Miracle Covers

Week 1 NFL

Miami -3 (-115)

The Patriots lose in Miami every year…. it’s why Belichick too the team down there early.

Chiefs at Cardinals OVER 53.5 -110

This could be the “wild” game of the day

Colts -7 -110

The Texans suck.

Props:

NY Giants at Titans First Drive ends in a punt – YES @ -143

Trey Lance Interceptions OVER 0.5 +125

TEASER +250: Colts -8, Ravens -7, Titans -6.5, 49ers -7

DFS:

2022 NFL Preview

2022 is here…year has flown by really. We are already 2 weeks into college football with games that have given me plenty of reasons why not to bet on college football.

Here’s the NFL Preview, we’ll go by division on my thoughts and plays n props I have made are in BOLD. First with the NFC…

NFC East:

I’m bullish on Philly this year; the picked up A.J. Brown at WR and rookie from Georgia DT Jordan Davis could be the next big thing on defense at that position. Their schedule also is super easy; they will probably be favored in their first 4 games. I have the Eagles OVER at 9.5 (-145). I can see them getting to as high as 12 games this year. Jalen Hurts sophomore slump is always a concern (along with issues getting off his first read) but that’s something we can exploit when the playoffs come around. Dallas will probably make the playoffs and lose in the first round because Mike McCarthy forgot time ran out or something. The Giants will be boring but probably get a little better by the end of the season with Daboll under the helm. I also took the Washington Commanders UNDER 8 (-125) because their name is terrible, their owner is terrible, and their QB is terrible (although if Wentz gets hurt if Sam Howell plays it could be in danger he looked good in preseason). Eagles and Cowboys both +150 to win division; sounds about right.

NFC North:

Boring division. Aaron Rodgers is bitching again, now about his WRs since DaVante is gone; you’d think he’d be more chill after a summer of tripping balls in the Peruvian desert. Minnesota will be the same as last year, including having the usual kicker woes because Vikings. Detroit will be slightly improved from last year; as we saw on Hard Knocks, Dan Campbell’s style of coaching is welcomed by players and they were one of the better teams’ ATS last year. The Lions issue is more at QB and depth at RB; Hutchinson on defense looks to be a stud however. I have Chicago’s UNDER at 6 (-125); I believe 6 wins is their ceiling: superstar LB Roquan Smith is not happy and will probably be traded, bad juju around them potentially leaving Soldiers Field, and Justin Fields at QB…he looks just meh. The Packers win this division, I guess… but if you are feeling froggy for a longshot Detroit at +1000 (Lou’s been talking about this one for years LOL).

NFL South:

Pat Darts’ likes Tampa’s under at 11.5 (+130) after Tom Brady “unretirement” stunt where he tried to retire under former HC Bruce Arians. The Buccaneers’ owners, the Glazers, flew Brady to the UK to hang out with Ronaldo at Manchester United to convince him to come back. As a result, Arians “retired” up to the front office and now Todd Bowles is coach. According to Brady’s new contract, he also had input in defensive game planning. Why not just make him the coach at this point? Now Brady is reportedly having issues at home with his wife AND he lost his starting center in training camp. Despite all this, they probably win at least 11 games and the division which is full of young, incomplete teams: Matt Rhule is the favorite to be the first coach to be fired; the Saints have Jameis at QB, and the Falcons are young and led by Marcus Mariota.

NFC West:

LA is super talented, they have a good coach, and they don’t care about the salary cap. They probably should not only win this division, but also the conference. San Francisco may have something to say about that; I have the 49ers to make the playoffs at -200 and they could meet LA again at SoFi in the playoffs like last year. Arizona could be the LOL team of the year; Kliff Kingsbury first to be fired is tasty at +1000 after the offseason they had. The Cardinals’ front office is so full of nepotism and failure they can’t even get re-signing their QB right (when he’s not on the tablet playing Hearthstone). Seattle, despite a good WR and RB group, maybe the WORST team in football. I am taking the Seahawks UNDER 5.5 (-115) because there is no way Drew Lock and Geno Smith combined (with a terrible OL) can win 5 games.

AFC

AFC East:

I have the Bills OVER at 11.5 (-115); I think they win at least 13 and try their darnest to get the AFC Championship game at Rich Stadium (I’m calling it that I don’t care what the new name is) this year. Them to win division at -240 isn’t a bad play either; week 1 BUF at LA Rams could be a Super Bowl preview. The Patriots offense looks bland but with Matt Patricia and Joe Judge involved, what would you expect? I just hope they don’t fuck up Mac Jones’ development; Pats’ saving grace is their defense and special teams. The Dolphins have made a ton of fun new offensive additions with Tyreek Hill and Chase Edmonds, with a Kyle Shanahan protégé as play caller, but their defense still isn’t good enough for me to say they can challenge for the division. Miami and the Patriots probably do dig it out for the 7th playoff spot. The Jets, as usual, suck.

