Episode 34

Shane Mercer [00:00:00]:

Loved. Love to hear it. Looking forward to a lot more goose poop on the way. Hello, and welcome to another episode of Behind The Lines, the only podcast purifying the sports betting industry. Remember to like, download, subscribe, follow us on all the socials at inplayLIVE. And if you want to see what it's all about on the inside, we have a promo code for you that is 'BEHINDTHELINES' all caps. I'm your host, Shane Mercer. Today I am joined by the one and only Andrew Pace, the founder of inplayLIVE, and we've got two guests with him who you should recognize from a few weeks ago if you've been following along with us.

Shane Mercer [00:00:44]:

We've got gosu thune. That is John Wilson, and we have the golden goose himself, Kenny Huber back. Guys, we are digging in to the first four weeks of the NFL. I'm calling it a quarterly review. We get to have a look at the very first quarter of the season. It is almost essentially behind us. We are recording this on a Monday, so the Monday nighter is still ahead, but for all intents and purposes, we have four weeks under our belts. All right, guys, I want to do this because things are constantly changing and we always have to have a look, see what's working, what isn't working, reevaluate and then put it into practice and see if we can make some positive changes.

Shane Mercer [00:01:25]:

Because this is all about growth. It's all about learning, always becoming better. So for anyone out there that's thinking to themselves, hey, these guys, they're pros. They just show up, they crush it every week and then they go back to living their lives with an extra stack of cash. Well, that's not the case. Yes, it is in many ways, but there's a lot more to it than that. Everybody makes mistakes. There's a lot of hard work going on behind the scenes.

Shane Mercer [00:01:50]:

So we're trying to sort of pull the curtain back a little bit, give you a glimpse into their efforts so you can see what it really takes. All right, so we're going to get into all of it, the good, the bad, the ugly, and have a bit of fun while we're at it. But first, why don't we just go around the horn very quickly and get some initial thoughts on the season so far? John, what's sticking out to know?

GosuThune [00:02:09]:

I think the first couple thoughts that come to my mind about the season so far are that one, there's been a lot of really bad coaching, I think that's been called out in the media. Just a lot of really dumb mistakes at the end of games. Guys kicking field goals down, weird scores like Josh McDaniels, guys not taking the time off the clock to walk off on a field goal or in a Tide game. We saw that yesterday in that Commander's game, and it's that sort of thing. And then I think the other thing that I think that our group is really taking advantage of is that the teams that were projected to be like the bottom of the bottom have actually not been they've been competitive in the games even if they've lost. So, like, Arizona Cardinals definitely won the Raiders outside of that game in Buffalo, they've been pretty competitive. Carolina has been really bad, but they've had the lead in many of their games so far this year. So I think we've taken advantage of a lot of value.

GosuThune [00:03:09]:

Tampa Bay is three and one, I think, like winning their division after Brady retired, which I think nobody expected. So we've taken a lot of advantage of those opportunities. So I think that's been something that's been really cool this year to see.

Shane Mercer [00:03:24]:

Yeah, it's funny because we always start the season thinking one thing and we I mean, the public generally has a look at the season and thinks, oh, this team's going to be bad. This team's going to be then, you know, a few weeks and everybody is back to kind of square one, having no clue what's going on. I like that you brought up the bad coaching decisions because, Kenny, I'm going to come over to you and if you guys can't tell, Kenny's an Eagles fan and his coach, Siriani is one of these guys who kind of made a bit of a boneheaded move this past weekend and nearly lost the game. And maybe it wasn't totally his fault. It could have been the player's fault as well. But Kenny, what's standing out for you so far this season? Any initial thoughts?

The Golden Goose [00:03:59]:

Sure just to be honest, the season usually starts slow for me because I'm trying to feel out the teams and everything, but I already feel like I have a pretty good grasp on the teams. But as far as trends that I see in the NFL, I think John touched on well, as the coaching with a lot of the teams is really poor, which normally would hurt me in a lot of situations, but luckily I've been able to sidestep some of those bad coaching decisions.

Shane Mercer [00:04:32]:

Yeah, you've even been able to capitalize on a couple of them, I think, with some of these games going to yes, yes, absolutely. Yeah. It's pretty impressive to kind of watch and pace, you know. John touched on something that I think you often harp about, which is the quote unquote bad team, and the bad team outperforming expectations. Have you seen more of that than you expected so far this season?

