Went through as much film as I could stomach (had time for), reviewed the box scores, threw some darts, and made some guesses where I had to. New Power Ratings for week three still have some sizeable differences from the market, which, again, I’m fine with at this point in the season.

I’ll still respect the overall market pricing and use it to inform my bets, but these are my raw numbers for now.

This is a Green Bay number with Malik Willis playing against the Titans. I guess Jordan Love could play, and I don’t know that I could move the price all the way back to where we started this year, considering he’s likely not going to be 100%. But we’ll cross that bridge if and when.

The Arizona Cardinals📈

Defense still stinks, but we saw some decent individual efforts against a battered and broken Rams offense. Dennis Gardeck had a day with three sacks, and folks like Mack Wilson and Zaven Collins are flashing here and there.

I shouldn’t have to sell you on the offense. We likely just didn’t get a good chance to see what OC Drew Petzing was all about last year while he was putting game plans together for Clayton Tune and Josh Dobbs. Kyler appears to be back to pre-injury levels and this offense has the pieces around him to make this a pain in the ass to scheme against.

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(Pats defensive injuries and the insistence on force-feeding the RBs have me picking Team A)

Other Upgrades: Saints, Vikes, Falcons, Chargers

• The Saints did it against a real team last week. I just had a hard time giving them a massive upgrade from a result against Carolina.

• I suppose the same can be said about the Vikings, going from the Giants to the 49ers and still looking pretty good on both sides of the ball.

• The Falcons drew an easier defensive opponent in week two, but a lot of this upgrade is based on Cousins looking like a legitimate QB again.

• The Chargers did play a pretty shitty team, but they dominated on both sides of the ball and seemed to have found an identity, especially defensively.

Miami and the Rams 📉

This shouldn’t need a big explanation. Tua is a big loss, as are all the starters for the Rams. Losing another offensive lineman, a starting safety, and Cooper Kupp for at least a few weeks is hard to work around when you’re already down Nacua and another starter on the offensive line.

Other Downgrades: JAX, PHI, DAL, CLE, IND

• The Jags looked bad on both sides of the ball against a Cleveland team that struggled in week one. Trevor isn’t playing well enough consistently, and the play-calling isn’t moving the needle.

• I asked last week if the Eagles’ defense was actually bad, and we certainly saw glimpses of that against Atlanta. Between that and A.J. Brown missing more time, this is a nice bump down.

• Dallas is a bit of a correction for me. Dak isn’t playing well despite the overperformance of the offensive line.

• Cleveland got me a cover, but it was ugly as sin. Currently downgrading them slightly on both sides of the ball.

• The Colts’ defense is worse than I realized, and they are now dealing with multiple injuries.

My biggest Full Season movers (price now compared to preseason:

Minnesota, New Orleans, & Arizona Up. LA Rams, Clevland, & Philly Down. (not counting moves for QB injuries; clearly, MIA and GB are wildly different as well).

Market

Bouncing between -6 and -6.5 most of the week. The lookahead price was -7.

The total dropped early in the week from 38 down to 37.5, before getting bet up to 39 and finally finding some resistance back to the under yesterday.

Injuries

LT Vederian Lowe (knee) and LG Sidy Sow (ankle) will both miss tonight’s game. Sow has been out since preseason, while Lowe injured his knee last week during the Seattle game. Third-round rookie Caedan Wallace stepped in at LT last week while Michael Jordan was getting the start with Sow out. Additionally, RT Mike Onwenu (wrist) & C David Andrews (hip) are listed as questionable.

LBs Ja’Whaun Bentley (shoulder) and Oshane Ximines (knee) will both be out; Ximines has been put on the IR. DE Deatrich Wise Jr. (shoulder) and S Jabrill Peppers (shoulder) are both listed as questionable after being limited in practice this week. Vet Raekwon McMillan will step into Bentley’s role tonight.

LB Jermaine Johnson (Achilles) is lost for the season for the Jets. LB C.J. Mosley (toe) is questionable for tonight. Haason Reddick continues to hold out.

Matchup

This could be a slog, especially when the Pats have the ball. Despite being in close games, they’ve run the ball over 57% of the time, good for 5th most in the league. The teams ahead of them include New Orleans (which played in a whole season's worth of garbage time in two weeks) and Green Bay (which was forced to run with Love on the shelf). They’ve been effective enough and even with multiple injuries up front, we may not see them falter here.

The Jets have been a bottom-ten unit so far in run stop, giving up a positive EPA/play vs opposing run offenses. This is after a top-ten performance in 2023. With injuries in the front seven, I’m not sure this gets any better this week.

On the other hand, we saw a pretty nice performance from the Jets’ offensive line last week against a solid unit in Tennessee. The run blocking could improve, but they did a fine job keeping Rodgers pretty clean, allowing two sacks on four pressures.

Starting to see Rodgers take control at the line and make good adjustments is an incredible sign for this offense, but it’s still going to need to push the ball down the field more. The two biggest questions coming in for me this year were how the rebuilt OL would look and how quickly Aaron would start to look comfortable in the offense. If they put up another nice game on a short week, I think it’s a nice buy signal for a team going forward.

Betting

Forced some props on Monday and had to bail myself out at halftime with Atlanta +2/ML that took a miracle drive to get home. I don’t have strong opinions here and should probably stay away.

If you really want to get involved, you could always talk yourself into the old “Rookie Head Coach on a short week” angle and blindly bet the Jets. I did look at their team total over, considering the injuries, but I worry about the limited snaps they may see if the Pats’ offense grinds out some longer drives.

Drew was a bit sleepy since we did this late-night Europe time, but we touched on all 16 games last night and who we’re looking at betting for week three WITH TIME STAMPS.