Angles hits inboxes on Thursday mornings throughout the regular season; you can also find Angles in The Scroll on Thursday afternoons.
OWS!!!
Can you believe it’s Week 9? It’s such a great time in the NFL season, when we learn a lot about nearly every team. When we see their true colors, as the contenders start to round into some sort of form, the pretenders fade away…or at least, that’s what the media will tell you.
We could also say that right around now is the time when regression takes hold, when we get teams like the Ravens, who will probably keep winning. Overachieving teams like the Colts and Patriots might eventually lose a few, and teams like the Chiefs and Bills might start to look more like what we expected before the season. We should also start to expect that players who have struggled with efficiency or red-zone luck start to enjoy different outcomes, and the coaches who actually have control of their locker rooms rise above the coaches who do not. I don’t know about you, but I much prefer this second stream of reasoning.
The NFL season is fast-paced and action-packed. Not to get all dramatic, “movie title preview” on you here, but these facts make it difficult to disconnect and slow down to enjoy it (and predict it). I dabble in Showdowns every now and again, and while I’ve never mastered the format personally, I really like sitting down for 10 to 15 minutes and thinking through one game, going quarter by quarter in my head to build a lineup that can reflect my predictions. It’s a different approach than saying Team X will beat Team Y 24-17 and building in stats from there. This slower approach goes drive by drive, quarter by quarter to work through all the if-then statements possible. It’s effective to build correlated lineups, and far from the most accurate predictions, but what I love about this approach is that it forces me to slow down.
How can you slow down in the midst of the ninth week in an 18-week regular season? Simple: by cutting out the noise. No X, limited podcasts, limited material. Be with yourself and your thoughts, first and foremost, and decide what content contributors make the cut for you this week. Slowing down can mean taking this 11-game slate and picking at least five or six to treat them like a Showdown slate. List out the player pools, think about the game flow if one team scores first, and then what does the next drive look like? What’s the likelihood of success if a team falls behind 0-14 or 0-10? Does it change game plans? Where can touchdowns come from? Which team will drive the game environment?
There is helpful data all around us. You can put it into action just as well as any of the content providers you follow. What you can also do is think for yourself in HOW these games shape up and play out, because we know we’re going to have some level of normal and randomness.
Speaking of Stats…
You’re likely aware, but OWS has a partnership this season with Statrankings.com (founded by our friend Kevin Adams, who is also an OWS contributor penning One Week Stats in The Scroll every week). If you haven’t checked out his site, and still use other sites for data, you can get a free account today to unlock literally thousands of data points. I have been plucking data from the site from time to time because the UI is very simple and welcoming, and the datasets are growing by the week.
Another week, another Bink Machine promo. This week, for one week only, we are putting the Bink Machine on the clearance rack for just $49 through the Super Bowl (14 weeks // $3.50 per week).
I am not an MME player, so when the Bink Machine came around a couple years ago, I tuned out all the communications on it. After seeing some of the OWS fam winning tournaments and citing their use of the Bink Machine, however, I gave it a spin one week to build my cluster of lineups, with one wrinkle…instead of letting it build just my set of lineups, I went 3x the volume, and then shopped around for my core third. Since then, on weeks where I have the time to do it, I am religious about running the Bink Machine.
If you’ve been putting off using it until now, you are a very disciplined OWS subscriber. But if you are ready for it, just remember that no matter the package you choose, OWS will offer a money back guarantee if you try it and find it isn’t a fit for you. Risk a little, win a lot. Sounds good to me.
Week 9 :: 11 Showdowns
Slowing it down this week requires time to think about the 11 games ahead of us, individually. The Jets, Eagles, Browns, and Buccaneers are on a bye this week, while the primetime games include Baltimore (with Lamar likely back), Washington (with Jayden likely back), Seattle (employ the best receiver in the NFL?), and a game that includes the Cowboys (always a gold mine). There are some high-powered offenses in this group along with some generous defensive units, so that narrows down our targets just a bit this week (bottom-tier defenses on this slate include Bengals, Bears, Giants, Titans).
The art of slowing down the slate means we can’t possibly cover each of these games in the Angles email. Instead, I’m going to make a few notes here that I’ll explore later, and you can do the same. Some will involve the key questions we asked above, thoughts on how these games could evolve, and how we could profit off them.
Chiefs at Bills is the game of the week. This is a different Chiefs offense than we’ve seen in previous seasons, but the same one we’ve seen the last two weeks. Rashee Rice first. Running game second. Kelce for volume. Worthy for shots. And a healthy, mobile Pat Mahomes. Buffalo’s defense is far more susceptible to the run, giving up the third-most rushing yards per game in the NFL, but the Chiefs may not prefer to play it this way. On Buffalo’s offense, we have Josh Allen doing everything, James Cook having a second consecutive very strong season, and the offense spreading it around like Tom Brady used to do in Foxboro. The Chiefs could slow this game down with some success, but Allen can speed it right back up.
Packers (vs. Panthers), Chargers (at Titans), Lions (vs. Vikings), and Rams (vs. Saints) all have 27+ implied point totals and a large spread.
Green Bay seemed to get its offensive mojo back last week against Pittsburgh. Christian Watson is back to open up the field and give them what Matthew Golden couldn’t. Carolina will want to run the ball but should be forced to throw it with Andy Dalton likely under center…
The Chargers visit Tennessee, who couldn’t get anything going last week against Indianapolis. Herbert has had a longer layoff with the TNF game, and while the Chargers may be able to run the ball all over the Titans, they also want to keep the train rolling in the passing game…
Detroit is coming off its bye week, and they get J.J. McCarthy’s return for Minnesota. The Lions have scored at least 30 points in each of their last five matchups with the Vikings (31, 31, 30, 30, 34). Brian Flores’ blitz-happy defense seems to cede big plays to Jared Goff and the Lions, but can Minnesota’s offense keep up?
The Rams are also off their bye week with Puka Nacua expected to be back in this game, and the Saints officially giving rookie quarterback Tyler Shough a tryout. New Orleans rolled over last week at home to Tampa Bay, and there’s little reason to believe they will battle here on the West Coast when their previous West Coast trip (Seattle, Week 2) didn’t end so well. The question shouldn’t be if, but how will the Rams score their points.
All of these individual offenses look to be strong options in Week 9, but the two other game environments (beyond KC/BUF) that could jump off seem to be Chicago at Cincinnati and Indianapolis at Pittsburgh. We think we’ll see Joe Flacco for Cincy despite his injured shoulder, and we don’t really know what we’ll get from the Bears this week. Two amicable defenses, however, should not be overlooked.
For the Colts, at some point they will be tested. It just might not be this week. Pittsburgh’s defense has had all the narratives from the Monday Morning Quarterbacks (MMQB) after its poor performance in Week 8. Mike Tomlin still knows how to win, but this seems to be Jonathan Taylor’s world that we’re all living in.
The rest of the slate brings us many other interesting matchups, from the Giants getting San Francisco’s pressure-less defense (last in NFL in pressure rate) with Christian McCaffrey on the other side getting the doormat Giants rushing defense, to the road Falcons and Bijan Robinson (maybe Michael Penix Jr.) traveling to Foxboro and MVP candidate Drake Maye, to the Houston Texans defense against the Broncos offense, and finally to the off-a-bye Jaguars going to Vegas, two teams desperate for a win.
11 “Showdowns” await us. Get out there and start shopping in the Bink Machine for the lineups you love this week. Level up your DFS game with a FREE account at Statrankings.com to unlock all the data you need. And build your winners for Sunday!
This is your one week season!
~Larejo
