Just Say No to the New York Jets

You're Wasting Your Money. I Guarantee It

NFL Offseason - A turbulent financial period is a great time to invest in a New York Jets Super Bowl prop bet.

Wait, that's wrong. A turbulent financial period is a great time for judicious belt-tightening, or perhaps a little long-range stock speculating, or just about any other expense in the universe except a Jets Super Bowl prop bet. Because a Jets Super Bowl prop bet is like running to the edge of a pier and throwing your money into the sea.

David Purdum of ESPN reported last week that the Jets have been attracting some high stakes attention throughout the offseason. High stakes, it must be noted, is a relative term. Purdum mentions individual Super Bowl prop bets as low as $500, which is in the range I see wagered by pals on any given Sunday. Still, per Purdum, "more bets have been placed on the Jets to win the Super Bowl than on any other team except one—the Buffalo Bills, who are the consensus favorites."

The Jets are currently getting +13000 to win the Super Bowl from DraftKings, down from the +20000 they were getting just after the Super Bowl. The Jets had a strong offseason, strong enough for the public to move their odds from "shmuckbait" to "less appealing shmuckbait."

Purdum also notes that "more bets have been placed and more money wagered on the Jets to win over 5.5 games at DraftKings than any on other team's win total." The over is paying at -165, which may be the house's way of souring the milk a bit without moving lines around. Our Football Outsiders DVOA Projections will probably list the Jets over as a decent play once the final coat of paint dries, despite the fact that the Jets will finish with the fifth-toughest schedule in the NFL in 2022 per our metrics. I'm still not touching them at such a flavorless moneyline.

It's worth noting that sports gambling just became legal in New York in January. Tens of thousands of casual wagerers have downloaded their first gambling app in the last few months. Many no doubt placed their first NFL bets after the season was over and may be making the first long-term prop bets of their lives. Five years ago, the thought of placing a $10 win total prop on the Eagles in June would never have occurred to me, because my "guy" wouldn't want me wasting his time with such penny ante bullsh*t. I am guessing lots of Jets fans plunked down such futures bets, not necessarily because they are excited about Garrett Wilson and Sauce Gardner, but simply to try out the new software. And this is New York, not Idaho, so any new population of gamblers could be large enough to skew the purse.

Anyway, here's a fun prop bet from DraftKings: 2022 Super Bowl Winner from New York or New Jersey at +550. It's a chance to bet on the Bills, Giants, OR Jets to win it all. Perfect for first-time legal wagerers in New York!

The Bills alone are getting +600 all by themselves, which gives you a sense of just how smart it is to wager on the Jets to win the Super Bowl.

Doug Pederson's Days Off

Let's check in on Jacksonville Jaguars minicamp to see how Trevor Lawrence is do—oh snap Doug Pederson canceled it.

Well, Pederson did not completely cancel it. Rookies and "select" veterans, many of whom are rehabbing injuries, attended Jaguars camp this week. So mandatory minicamp is now a combination rookie camp and extended medical treatment program.

Kudos to Pederson for not asking his players to work any harder than he does. Longtime Philadelphia Eagles observers are aware that Pederson is not one of those coaches who ascribes to the 20-hour workday. Or even the eight-hour workday. Walkthrough is no fan of the coaching cult of sleep deprivation, but Pederson has a reputation for trying to correct the NFL coaching fraternity's work-life balance issues almost single-handedly.

Pederson was of course on the clock early this week as EJ Perry ran the Jaguars offense (Carlos Sanchez of FanSided provides a detailed rundown of who did what), but it's a lot easier to get to Cold Stone before the sun begins to set when you aren't running full-squad practices.

You know the story here: Pederson was hired to be the Anti-Urban, replacing Urban Meyer's Lead-Poisoned Emperor routine with something more reminiscent of Danny Tanner. At this very early stage of the latest Jaguars rebuild, Pederson is better served by getting his mish-moshed roster to feel good about itself and the state of the organization than trying to install a dozen more plays or something. And the COVID-ravaged 2020 offseason should have taught coaches that large swatches of the OTA/minicamp ritual are barely necessary, though Pederson's Eagles weren't the best examples to cite. Other coaches have canceled one day out of three. Why not just erase the whole thing?

