🍻Friday Free Bet: Free Prop Bet for Falcons/Texans

Off the Top

The Claypool trade makes sense. Move on from it and stop dealing with multiple questions about him in every presser. Not sure how he fits in down in Miami, but he’s a much bigger receiver than the stars ahead of him (I lobbied for them to use him like a pass-catching TE already this morning to anyone who would listen).

Injury Catch Up

• Jonathan Taylor and Cooper Kupp both practicing and apparently looking good to go for their returns off the early season PUP

• Dolphins LT Terron Armstead is going to the IR for a knee injury, but apparently, it’s not going to be a season-ender.

• Dallas is trending towards having it’s OLine back

• Tee Higgins is practicing today (we’ll see if it matters)

• Amon-Ra St. Brown missed another practice with an abdomen injury, this is not trending well for him. The Lions will also probably be without star rookie DB Brian Branch this weekend.

• Jimmy Garappolo remains in the final stages of concussion protocol but also has an extra day this week.

All kinds of weirdness in this one, but all things aside this looked like a bit of a step forward for the Getsy offense in Chicago.

Quick

• Fields didn’t complete a ball to any other WRs

• The Bears were forced to use a fullback as RB1 in the 2nd half, still salted the game away eventually

• The Commanders were in a negative game state the whole time with a QB who loves taking sacks, still made the Bears sweat

• Rivera made bad decisions on red zone FGs

I won’t get into the whole “Bears should trade Fields” discourse, that’s a big old topic that needs to be looked at from a lot of different angles. I will say, that while the Bears are still a very incomplete team, some of the pieces are starting to perform.

Fields looked confident again, D.J. Moore is living up to his potential, T.J. Edwards is all over the place, and they even managed to pick a good lineman in the draft:

As for the Commanders, I think this is what we’ll be getting from this offense all year. Howell is going to be a high-variance guy who can move the ball but also blow up drives with 10+ yard sacks. I didn’t love how few targets the top two receiving options got and obviously, the protection up front could be improved.

The defense, outside of a few guys, was pretty disappointing. I lauded the Bears for a good game plan and clean execution but it takes two to tango and the blown coverages and missed tackles from Washington definitely played a part in that 40 on the scoreboard. Chase Young and Montez Sweat looked great up front, but it didn’t matter in the end.

The Commanders now sit at 2-3 after losing their third straight game. The Bears, despite winning, still own the top two picks in the draft if the season ended today.

Lots of close calls and a couple of massive blowouts (both ways). Of course, I combined one of each and got to live and die with the late-game antics of the Eagles with the Houston legs comfortably home by like halftime.

Last week’s rankings. Still embarrassed for the Giants.

A very light week to be sure, without really any games that might slide into range outside of maybe MNF.

I don’t rank these strictly on my numbers and what sort of an edge I show. A big part of avoiding the pratfalls of high variance caused by erratic QB play or bad defenses. Have fun sorting that out with these teams.

Maybe a bit of a landmine week again with the options featuring two rookies and Zach Wilson.

Week 5 Teaser Rankings (Best to Worst)

I’ll check back in on Sunday morning with the bets for the week, good luck if you’re betting on the divisional series baseball action today.