a little skeptical of his arm strength and durability. But he’s proven me mostly wrong, so I’m extending him the benefit of the doubt for now.
The Colts certainly haven’t hesitated to test out that shoulder’s durability. Luck paces the league in pass attempts with 245. He’s even ahead of Eli Manning (230), who at the time of writing has played one game more than Luck. He’s averaging nearly 50 pass attempts per game. He’s been efficient (66.5% completion, 12:5 TD:INT), but unexciting, content (or needing) to work in a dink-and-dunk scheme (6.09 yards per attempt). What he hasn’t been doing is running. He’s averaging less than two attempts per game, while in previous seasons he was consistently over four.
The Colts are going to pass, for many reasons. It’s been their tendency all season and I think it continues even though they will get Marlon Mack back, who is healthy, in theory. That was the theory in Week 2 also, which didn’t quite work out. The spread projects a close game with the Colts losing, meaning they will likely be playing from behind and need to throw. But even if they don’t need to, I think they want to. They’ve been eager to spread out the field and go fast. In fact, they’ve got the lowest overall seconds per play and neutral situation seconds per play (according to Football Outsiders pace of play data).
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