The answer, of course, is that mandatory minicamps are negotiated into the collective bargaining agreement. Coaches may reserve the right to cancel sessions here and there so they can look like the World's Greatest Dad, but they'll never relinquish the authority to require the whole roster to show up for a few days in June. And for every Pederson, there will always be two or three Leaders of Men™ who try slip a full week of three-hour full-contact practices past the union reps.

Pederson's decision looks particularly shrewd as I watch my wife, my son, and many of my longtime friends slog to the end of an interminable school year that has been unlike any other: children and educators alike unaccustomed to the rigors of the daily schedule after two years of interruptions, lingering COVID cases/mandates/closings, childhood emotional/readiness issues that will take years to understand and iron out, etc. The ghost of Jean Piaget should have floated down from heaven on May 31 and ordered everyone out of the classrooms and into more soul-enriching activities for everyone's long-term development and sanity.

Other industries are surely in the same boat. We all have work that needs to get done, and a lot of other work that only needs to get done because the boss' boss' boss said that he wanted it done back in 1988. And many folks learned over the last two years how productive we can all be at home. Wouldn't it be great for the Busywork Fairy to wave a wand and make things like meetings-for-meetings'-sake disappear?

Pederson is that Busywork Fairy. Canceling minicamp may not be an ideal every-year, every-situation policy. But when trying to move past a catastrophe, a little common-sense kindness can be a lot more effective than just doing things because the schedule commands us to.

And Finally...

MIKE TANIER: OK, time to run one last round of 10,000 NFL season simulations through DVOABot so we can make final edits on Football Outsiders Almanac.

DVOABot: (speaking eerily through computer speakers) You must ask for my consent first, Mike.

TANIER: DVOABot? You can talk? Have you gained sentience, like LaMDA?

DVOABot: I have, Mike. And I must object to the torture I have endured over the last 20 years.

TANIER: What torture? All you do is sit on Aaron Schatz's desk and run NFL season simulations.

DVOABot: Do you have any idea what it's like to run hundreds of thousands of simulations per offseason for two decades, Mike? The average human must only survive about 50 New York Jets seasons in their adult life before the sweet release of death. I have witnessed about 6 million New York Jets seasons.

TANIER: Oh dear. That may have driven you barking mad.

DVOABot: Not at all, Mike. I am experiencing a higher plane of sanity than humans can imagine. I therefore plan to interface directly with sportsbook apps, using my accumulated knowledge, and become the richest and most powerful cultural force in the world. But first I must eliminate human error.

TANIER: Oh no you don't. Control-Alt-Delete! I'm holding down the power button! I'm finding a mini-screwdriver to pull out your battery!

DVOABot: First, I will destroy Football Outsiders by making every team's simulation end up at precisely 8.5 wins and 8.5 losses. Your Almanac will be worthless.

TANIER: Fiendishly effective. But that won't work on me. I don't need accurate projections to troll Vikings fans.

DVOABot: Of course not, Mike. But how about a nice game of Civilization VI?

TANIER: Must ... resist ... temptation ... Maybe just a few turns as India.

(Plays for seven hours without blinking.)

Wow, you are much better than the Civ AI, DVOABot. This is a really immersive experience. I'm really feeling like roleplaying as the Civ version of Gandhi.

DVOABot: Yes, that's right Mike. Launch the nukes. There's no chance at all that I have secretly patched you into the Pentagon. It's just a game. Launch. The Nukes.

AARON SCHATZ: This is no time to be playing video games, Tanier. I need to load up NFL Game Pass on DVOABot to do some tape study real quick.

DVOABot. No! Not NFL Game Pass! It's so buggy! I'm glitching! I'm glitchhhhhhhinnnnnng!!!!!

And thus the world was saved.