AFC South:

I took the Colts to win the division at -130; they have an actual professional QB now in Matt Ryan with a top 3 running game in football and a fast, good tackling defense. The Titans will dig it out for the wild card spots; they lost a lot of players in Free Agency and if you’d watched the preseason, QB Malik Willis looked so good one should think he should start now over Ryan Tannehill; the Titans secondary still is blah however. Jaguars will slightly improve and I have Trevor Lawrence Passing Yards OVER 4000.5 -125 as he now has actual professional coaching. The Texans will dual it out with Seattle to be the shittiest team in the league.

AFC North:

Baltimore, Pittsburgh, and Cincinnati can all win this division; they can also all go 8-9 with injuries. Cleveland sucks and I think the DeShaun Watson move was a mistake but what do you expect from an owner whose company was involved in a fraud scandal.

AFC West:

What a fun division! All of these teams can make the playoffs, and 3/4 can also make the Super Bowl (minus Denver; they project to be a Wild Card contending team). The Raiders have an awesome receiving group; the question is Derek Carr under McDaniels. I have Chargers UNDER 10.5 -115 for small amount as folks are a little TOO high on them, the coach goes for it on 4th down like it’s a Madden exhibition game, and their special teams’ is still Chargery.

Early Trends

Until further notice, I think it is worth blindly betting LA Dodgers team unders. The catchy tag-line following the Freeman signing went “Dodgers’ Best Line-Up Ever.” This team will certainly hit major grooves at points this year but they seem off at the moment. They needed a dropped fly ball on Sunday just to get multiple runs in Colorado, and only plated 2 runs the game previous. To be fair, Will Smith was out of the lineup for both those games and he’s no slap-hitter, but nevertheless, the team as a whole doesn’t appear locked-in offensively. Combine this with the media-generated expectation inflation, and ‘team total under’ becomes the play in the immediate future.

The same is going to be true for the time being in regards to D-backs team unders. No hit by SPs on back-to-back games to start the season…This team needs to prove itself offensively. Not impressed by 5 runs on Sunday in what turned out to be a BPen game and blowout.

MLB Win Totals

If you listen to 3 consecutive podcasts about a team, I congratulate you if your mental estimations of them and their players dont sky-rocket. A podcaster innocently trying to drum-up some excitement for their next episode will have you thinking, “Well sure that guy has hit a combined .199 the last 2 seasons, but if…” A random team reporter will have you excited for a pitcher that was an all-star a half decade ago. If you can listen to back-to-back spring training podcasts of a team without thinking, “Has any team ever gone 162-0 before?” “Will their games count as wins if the other team isnt able to record an out?” then kudos, kudos to you. Lets see what we like.

Yankees – (U 92.5) -122

First of all, this is just a fun bet. But to the rationale…a lot of this would seem to ride on the health and production of Severino and Cole. When 100%, Severino is full-on legit, but he has only been able to throw something like 18-19 total IPs since the end of 2019. Expecting Cole to replicate his numbers from 3-4 years ago is fool’s gold imo. From late last year: “Cole’s stuff and velocity mostly looked fine, but his command was off as it had been on occasion down the stretch of the regular season – 5.13 ERA in Sept” Cole will not be well-served if the sticky stuff police are again on duty this year. I dont think the Yankees, as an organization, have the pitching depth this year to adequately deal with Severino living on IL while Cole is getting sporadically lit-up. Cashman, I believe, fully realized his situation early in the off-season, which is why he throws a huge offer to Verlander. To compound difficulties, this is a team that under-delivered last year offensively. They ranked 13th in combined OPS (.729) and 19th in runs scored despite relatively healthy years for Giancarlo Stanton and Aaron Judge, and can you honestly count on that happening again? Would you really trust Hicks to get 300 plate appearances this year or to do anything productive with them if he did? Was going from Rizzo to Voit really just an expensive lateral move? In other words, this is an offense that cannot be counted on to cover the sins of a less than stellar pitching staff. The Yankees would have done well to add one more big arm to deal with the bats in Toronto and Boston, and they didn’t.

Cleveland – (O 76.5) -114

The AL Central is, imo, the most interesting division in baseball this year. This is when baseball really misses old-school divisional races. Imagine how great last year would have been with San Fran and LAD going to the end. At any rate, I personally think this Cleveland number is artificially low because a lot of bettors are going to be hot on the White Sox and Tigers. This is understandable, but those teams certainly are not without flaws. CWS lose Rodon to free agency this off-season and Lance Lynn goes down injured late in spring training, “the same knee that gave Lynn trouble during the second half of the 2021 season.” The Tigers look solid, but are still relying on elder statesman Miguel Cabrera as their primary DH entering the season, not to mention an infant @ 1B. I wound up taking 4 combined team win total over/unders last year and Cleveland under would have been my 5th. There were quotes and reports coming out constantly about the team struggling financially from pandemic stuff; the organization had the vibe of what Oakland is this year. But now things seem to be looking up. Bieber is back. Jose Ramirez is signing extensions. Civale, Plesac, Quantrill and McKenzie are young, fun guns. Emmanuel Clase may be the best closer in baseball already. They are no longer passive-aggressively demeaning a race of humans. Big X-factor(s) for this team? Rosario and Gimenez.

