This week’s NFL slate features some great matchups, including the Vikings–Lions on FOX and the FOX Sports App.
As for how you should wager on the games, I ran my models to give you my favorite betting edges and predictions for Week 14 of the season. My goal for this weekly column is to always provide you with nuggets you didn’t know before reading this piece.
A couple of matchups stuck out from a betting perspective, so let’s look at my favorite edges of the week with odds courtesy of FOX Bet.
Tom Brady returns home to Bay Area as 49ers host Bucs in Week 14
Tom Brady grew up a San Francisco 49ers fan and returns to the bay to take on the Niners Sunday on FOX.
Buccaneers at 49ers (4:25 p.m. ET Sunday, FOX and FOX Sports App)
Since Jimmy Garoppolo joined the team in 2017, San Francisco has averaged 0.07 EPA per snap with him in the game.
That ranks second in the NFL.
With Garoppolo off of the field over that span, San Francisco is averaging -0.08 EPA per snap.
That ranks No. 31 in the NFL.
The offense literally has gone from second-best to second-worst without him on the field.
There is a reason the 49ers are 38-17 with him and 9-29 without him since 2017.
This is a game with two offenses that have played some terrible defenses of late.
The 49ers have played just two defenses that rank above average this season:
Now they are playing the No. 8 Bucs defense, and doing so without Jimmy G.
But on the other side of the ball, the same is true for Tom Brady’s Bucs.
They have played just three games against top-15 defenses this season:
- 18 points scored vs. the No. 13 Steelers in a loss
- 22 points scored vs. the No. 9 Ravens in a loss
- 19 points scored vs. the No. 1 Cowboys in a win
The key to this game when the Bucs have the ball is coaching and quick throws.
The Bucs cannot afford to run the ball on first down as they’ve done in the past. The 49ers have the NFL’s second-best run defense and the Bucs have the NFL’s 30th–run offense.
And the Bucs have that third-worst run offense despite playing the ninth-easiest schedule of run defenses. The last three run defenses they’ve faced were ranked No. 20, 24 and 31.
Now they’re playing the second-best run defense in the League.
Byron Leftwich MUST refrain from running the ball on early downs.
On second and third downs with 8-plus yards to go, Tom Brady ranks No. 31 in YPA and No. 24 in EPA/dropback.
They must avoid obvious passing downs.
Instead, pass the ball underneath on early downs with Brady’s NFL fastest time to throw.
On first downs, Brady ranks seventh in EPA/att and eighth in success rate.
For the 49ers, the key is actually quite similar. With an inexperienced QB like Brock Purdy, they must be efficient enough on early downs to avoid obvious passing downs. How they choose to balance that against a top-10 pass and run defense will be a challenge for Kyle Shanahan, but they have to make life as easy as possible for the inexperienced Purdy.
Vikings at Lions (1 p.m. ET Sunday, FOX and FOX Sports App)
The Vikings are a damn lucky team.
But the Vikings have also played a brutal schedule of defenses since Week 8.
Minnesota has done nothing but play top-10 defenses for five straight games, taking on:
- No. 1 Dallas
- No. 3 New England
- No. 4 Buffalo
- No. 5 NY Jets
- No. 10 Washington
They won four of those five games, and while they should have lost more of those games, the defenses they faced were absolutely brutal.
That won’t be the case when they step down in class to take on the Lions, which ranks No. 19 on the season and is terrible vs. the run, ranking No. 25.
The lone concerning issue for Cousins is the defensive style of the Lions. They blitz and play man and do so at the No. 5 rate for both.
On the season, Kirk Cousins has major man vs. zone splits. Out of 38 QBs:
- Vs. man: -0.10 EPA/att (No. 23), 36% success (No. 30), 6.2 YPA (No. 28), 52% completions (No. 31)
- Vs. zone: +0.01 EPA/att (No. 21), 48% success (No. 14), 7.0 YPA (No. 25), 72% completions (No. 6)
In their Week 3 meeting earlier this year, against man coverage, Cousins was 12-of-26 (46%) for 125 yards at 4.8 YPA, -0.33 EPA/att and 26% success.
