Best of A Numbers Game | January 7, 2026

0:00The numbers told the story now is down. Swandles, idiots who believe in athletics. This is a numbers game with Gill Alixander gone V-Send. And stay morning to you as a numbers game at V-Send, these sports betting network, V-Send.com, Game Plus, iHard Radio, YouTube TV, Series XM Channel 1508. Any wish when you take a simple we appreciate it on this Wednesday of wild car week at Gill Alixander, Kelly Midland, in the house here at Circa. Good morning. You good? I'm great. Beautiful Wednesday morning in Las Vegas. It is. Beautiful Wednesday morning. Will Hill will join us momentarily. Give all his plays. Talked to college football semis. Obviously wild car weekend in the NFL. Whatever else. He's betting Greg Peterson on college hoops. A bit as Michigan wins yesterday. But who survived against Penn State? Mm-hmm. Certainly. Yeah. Yeah, what they win by two. One by two. Who survived a three at the end, I believe. Yeah. He did not cover. Did not cover.

1:00Yeah. Just shy of the 20 and a half, which we had it at. It got up to 24 by tip off. Aaron Shots joined some. I'm bearing the headline with apologies to Greg and Will. Aaron Shots with his annual appearance this hour. He comes to us quarterly here on a numbers game. He also does the megapod once a year. But he comes to us quarterly on a numbers game to sort of give us a DVOA update. His thoughts on awards. This is his final one of the year, which is always the post regular season pre playoffs. Here's what was the historical DVOAs on these teams. Here's what I think about the awards or at least what he's willing to share about what he thinks about the awards. Again, he represents 2% of the entire voting body with all these. The guy who famously Kelly, when you me and Matt Brown, went out to dinner with Aaron Shots. We'll never forget. We'll never forget it. They announced that Lamar Jackson had won the MVP. So this is two years ago. We announced that he had won the MVP. One vote shy of unanimous. And Aaron was the guy who did not vote for.

2:00And then last year he was the guy that voted for Lamar and no one else did. Well, not no one else. But he didn't win. You could easily make the argument that Shots had it right? Those two years and everybody else had it wrong. Correct. Little later Nick Whalen will join us. Win total Wednesdays. Warrant. Sharple. Join us. Wishnevs out today. Because wishnevs sick. So we can't have wishednev to that. Get better. Todd. I'll start getting here. Well, because he runs himself into the ground, betting college hoops. You know the part. I don't want to circle back to this dinner. I don't want pride. I don't want to talk too much with Aaron. Because he was. But I think people need to know this, right? Like some of these voters. We were thrilled to hear when Aaron Shots became a voter and started as a voter. Because we knew that some of his numbers and analytics were going to be used and worked into his vote. Seeing how much he cared that night, though. Like as someone who bets on these things was meaningful, I will put it that way. But like, I mean, he was obviously in a weird space

3:00when he was the only person right on that side. But seeing how much, like, that these guys should care as much as Aaron Shots did, that makes me feel better when I go to bet these things. Because how many times do we throw our arms up? And we're just like, bet awards. What do we think it's sometimes? We lost him for about five minutes. Yeah. He was still at the table, but he was lost and thought. But that was more about he knew he knew the backlash that was going to come. He was correct. We then remember we were owned by draft Kings at the time. We did the radio row for the Super Bowl. He joined us a couple days later at radio row and talked about the online hate that he received for this. This is just a guy who's into analytics. A nerdy guy, right? Who's just pioneering football analytics. He made his vote based on his conscious, his conscience. And in the end, he knew it was coming. It came and he just took it like a man. He was like, you know, doesn't mean I didn't do it

4:01for all the right reasons. And I'm just like, whenever I think about that, it splits compared it to the 900 and 83 people who vote on the highest men who I know firsthand. Some don't even care about something. It's like, let me just send it in. Let me just get it in. All right. So we'll talk to Aaron a little later on. The biggest news of course in football happened after the show yesterday when the the Baltimore Ravens fired John Harball after 18 years, 18 years, one Super Bowl title in 18 years. I believe that's what Kanye said back in the day. John Harball, who had gotten six division titles and that one Super Bowl title in the Harball, if you will, in 2012 against his brother Jim and the 49ers. Where Joe Flacco was the quarterback for the for the Ravens. Let go. And part of the, you know, part of the scuttlebutt afterwards. Can we say scuttlebutt? Yeah. Was that he lost the locker room, not only lost Lamar Jackson, but lost the locker room, read into that what you will.

5:02That's a very vague sort of catch all. We had talked about during the season that there were some rumors about Lamar falling asleep during meetings. I don't know if that's part and parcel with it as well. But anyway, they decided to be shot at the Ravens owner decided this, and it was time after, after a few consecutive disappointments, right? The Z-flowers fumble, the Mark Andrews drop, and then the Tyler Luke miss to not even make the postseason here against the Steelers. You see that graphic? I think Trey Wingo posted this. I'm not sure if he made the graphic, but he posted this. I was the goalposts in the Baltimore Pittsburgh game, right? Backshot from the other side of the field as we always see field goals. And in between the goalposts that said Mike Tomlin fired, and on each side of the goalposts said John Harboff fired, which is to say that if that kick goes in, maybe it's Tomlin who goes and not Harboff. But anyway, that's how it is. And you can bet on who the Ravens next head coach will be at Kalshi. Jesse Minter is your short shot at plus 177.

