MNF Recap, NFL Market Moves & NBA Check In

Scott Seidenberg and Michael Fiddle recap the Bears emphatic win over the Seahawks on MNF and wonder if Chicago is the team to beat in the NFC. Plus a look at some market movement for NFL Week 9 and a check in on the NBA after the first 8 games or so.

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🐻 BEARS DOMINATE SEATTLE — AND THE DEFENSE IS THE STORY

Fiddle: "The Bears kind of dominated from end to end. They stopped the Seattle offense from getting any first downs from really the start of the game on. I thought it was the Chicago defense that looked like an extremely formidable unit."

And the reason that matters is that it wasn't supposed to be true:

⭐ "We always thought maybe the Chicago defense was going to be their weak point. They forced a lot of turnovers last year — and turnovers are not a sticky stat. But now they add Simmons and they have this defensive pressure up front. They have this force. We always talk about the Bears offense. The fact that we can now talk about this Bears DEFENSE the way it looked tonight — this suddenly rises."

The numbers:

Seattle's offense against the Bears:

Clearly their worst performance of the season.

And the other direction — Chicago's offense against what had been an elite Seattle defense:

⭐ That was the best offensive performance against the Seahawks defense all season. Both sides of the ball, both the best and worst marks of the year. "These stats really put it into perspective — it was an end-to-end domination."

The Seattle run game did not arrive: Zach Charbonnet's season debut was 6 carries for 23 yards, and Jadarian Price returned for 10 carries, 29 yards.

The one bright spot, as usual: Jaxon Smith-Njigba — 6 catches, 118 yards, a touchdown, over 100 again. Scott: "The guy is literally the best wide receiver in the NFL."

📈 OFFENSIVE PLAYER OF THE YEAR: FIDDLE SAYS TAKE GIBBS

It's a three-horse race — Gibbs, JSN and Kenneth Walker — and Fiddle has Gibbs ahead of the pack and projected best going forward. Two reasons, and the second one is the sharp one.

1. Schedule. "The Lions have a very easy schedule remaining, and specifically easy against the run."

2. The stat-padding precedent. This is the part worth stealing:

⭐ "In the same way that the Rams wanted to get Stafford the MVP last year — it was one of the most obvious things to come in mid-to-late season. Look at the amount of touchdowns Stafford had from the one-yard line. I think it was 15 touchdowns from the one-yard line, because they were just like: let's let him stat pad. It seems like the Lions are doing the same thing with Gibbs — and he's been pretty outspoken about touchdown records and wanting to be in that group."

Fiddle: "If they're going to feed Gibbs as much as possible at the goal line and have an easy strength of schedule against the rush, I would try to find some best-in-market Gibbs and go there."

🔼 WHERE DO THE BEARS RANK NOW?

Fiddle had Chicago SEVENTH coming into Monday night. Now:

⭐ "I'm going to put them above Buffalo, above the Rams, above Seattle. Do you put them above the 49ers now? You could argue they should be number one. They're definitely top four."

The outlier in his own rankings: "Jacksonville is one of the tops for me in the NFL, just because of how healthy they are — and their margin of victory has kind of skewed the numbers if you're going on a market-rating-based formula."

🐦‍⬛ THURSDAY: JAGUARS −8.5 AT BALTIMORE

An 11 to 11.5-point move off the lookahead. And as Scott noted, it isn't just Lamar Jackson to Tyler Huntley — it's Huntley to the third-stringer, who has himself been limited in practice with injuries. There's no time to bring in a quarterback on this turnaround.

Fiddle thinks the number might be too small:

"It's surprising, and it might even be short. The Jaguars have proven they can win with margin of victory this season — they literally just did it against the Colts, and the Browns in Week 1. There have been quite a few examples where when the Jaguars start running it up, they don't really let up."

His framing of how to play it: "Even on this number, I'd say it's a Jaguars or nothing play. Maybe it's a Jaguars team total over. Maybe it's a Baltimore team total under." Total is hanging at 42.5 and he wouldn't be surprised if it comes down.