Andrew Pace [00:04:54]:

No, no, I wouldn't say so. I think that more than anything, John just kind of hit the nail on the head there. One of the best things about the NFL is that the worst team is a very good football team.

Andrew Pace [00:05:10]:

So you go into a game, a really great example being from this week 449 ers Cardinals. So you pull out the Pregame Line and I believe the 49 ers closed At -15 I think the biggest spread.

Andrew Pace [00:05:30]:

I ever saw was Peyton Manning in the Broncos against the Jags and I think it closed at -20 and a half for the NFL

Andrew Pace [00:05:37]:

I could be wrong on that, but I think that's the biggest one that I've seen. But if I go through the course of time and think about the Miami miracle, I believe the patriots were like -18 and a half in that game. So in the NFL. Obviously you don't get as many of these wonky spreads that you see obviously in college. But regardless of that, the 49 ers they won the game by. What did they win by? They won by 19 points. So they covered the spread and they looked phenomenal doing It throughout the entire game. They Were spectacular in really all avenues of the game.

Andrew Pace [00:06:11]:

But the Arizona Cardinals, as bad teams do, they average 16 points offensively per game and typically about 17 and a half points at the end of the season per game. It's just that one and a half of those points usually come from Special teams or defense. So bad teams do great things and they stay competitive in the game and there are ways to obviously exploit that. And I wouldn't say that it's surprised me, but it's certainly been remarkably profitable for us in the NFL.

Shane Mercer [00:06:44]:

Yeah, absolutely right. You're never as bad as you look and you're never quite as good as you look. Right. A great NFL saying that I think always holds true, especially at this point in the season where we're still getting a look at these teams and still trying to figure out who is who are they who they think they are or are they who we think they are. It's sort of something that totally isn't shown to us just yet and we're kind of still trying to figure it out when we all last gathered about four weeks ago, you guys had sort of all given your thoughts on what you were hoping for the season or what success looked like for you in the season. And so I want to go again kind of around the horn here and ask John are you on track, are you off track? Are you Doing better than expected or worse?

GosuThune [00:07:29]:

I think I'm on track and there's some things that I think I'm meeting my expectations of doing well in and then there's other things that I think I'm a little behind. So from a modeling standpoint for some of the stuff I run for Pregame that hasn't really performed that well this year for Me. It's definitely below my standards, though I was just checking and I think there's something like if over 50% of the public bet on a team, I think they've covered like 56% of the time so far this year. So that's pretty weird. For the first four weeks of the season, the public's winning. So that means I'm not doing well if I'm just picking sides pregame, but maybe there's some things that I'm not picking up on when I'm handicapping some of these games. So I'm going to try to focus in on that. But I think for some of the live betting that we've been doing, some of the strategies that I was using in the last couple of years aren't working as well.

GosuThune [00:08:27]:

But I've really tried to adapt, and I think I've done a good job of doing that in terms of trimming down what I'm taking and when I'm taking and which teams I'm focusing on. So one thing I wanted to do this year was just really try to locate two to three games at a time that I could just focus in on and really attack those games, and I find myself doing a good job of hitting them multiple times and exploiting the behavior that's happening in some of those games. Whereas last year I think I was a little bit all over the board, so I've been doing a better job of that, and I'm pretty satisfied with that.

Shane Mercer [00:08:57]:

Okay, well, we'll dig into some of that a little bit more in a moment here. But Kenny, over to you. You declared a target of $5 million for the season when you were last here on the podcast. Are we on track? Off track, ahead of projection? Where are we at?

The Golden Goose [00:09:13]:

I would say I'm on pace with projection, but I would say I'm ahead of the track just because I'm usually very cautious in September because it's a new season and I'm just kind of feeling out the teams and feeling out the league and everything. And to be honest, most seasons I'm just ahead of break even in September, and then I really started hitting my stride in October, November, December, and I've had a very profitable September in that aspect. I think I'm ahead of my track, even though I'm pretty much on track to make that mark.