6:04Thank you, Kelly, for putting these in sports fan mode. Sports fan mode. That's what Kalshi calls it. Sports fan mode. Because usually just percentages, right? I swear when I changed my settings five days ago, it was not called that. It was just like American odds. I'm pretty sure it was. Now it says sports fan mode. Sports fan mode. Because there's some there's some trader there. I mean, Robin Hood just laughed at us. Oh, totally. Sports losers betting on this. You lose. Just scoop up. I think you're going to win. Well, on this stuff, you can. I bet Brian Flores yesterday. Brian Flores is three to one. Cliff Kingsbury. Austed. Washington offensive coordinator. Former Washington offensive coordinator. As of yesterday. Plus 733. Then you see Stephanski and Kubiak who are rumored almost on all these jobs. Just over eight to one. Chris Schulas name has been bantied about. He's nine to one. Robert Salah. Also in the mix at 10 to one. And here's the thing again with these prediction markets like Kalshi. These are a reflection of the actual bets that have been made. This is not some bookmaker, right?

7:04Is the difference. This is not some bookmaker. Making book. Being an odds maker. Nothing like that. This is the actual reflection of the bets that have been made. So my Brian Flores in percentage. I was going from 17% to 23%. I have no inside information on this. I have no idea if Brian Flores is going to be the next head coach of the Baltimore Ravens. It just makes a whole lot of sense to me. That. Well, I punched myself. I didn't realize you made the bet. What number did you get? I got. Well, at 17%. So I'm somewhere in between four. And five to one. Okay. On mine. Again, that. That's what brought the question. I'm like, how do I convert this to my actual plus? It's easier. Sports fan mode is what I do. So there it is. So I have no sense of this. I don't know. Maybe they want to go Jesse Mentor. Maybe they want to again, Jesse Mentor, who was with Jim Harbaugh at Michigan. Maybe they want to distance themselves. Again, poor Jesse Mentor is getting distanced. If he doesn't get this right from two jobs now, Michigan, the other one. So I don't know. We'll see. I just want to bring up one. So that. The mentor. Why?

8:04So I look, I think Flores. I think Flores. I hope Flores gets a job. I'm going to leave it as that. I would think he gets a job. Who knows what the stuff that he's going on with the other job. He ought to get a job. Yeah. I think he could make a lot of sense here, right? You, you, Danny and I were kind of texting about this. Yesterday. Like the whole John Harbaugh thing just on the surface, too. Like, yeah, it's probably best for both sides. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's probably best for both sides. I kind of have a feeling at the end of the day. It's John Harbaugh getting the last laugh. Somewhere else. But John Harbaugh, according to John Harbaugh's agent, was contacted within forty-five minutes of this news breaking issue. Within forty-five minutes. According to his agent, he was contacted by seven different teams. Now, you will note that if you count the number of openings that exist, there are seven, and one of them is the Ravens. So, if you were to believe John Harbaugh's agent, and you know, agents never lie about anything, then some team that currently has a head coach also contacted. Well, I heard Rich Eisen's talking about this yesterday. No, I'm going to start calling it Adam Schaefter, by the way.

9:04Not Rich Eisen. This is Colin Coward, who was talking about this with, you know, giving Colin Coward a couple of minute commentary, right? You know, as the sports talk, what's the one team who can't lose wild card around? The Buffalo Bills, and he was basically just going, John, everything we've brought up. John Allen doesn't have to face. Oh, good call. Doesn't have to go through the AFC with Mahomes, Oral Mark Jackson, right? It sees the one team that cannot lose. So, it was, he was bringing up what happens if they do, is McDermott on the hot seat, right? I don't know that he should be, I don't know if that fully translates to me, but I can understand that some, why some people would think that, real quick, just wrap this up. Look, I love Flores. Mentor feels like he would make a lot of sets, right? I mean, he has been awesome for the chargers and that defense that he talked about. Any defensive minded coach would want this job. And he's big. I mean, he's been connected to Baltimore, the harbors. I mean, I guess really just, I don't know how the brothers have this conversation sometimes, right? It's, you know, to John and Jim.