On the season, Cousins splits when blitzed vs. not blitzed. Out of 38 QBs:
- Vs. blitz: -0.10 EPA/att (No. 27), 37% success (No. 33), 5.3 YPA (No. 36), 56% completions (No. 33)
- Vs. no blitz: -0.01 EPA/att (No. 15), 46% success (No. 15), 7.0 YPA (No. 19), 68% completions (No. 10)
In their Week 3 meeting earlier this year, against the blitz, Cousins was 7-of-16 (44%) for 47 yards at 2.9 YPA, -0.38 EPA/att and 25% success.
This is a defensive style from the Lions that gives Cousins problems.
Meanwhile, the exact opposite is true for the Vikings.
The Vikings play zone at the second-highest rate in the NFL (82.5% of plays).
And Jared Goff has big splits, performing much better vs. zone.
In fact, on the season vs. zone, Goff ranks fifth in EPA/att, sixth in success rate and eighth in YPA.
And over the second half of the season, Goff ranks tops in EPA/att, tops in success rate and third in YPA vs. zone coverage.
This is a huge mismatch in the red zone favoring the Lions offense. Detroit ranks No. 5 in the red zone, while the Vikings defense ranks No. 27. Minnesota ranks No. 32 in success rate per play in the red zone. They were extremely fortunate the Jets went 1-of-6 in their red zone last week, but the Jets are a below-average red-zone offense and against the Lions top-5 red-zone offense, I don’t envision that happening this week.
Lastly, the Vikings’ pass defense is the most sensitive to play action in the NFL and allows +0.47 EPA/att on early downs vs. play action, and the Lions use play action at an above-average rate.
I believe the Lions are rightly favored in this game but see no value in laying the points and instead would support a Lions team total Over 26.5 or 27 points.
PICK: Lions team total Over 27 points scored at FOX Bet
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Panthers at Seahawks (4:25 p.m. ET Sunday, FOX and FOX Sports App)
The Panthers’ offense has struggled massively when they cannot run the ball. If this unit can’t achieve balance, they’re destined to fail.
Against above-average run defenses, they are 1-4 and are averaging just 14 PPG.
Regardless of year-to-date rank, let’s look at in-game results:
There were five games since Week 3 when the Panthers saw their RBs post a success rate less than 35% on early-down runs:
- Week 4: 25% success – L 16-26 vs. ARI
- Week 5: 33% success – L 15-37 vs. SF
- Week 6: 33% success – L 10-24 vs. LAR
- Week 9: 29% success – L 21-42 vs. CIN
- Week 11: 23% success – L 3-13 vs. BAL
But in games where the Panthers saw their RBs hit at least 35% success, they fared far better:
- Week 3: 53% success – W 22-14 vs. NO
- Week 7: 36% success – W 21-3 vs. TB
- Week 8: 53% success – L 34-37 vs. ATL
- Week 10: 40% success – W 25-15 vs. ATL
- Week 12: 39% success – W 23-10 vs. DEN
That’s a 4-1 record, and averaging 25 PPG.
All of these games, with the lone exception of the Bucs, came against below-average run defenses.
The Seahawks have a below-average run defense.
In fact, their bottom-10 ranking of 24th puts them as the easiest run defense the Panthers will have faced since Week 2 other than the Falcons.
The Seahawks’ run defense has been atrocious the last two weeks.
They allowed Raiders’ RBs to run for 45% success and +0.22 EPA/att on early downs two weeks ago.
Last week, they allowed Rams’ RBs to run for 47% success and +0.05 EPA/att on early downs.
The Seahawks’ run defense is viewed better than it truly is because they’ve played the fourth-easiest schedule of run offenses in the NFL.
