Every week Adam from Talent Alone brings you an article curated from a list of Team Talent Alone. Who is Team Talent Alone? Well, you can see the list here. These are a group of players that, due to fantasy, priors or playing for the Commanders, Adam feels a sense of #take ownership of these players.

Week 5 is in the books and we are on the precipice of Week 6 kicking off with Chiefs Broncos, but we’re not here to talk about Week 6 quite yet. This article has been rebranded from My Guys to Team Talent Alone because… well I didn’t like the old name and it’s my website god damnit.

This week’s thesis was supposed to be “What is going on with _____?” however, after much research and consulting with the stars the answer turned out to be “Not much.”

So instead this week will be about Gambling and Kam Curl Film Review. Big Surprise right?

The Quarterback Bets

So here’s the way this section will work. I’ve gone through and looked at every main QB prop (Passing O/U, Rushing O/U, Anytime Scorer, Passing Touchdown O/U, and Interception O/U) as well as their closing line and determined what the best bet would be for each QB on the list if you could only take one bet for the first six weeks (e.g. if you could only bet Lamar Jackson Over Rushing Yards or Under Passing Yards each week, what would have made the most money). I’m going to talk a bit about the QB and then tell you what their most profitable side has been to date this year. You’ll get it as we go along.

Lamar Jackson

In my many years covering the NFL, I have found that certain players can not shake draft priors. We can see this reflected in things like Awards voting (see Defensive Rookie of the Year), Starting opportunities (Sam Darnold) or even how we talk about a player for their career. I mean hell, it took until 2007 for us to admit Tom Brady might be more than a system QB.

I feel this is heavily reflected in the way we talk about Lamar Jackson. His draft stock wasn’t too low to be a sleeper or too high to be undisputed. Every team except Houston, Kansas City and Philly (half credit because they traded the Lamar pick to Baltimore) passed on Lamar, even Baltimore picked Hayden Hurst seven picks ahead of Lamar.

Your thoughts on Lamar are probably going to stay your thoughts on Lamar. If you think he’s a poor passer you’ll point to his low yearly Passing Yards and Touchdown, if you think he’s a good passer you’ll point to his poor receiving talent and large number of drops. Just to show what side I’m on here, let’s look at a clip:

That is a drop that would have been a touchdown followed the next play by a drop that would have been a touchdown.

Okay, that’s a lot of preamble to basically say, you’ll see what you want to see in the data. Without further adieu, the Most Profitable Lamar Jackson prop through Week 5 is:

Passing Touchdown Over

So far Lamar has hit this over 3 out of the 5 weeks and twice at plus-money odds. If you blindly bet this every week at $100 you’d be sitting at a profit of $208.59

Anthony Richardson

I am a staunch detractor of the practice of keeping receipts. Whether in the online blog community or just in regards to Costco (like I’m ever going to return the 5 lbs bag of quinoa I bought) receipts only stand to take up space and be thrown away.

Before the season started, one of the writers at Talent Alone repeatedly on his podcast, talked about how Bryce Young was too small to play NFL QB. His concern was that Young would be a walking injury waiting to happen.

Whomever this mystery writer was, also insisted that Anthony Richardson was going to be great, maybe even went so far as to pick him to win Rookie of the Year.

So far into the year, Bryce Young has 165 dropbacks to Richardsons’ 98. Not a great early-season look.

Now, as we enter into Week 6, Richardson has been placed on IR and that means he’s out until at least Week 10, which would have him return for a home game against the Patriots right before the Colts go on bye.

Some of the injuries can be chalked up to bad luck, his concussion happened when his head hit the turf in the end zone and it can be hard to mark that up to play style. However, the early career frequency in which he has been hurt is starting to get a little alarming, he’s either been pulled from or kept out of 4 of his 5 games due to injury and that number will soon be at 9 of 10.

Before looking at the data I was positive his most profitable bet would have been rushing under due to the amount of times he’s been pulled from games. I think the market was pushing that number high and probably with a lower vig than the overs. You may be surprised to see that…

Anytime Touchdown Scorer

I was wrong. Now it’s worth pointing out, that Richardson Unders have been way way way more profitable than his Overs, but that’s not what we’re talking about here.

Richardson has found pay dirt in three of the four games he’s played and if you had just blindly bet $100 a week you’d be sitting at a cool profit of $365.

C.J. Stroud

C.J. Stroud was the first player ever to be added to Team Talent Alone after the season had already begun. I was so blown away by his early season performance that I broke Three Weeks of precedent to add him to the list. Talent Alone’s own Mike Regan even coined the term Stroud Crowd which has now become a worldwide sensation.

When compared to Young and Richardson, Stroud was the forgotten QB. He was like your friend who clips coupons and waits for sales. It’s not at all interesting but when the clock strikes midnight he’s the one with money while the rest of us bought Starfield for $99 just to play it 4 days earlier.

Stroud’s whole draft wrap was that he does everything well but nothing in the 99th percentile and for some reason we all took that to be a con instead of a pro. Immediately in the NFL, he’s doing everything well. Bryce Young has struggled due to his size and arm strength, Richardson has been hurt and raw while still showing bright flashes of potential and Will Levis has yet to play a snap, but over here, young Coleridge Bernard Stroud IV has thrown for 1461 yards and 7 TDs without throwing an interception in his career.

Stroud is dissecting defenses, moving linebackers with his eyes, and throwing receivers open into their brakes. He’s playing with anticipation and control and he’s only played FIVE GAMES.