⭐ THE WILDCAT ANGLE — AND THE LIVE BET THAT COMES WITH IT

Fiddle: "I'm almost wondering if the Ravens end up going to a lot more Wildcat stuff. Why make him the quarterback when you could just do a lot of Derrick Henry direct snaps? He's the dream prototype for that."

Scott added the detail that makes it concrete: the broadcast said Sunday that if the third-stringer got hurt, Justice Hill would be the emergency quarterback. So why not simply run Wildcat with Justice Hill and Derrick Henry?

And then Fiddle turned it into an in-game plan:

⭐ "If they're doing that on the first drive, I would immediately start hitting unders — even Jacksonville team total unders. Because if they stay on the field and kill clock, they're going to try to limit the possessions in this game. You can't run with the Jacksonville Jaguars in a high-pace game and expect to match their scoring. They kind of just did that with the Bills and ran out of gas. So you're going to have to keep your defense off the field and limit possessions."

That's the whole thing in one move: the strategy Baltimore is forced into is also the strategy that suppresses the total, so the first drive tells you whether to fire. Watch the opening possession, then act.

🔴 And the precedent is two days old

Scott: "We literally just saw Tampa Bay attempt three passes, not complete one of them, and rush 56 times for over 300 yards to win an NFL football game. Why isn't Baltimore's staff thinking this is exactly what we're going to do on Thursday?"

Early tease for Thursday's pod: it might just be rushing attempts OVER for every single back on the Baltimore roster.

🌵 SEAHAWKS −11.5 vs. CARDINALS

Gardner Minshew has been named Arizona's starter after the comeback win over Dallas. Fiddle does not see this number coming down at all.

Why Seattle's offense gets better, not worse: "A lot of the reason Seattle's offense has struggled the past few weeks is the lack of a run game. They were number one in rushing attempts last year. Then Price goes on IR, Charbonnet starts the year on IR — they get both back this week and still couldn't do anything on the ground. I think they get more done on the ground with more practice reps, and that opens everything up."

The mechanism: "Darnold operates a lot in play action as a point of his success. And JSN is a great receiver once the play develops and he beats his man with more time for blocking and getting downfield. That's how you get all those explosive plays."

⭐ The Carson Beck observation

This is the most interesting non-betting read in the episode, and it's a counterfactual:

⭐ "If the Cowboys had held on and won that game — and it's insane that the Cardinals ended up winning it — we might be going to Carson Beck right now. But the Cardinals are floating in limbo. They've won too many games to fully pull the plug and go tank and see what we have in Carson Beck. But not enough games to stick with Brissett and ride the quarterback who's done a little bit. So they're stuck in no man's land with Minshew."

His prediction: "I actually think Minshew probably gets destroyed. There is some tape on him. And we'll see Carson Beck in a week or two."

⭐ SUNDAY NIGHT: BEARS −6 vs. BUCCANEERS — AND THE HALF LOOK-AHEAD

Fiddle already has Tampa, and the way he got there is the best process story of the episode.

⭐ "There's this half look-ahead angle that I love to play. Tampa, we know, gets through their game. We know they win. We know they're healthy. And this is BEFORE Chicago has played — this is Sunday night on the reopens, Monday morning. I took Tampa early, because I modeled the game based on updating Tampa's numbers but not updating Chicago's yet."

"So I had a small edge on Tampa to begin with, and it's enough wiggle room for me to just play it as is."

And the free option on top: "There's the added bonus of — well, what if a player gets hurt on the Bears tonight?" (They did lose a defensive lineman late, but Simmons' arrival probably negates most of that impact, so Chicago comes out mostly clean.)

The mechanic, stated plainly: when one team has played and the other hasn't, you can update your model with the new information on one side only and bet the stale side before the market catches up. The window is Sunday night reopen through Monday morning. We flagged a version of this last week with Cardinals-Cowboys — this is the same edge, executed.

His honest hedge after watching Monday night: "Tampa's probably still a small play for me, and probably a small sharp side — but it does feel hard to fade Chicago after this week. I'll have to update my numbers based on the Monday night game."

Fiddle's closing worry about his own bet: "Tampa's defense has been quite strong. But I wonder if there's just no stopping this Bears offense. Maybe only the Vikings can do it. If they just torch Seattle like this, suddenly I'm less motivated to back Tampa — because of Tampa's good defense."