In their last three games, the Seahawks’ run defense has allowed:
- 164 rushing yards to a dormant Tampa Bay backfield
- 273 yards rushing to Las Vegas and Josh Jacobs
- 60 yards and a pair of touchdowns to Cam Akers
Seattle will likely be forced into stacking the box to slow down the run game. That’s what they had to resort to playing the Rams last week, and over the last three games, they’ve used 8-plus man boxes on 41 snaps.
And QBs have seen a ton of success when they pass the ball instead of run against those 8-plus man boxes of Seattle.
In fact, Seattle’s pass defense ranks No. 31 on passes when they have 8-plus box defenders, allowing +0.53 EPA/att and 10.0 YPA.
The Panthers are worth a bet at anything above 4 points.
PICK: Panthers (+4 at FOX Bet) to lose by fewer than 4 points (or win outright)
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Patriots at Cardinals (8:15 p.m. ET Monday, ESPN)
Kyler Murray met Bill Belichick once in his career, and it was Week 12 of 2020.
In that game, it was Murray’s first game since sustaining an injury to his throwing shoulder. He initially hurt himself near the end of the Seahawks’ game in Week 11.
Though Murray practiced, he was listed with a right shoulder injury in the days leading up to the game with the Patriots.
Murray went 23-of-34 for only 170 yards, 5.0 YPA, 0 TDs and 1 INT.
Almost as big a factor was his lack of rushing. Playing injured, Murray ran just five times in the game.
Prior to getting injured against the Seahawks the week before, Murray posted the following rushing stat lines:
- Week 6: 10 rushes for 74 yards
- Week 7: 14 rushes for 67 yards
- bye
- Week 9: 11 rushes for 106 yards
- Week 10: 11 rushes for 62 yards
Murray was running 10-plus times a game with solid rushing totals and averages.
But with the injury, he didn’t run against the Patriots in 2020.
We know that running quarterbacks cause a lot of problems for the Patriots defense.
Lamar Jackson ran 11 times for 107 yards and Justin Fields ran 8 times for 20 yards. The Bills were having so much success running their RBs that they didn’t need Josh Allen to do much on the ground this year, but last year he ran 6 times for 66 yards and 12 times for 64 yards in his two meetings.
This will be the first time that Murray will have DeAndre Hopkins, Marquise Brown and Rondale Moore on the field at once.
On the other side of the ball, the Cardinals blitz at the third-highest rate in the NFL. They rank No. 16 in pressure rate when they don’t blitz and No. 14 in pressure rate when they do blitz.
When they blitz, they play zone behind it at a 72% rate, which is second highest in the NFL and well above the NFL average of 44%.
In Week 3, the Ravens dialed up a number of blitzes with zone behind them, and Mac Jones threw an interception and took a sack and averaged just 1.3 YPA.
But since Week 3, look at the splits from Mac Jones when the defense blitzes:
- Blitz + man: -0.08 EPA/att, 39% success, 6.7 YPA, 72% completions, 2 TD, 2 INT
- Blitz + zone: +0.27 EPA/att, 58% success, 12.7 YPA, 89% completions, 1 TD, 0 INT
Ignoring blitzes and just looking at man/zone coverage, over the second half of the season, Mac Jones is completing passes at a 74% clip vs. zone and a 56% clip vs. man. All of his metrics are better vs. zone coverage.
Additionally, the Cardinals rank third-worst vs. early-down play action this year.
If the Patriots simply use rational coaching to game plan for this one, I think they might score enough to help extend this game over the 43.5-point total.
PICK: Over 43.5 points scored by both teams combined at FOX Bet
Warren Sharp is an NFL analyst for FOX Sports. He is the founder of Sharp Football Analysis and has worked as a consultant for league franchises while also previously contributing to ESPN and The Ringer, among other outlets. He studied engineering before using his statistical acumen to create predictive football models. You can follow Warren on Twitter at @SharpFootball.
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