Shane Mercer [00:09:53]:

Love to hear it. Looking forward to a lot more goose poop on the way. For anyone out there who doesn't know, goose poop is a good thing. It's a really good thing. It's when Kenny starts dropping great bets on us, and we absolutely love it. Pace, over to you. On track, off track. How are we doing? I know you've already burned a few books and you've already hit the cash out button on a few.

Andrew Pace [00:10:13]:

Yeah, yeah. I would say overall, I'm really happy with where we're at. I feel like coming out of last year, we kind of touched on this before we had to make some significant changes in the NFL. And I feel like in December of last year, it was like, okay, we've hit our stride and we're really doing well, and we took that right into the Super Bowl as we went, like twelve or twelve on the Super Bowl game itself. Kenny can't share that sentiment as an Eagles fan. Sorry about that. Kenny. But point being is that we really hit our stride and there is that unknown in a new season, just new personnel, potentially new rule changes, all that kind of stuff that then factors into the game.

Andrew Pace [00:10:57]:

And I just feel like we've done exceptional in the NFL. The first week was a little bit of a struggle for some of the strategies that we have where it did have that feeling of like, okay, we got to feel some things out. And then Kenny came in and did his thing, which is very complementary I think, to some of the other pros skill sets and brought us home like a massive week one. And then all the other things we're doing from week two onward just really took off where things would be. Lagging, I think, is on the college football side of things with those rule changes in particular. I know that's not the topic today. So it's one of these things where do you dump money in one day and then win it back the next day and are you coming out net positive or are you figuring things out in that arena in a responsible way that allows you to not have any significant negative impact? Right, so that's kind of where we're at right now, I think, with the group. And when we touched on success for the season, we were really very much of the mindset of looking back on the season where people had a lot of success and learned quite a bit and obviously striving to find some level of consistency in a world where obviously inconsistency is the yeah, it's it's been a hell of a start to the football.

Andrew Pace [00:12:16]:

You know, obviously with now now upon know, you kind of see more and more of where teams are headed. So Bengals are probably the biggest letdown this year, I would say, of any NFL team. And I feel like after week four we are starting to get some consistency with them actually being a remarkably poor football team. So you start to figure these things out and a lot of times the public can't get off that. They'll be like, but it's Joe Burrow, but it's this, but it's that. And I'm not saying that the Bengals won't make the playoffs or won't turn it around, but I think we get very comfortable with knowing that said team actually isn't good and we get very comfortable with that really fast. So, yeah, there's a lot of talent overlap from the previous season and then teams like the Eagles and the Chiefs and the Bills have they had some struggles, sure, but they look like they're going to be right there in the AFC and NFC Championships. And then the Niners are just like probably the best looking football team I've seen in a long time.

Andrew Pace [00:13:17]:

So they look really good.

Shane Mercer [00:13:18]:

Yeah, they do look great. And I know that you're really high on them and on the Bengals side of things. They're just looking really poor. And I like what you get out there with sort of the public maybe not wanting to buy into it, but I'm a big believer know, when someone shows you who they are, believe them. Right. And the Bengals are certainly showing us who they are right now, and I'm happy to just believe that maybe they're not the team that we thought they would be. And burrow. Doesn't look great.

Shane Mercer [00:13:46]:

Right. He's looking a bit hurt out there. So maybe that's a big part of it. Who knows? Okay, I want to get into the good side of things. We sort of have touched on some ups and downs going on in the season so far, but why don't we dive into what's working? This is something that you would have expected it to work, and it is delivering, or it could be something totally unexpected, and it kind of came out of left field, but you're finding, hey, this is really working for me, so I'm going to keep going with it. John, over to you. What's working for you really well, right.

GosuThune [00:14:23]:

You know, for me, I think a lot of the actually looking at some of the first half when a team when teams come out slowly, in particular, really diving in, especially if in games where we expect some offensive battles, I think we're just talking about the Bengals, obviously. I think Joe Burrow, I can't remember what exactly what the stat was, but he has, like, the lowest yards per attempt of any quarterback with at least 100 attempts or something ever in the first four games of the season, first four or five weeks. So being able to exploit some of those teams that are traditionally thought of as high powered offenses, and when you see them come out and struggle, really jumping on that first quarter, that first half, and attacking either the under or the other team to really build up a lead has been very successful. And then also just a lot of the end of game stuff. We've had a lot of blowouts, I think, in some of these games. A lot of, like, 30 point differentials just in the third quarter and just starting to settle into the fact that a lot of when you know who's involved with that game, that there might be some backups coming in. I think we've seen a couple of backup quarterbacks. We saw just a few of them yesterday come in in games where the game had gotten away from a team.

