A nice 7/2 Request a bet winner on Thursday night as the fade of Daniel Jones was in full effect. Annoying I also requested him to throw 3+ INTs and u200 yards as well which wasn’t priced up, would guess it’d have been nearer 10/1, but I’m happy with the result we got. The first quarter Giants points wasn’t looking too bad when they returned an interception to the Pats 40, but a penalty took it back 15 yards and they couldn’t make the ground.
As usual the weekend write ups will be up on site before Mid-day Sunday depending on how much I get done after work on Saturday, sign up to my telegram and you’ll get a note when they’re posted. – https://t.me/TDtips
I’ve got a little more time today so seeing as it’s in a standalone slot on at 1430 BST on Sunday, I’ll dig in to the Panthers v Bucs a little bit more.
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Carolina Panthers (-2.5) @ Tampa Bay Buccaneers: 47.5
Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, London; 1430 BST Kick off
This is the first rematch of the season with Tampa having won their first encounter on the road, on a Thursday night, by 20 to 14. It was a good result for Tampa and showed how badly Cam Newton was injured as he constantly over-threw his targets. Cam hasn’t played since.
A little note on the Spurs stadium. I’ve heard nothing but good things about the whole experience there, from reports I’ve read the atmosphere was brilliant, you’re closer to the field, the stadium itself is brilliant. So fingers crossed for another positive experience for the fans this week as well. Personally I can’t wait for the Wembley games which I’ll be attending, even if the Bengals will likely be destroyed by the Rams.
Carolina Panthers
Is it fair to say that the Panthers are a one-man team? Last week 25 touches, 237 yards and 3 TDs; The rest of the team 229 yards and 1 TD. The week before that… 179 yards, 1 TD; the rest of the team, 107 yards. The week before… well that doesn’t fill my narrative quite as well, but 188 yards and a TD; rest of the team, 246 and 3 TDs.
So it might be a little unfair to say that he’s the only players they’ve got, but stop him and you win the game. And that’s what the Bucs managed to do in their previous encounter, they restricted CmcC to just 53 combined yards. It’s definitely not easy to contain the most electric player in the league at the moment, but Tampa have held some of the best RBs in the league to low totals all season. Week 1, 49ers RBs – 99 yards, Week 2 CmcC, Week 3 – Saquon 37 yards, Week 4 – Rams RBs, 84 combined yards, only 30 on the ground, Week 5 – Kamara 104 combined, 62 on the ground. It’s safe to say their run defense has been really good so far this season. – Backup RB Reggie Bonnafon came in last week as McCaffrey finally took a couple of snaps off and ran in for a long TD. He’s 10/1 to repeat that this week, but I’m not sure he’ll see the field.
Kyle Allen at QB has quietly been pretty crap over the last few weeks just to be bailed out by McCaffrey. His ball security has not been very good, 1 fumble last week, 3 against the 49er the week before and 2 against the Cardinals in his first start this season. His passer rating has been dropping every game as well as his completion percentage. In fairness he has played the Jags last week which isn’t easy but the Texans don’t have a great secondary.
The problem for the Panthers seems to be that they’ve got a limited amount of players in the passing game, just 5 players caught a pass last week, one of them Alex Armah the full back, and 6 the week before, one being Chris Hogan who is now on IR. Basically if you keep an eye on DJ Moore and Curtis Samuel then they can’t really do a whole lot on offense. Greg Olsen has had a couple of games over 75 yards this year but hasn’t done a whole lot over the last fortnight, he’s still on the field for over 96% of offensive snaps though so I wouldn’t be surprised to see him bounce back a bit. DJ Moore seems to be the favourite target in the passing game in the slot, he and WR2 Curtis Samuel are similar players in that their highly athletic, mobile and quick. I personally prefer Samuel as I think he’s more explosive, but obviously Moore is more reliable in Allens’ eyes. Samuel and Olsen lead the team in redzone targets with 4 apiece.
Their defense has been very good this year, footballoutsiders have them ranked 9th overall on defensive DVOA with them coming in at 4th against the pass, 29th vs the rush. I’m not going to sit here and say I understand DVOA, but I do know that a lot of analysts trust it and reference it, and if you go barely on yards allowed you see they allow just under 200 yards in the passing game and 134 yards on the ground.