Mariners – (O 84.5) -115

As many of these bets go, this is more an indictment of the teams around them. Oakland and Texas are essentially after-thoughts…Houston has to be weaker. Who the Hell knows what the Angels do. This is a Mariner team way more likely to win 92 games than 75 games imo. So we will take the over.

I wish I had more but thats all for now…

EDIT:

Saying “thats all for now” when gambling…like being at a beer festival and saying “Im all set for the evening” an hour before it ends. Stop it, no one believes you, its sad. We sneak in a last minute under on the aforementioned White Sox. The Lance Lynn injury alone is almost enough in my mind to validate this pick. Not only does that push Keuchel into the #3 role, it may ultimately force Vince Velazquez into the rotation which will almost undoubtedly fail. Lynn inj gets coupled late with a Yoan Moncada IL designation also. Oblique strains can linger, and just think about this infield when Moncada is out. Abreu is now firmly in his mid-30s, as is Josh Harrison @ 2B. Tim Anderson is a stud but he is almost certainly not improving this year. You are getting the same numbers out of him or worse. And then @ 3rd…Burger? Hasnt done anything yet. Leury Garcia? He hit 5 HRs last yr in 126 games. Andrew Vaughn? He hit .235 last year. Add to these points one I made earlier. This division, I believe, will be intriguing and competitive. It would be no surprise to me at all if the winner of this division comes in at a sub-90 win total. I believe the moves made by the Twins, the young talent coming up with the Royals, the potential renaissance happening in Detroit, and Cleveland not going bankrupt ultimately translates to parity. The White Sox probably still have the best overall roster, but the gap is not where you thought it might have been at this point a year or 2 ago. So related to that, I also have action on non-White Sox division winner (+150). We will see how things go.

MLB Over/Unders

It is a return to old-times, as team O/Us are back to total wins, as opposed to winning %. We wind up going 3-1 with these last year, with Philadelphia going to the last weekend. We did well taking the Nationals under and Tigers over, but the Phillies W was fortunate. Shout-outs to Bryce Harper and Ranger Suarez, I owe you both a Yuengling. Here are the totals for 2022, we will make our picks a few days before Opening Day.

Arizona – 66.5

Atlanta – 91.5

Baltimore – 62.5

Boston – 85.5

CHC – 75.5

CWS – 91.5

Cincinnati – 74.5

Cleveland – 76.5

Colorado – 68.5

Detroit – 76.5

Houston – 91.5

Kansas City – 75.5

LAA – 84.5

LAD – 97.5

Miami – 76.5

Milwaukee – 90.5

Minnesota – 81.5

NYM – 90.5

NYY – 92.5

Oakland – 70.5

Philadelphia – 85.5

Pittsburgh – 65.5

San Diego – 89.5

SFG – 84.5

Seattle – 84.5

StL – 84.5

Tampa Bay – 88.5

Texas – 73.5

Toronto – 91.5

Washington – 71.5

March Madness Sunday

Ohio St vs Villanova UNDER 133.5 (-107)

Texas Tech -8 (-110)

TCU vs Arizona OVER 145 (-113)

Texas +3

PARLAY +350: Houston ML -170, Wisconsin ML -190, Ohio St vs Villanova UNDER 133.5

March Madness Saturday

Kansas -11.5 (-115)

St Mary’s vs UCLA OVER 126.5 (-110)

Michigan +6 (-105)

Providence vs Richmond UNDER 134.5 (-110); 1H UNDER 61 +105

St. Peters vs Murray State OVER 129.5 (-110); St Peter’s 1H +4.5

TEASER +150: Michigan +6, Gonzaga -9, Baylor -5.5

PEOPLE’s ML PARLAY +144:

Kansas -800

Gonzaga -595

Gunnar Nelson -550 (UFC)

Paddy Pimblett -750 (UFC)

Los Angeles FC -250 (MLS)

March Madness Friday

Loyola Chicago pk -107

CS Fullerton +18.5

Michigan St pk -110

Auburn vs Jacksonville St OVER 139.5

Delaware vs Villanova UNDER 135

UAB ML +330

Wisconsin -7.5

NCAA Round 1 Thursday

Richmond vs Iowa UNDER 150.5 -110
Gonzaga -23

San Francisco vs Murray St OVER 138 -110

Boise State ML +138

Indiana vs St.Mary’s OVER 126.5 -110

Marquette +4 -110