GosuThune [00:15:37]:

So really watching that and seeing the personnel there has been super positive for me this year.

Shane Mercer [00:15:43]:

Kenny, as an observer over here, you are dropping golden pieces of goose poop all over the place. I really appreciate it, but is this the kind of start that you totally expected, and I guess, is there something working for you that maybe goes beyond what we're just seeing?

The Golden Goose [00:16:03]:

To be honest, I think last year I kind of got wrapped up with a lot of newer strategies that I wasn't exactly an expert at. And I kind of just kind of returned to my roots this year and everything's kind of going as expected and almost better than expected, because usually with some of the strategies, turnovers or things of that nature just aren't part of my calculations. And I just haven't gotten really burnt with that too badly this year. I would say lower than my expected randomness, where basically right now I feel like I'm exceeding my expectations, like dramatically. I don't expect my record to continue at the percentage that I'm hitting the rest of the season, that's for sure. It'd be very difficult to I hope to, but I think it's almost mathematical impossibility.

GosuThune [00:17:04]:

What is your record, kenny, what's your record so far?

The Golden Goose [00:17:07]:

I believe at my main strategy, I'm 30 and 9. It's about 80% or so.

Shane Mercer [00:17:16]:

Okay. So obviously amazing and congrats and us in the community, we all very much appreciate it, but when we hear you say, wait, this can't last, it's a little bit like, no. What do you mean?

The Golden Goose [00:17:31]:

I normally hit around 70% and I'm hitting closer to 80% is a significant difference.

Shane Mercer [00:17:38]:

Right.

Andrew Pace [00:17:39]:

70 is still profitable, Shane.

The Golden Goose [00:17:41]:

Yes. 70 is still very profitable.

Shane Mercer [00:17:43]:

70 is still profitable. All right. It's always tough to sort of hear, I guess it's kind of a mindset thing, right? It's sort of, oh, I'm doing so well, but I know this can't last. And I guess you have to have that sort of reasonable expectation, right?

The Golden Goose [00:17:57]:

Right. Exactly.

Shane Mercer [00:17:59]:

Yeah. Okay, Pace, what's working for you? What were you expecting to work? And it's delivering or anything unexpected that is outperforming what you thought?

Andrew Pace [00:18:08]:

I just love the perceptions of what people have. And I was in the summer, in the pool, on vacation in the desert this summer and I was almost passionately screaming at Rodge about the Arizona Cardinals this year. And I'm like, how could a team have this little credibility? And it's like people couldn't believe that they could ever win a game. And obviously they had that huge upset against Dallas, which was one of our most profitable games of the year. But separately from that, you go on.

Andrew Pace [00:18:41]:

To Instagram or TikTok or whatever and Josh Dobbs can't even get his jersey. At the team store and the guy's been amazing. And so much so I would actually question as to why Kyler Murray would play for that football team know? Then you just look at the box score and you go, oh, they're one in three and they didn't cover the spread or whatever the case may be. And I just go, gosh keep those perceptions. Yeah. I just love bad teams that do great things in all sports. And I have a real fondness for the state of Arizona. I'm not sure what it is, but I'm really excited for hockey season and the team that comes from there as well.

Shane Mercer [00:19:25]:

Yeah, we really like Arizona teams. If you want to find out why, you got to join, but there's a lot of good reasons to appreciate the teams from Arizona, even if it's not related to their records. Yeah. And also looking forward to sort of seeing the Arizona Cardinals perhaps keep that perception that they're a bad team while still performing well. I mean, it was a valiant effort against the San Francisco 49 ers, who might be the very best team in football right now. So it was great to see. And, yeah, we hit a dobbs bet. We hit a dobbs player prop.

Shane Mercer [00:19:57]:

So, hey, there we go. Dobbs right. A nice guy delivering for us. We wouldn't mind seeing more dobbs out there. Okay, good stuff out of the way. Let's get into the nitty gritty ugly stuff here. John, when we last spoke, one of your kind of goals for the season was limiting the number of bad bets you make and just reducing the number of overall bad bets. Have you made any bad bets? How's that going? How's that process unfolding for you?

