Total Domination: Week 7
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 7
Last week I looked to “pace of play” data for an angle on finding high-scoring games. Pace of play isn’t fancy; it’s how many seconds on average does an offense take to run a play. More plays, more points – well, at least potentially. It worked well, leading me to the Colts vs. Jets game, which ended up scoring 74 points. Just a bit over the 48 total.
This week, I dug a little deeper into exactly how big of an outlier the Colts are. They have the lowest time of possession among teams that have played six games, over minutes less than the next-lowest Miami Dolphins. The Colts’ 22.69 seconds per play is more than two seconds faster than second-best Cleveland (25.0) and over seven seconds faster than Miami (29.99). In a testament to both how fast the Colts play and how slowly the Dolphins do, Indianapolis has run 92 more plays than Miami. In five fewer minutes. It puts pace in perspective.
However, the Bills are kryptonite to overs. They play slowly, have an above-average defense and a below-average offense, and they favor running over passing. Even with a total of only 43, I have to pass on the Colts for this week.
Houston Texans at Jacksonville Jaguars (-4) Over 41 2u
It’s understandable if seeing a Jaguars home game doesn’t immediately make you think high scoring. They do have an elite defense (though not quite like last year’s) and it’s easy to think of their offense as slow and plodding. Maybe, if Leonard Fournette had been healthy all year, it would have been. But with Fournette on the shelf the majority of the year, the Jaguars have turned to Blake Bortles and the passing game.
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