Seth Payne and Sean Pendergast react to and assess ESPN sports betting Analyst Joe Fortenbaugh's case against the 2024 Texans making the playoffs.
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00:00Sports Radio 610 presents Payne and Pendergast. Joe Fortenbaugh is a former radio host in San Francisco, in the Bay Area. He's on ESPN now. He's probably one of their top gambling experts out there.
00:15Yeah, Meltzer and I used to have him on a lot, actually. Who did? Meltzer and I. Oh, did you? We used to have him on a lot in the midday. Yeah, he's really good.
00:23Some of our listeners, most of our listeners back then were probably college kids, so some of those guys actually wake up in the morning now and probably listen to the morning show. Maybe, I hope so.
00:34That'd be good. Joe Fortenbaugh is excellent, I think. He's really good. He was on, it looked like he was substituting on first take yesterday, so he was on first take.
00:43And they asked him, which team do you think could be a big disappointment this year? And Texan fans, if you want to avert your ears, it's up to you, but he says you're Houston Texans.
00:55I'm going to take the Houston Texans. I'm going to say they missed the playoffs this year. You start with the fact that everybody loves the Houston Texans. Yeah, that's how they built Caesars Palace out in Las Vegas, because everybody with the exact same opinion often works.
01:08But that's just the joke part of it, right? They're a 10-win team from last year. You peel back a lot of what they did. There's reason to believe some regression could be coming.
01:16Everyone is very fixated on C.J. Shryock's fantastic. D'Amico Ryan's fantastic. Sky, five years, it's stock you want to own. Next year, I think there's a step back.
01:23Number one, seven and three in one score games last year. That's an outlier performance. That regresses to the mean. It means you end up losing more games next year.
01:30Number two, top five in turnover differential. There's no stat that predicts wins and losses more than turnovers. The turnover differential falls back, and they were on the outlier side of the spectrum.
01:39If that falls back, you have losses there as well. Another thing no one really talks about when we just gush over this team, which again, they deserve a lot of it, they had a very easy schedule last year.
01:49They have a top seven schedule in terms of difficulty this year. Targets on their back. People are coming for them. So you go ahead and you take a tougher schedule.
01:56You take a couple indicators that probably aren't going to break their way. One score games comes back to earth. Turnover differential comes back to earth.
02:03They did at Steph Diggs. There's a lot to like about them. Again, three and five years out. I think that's the team that, keep in mind, in that division, Jacksonville's a buy low for me, and I think Indianapolis is going to be right in the hunt too.
02:15And if you miss winning through the division, you got to grab a wild card spot. And competing for one of three wild card spots in the AFC, it's a tall order.
02:23Makes a lot of good points and makes points that appeal to my sensibilities. It would make sense because he's a fellow degenerate gambler. Things like the one score games regressing, the turnover differential regressing.
02:35And he's right. I'm surprised how few people point out the difficulty of the Texan schedule when they analyze the Texans.
02:41You know, one thing that's kind of strange this year, Sean, and why I'm not as worried about the relative strength of schedule stuff, is that most of the teams that you look at as potential contenders or teams to worry about in the AFC actually have, they're in the top in the difficulty of schedule segment.
03:01The Ravens are, the Browns are, the Bills are. Kansas City is just on the easy side. They've got the 12th easiest schedule. But there's not a lot of the contenders in the AFC that have a really easy schedule.
03:17So some of that balances out as iron sharpens iron around the league. The other part of it, too, is that I'd like, yes, the preseason strength of schedule usually changes drastically by virtue of a couple of bad teams being good and a couple of bad teams, good teams being bad.
03:34So I don't worry about that right this moment. Now, if you're trying to predict out into the future and gambling and setting a line, then yes, that does matter. So I appreciate everything he was saying about the one score games. I think that sometimes where people make an error with that isn't just assuming you're going to have the same number of one score games.
03:57It's OK to win by more than one score. And if a team has improved, then it would. So analyzing last year's team, yes, it's very possible that they could have easily missed the playoffs. They could have ended up not even being close to the playoffs if they'd had some bad luck in some of those one score games.
04:14You have to look at the offseason changes and additions and the assumed return to health of a good portion of the starters. Not that that's 100 percent guaranteed, that it's just it's not such a slam dunk guarantee that those would be one score games this year if this same team played those last year's games.
04:34Absolutely. I think he he you I don't think you can mention the luck element of one score games, the luck element of turnover differential without mentioning the bad luck element of all the injuries they suffered last year. I think you're being disingenuous in your analysis if you don't put that in there. Joe Fortenbaugh and I like Joe a lot. I know Joe. I like him a lot, but I think you think he's an idiot.