10:06John not want Mentor to take the job. He was just dad like and Jim has any food. I don't get this, I don't get the sense that those two talk every day. Yeah, who does? I just want to mention this one last thing before we move on from this get to Will. So my little buddy Owen, right, he was on the practice squad with the Ravens. And one story he, one story he told me sticks out in my brain, which is he would always say, again, the Ravens won one Super Bowl in 18 years under Harbour. A lot of disappointment since that Super Bowl, with a lot of expectation, right? That's the real rub. He would always say in his couple years there, he would say, it's amazing how when we get players in from other teams, that the common thread with those other players is, what are we doing practicing so much and so hard? This is in training camp, right? This is in the offseason before the season even starts. The common complaint of players that have experienced other organizations was,

11:08this guy is Michuguna. Like John Harbour is killing us out here in August. And I was struck by that story and then what follows after the comma from then is, maybe does that contribute to late season disappointment? Who knows, man. I mean, again, it's a fumble by Zay, it's a drop by Andrews, it's a mist field goal. So you can really distill it to that one thing. But after all those years of not getting to the Promised Land, I do wonder if the Ravens are more gasped than other teams towards the end of the season? I don't know. Just an inside story for you on that. Will Hill on the other side. It's a numbers game at Visa, these sports betting network. You're here because you want an edge. That's what separates listeners from winners, but let's be real, mindset alone doesn't get bets home. Pros win because they've got the tools, the data, and the discipline. And now, so can you. Visa programs you access to the same real time insights the sharps use. No secrets, no fluff.

12:08Just actionable info that moves markets. Tap the link and see why serious bettors are turning knowledge into profit with Visa and Pro. This is Visa. These sports betting network. The numbers told the story they always do. So I'm those idiots who believe in analytics. This is a numbers game with Gil Alexander on Visa. Our number two of a numbers game at Visa. These sports betting network. Visa.com game. Plus I hard radio YouTube TV. Series X of Channel 158. Ever you're taking us in this morning and any morning. We appreciate it. Gil Alexander. Kelly Midland alongside producing number nine. So much more than a producer. So much more. What are some of your other roles? Bouncer. Bouncer. Make sure Danny gets to the bathroom. Okay. That's right. You know, other things. Check out the casino. Try to figure out who's smoking weed in the casino this morning. Does all of it. Yeah. All right. This is one of my favorite times a year because it's our Aaron is kind enough to come quarterly with us on the numbers game.

13:12He also does the megapod once a year. But this is the one that has gone back the furthest in podcast history. We used to do this on the betting dork podcast all the way back in 2011, which is his post playoff. Pardon me. Post regular season appearance to discuss DVOA historicals and we'll get into awards in the second segment because he's an awards voter as well. He'll share whatever he's willing to about his thoughts on those ladies and gentlemen. Aaron shots the chief analytics officer over at FTN and for our purposes, the creator of DVOA, which of course, analyzes football on a play by play basis granular level against average league average on those particular plays all the way back to 1978. That's as far as they've gone back Aaron shots joining us now courtesy the progressive guest line. Good morning, Aaron. Happy New Year. Good morning. Happy 2026 to you. We appreciate it. So we were just chatting briefly off air. I love this because there are historical context categories that, you know, sometimes some years, the barely any of them for all the 32 teams this year.

14:21Is this the most ever where you can kind of put stuff in top 10s historically? I mean, since I started doing it and looking back historically, this is the most I can remember where there were teams that were all like top 10 run offense and top 10. And best teams to make the play out worst teams to make the playoffs or whatever. Like there's tons of them. Yes. Okay. Well, let's start by just showing here's your top 10 best DVOA teams from this year of 2025 the NFL see Hawks. Right. Edge the Rams at the top. And then I guess that the interesting ones Aaron that people will be like really the lions. I think some people will be like, okay, I can kind of see that third best. Colts fifth best. What say you about that one? The first thing I should point out is this is for the entire season. So this is not weighted towards the second half of the year. If you waited towards the second half of the year. Now the Jaguars are third.

15:21The Patriots are fourth and the Colts are 13th. Okay. There you go. So they collapse. The Colts were super ridiculously strong in the first half of the year. And then completely collapsed, especially once Daniel Jones got hurt. How did the bears end up with the weighted DVOA? In weighted, the bears are 10th. Okay. I think that I think that trash. So the bears also were better in the second half of the year. Like the Patriots and the Jaguars. Yes. Okay. It's still amazing to be like that tells you how good the Colts were. Yes. The first half of the season to still stay to remain here at the end of the season. Do you remember a collapse? Yes. They were number one after week eight when they were seven and one. They were number one at that point. And then everything was downhill from there. Just on memory. Do you remember a collapse like that from one half of the year to the other? I mean, there have been teams in the past. There was a year that San Diego started 4 and 0 or something and ended up like six and 10 or something.

16:25Nothing collapses in the past, but this is a pretty big one. All right. So let's go to the historicals because there's so many of them this year. So we just mentioned Seahawks and Rams are one, two and DVOA for the entire season. Historical all the way back to 1978 as we have said many, many times. 2007 Patriots. 1991 skins. 1985 Super Bowl shuffle bears. One, two, three. Epic NFL teams. Eric, where do you have these Seahawks and Rams ranked historically? Shockingly high. The Seahawks are seventh and the Rams are ninth. And I know there's some skepticism about this because the fact is that for the last couple of years, I have had these teams extraordinarily historically high. It's not something that happened between 2011 and 2021 and then for the last four years. We've had these historically high teams that haven't won the Super Bowl. But if you look at the Seahawks and the big wins they had over other good opponents and they are the best defense in the league.