How the hell did I nearly forget the most important part of any team coming to London, mentioning a player who has a connection to us. Efe Obada @efeobadaUK on twitter was raised in London his story is truly awe inspiring and from everything I’ve heard he’s a top bloke as well. For him to come here as a refugee, play for the London Warriors, before making it onto the Cowboys practise squad is a hell of a rise. He bounced around a couple of other practise squads before finally settling in Carolina. He made his NFL debut for them against my Bengals and destroyed us, finishing the game with a sack and an interception which earned him the game-ball and NFC defensive player of the week. He’s played a part in every game this year and I wouldn’t be shocked to see him in the backfield this week. Good Luck Efe.
(ap photo/mike mccarn)
Tampa Bay Buccaneers
Is Jameis Winston the right man for this team? Jameis has always been dogged by his propensity to throw stupid interceptions in games, and that looked like it was going to carry on this season as well when he threw 3 in the opener against the 49ers, in fairness to him the 49ers defense seems to be legit this year, so it’s not as bad as it seemed at the time. Since then he’s only thrown 2 in 4 games (although he had a really poor one last week which was negated by a delay of game penalty on him, very lucky) and has topped 100 passer rating in those games as well. He’s had 10 TDs over that period as well. Personally I like Winston, he’s fun to watch, but he’s far from perfect on the field.
It helps that he’s got what is looking like the best receiving duo in the game this season with Mike Evans and Chris Godwin. Godwin especially has been brilliant with 6 TDs so far this season, and three of his 5 games over 100 yards including a TD and 100 against the Panthers in week 2, probably worth noting he’s had 2 TDs in each of their last two games as well. Mike Evans was supposed to be the WR1, and a 3 TD, 190 yard showing against the Giants seemed to show that, but he caught zero from 3 targets last week much to fantasy players anger. Outside of those two it’s a little complicated, Perriman is out with a hamstring injury to it will be Justin Watson, Scott Miller or Bobo Wilson getting a few looks outside of the big two guys. They haven’t really managed to get OJ Howard going yet at tight end (11 catches from 14 targets this year), he’s talented but Arians offense tend not to utilise that position too much and when Winston gets scrambled he seems to prefer Cameron Brate as his go-to guy. Brate has caught all 10 of his targets this season. Howard has had far more of the snaps at TE though.
Running back is frustrating here with Peyton Barber and Ronald Jones II sharing the position and Dare Ogunbowale getting a lot of the 3rd down work. Barber has had more snaps this year, he got a good workload in the win over Carolina in week 2 but it’s since been revealed that RoJo had a knock early on in that one, and Jones has had more attempts in every game since then and has run more efficiently as well. Dare (Dar-ay) has had 16 or more receiving yards in every game this year, bar that games vs the Panthers (of course the only one I recommended it as a bet) his line is 15.5 on Skybet.
The Buccs have been great against the run so far this year; ranked 1st when using DVOA, and they’re 22nd vs the pass which isn’t terrible either. It helps that Shaq Barrett already has 9 sacks on the season unsurprisingly leading the league with that stat, and Suh and Vita Vea have been great securing the middle of that line.
Summary
I’m really not sure. The Panthers are missing two of their starting offensive line, and going up against the sack leader. The Buccs are also missing a couple on their line.
The History of London games suggests it will be a low-scoring affair, 6 of the last 8 London games have gone under their total, by an average of 12.1 points. It might be worth mentioning they were all on turf until last week where the total flew over on a proper NFL track in this stadium. – The history of the Buccs and Carolina games though has the total going under in 7 of the last 10 (12 of the last 20) and in general divisional matches are lower scoring than inter-division games.
I’m leaning to the Buccs winning as I think they’ve got more on offense and if they slow down CmcC again then they effectively shutdown Carolina’s gameplan. The total is a tough one though, I’ve got to lean to the unders, but the Buccs are capable of putting up a lot of points by themselves
Jesus christ. Christian McCaffrey is 1.17 to score a TD at CoraLadbrokes. Shorter than 1/5. That is ridiculous.
- Dare Ogunbowale o15.5 rush and rec yards – 1.83 (365)
- Peyton Barber and Curtis Samuel both to score – 10/1 (Skybet)
2 points on each as usual. Barber seems like he’s getting goal-line carries, or at least more successful with them as RoJo actually has more RZ carries than him, and Samuel is electric.
As always I got the props from Super Glenns MEGA-Sheet @gScurfTrader on twitter – You can see on that there’s a big middle on CmcC rush and rec yards, 130.5 on 365 and 159.5 on Ladbrokes, if you fancy it I’d back the unders a bit more heavily.
Good luck if you get on anything in this one. Enjoy the extra televised game, annoyingly it’s not on BBC again.
Remember the Showdown game on this one – on draftkings now
Adam
TouchdownTips 