04:58In this particular case, I thought he brushed by something. Two things. The injury issue and just the kind of the casual mention of the addition of digs as if the Texans didn't do some major things in the offseason to improve the team like this is this is not they are not going into this season against a tougher schedule with the exact same group of players that went 10 and seven last year.
05:19They significantly upgraded the wide receiver room with digs. They significantly upgraded the pass rush with the Neil Hunter. If Joe Mixon can ever get back on the field, I think they significantly upgraded at the running back position as well. And you add that to what should be better injury luck. And I think this is an improved version of the Texans going against an admittedly much more difficult set of opposing quarterbacks.
05:41Yeah. And I do think that it's the additions in the way they spent in free agency. I liked it because for the most part, you know, sometimes the NFL free agency is especially dicey because you don't know how a guy's going to fit into a certain scheme or this or that.
05:56The guys that they brought in, you know, you bring in a pass rusher and generally, even though it's a different scheme, rushing off the edge is rushing off the edge. So Daniel Hunter is going to be that same guy. You brought in Al Shire, who's already actually played for D'Amico Ryan's already and isn't some aging guy that played for D'Amico Ryan's. He's still very much in the prime of his career.
06:20I think the biggest X factors in terms of it being an actually better team are that. Hey, Stephen Nelson, for all of the weirdness that surrounded him for the last couple of years, he's a solid, dependable veteran NFL cornerback. I feel really good about Kari Lassiter, but he's still a rookie and he's still unproven. So we just flat out don't know until we until we see what we have of them.
06:41Yep. Text message. I'm not trying to be the eternal optimist, but regression is not guaranteed. It's not. And Joe knows that Joe again, like Joe is a handicapper. So he's playing the percentages. The percentages say that there's there's a better chance they regress then attain those levels again in those games.
06:59It's a little bit more complicated than that because it's not the same entity. That's always the now when it comes to turnover rate and everything, I think sometimes sometimes people overstate the randomness of it. There are some teams that do a good job forcing turnovers. I actually think the Texans underperformed in that regard, given the way D'Amico's defense is constructed. I think if anything, they'll actually create more takeaways this year because of an improved pass rush, which is a big turnover yielder.
07:29And also, if you've got that good pass rush aside from the strip sacks, you're playing a lot of zone and guys can pounce on it. And the other side of it, something that's very consistent year over year is quarterbacks and how much they turn the ball over. Yes. And I don't think it was an accident that CJ didn't throw many interceptions last year.
07:45He got lucky a few times, like every single quarterback does. Like every time I bring this up, people point out some dropped interceptions. Yeah, that's it happens with every single quarterback in the league. He was very careful with the football last year as a rookie. So I don't I don't worry about that. I don't. But I think if there's if there's a regression that's negative for the Texans, I think on the turnover side, I actually think there's a better chance that CJ turns the ball over more this year just because he'll be through five picks.
08:12Last year, like it was a remarkably efficient year in terms of protecting the football. I just think that's a really, really hard number to to be at again this year. The one score games and you brought the one score games also. And and it's a great point that they they don't have to be one score games. Some of those games that they were involved in during that stretch, that eight game stretch where it came down literally eight games in a row came down to the last minute, if not the last play of the game.
08:39So many of those games, I think a more experienced team would have put teams away like there's that Bengals game had no business being a one score game. They're up 10 with the ball and CJ throws a near pick six. The Denver Broncos game, which wound up having to be saved by a Jimmy Ward interception.
08:56If the referee doesn't botch a strip fumble six by Desmond King, the Texans are up 23 to three and that game takes on a whole different complexion. There were other games too in that stretch. We're just like you're watching the game. You're like, man, the Texans are just the better team here. How are they letting the Saints hang around in this game? How are they letting the Cardinals hang around in this year? In the case of the Cardinals, they gave up a touchdown. The Texans did on the very first play of the game or like the first series to Rondale more.
09:23So there were so many of those games where I'm like, man, if this were a prize fight and I was just judging it just based on how the two teams are playing and just watching them, the Texans are clearly the better football team and yet they're letting some of these teams hang around in these games.
09:36Right. So if you end up, yeah, if you are an improved team, right. Cause I don't know when people tell me like all the Texans, you know, they very easily could have only won seven games last year. I'm like, oh yeah, that's true. Like I like you'll never get me with that because you can say that about every team.
09:50Like Bill O'Brien was right in saying that it was an eight and eight league. I mean, there is a lot of times a 13 win season happens because you're, it's rare that a 13 win season is because, well, they just, they didn't need the wins at the end of the year and they phoned it in. They were that good. It was, it could have easily been 10 wins. Sometimes it could have been 15 wins. You just, that's the way the NFL operates.