GosuThune [00:20:30]:

Yeah, you always make bad bets. I think it's kind of impossible not to make a few every now and then. I do feel like I'm making a lot more. Like I think I said earlier, my volume of bets, just in general, is down significantly from last year, and I've noticed my ROI is much higher, which is good. At the end of the day, I really just want my net dollar growth to be as high as possible. So maybe having a more volume with lower ROI would actually be closer to that, but it's more stressful, and it can cause invariance in the moment with how much money you have in one book versus another, something things you want to kind of avoid. But there's a couple of bets that I think that I've made recently that maybe weren't very good bets. I joked with the guys yesterday.

GosuThune [00:21:18]:

I think it was 21-14 in the Dolphins game, and I bet Miami team total first half team total over 20 and a half, and they promptly went three and out, like, three times in a row, even though they looked unstoppable until that point. I don't know if that was a bad bet or if that's just kind of unlucky timing or what, but something happened in that game, and they just couldn't score again. And I had done the same thing the night before in the Washington game in the college space, where I had taken a Washington team total over, and they didn't hit it until, like, the last drive of the fourth quarter. So those are things that normally I don't bet on. Those aren't in my wheelhouse, like taking an over. Like, you know, maybe I either need to just not make those bets at all and let people who are good at those things help. Call those bets for me to take, or I need to just write them down. Or bet a dollar on them and track them and then eventually just see where I'm getting those right if it's something I want to bet, because I want to watch these cool, high scoring games that everybody else seems to enjoy so much, but I find myself losing money when I bet on them because I don't know what to bet.

GosuThune [00:22:21]:

And it's just not something that I'm personally good at. So maybe I will try to start tracking one dollars bets and just see how I'm doing and maybe if there's something I can improve or maybe I'll, again, just go back to cutting it out entirely. But I've been doing a pretty good job of not betting those things this year, and that's really helped me a lot. I think I've bet 98% unders this year, and I have had a lot of success doing that.

Shane Mercer [00:22:46]:

Well, that's great to hear. And yeah, being able to kind of recognize, you know what, maybe this isn't a great bet or this is where I'm going wrong. Goes a long way over the course of a season. Kenny? Any missteps, missed clicks? Maybe anything that you think that you could improve upon over the next four weeks?

The Golden Goose [00:23:06]:

To be honest I was a former gambler and I tend to chase a little bit and I I try to get that out of my system as much as possible but I I always tend to do that. I give an example. On Saturday, I took a Penn State under and I called it out at 44 and a half for everybody to follow me. And then they scored really quickly and the total jumped up three points. I was like, it's an extra field goal to give. Felt a little chasey, me betting it. So I kind of separate value versus my own bad habits. So I chased it up to 47 and a half, and I didn't announce it, and it looked like it might have possibly won.

The Golden Goose [00:23:53]:

And then Penn State does a fake kneel down and throws a bomb into the end zone for a touchdown, and I lost that too. So I'm glad I didn't advise that wager, but I need to get that chasing mentality sometimes out of my system. I've improved upon it dramatically because I used to do it with basketball like crazy, and I don't do that anymore. And I've learned my lesson there. Anyway. I have to get rid of some of the bad habits that I've had from years past.

Shane Mercer [00:24:25]:

Sure, old habits die hard. And for everybody out there listening, I mean, look, this guy's a pro, and he still has bad habits he's trying to work on. So this is really a great opportunity for all of you, the listeners, the viewers, to kind of ask yourself, what are my bad habits and what could I sort of eliminate to help improve my own ROI? And make a little bit more money at this betting thing. Pace, you touched on some mistakes in your primer. For those of you who don't know, every week Pace puts out a Monday primer, which is just great for the community as a whole. He looks back on the previous week, dissects it, evaluates what went right, what went wrong, and helps everybody kind of get on the same page for what we're doing as a community, betting on sports. So, Pace, you had some mistakes in your primer. Do you want to tell us a little bit about it?