17:25I mean, maybe you argue with me, maybe you think they're the second best defense in the league. They were a great offense for the first half of the year. The offense is really kind of declined since then. They're the second best special teams. This is a really great all around team, the Seahawks. I know we're all questioning the quarterback, but as far as regular season performance, this was a great all around team. And the Rams right up there too. That and that from the powerful offense, the Rams and all of their losses were very close. And that and you you're okay with that. Your eye test tells you that sounds reasonable to you that they are top 10 teams of all time since 78. That is. No, I don't know. I test wise. There are other teams. I probably put a little bit higher by half them like top 20. You know, when you go back and you look at some of the teams from the 90s, you would be surprised how many close games teams like the 92 cowboys played. Yeah. Like we think of them as being ultra super dominant. But they didn't have as many blowout wins as we remember.

18:26I think that's such a great point. We are our memory does purge those. Now there were some historically bad units, which I think it's fascinating to worst offense is in history. So let's forget about full teams. Let's just focus on the offensive unit. Where did which is our historical from this year? The Cleveland Browns were the number nine worst offense. Wow. And the Las Vegas Raiders were the number seven worst running game. Sorry, eight number eight worst running game. Despite drafting a running back sixth overall, who broke a lot of tackles. Yes. It was not astrogenties fault. Not astrogenties fault. It was the line. How many tackles can you break in the back? That's what he said when they driving. Why don't you guys draft the guy that no one can tackle. He was right about that. All right, worst defenses who historically from this year landed in the top 10. Dallas Cowboys. Yeah.

19:26Were the fourth worst DVOA defense ever? How, how quick do you think that that interview with Jerry Jones and, and ever flew sweat at the end of the year? Three seconds. Matt. I don't think I have to say anything. We're moving on. But they weren't. They were not the worst past defense this year. Because the jets with their ridiculous zero interceptions were the second worst past defense since 1978. The jets only the 1981 Baltimore Colts had a worst past defense DVOA than the 2025 jets. And the, the 2025 jets are an astonishing team. They were number one in special teams with one of the best special teams units ever. If you take out special teams and you only look at offensive defense, they were the third worst team I have ever measured.

20:27Wow. So the New York jets. They had the, so let's just review that again. The jets had the. The one, two, three, four, six. Best special teams. Historically ever. And they had all kinds of front returns and kickoff returns touchdowns. The second worst past defense ever. And so end up if you take out the special teams, you're saying they're the third worst team period ever. That's incredible. 30th. They were 30th in all offense and 31st in defense this year. And if you take out the special teams, the only teams that were worse were the 05 49ers and the 91 Colts. Oh, man. And here I thought the Falcons were the most confusing team of the season. I guess not the jets by the. Well, the Falcons and Panthers were confusing because you never knew who they were going to win or lose. That's right. You're the jets. You knew they were going to score a punt return touchdown and lose in every other fashion. I gave a head back to back. Also a punt return and kickoff return. I believe touchdowns in one game as well. They also had great punting and kicking like everything about special teams was good for them.

21:30Well, you got that to lean on New York jets fans. All right. Best total. So we had teams with losing records. We had a team with a losing record this year. That ends up at the top of the heap. Oh, you may have already mentioned them. The best losing record team of all time. The Colts had the best DVOA ever for a team with a losing record. So passing the 1990 San Diego Charters. Wow. Do we have a most of the teams on this list were better the next year. Except for the 1990 San Diego Chargers who were four and 12 the next year. Oh, no. Do we have another losing team on this board as well from this year? The Baltimore Ravens. The Baltimore Ravens were one of the best losing teams ever. Goodbye, John Harbaugh. Wow. All right. This is a little. This is a little different because we're not talking about losing record now necessarily. But how about best total DVOA to miss the playoffs? Yep.

22:30The 2025 lions were number seven on that list. And the 2025 Colts are number 10. This is an amazing year. Like this is for people who are just tuning in for the first time. We you never have this many categories with top 10 historicals. This incredible. No, it's it's kind of crazy. And it's fun. This is love to history. You talk about the best teams to miss the playoffs. You get to talk about things like 91 49ers. We're Steve Bono ended up as the quarterback for most of the year. And it's great. Historical discussion of the NFL. It's crazy how many of these extremes there were in 2025. Just really crazy. All right. This one isn't an Aaron shots DVOA over at FTN Sports, by the way, which we'll get into how you can get all of Aaron's stuff here momentarily. But biggest but thagry and other performers. So this is like the old baseball bill James thing. Point scored points given up. Who is the biggest under performer? The chiefs are the fifth biggest Pythagorean under performer since 1970, which is wild because last year they were the biggest Pythagorean overachiever since 1970.

23:34Wow. I forgot about that. Interesting. Yeah. They went from overachiever to underachiever in a ridiculously extreme fashion. All right. Last one before we go to the awards after the break. Easiest schedule. Patriots. Where did they land? Third easiest schedule since 1978. But the two teams with easier schedules with the 91 bills and the 99 Rams. Oh. And both of those teams made the Super Bowl. And one of them won it if I'm not mistaken, right? One of them won it. Yeah. Yeah. It's good. Home field is good. Hmm. There you go. We might have had the easy schedule. In the end, it didn't matter for those two clubs. Aaron Schott's on the other side coming back in numbers game. Vista, these sports betting network. A numbers game on Vista, these sports betting network. Back on a numbers game, Gill Kelly in the house here at Circa.