It’s always fun to overreact to the first few weeks, and there is something to be said about Bobby Slowik and DeMeco Ryans doing great jobs with the Texans, but I can’t wait to see where Stroud will be as a passer in a few weeks, let alone a few years.

Okay, let’s look at the props. My guess going in (and based on personal betting record) was that the most profitable Stroud bet was going to be the under on interceptions. The Answer:

Interceptions Under

I am so smart. Worth noting, Stroud has hit the covering on passing yards every week too while his under on interceptions has started to cost more and more. A weekly $100 bet on interception under for Stroud would currently have you sitting at a profit of $453.91.

Jordan Love

People are already on the stage of tossing dirt on the casket of Jordan Love. So far into his career, Love has 274 dropbacks, 57.1% completions, 11 Touchdowns and 9 Interceptions. It has not looked good so far.

I’m of two minds on the Love experience. First, I want him to be good because he is an inaugural member of Team Talent Alone and I’m invested in his success. Second, I want him to be bad because it will be so obnoxious if the Packers go from Hall-of-Fame QB to Hall-of-Fame QB to Hall-of-Fame QB while the Commies…. have not. All in all, I guess the good outweighs the bad and I’ll root for a comeback for Love in the coming weeks.

So far here are his PFF grades by week for the 23-24 NFL season:

Week 1 – 62.5

Week 2 – 65.9

Week 3 – 63.9

Week 4 – 68.1

Week 5 – 53.0

That Week 5 game against the Raiders was especially bad where Love threw Three interceptions and Zero Touchdowns. Here’s a great breakdown of the last interception:

What does this tell us about Love? Not much I guess. He got tricked by the defense, almost sacked, and then threw a hero ball that wasn’t so heroic.

I think the jury should still be out on Jordan Love, while he has a lot more games than Richardson and Stroud he also has a much much much younger team around him. There isn’t a Robert Woods around to be his every-catch guy if need be. He is throwing to first-year tight ends and second-year wide receivers. I think we’ll revisit this in the coming weeks and see what we’re feeling on Love.

Alright, betting time. My assumption here is that either Over on Interceptions or Over on passing touchdowns will be the best bet:

Anytime Touchdown Scorer

Yep. I’m surprised too. He’s only hit this bet twice and that was at +500 and +750 and that’ll sure as shit inflate your profit margins. If you had bet $100 on this prop every week you’d be sitting at a whopping $950 of profit right now.

Actually, Kam Curl is Fine

As a Commies fan, I’m starting to worry that this team isn’t going to win the Super Bowl. The defense has been anemic allowing 32 points per game to opposing teams. That puts them in the 31st spot above the team that let up 50 a few weeks ago.

As such, I wanted to go back into the tape and figure out what was wrong, however, since this dumb article with its dumb rules doesn’t have a “Just watch tape clause”, I went back to see if our resident defensive Swiss army man, Kamren Curl was broken or not.

Okay first, I have a detour on my philosophy of relying on defense. I’ll mark it with dividers so that you can skip it if you’re just hungry for mild Kam Curl takes.

Defense is typically not sustainable year over year and I believe there are two reasons for this.

First, defense is a reactive phase, whereas offense is proactive. That means that when the ball is snapped, the offense knows what will happen and the defense is just guessing. Now defense can mitigate this in a lot of ways. They can predict outcomes based on personnel groups or tendencies. They can rotate coverage or stunt so the QB is confused about what the defense is going to do or they can have players like Kam Curl who play in the box, the secondary, and on the line. All of this mitigates the issue but doesn’t solve it. No matter what, at the snap, the offense knows what will happen and the defense reacts.

Second, an offense can pick on a weak link. A defense can double cover and load the box and do whatever they want to dissuade the offense from getting the ball into the best player’s hands but the defense can pick out the worst defensive player and run play after play in their direction. Look no further than Philidelphia vs Emmanuel Forbes Jr. In that game, Hurts targeted Forbes 13 times for 197 yards and 2 TDs. There was nothing Washington could do nothing to force Hurts to target another player. Double Coverage, Zone, Man it didn’t matter. Philly knew where the weak spot was and they pushed it over and over until it broke.

I say all of that out to say…

Kam Curl has been largely ineffective but it isn’t his fault. There isn’t really good or bad to talk about after watching his tape. Defenses are targeting St. Juste and Forbes a ton in coverage and Kam Curl is either out of the play or lined up on the D-line. If this was a general film breakdown article, the point would be that Del Rio has lost a step calling defense. Or maybe he has a foot out the door since it might be time to clean house for new ownership. However, since this is about the one list of guys let’s talk a bit about Kam Curl.

The Bad

Okay, so there are some things I noticed on the Kam Curl tape. He seems to be, to use a basketball term, dying on screens. Now I could clip together a bunch of plays where Kam Curl lines up in the box and dives down to stop the run only to get blocked out of the play by a guard or fullback, but instead, I’m going to tell you to take my word for it and show you one play where he gets blocked into next Tuesday.

Worth the price of admission for the article right?

The Good

When Kam Curl is able to be involved in the play, he’s still playing like a franchise guy. He’s excelled in coverage where so far he’s only allowed 118 yards on 19 targets all season. Here he is, cleaning up for Forbes after Forbes trips on his route.

He’s playing all over the field too. He has double-digit snaps at FS, Slot, D Line, and in the Box. He even figured out an innovative way to stop the QB Cheek.

I can’t tell you much of what the big takeaways are here but I can tell you, Kam Curl is fine and invests in offense GMs.