Andrew Pace [00:25:13]:

Yeah, well, I think Kenny brings up a really good point with respect to number one chasing, but also his hit rate with what he's doing so far in the NFL. And when we look at the ROI or whatever it is that we have for each strategy or each sport, it can justify you to continue down a path and maybe take something in that category that perhaps actually is slightly straying away from the strategy itself. But it's justified by the record or ROI that you have already. So Kenny could easily go, okay, well, this is my hit rate. I'm 39. I need to be doing more of this.

Andrew Pace [00:25:52]:

Right and then all of a sudden, maybe he is still profitable, but he's hitting closer to the 50% mark. Right. So is that a bad thing or a good thing? Well, in my case, we came out firing all guns blazing on player props, arguably the highest ROI that we had in the NFL through the first three weeks. So that justified some decisions that went into this past weekend where I looked back on the wagers that I took.

Andrew Pace [00:26:25]:

And not only were they bad bets they actually didn't even have a chance to win. So, to give you an example, betting on a player's over on rushing yards, receiving yards, whatever the case may be, where they physically do not get the ball back, there are no more drives left in the game. So what Patrick Mahomes did at the End of Sunday Night Football in week four is he's up three, he's with the ball, and there is a one and a half yard window between the end zone and a first down. And if he scores a touchdown, the Chiefs go up ten. If he doesn't get a first down, the Chiefs probably have to kick a field goal to go up six, but he's running into the end zone with no one anywhere around him. And of course, the spread is minus eight and a half. And I think it was like 90% of the public was on the Chiefs minus eight and a half or seven and a half or whatever it was.

Andrew Pace [00:27:23]:

So they'd be covering if he scored the touchdown. And for our wager itself, we had Breece Halls over on receiving yards. Well, what Patrick Mahomes did in that moment is something that a lot of sports bettors scream and cry and yell about because they had the Chiefs minus and they're know, fuck Patrick Mahomes. I can't believe he would ever do that. In fact, Tod Gurley did that against the Green Bay Packers years and years ago, and Dave Portnoy saw him in an interview on media Day before the Super Bowl, and he was like, yo, Tod, you cost me like $75,000 or something like that when you kneeled out.

Andrew Pace [00:27:59]:

And Todd Gurley just basically told him to shut up. But the point being is that what Mahomes did in that spot turned our brief hall wager into a horrendous one because we didn't get the chance to win. But what's underrated in that circumstance is the brilliance of what Patrick Mahomes did because he gave a 0% statistical probability of the jets being able to win that game, where, believe it or not, a lot of people don't understand this.

Andrew Pace [00:28:27]:

If the jets went up ten and even if there was 60 seconds left in the game, you have one ball thrown into range. You clock the ball, you kick a field goal, you're down seven. You kick an onside kick, you throw a Hail Mary or two or three long passes, and boom. All of a sudden, the Chiefs could have lost the game. And that's precisely what we were referring to earlier with Sirianni not kicking a field goal against the Commanders where he could have run, run, run and made.

Andrew Pace [00:28:52]:

The final play of the game to kick the field goal and win the game. And instead of doing that, they almost lost the game because they left their opponent time on the clock. And I can think throughout the course of time. The NFC championship, Seattle Seahawks against the Green Bay Packers, where the Green Bay Packers are on their way to the Super Bowl. The game is over, and Seattle gets the ball, scores the TD, recovers the onside kick, scores the TD again, and Seattle ends up going to the Super Bowl that year.

Andrew Pace [00:29:16]:

So you might think like, oh, that's not possible, or whatever the case may be. New England Patriots did it to the Cleveland Browns at home, recovered the and the Saints as well in the Tom Brady days.

Andrew Pace [00:29:26]:

So what I'm getting at is what Mahomes did was actually downright brilliant, and I'm sure a lot of people hated him for it, but that is the Highest level IQ smartest football execution, and it’s precisely what we look for in our group. So it unfortunately turned the wager I called not into a bad bet, but actually probably the worst bet you could have ever placed. But I actually respect what he did in a big way.

Shane Mercer [00:29:53]:

Yeah, a lot of people on social media talking a lot of shit about know that really upset a lot of these casual fans, know, recreational sports bettor is just really pissed off about Mahomes not scoring that touchdown for the spread. But you know what? Kenny, we won the under.

The Golden Goose [00:30:08]:

Yes.

Andrew Pace [00:30:11]:

People will say that was a fix. They'll say that was a fixed game.