24:34Aaron Schott's kind enough to join us for a second segment, the Chief Analytics Officer over at FDN Sports creator of DVOA. As we did a whole segment on the historicals, which is pretty amazing. And you can follow them on Twitter at a shots NFL. That's SCH ATZ a shots NFL Aaron. Thanks for hanging out with us again. Tell everybody where they can find all your stuff at FDN. What's the easiest way? First of all, I should point out I'm on all the social medias. I'm also on the threads at a shots NFL and blue sky. Aaron Schott's dot com. And FTN fantasy dot com. You get an FTN fantasy subscription and you get all the DVOA splits. You can download all the historical numbers. You get all of our game charting. So you get stats on man versus zone quarterbacks and, you know, how teams run versus stack boxes compared to other boxes and zone runs versus man runs, ISO, duo, etc. We track all this stuff. All of that with an FTN subscription and picks and fantasy and a bunch of new basketball

25:36stuff. People check the NBA stuff that we are doing right now. The NBA stats hub on FTN fantasy dot com is currently free for you to check out. And we have all kinds of new advanced charting and stats for the NBA. You just got you got Kelly's ears perked. I use FTN all the time. I think some great betting resources on there. I love the little prop shop where you can shop around for different books for the best prop numbers. And yeah, I have not seen the new NBA stuff yet. Aaron. So you just got me excited. Check that out. Check it out. Absolutely. Aaron also happens to be one of 50 voters for the Associated Press NFL awards. I was telling the story. Aaron earlier with you, me, you, Kelly, Matt Brown, we're all out of carbon when the award came down or the vote announcement came down for MVP a couple years ago. We all remember that very well. You voted for you voted against Lamar that year, but you were one of the few who voted for Lamar. Last year, so it was just a reverse thing. Let's talk about MVP for this year. The betting market. Just for your own interest because I'm not even sure if you follow this kind of stuff.

26:39Matthew Stafford minus 204 Drake May plus 156. What are your thoughts as a voter? I would be shocked if it's unanimous this year. Okay. I think it's going to be between these two guys. I will now make an argument for each one. The argument for Matthew Stafford is that Drake May's schedule was a phenomenally easy. And you may have seen something going around the internet about how if you look at the ranks of EPA, Drake May didn't actually face a heart, an easier schedule than Stafford. I don't know where that comes from. If you look at actual EPA itself, this is not my staff, right? This is EPA that's more public. Drake May played the easiest schedule of opposing past defenses in the league. And Matthew Stafford's ranked 14th, so it was basically average. By my stats, it's even more of a difference. May played the easiest schedule of past defenses in the league.

27:42Stafford's was the fourth hardest by DVOA. You've got to understand how bad the jets and dolphins and bills defenses were this year. Really bad, especially the jets. Now, let me make the case in the other way. Puka, Nakuwa. If you subtract the top wide receiver from each player, Drake May comes out even after adjusting for schedule. Even after adjusting for schedule. If you subtract a Puka Nakuwa and Stefan Digs may come out as much better. Okay. Stafford's season worked very heavily Puka Nakuwa. Which makes for a great transition to offensive player of the year, where it is a foreheaded monster between Jackson Smith and Jigba, the aforementioned Puka Nakuwa. Christian McCaffrey is in there as well. There's also Bijan Robinson, who put up ridiculous stats for the Atlanta Falcons. Your thoughts on this, Jackson Smith and Jigba, by the way, a massive favorite in the betting market,

28:42which really doesn't jive with the stats versus Puka's. Yes, Christian McCaffrey had the third best season in receiving value for running back by my numbers, only behind two martial flock seasons. But he had a terrible season as a runner. Terrible. Next gen stats has this rush yards over expectation thing. And he was negative, negative, like wow. Puka had the best wide receiver value season ever by my numbers, passing Cooper Cup four years ago. Obviously having the extra game helps, although Puka did miss a game. You add in, you know, he had the better receiving stats. And then you add in, he had 10 runs for 105 yards and a touchdown on the ground. But Jackson Smith, the Jigba was part of an offense that passed last. So Smith, the Jigba was a bigger part of his own offense than Nakuwa was. So again, this is a difficult award to pick. Is Bijan even even in the mix in your opinion?