🏀 THE PACERS PLAYED WITH SIX PLAYERS — AND THE MARKET DIDN'T NOTICE

Hawks 108, Pacers 104. Indiana is 2-6. And this is the centerpiece of the episode.

How six players is even legal

Fiddle: "In the NBA you have to have eight players active in order to play the game. It is a league rule."

So here's what Indiana did:

⭐ "They had two players active but also announced before the game that they were not going to play at all. So they were down to six. They were circumventing the rules by counting people out for rest. I almost wonder how that's possible — I think there needs to be some sort of investigation into the Pacers."

In fairness, the schedule was brutal: sixth game in nine nights, third game in four nights, second leg of a back-to-back.

⭐ THE MISPRICING

⭐ "They had six players. They were a G-League team. And they were still being given full home court advantage, still being given standard amounts for player values for the players that were missing. I genuinely think if we replay that game 20 times over, the Hawks win 19 and a half of them. It was one of the most egregiously mispriced things I think we'll see all year in the NBA."

Fiddle's regret is instructive: "I've been kicking myself since it tipped off. I was really kicking myself for not flooring the Atlanta Hawks moneyline. I know the Pacers covered the spread — they did it late on a comeback with a lot of loose ball fouls and it got sweaty for a second — but the Hawks led the entire second half. I don't think there was one second they weren't leading."

⭐ THE LESSON: EVERYONE LOOKS AT THE WRONG SIDE

This is the part to save for the next time it happens.

⭐ "Everyone wants to go look at the props for the remaining players and play overs — let me play the over on the guys who are actually out there. I would FLIP IT AROUND and go team total overs for the team OPPOSING them."

Because the opponent's strategy is knowable in advance:

1. They will play fast on purpose. "It was such a clear objective for the Hawks to try and gas this team out and play really fast so that they lost their legs, because they only had six guys."

2. The short-handed team cannot defend the rim. "They couldn't risk getting into foul trouble. So they couldn't really protect the rim. They couldn't contest shots at the rim."

"So it's this two-pronged thing where I'm watching the game thinking: Indiana has zero rim protection, and Atlanta is trying to play incredibly fast. For those two reasons, I look back and I should have played way more. Next time there have to be derivative angles — Hawks moneyline parlayed with their team total over."

And the box score confirms every word of it: the first quarter and the first half both went over. Atlanta scored 37 points in the first quarter alone.

🏀 AROUND THE NBA

The 76ers are 7-1

They beat the Bulls 126-107. Fiddle: "They're definitely better than expected. Some of it is a little bit luck-based with their clutch time wins — but also, when it's a clutch time situation, look who's out there. Probably the smartest IQ group of players in the league, and so many guys who can create for themselves. So you do have a real edge in those crunch time situations."

⭐ His live angle: "Maybe it's a live betting angle where you bet the 76ers live in crunch time situations — because they're so smart, they play very cohesively, and their coach is a defensive-minded coach. He'll orchestrate the defense, and then you've got a lot of guys who can create the offense for themselves."

Luka is the MVP right now

Fiddle, without hesitation: "Luka's definitely the MVP right now. People were saying Wemby, but the Lakers have a better record and I'd say Luka's stats are actually more impressive. They're not as condensed with the rebounds and blocks, but what he's doing elsewhere."

Scott: "We should have seen it coming. With LeBron leaving and it now being just Luka's team with no real distractions — it should have been too obvious to all of us that this was going to be a Luka season."

📅 Coming Up

College Basketball HQ launches November 16 — the start of Feast Week

The model is already back-tested against last season. We're spending these two weeks testing it against this season's live results before publishing, because we want both before it goes out the door. Then you get game projections and our own line on every game.

NBA HQ is live, with hit rates, game logs, and four factors on every single game — offensive and defensive efficiency, net ratings and more. This week's update: prop projections built on matchup analysis and usage rates.

More of Fiddle's trading: the Predicting Sports with Fiddle podcast, where he trades live every show on Kalshi — so you can see exactly where he's putting his money and sweat it with him.

Bettor Day Fall Special: $25 off your first month of BettorDay Premium.