GosuThune [00:30:16]:

Well they are, because it wasn't even possible for the game to end without specifically an offensive hold or it could have been a sack or something, and then that five yard automatic first down. That was the only way it could have ended.

Shane Mercer [00:30:30]:

Yeah, we'll let them talk about it. We capitalize on the moments live. Right. And that's kind of what we do. Okay, let's have a bit of a look ahead. All right, so four weeks behind us. We've got another 13 weeks ahead of us when we include the 17th week now, but essentially, we're at the quarter mark, and I don't want to do a whole lot of crystal ball peering and sort of try to predict what's going to happen the rest of the season. Let's just narrow it down, narrow our focus down to the next four weeks.

Shane Mercer [00:31:03]:

All right, so by the time we're at the midpoint of the season, john, what do you expect to kind of see over these next four? You or at least what are you looking for?

GosuThune [00:31:15]:

Yeah, I'm probably looking are are some of these teams that are overperforming expectations? Is it a flash in the pan, or is there something real there? So, like, Tampa Bay going on the road, beating division rivals, stuff like like, is Tampa Bay, like, a real team? I don't know. I would guess not really, like, not a real contender. But they could still be a 500 team. They could still win that division. Also. Then on the flip side, are teams like the Bengals? Are they just this bad, and is Joe Burrow just that hurt, or there's just something wrong there? That's really what I look for over the next four weeks because I think with the and we talked about this, I believe the last time we were on was the lack of anyone playing in the pres season anymore. For a lot of these teams, it takes like a week or two for a lot of these guys to just get going. And maybe some of the slow starts are due to that or some of the hot starts are due to the fact that a lot of these guys on some of these bad teams were just playing.

GosuThune [00:32:20]:

So let's see how everything is kind of even out over the next four weeks, and you can kind of just start to cross some teams off and then narrow your list down of who the real contenders are. And that's always what I look for going into the November, December timeframe.

Shane Mercer [00:32:36]:

Okay, so are the Bengals as bad as they appear, or can they get right? And then the other one is Tampa Bay. Are they the best in the division? And I guess we will see and see how it you know, I feel like that division's totally up for know, Atlanta playing surprisingly well, and New Orleans strong. It feels like the only thing that out of that division is is just not that mean.

GosuThune [00:33:00]:

Baker Mayfield may be the best quarterback in that division, which is unfortunate, but that might be true.

Shane Mercer [00:33:08]:

That says a lot. Okay, Kenny, what are you looking for over the next four weeks? What do you expect to see or what are you sort of hoping will reveal itself?

The Golden Goose [00:33:18]:

A lot of my strategies definitely revolve around coaching staff, so I basically try to study coaching tendencies and things like that. Andy Reid's always been historically really aggressive, so it was really good to see. The way he ended that game last night was actually really masterful, John's. Like, oh, well, the game could end now. And I'd be honest, I was like, that'd be really difficult at that point for the game to end. They killed over four minutes with three timeouts and the two minute warning with only 35 yards to work with. That was really a masterful way that the Chiefs ended that game last night. But, yeah, I love to see things like that because that kind of ups Andy Reid's stock with me tremendously for what that was.

The Golden Goose [00:34:01]:

I was really comfort because he's a tendency not as much as like, Sirianni, but he's sometimes aggressive with throwing bombs and things like that with leads at the end of so that was really good to see.

Shane Mercer [00:34:13]:

Okay, so Andy Reid value up. Will that value hold, is the question. Right. And then Kenny will be watching for.

GosuThune [00:34:24]:

Sorry, the opposite is also true. Right. So Brandon Staley once again goes for it on fourth down on his own side of the field, up seven instead of punting and making the rookie quarterback make his first start on the road, drive 90 yards to tie the game. The opposite is also true.

Shane Mercer [00:34:42]:

Yes.

Andrew Pace [00:34:43]:

He didn't learn anything from the week before.

Shane Mercer [00:34:46]:

No, it was the same stupid decision on repeat.

The Golden Goose [00:34:51]:

But the unfortunate thing is he ends up getting bailed out with the interception on the goal line.

Shane Mercer [00:34:57]:

Exactly. So nobody's really grilling him about the bad decision in the post game press conference, right?