29:44No, I apologize to Bijan Robinson, but I don't think that he'll be in the mix yet. He had a great season and you put five guys down on your ballot. So I mean, in that way, he's in the mix, but I don't think he's going to get a lot of number one. All right, you may not appreciate me saying this, but if the whole idea here is for better sort of read between the lines, it feels by those last two dissertations that Aaron might be gravitating towards Puka. I don't know, but I'm just saying it feels like you might you might be talking Puka there. NFL defensive player there, we don't need to talk about this, right? Miles Garrett. Miles Garrett. Yeah. Okay. Who's second? The only thing to talk about is the appreciation that we all now have of Al Baker, who unofficially also had 23 sacks as a rookie in 1978. So yay. Al Baker. We didn't count stats back then, did we? Sorry. No, they didn't count stacks officially. Yeah. All right, here's one NFL offensive rookie of the year. Tederoa Mcmillan is this massive favorite when the betting markets closed on this. Jackson Dart, Tyler Schuck, now in that order,

30:47a distant second and third shots in this. And then there's Travion who's fourth. Your thoughts here. Yeah, Mike, two through five picks on this are going to blow people's minds. Oh, really? So are you suggesting that three of these four names will not appear on your ballot at all? I think the number one guy for this award is pretty obvious. Oh, wow. Does it rhyme with Federoa Fick-Fillin? By any chance. Okay. Don't answer. Okay. Interesting. That's a pretty interesting comment there. Again, Aaron is one of 50, two percent of the whole vote. NFL defensive rookie of the year. The betting market has had Carson Schwessinger as the guy for a long time. Is it that clear to you? Yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah. Okay. I like the pregnant pause. By the way, that's drama. I like that. Okay. I'm saying here, go on. You're not supposed to talk about who you voted for.

31:47Yeah. I mean, I don't think I'm really giving a lot of way. Mina doesn't have any problem with it. Mina's out there. They're giving hers out. Yeah. I'm surprised, man. They're going to call Mina up and tell her not to do that. She's all about it. All right. This is maybe the one that I think I'm the most fascinated by. I think I speak for Kelly. Okay. Okay. We're talking about coach of the year. How many guys are in the mix in your brain right now? For me seven. Oh, man. We're in the mix. And there's a couple of others that honestly have good arguments. That I didn't consider. Really? Who are those? Yeah. We talk about like the Sean Payton's of the world. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think he's a. Shana hands in there. Carolina guy. A journalist. Can Alice. Yeah. Yeah. You're right. I mean, it's the most. But right now, verbal, by the way, the favorite but Mike McDonald lurking. Liam Cohen Ben Johnson. I consider all four of these guys.

32:48I consider three other guys. Like it's. This is a hard. This is such a hard award. Is this the one where you only make your choice right before you submit? Kind of thing. No. This one. I made my choice. Week 18. You know, yeah. I pretty much made my choice before that. You made your choice. Okay. Okay. So what was most difficult. 40 40 Aaron. Was it. Was it rookie of the year? Or was it coach of the year? Oh, no, no, no, no. The most difficult is coach. Okay. Most difficult is coach of the year. So many good guys who deserve it. So many good guys who deserve it. Okay. I want. Okay. I want. Okay. I want to follow up on that. But I won't out of respect. Come back player of the year. Christian McCaffrey. This is of course the weirdest award in terms of our recent history with the wording and how they had to change. Or they had to really crystallize the definition of what this is. Christian McCaffrey becomes the or has been the prohibitive favorite in this. Trevor Lawrence lurks, though. Dac. Phillip Rivers. Crystal Lave. Rounding out our top five here. You're pretty clear on this or no? No. No. No.

33:48No. No. No. No. This was a hard one also. I think some of the question is doesn't matter that Phillip Rivers was not good. Because it's a great story. It's a great story. It's absolutely a comeback. Like you didn't come back from an injury, but that's absolutely a comeback. That's what this award is for. But he wasn't good. Yeah. So that sounds to me like you considered it, but then maybe not so much once the performance happened. You know, you do get five spots on your ballot. Okay. All right. So it's not going to be what it feels like, but he'll be on the ballot. It sounds like. Okay. Aaron, I appreciate it. That's very here. You're as transparent as as you were able to be. I appreciate that. I think there is a there's enough to read between the lines on a lot of that stuff. Again, just one of 50 voters. I'll remind everybody again. FTN. The place that they should go. FTN's URL or Twitter or wherever. FTN fantasy dot com. That is the main URL. FTN fantasy dot com and definitely check out the stats hub.

34:48Check out the goat subscription. All the new basketball stuff at the basketball stats hub at FTN fantasy dot com. And the like you said, the prop bet tool that gives you your best odds for different prop bets. Your favorite wild card play is what, by the way, 10 seconds. My favorite wild card play is probably the Patriots over the Chargers. That's three and a half. Okay. Aaron, thank you so much. Man, always a pleasure. So great. Appreciate it. Are you ready? Aaron shots everybody. Creator of DVOA. Coming back on a numbers game right here at Visa. The numbers told the story. I always do. So I'm those idiots who believe in analytics. This is a numbers game with Gill. I like Xander gone. Visa. Hour number three of a numbers game at Visa. The sports venue network. Visa.com game. Plus I hard radio. YouTube TV and of course, Series X and Channel. 158s. Gill, Alexander. It's Kelly. Midland. As well here from Circus, Orcasino. Still to come this hour, Kelly.

