Titans, Saints, Patriots Shake Up Week 5; Props We Like for Monday Night

Happy Monday! And just like that we are almost done with five weeks in the NFL and six weeks in CFB. we had some monumental upsets yesterday with the Titans and Saints winning their first games of the season and the Patriots and Broncos taking care of the last unbeaten teams in the league (yay 1972 Dolphins).

We have you covered for the final game of the week below as Kansas City is in Jacksonville for MNF. And we have an NLDS play for those baseball handicappers.

We continue to do well in props. Make sure to Upgrade at the current $99/year plan as you don’t want to miss weekly NFL and CFB week picks in the fall. One $99 price (or $9.99/month) will get you every single newsletter unlocked, all our trends and picks and access to me of course. All the picks you see above were in that premium part.

Also make sure you listen to the weekly Betting with Bearman podcast. Last week, we had Joe DeLeon, from Ruffino and Joe, where he nailed three of his four main games to turn a profit.

Sia Nejad, host of the Early Edge on CBS Sportsline, will be the guest this week.

Let’s get into it as we have a Monday night football game, early look at Week 6 and much more!

NFL Main Side/Total Plays (including primetime games): 9-12-1
- Sides: 4-5-1
- Totals: 5-7
Main Props (including primetime games): 33-13 (7-3 in Wk 6 entering MNF)
Total: 42-25-1

I think the return of Xavier Worthy is being undervalued in the market. After failing to crack 350 yards of offense the first three games, the Chiefs had close to 400 last week against Baltimore with Worthy, but we recognize the Ravens defense is bad and injured.

Still, Worthy made Patrick Mahomes look like Patrick Mahomes for the first time all season and the Chiefs offense finally looked good. They are up against a good Jaguars team that has been a surprise to many (not to us as we took the over 7.5 as one of our top plays this season in the Betting with Bearman futures newsletters).

My lean is Chiefs -3.5 and to the under 45.5 in a 24-20 type game. That tells me both are too close to call, so as we love to do in primetime windows, let’s head to the prop market.

Trevor Lawrence under 1.5 Passing TDs

In our boosted Same Game Parlays that we will play tonight, we are going to be using the following legs with alt-lines as we like to do for our SGPs. I will post the official bets and lines used on Twitter/X later this afternoon.

In this section, we like to take a first look at the next week’s action and hope to jump on some games before the line moves. These are not official plays unless noted that I took it today. It’s good to get ahead of the market and look for edges.

A perfect example: In Week 1 in this section, we mentioned Broncos -7.5. If you took it Monday, it was a win. If you waited unless Sunday, when it moved to -8.5, you lost. In Friday’s column, it was still -8, so that was a push.

I will note in the column below if I already made the bet. If not, official plays will be in Friday’s newsletter.

What we like/monitoring today

Arizona Cardinals at Indianapolis Colts (-5.5, 47.5)

If you have not figured it out yet, the Colts are for real. This is not a September aberration, like the Saints were for a few weeks last season. Shane Steichen has Daniel Jones, Jonathan Taylor and the offense (2nd in yards per play) running on all cylinders and a defense that is ranked in the top 15. The Colts lone loss was after giving up two TDs late to the Rams, one of the better NFC teams.

The Cardinals , after a 2-0 start, are manifesting ways to lose. After nearly blowing the Panthers game in Week 2, they coughed up a win to the Niners, waited until the 4th quarter to compete vs. the Seahawks and completely gave away the game yesterday vs. a winless Titans team. Those are losses that you don’t really come back from.

I expect the Colts to take full advantage of that. They are the much better team here. I expect this to close closer to 7, so I will be grabbing it now.
Colts -5.5

Tennessee Titans at Las Vegas Raiders (-5.5, 41.5)

We were on the Titans/Cardinals under 4.15 last week and the late game shenanigans cost us what looked like a solid under win. My philosophy on betting is to not run away from a bad beat, but to look at the process and if it’s sound, keep going. We were on the right side, but got wrong results.