The Golden Goose [00:35:03]:

Yes, exactly.

Shane Mercer [00:35:05]:

Which only kind of means perhaps he'll do it again. Maybe we can expect to see another boneheaded move from that guy. Okay, Pace, what are you looking for over the next four weeks? What are you sort of mining for?

Andrew Pace [00:35:18]:

Yeah, I think just keep sharpening the axe. Not making player prop bets that have no statistical chance of winning would be a good first step. But, yeah, just continuing to have fun and having a great season and working with these guys on continuing to improve all facets and avenues of what it is that we're doing, but honestly, getting revved up for hockey season here, it starts next week. So looking at the NHL and where where did we struggle last year, what can we improve this coming into this season? And obviously the massive changes that are occurring there. So lots of coaching changes in the NHL this year, which we've got all documented and ready to go. And, yeah, excited. Really excited for it. I think Kenny and I are going to be in Vegas for Monday night football.

Andrew Pace [00:36:05]:

Raiders packers this next week. And we'll be checking out that Golden Knights home opener, I think, for the ring ceremony. So really excited for hockey. And then obviously in the college football stuff with these rule changes coming out just so hot, thinking that there was a lot more parallels with the NFL than typically there were, and now realizing that maybe that isn't the case. So trying to adjust to that, obviously on an ongoing basis. But, yeah, just enjoying the journey. That's what it's all about. But also, I should just say, guys, we are a company that is called inplayLIVE, and that is derived from Betting live.

Andrew Pace [00:36:45]:

But there's a pro that works with us that hopefully we'll be able to get an opportunity to come on this show in the near future. But he only bets pregame he bets live with us, but his calls are only pregame. So in September, he made 94 calls and returned 18 units of profit, which is just remarkable if you were to put that success throughout the entire NFL season. And this is both college football and NFL, 18 units throughout the first month.

Andrew Pace [00:37:20]:

So when you say, what are you looking for? I might start throwing a few of these pregame wagers down, but I do like not even knowing who's playing. Like, sometimes I'll literally be flick on the TV and be like, oh, it's the Seahawks playing, because I literally didn't even know because I don't want any bias heading into the game. But if anyone wants to tail those wagers, he calls them inside of our upgraded tier, which is referred to as inplayLIVE PRO. And it's really nice for people that have families and things like that where they can do a bit of a plug and play potentially on a day where maybe they have some sort of commitment and they aren't able to actually wager live. So, really cool addition to, I think, the inplayLIVE product as a whole, being able to succeed in as many arenas as you possibly can.

Andrew Pace [00:38:05]:

While the edge might not be as great as live, long term, an edge is an edge.

Andrew Pace [00:38:10]:

So really cool to see that, and hopefully, obviously, the success in that arena can continue.

Shane Mercer [00:38:16]:

Yeah. Schroeder what a guy. Just crushing it on pregame. And you're absolutely right, Pace. We are trying to get him on the show. I've been in touch with him going back and forth to schroeder if you're listening, let's work it out, budy. Let's get you here on the show. You're coming and on top of that toothpaste, you touched on a few other things.

Shane Mercer [00:38:31]:

Hockey is just around the corner, and we will be having a hockey show coming out for all of you. I'm really looking forward to that and locking down some excellent pros for that show to come on and talk hockey. After that. We've got the NBA coming. So October is here. What an amazing month. And, geez, just after NBA comes out, then it's my new personal favorite, college basketball. So we've got a whole lineup of shows coming out for all of you out there.

Shane Mercer [00:38:58]:

And then, of course, guys, we have to reassemble at the halfway point. And Kenny and John, you guys got to come back. You guys down?

The Golden Goose [00:39:04]:

Sure.

Shane Mercer [00:39:05]:

Absolutely perfect.

Andrew Pace [00:39:06]:

All right.

Shane Mercer [00:39:06]:

And we'll do a little halftime half season analysis, if you will, and have a look at everything thing then. All right, guys, that's it for this week. Till next week, keep beating those books. Thanks for tuning in to another episode of Behind the Lines. Remember to like, download and subscribe. We are on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, and everywhere you get your podcasts. Have a betting story or want to be featured on our podcast, drop a note in the comments below. And if you want to join inplayLIVE, use promo code 'BEHINDTHELINES’