35:49What has become sort of a weird annual throw in tradition for us? A field goal kicker breakdown. Oh, yeah. Wild card week. No, we didn't get to that already. You know why? Because we never talk about field goal kickers. How many of these games come down to the kickers? And maybe if you know, all things being equal, it's just a little, another little data point in your handicap. I enjoyed when you sent that over this morning. And I kind of chuckled it. And then I had to tell Danny before the show too. I was like, yeah, I forgot this for a couple of like an annual throw. Yeah, actually he does. We always get the one to he's like, why are you breaking down field goal kickers? I don't know because they decide every game feels like. Anyway, ladies and gentlemen, he always joins us at this time of week. And we are always thrilled to have him. The playoffs by the way are here. Warren Sharp has a special sale for visa listeners this week. All of his wild car weekend betting recommendations for just $19.99. That's an 80% discount. And as an extra gift, you'll get all of his college playoff semifinal bets as well. To claim the offer, go to sharp.football and click the top link. Here he is right now in the flesh,

36:50courtesy of the Progressive Guest Line. It's Warren Sharp from just outside the, or somewhere inside the DMV. How you doing, Warren? I'm doing good. Better than a lot of these coaches after Black Monday, you know, getting canned, left and right. But it's really interesting, Gil, because you know, last year in the cycle, we had some really like elite candidates, right? Like guys that obviously offensive gurus, like your Ben Johnson, who is there and people are scrambling finally, Liam Cohen, especially like, we don't really have that this year. We've got a lot of openings, but I don't really think that we have that guy that's just like, you know, so elite that you got to go get him, and he might change your whole franchise's direction. This is interesting to me, because you and I, we briefly chatted just off air, you mean Kelly, about John Harbaugh now being available, and John Harbaugh is agent, if you're to believe him said, hey, within 45 minutes, we got calls from 17s. And again, noteworthy, as Adam Schefter pointed out, there's only six vacancies, so someone with a coach, if you're to believe him, called and inquired about John Harbaugh,

37:50share your thoughts if you would about this. I know that John Harbaugh has won a Super Bowl. I know that John Harbaugh leads the Ravens to the playoffs in six of the last eight years. What is it specifically about John Harbaugh? That would make him a great coach for your team. That would change the trajectory of your team. Obviously, if you've got a good team, you're not getting a new coach. So you're a bad team, you get John Harbaugh and then what? Like what magically is going to happen? He doesn't call plays offensively. He doesn't have some sort of a scheme or system that he's going to bring in. It's going to elevate your team. He doesn't call plays defensively. If you don't have a good quarterback, like what is he going to do? And I've I've harped on this for several years and I tweeted it out again yesterday. John Harbaugh was almost fired after the 2017 season by the Ravens. They had missed the playoffs the last three years in a row prior to that season.

38:50And the owner of Biscotti considered firing John Harbaugh at that point in time. They decided to keep him on for the 2018 season. They were sitting with a four win five lost record with Joe Flacco at the helm. And they decided, you know what? Like Joe Flacco got hurt. We have to start Lamar Jackson. Lamar Jackson goes six and one down the stretch. Gets them into the playoffs that year. He gets them into the playoffs in six of the seven next years and basically saved John Harbaugh's job was the performance of Lamar Jackson and Lamar Jackson being brilliant, winning MVP awards, et cetera. Lamar Jackson obviously is the type of quarterback who changes the direction of a franchise. If you're able to draft a guy like Lamar, especially late in the first round, you've got a good general manager who brings some other talent around him. You can change your direction. How much of that was John Harbaugh? And in fact, I would say that, you know, when you've got a good quarterback

39:50and you've got a decent team, it's got to be the coach that gets you to the final, you know, the final level. Like you look at the Buffalo Bills, I have the same type of opinion with Sean McDermott. It's like Josh Allen's giving you every single thing that he can give you. Why are you not getting to that next level? I don't know that is Josh Allen needs to be better. He's elite. Maybe it's the coach that needs to come up with a few little tweaks in some of the matchups, in some of the biggest games in the playoffs to get you over that hump just like Andy Reed has done previously. So I just think that, you know, I think John Harbaugh is a very respectable coach. I think he's a, he's a, he's a, he's a, maybe a good guy. But what exactly should make him be like head and tail, you know, night and day, the best coach in this cycle? I find myself nodding to most of that one. I agree. When you're a, when you're a guy who got the head coaching job from a special teams, right? Special, a special teams coordinator position. I think it's only, it only follows that you have to say to yourself, well, I mean, the CEO coach, right?