The Titans offense is still bad, despite their 16-point fourth quarter. They are still 31st in yards, 32nd in yards per play and last in points per game at 14.6. The Raiders are slightly better, scoring 16.6 points per game.

We could get some more nonsense of Geno Smith pick 6s or other things that hurt this under, but with two bad offenses, we like to go under.
Under 41.5

Others that I am eyeing for now

Oklahoma vs. Texas (-3, 42.5)

On the college side, I did a double take when I saw Texas favored over Oklahoma. Guess no one watched the Texas-Florida game. Not to overreact, but Texas did not look good in any way shape or form. Oklahoma may have surprised some people with their good start, but I think they are the better team and getting points.

How Did We Do?

We continue to do well in the prop market and get beat late on totals. 7-3 in props so far in Week 5 after a 10-1 week last week. We lost both our totals with unfortunate late TDs.

NFL

CFB

How Did the Weekend Go in Sports Betting

The popular picks in CFB continue to not do well. Through six weeks, the top 5 most bet on games in CFB are 9-21 ATS.

In the NFL, favorites went 5-7 and over/unders were split 6-6 on Sunday.

For a complete recap of NFL splits, check out the table at the top of the newsletter.

Chicago Cubs (Shota Imanaga +105) at Milwaukee Brewers (Aaron Ashby,-127)

I'm not going to lie to you and tell you that Imanaga has been good recently. He hasn't been. He posted a 6.51 ERA in September, has allowed a bomb in 10 straight starts (including the Wild Card start against the Padres) and gives up too much loud contact to righties.

But we are talking about a sample of one single start that we are betting one. It's technically not a must win, but it's close to it with the Brewers taking this as a bullpen game after winning Game 1, 9-3 on Saturday. And in this isolated spot, I'm giving him more respect than the market.

Let's work in reverse.

It's not rare to have a handedness disadvantage. That said, it may not really apply to three of Milwaukee's four best power hitters. Jackson Chourio is a righty, but he's iffy with a hamstring injury while both Brice Turang and Christian Yelich bat from the left side (LHB have just a .135 ISO against Imanaga this season, compared to the .240 rate of righties).

There are two parts that come into play when struggling with home runs allowed: launch angle and barrel rate, right? You have to hit the ball hard and you have to hit it high to clear the fence.

Well, since Imanaga made the first of three starts against the BrewCrew this season, his barrel rate against the rest of the big leagues is an unacceptable 12.3%, but against Milwaukee, he's trimmed it nearly in half (6.4%). That's at least interesting and I think it flirts with predictive when you combine it with the fact that only the Rays have had a higher ground ball rate than tonight's home team over the past month (46.1%).

Maybe it's a death by 1,000 papercuts tonight and the Brewers find holes with batted balls that never get above eye level. It could certainly happen, it's baseball. That said, Imanaga has a 1.17 ERA this season in starts in which he doesn't allow a HR and I'd expect that to be enough with the wind blowing out in a merry-go-round game for Milwaukee in terms of rotating pitchers.

In some spots, the Cubs are favored to win the first five innings of this game, but underdogs overall. That's an odd split that you don't see a ton and it has me thinking that the books are hedging against this angle a touch. If you want to live on the edge, an Imanaga win pays +390, but I'll settle for his Cubbies to level this series with a plus-money ticket in hand (+105 at DraftKings).

Never Go Higher Than 4 in a Parlay

Unless there’s a real financial reason to, I do not go longer than four sides, totals, or props in a parlay. Sure, the payoff is a lot larger the higher you go, and there’s nothing wrong with going for the lotto ticket from time to time, but in the long run, those don’t hit often and are usually a waste of money. The value does not increase as much as the risk does of adding that extra game.

Stick to what you really know and pick three or four sides/totals/props that you’re strong on. There’s a lot more value in that strategy.

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