40:50The Mike Tomlins of the world. They, there is a, I mean, some people subscribe to that model. But what is John Harbaugh's specific skill set beyond that? Is an interesting question. If you were, last thing on this, if you were one of the, one of the guys making the decisions on one of these teams with a vacancy, who's the first guy you interview? Well, if it's one of the coaches that was fired, I'm looking at Kevin Safansky. I think the circumstances that he was working with in, in Cleveland were terrible for years, or the worst franchises in the entire NFL. I think that he, from a play calling perspective, and from an X's and O's perspective, does have the edge over a lot of these other candidates. Now he's not the knock it out of the park home run type guy, like a Ben Johnson was, maybe even like a Liam Cohen was. But I do think that he's a guy that I would want to bring in and talk to from the cycle. I also find it interesting. I don't know that he's necessarily, you know, head coach right away type material. But if you're talking about offense wins games in 2026 and beyond,

41:51the fact that I haven't heard Brian Davos mentioned at all, name mentioned at all, I think he's really a good creator of offense and a play caller of offense, maybe not from a head coach you perspective. But if I'm looking for somebody to pair with a coach to bring in to call my offense, I'm definitely looking to get Brian Davos name on my list. I wonder if Brian Davos doesn't end up as the OC and DC in Washington, the OC and because he seemed to love Jaden Daniels on that hard knock show. Was it the hard knock show? Yeah. So I don't know. It'd be interesting to see. Okay, as far as wild car weekend is concerned, we just mentioned the offer for just 1999, all of your plays wild car weekend, including the college football semis. I'm curious right now as we do this on a Wednesday morning, what's the game that you feel like and not holding you do this? But right now you feel like you have the most conviction on. So I'll put it bluntly. I haven't bet anything yet, which is, which is a little bit atypical.

42:51Sometimes I'll come in early in the week Monday morning. I'll have some work all night Sunday, get some things lined up and look to fire early. There's some things I'm waiting to, to shape up a little bit for this week. And definitely I was a little surprised with the availability and massive market that we were getting for player props on Monday. I mean, like pretty much anything that I was looking at that was already lined and is available. So I'm definitely going to be pivoting towards the player prop market very soon. The one game that I find to be really intriguing from a matchup perspective and a philosophy perspective is that Jaguar's Buffalo Bills game. Because you do have a situation where Josh Allen and this Buffalo Bills team has been starting out very slowly in a lot of their games down the stretch. They're actually below average in points per game, scored in the first half of games. And they've liked to play a little bit more conservatively. But they're going up against a Jacksonville Jaguar's team

43:51that has the second highest pace of play over the last like six games. And is the second highest pass rate over the last six or so games. And with Jacobi Myers in this passing attack really taken off. Like this is a Jaguar's team that will come in and try to put up points on an opponent and do so quickly and early. And that might put Josh Allen, if this Bills team comes out and starts a little bit slowly like they've been prone to do, playing from a position of deficit and position of weakness. And all of a sudden when you got Josh Allen with no Joe burrow to get past, no patch from a home to get past. And everybody's talking about I know he's on the road. But it's like this is Josh Allen's year. Like they cannot afford to go down in Jacksonville and lose this game. I mean they just the narrative around Josh Allen without those guys in his way is this is his year to get through to the Super Bowl and try to win it. And they can't afford to start slowly here. So I'm really intrigued with the offensive philosophy that they're going to try to approach this game with another interesting tidbit about this game.

44:53I haven't heard anybody mention yet. But I went back to 2020 when the Bills offense really took off. That's when Brian Debel came in and had Josh Allen like throwing the ball all over the field. He came up past first offense in 2020 and Josh Allen's career took off and so did the Bills ceiling. From 2020 through present, the Buffalo Bills have played 12 playoff games. I want you to guess how many of those games have not been in Buffalo or Kansas City. Oh wow. Zero. No, no, that's not true. Like zero. Is that right? Zero. Come on. The only two venues that the Buffalo Bills have played their last 12 playoff games or last five years has been Buffalo or Kansas City. And every time they've gone to Kansas City, they've lost in the playoffs. So they've taken three trips to Kansas City. Their other nine games have been at home. So this team is not that familiar with going out on the road, going to play elsewhere in a venue that's not quite as familiar. Let alone going to Florida now. Fortunately for them, I think that whether it's only supposed to be in the 60s, maybe a little bit cloudy.

45:56So it's not like 80 degrees in sunny. We'll see if that forecast holds holds true for this game. But I mean, that's another opportunity for them to just be playing in a different venue. I know they whooped the Jacksonville Jaguars last year in Buffalo. But they also went down to Jacksonville two or three years ago and lost nine to six to the Jaguars. And then they played Jacksonville the next year over London and lost to Jacksonville as well in London. So they did beat them last year by heavy margin at home. But this is not a familiar situation for Buffalo B traveling on the road to someplace other than Kansas City in the postseason. You know, you this wasn't the main point of what you were just talking about. But you know, we don't make enough of you brought up Jacobi Myers. That trade deadline move to get him. And I would say even Seattle Rashid Shaheed showed up finally after a few games and he's been a factor. Some really stealth great moves by some of these teams that ended up in the playoffs. Jacobi Myers maybe taking advantage of those Raiders. I mean, the Raiders are a disaster and a lot of respects.

46:58Warren, always a pleasure, man. Enjoy the weekend. Thank you so much. Good luck to us. You too. You got it. Warren Sharpe, everybody at Sharp Football. That's where you can check out all of his stuff. Fascinating staff there from about the bills, I should say. I would not have guessed zero, but yeah, that's the case. I'm coming back on a numbers game of these sports betting that one.