Razor-Thin Margins and Coaching Decisions Dictate Playoff Football Outcomes

The following is a transcript of an audio recording. This transcript has been generated automatically and may not be completely accurate.

The Herd with Colin Cowherd

Episode Title: 3 & Out - NFL & CFB Best Bets: NFL's Playoff Weekend & College Football Playoff's National Championship Game

Episode Description: John is joined by betting guru, Stuckey from The Action Network to break down the upcoming HUGE weekend in the NFL and the College Football National Championship Game. They dive into all the action, key storylines, and deliver their expert insight on where the value is for bettors. The action starts on Thursday and they’ve got you covered with sharp analysis and some of the best bets to make this weekend.

Follow John on Twitter, Instagram and YouTube for the latest.

All lines provided by Hard Rock Bet

Check out Gametime - the fastest growing ticketing app in the US, and the official ticketing app of 3 & Out and GoLow - for tickets to all of your favorite NFL, NBA, NHL, NCAA teams. Concert and comedy show tickets, too. Go to Gametime now to create an account, download the app and use code JOHN for $20 off your first purchase. #Volume

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The American Express Corporate Card program is more than a card, it's a complete solution. Apply for the right card for your employees, from everyday spenders to frequent travelers. Issue virtual cards to suppliers or project teams for added security and flexibility. Simplify accounts payable with American Express One AP, helping your company automate supplier payments. The American Express Corporate Card program grows with you. Terms apply, enrollment required, and fees may apply, including an auto-renewing monthly platform access fee. Suppliers must be enrolled and located in the United States.

If you only listen to one thing to make sense of the news this year, make it this: the final episode of this season of Next Question pulls together the most important conversations of the year. You'll hear David Graham on Project 2025, Liz Oyer on the plethora of presidential pardons, Tina Brown on the year's biggest scandals here at home and across the pond, plus much, much more. It's a crash course in the last 12 months, how we made it through the year, and a look at what might be coming in 2026. Listen to Next Question with me, Katie Couric, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

On June 11th, 1998, a deputy from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department went missing. "If they'll kill a cop and bury him, what are they going to do to me?" What really happened to the missing deputy? Valley of Shadows, a new series from Pushkin Industries about crime and corruption in California's high desert. Listen to Valley of Shadows on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

You know, we always say "new year, new me," but real change starts on the inside. It starts with giving your mind and your spirit the same attention you give your goals. Hey everybody, it's Michelle Williams, host of Checking In on the Black Effect Podcast Network. On my podcast, we talk mental health, healing, growth, and everything you need to step into your next season, whole and empowered. New year, real you. Listen to Checking In with Michelle Williams from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

What is going on everybody? John Middlekauff, Three and Out podcast. How are we doing? Presented by my friends at Zone Pouches. Today, we will be talking to Stucky. We recorded on Wednesday. If you're listening to this, I'm either headed to the hospital, in the hospital, maybe have a kid by now, maybe I don't yet. We'll see if we get pushed back for emergencies. I don't mean emergencies, I'm just saying if C-section, if there are other emergencies, we get pushed back, so it's a fluid situation. But we'll have Stucky on today, talk about the games. We'll look back a little bit and talk about at the end the College Football National Championship. Also up on Netflix, Stucky's Netflix debut. Yeah, so make sure you check that out. We have all of our content up there. Obviously, if you're listening audio, Spotify, Apple, subscribe to the podcast. If you listen on Collins, I appreciate you doing that. Tomorrow, we recorded with Josh Pate. He's, it looks like ESPN's about to build a show around the guy, fellow ball brother. That will be tomorrow. Yeah, it's a game plan for the week, so let's just, you guys know him, he's here every week. Let's dive into my main man, Stucky.

Wild Card Weekend Recap

We've been doing this every week for years. For those of you watching that are new to this, this is my good friend Stucky. He is a fellow degenerate gambler, works for the Action Network. You can find him all over the place. Big Bets on Campus guy, is dialed in on college football and basketball, and knows the National Football League from a gambling standpoint as well as anyone I've ever been associated with. So we do this all throughout the football season, and he just had a baby as well. So he's got a new baby, he's got basketball season in full swing, he's got the NFL playoffs. Probably slept, my guess would be over/under eight hours this entire week, and going right into a massive, massive weekend for the National Football League. Stucky, how are you holding up?

Yeah, under on that. Everything's going well. I had a rough, I had a rough Wild Card Weekend. I loved my card. The Jags first half was one of my favorite bets of the year. Jags first half money line, I had him, I think, plus 102, closed like minus 145. They missed a field goal, Parker Washington gets hurt, Trevor Lawrence's shin goes down. That was rough. The Packers were one of my favorite bets. That was absolute pain. It's only the second time in playoff history a team has scored 25 or more points in the fourth quarter and/or overtime in a 15-plus point comeback. The other was the Falcons against the Patriots in the Super Bowl, or I should say the Patriots against the Falcons in the Super Bowl when they were down 28-3. That was one of my biggest losses ever. I had the Falcons plus four and a half, one of the most painful losses and one of the biggest financially. So that was like reliving that.

The 28-3 Comeback

How cocky were you at 28-3 that day?

Yeah, I thought it was over. The sequence of events that had to happen, I mean, this is what Bears games have been like all season. You had McManus missing kicks left and right. The fourth and eight, that was the game. You have to give Caleb credit for that throw on fourth and eight, but if they don't call the false start, the ball snaps over his head, the game's over. If they don't convert that fourth and eight, the Packers have the ball at midfield up 11 with six to go. But yeah, I thought it was over, and then when they scored again, then I got a little nervous, and then when they scored again to go up 11, I thought it was over. But then after that fourth and eight, I was like, you never know with this Bears team, I've seen this story. Then they get the two-point conversion, the Packers missed more kicks. If you think about it, if they just, the margins are so thin in the NFL playoffs from a betting perspective and just in how these games are decided. The Jags, they have an All-Pro kicker, they made 20 kicks in a row. They missed a kick at the end of the first half, which was like a shocky miss, even though it was from like 52. That ends up being the margin. The Packers, if they make any of those kicks, if McManus makes any of those kicks, the extra point or any of the field goals, they missed a kick at the end of the first half too. Then at the end of the day, when they're at the 20-yard line, McManus would probably miss it again, but you could kick a field goal either tied or win it, and you don't need a touchdown there. So the margins are very thin.

Then I had the Chargers, which I was just dead wrong on. Herbert was bad, horrifying. You could blame the offensive line, you could blame the game plan, I don't care. In the first half, he had pockets to throw, he had clean pockets, and he couldn't make the throws. He looked gun-shy, he looked like a rookie. That was the worst I've ever seen him play. Credit to the Patriots, apparently the Chargers offense was confused, but Herbert missed throws, missed wide open guys, and just looked gun-shy. So yeah, didn't get much right on the weekend. Did have some Eagles 49ers under, which I had to sweat, but a couple bad breaks, but that'll happen.

Coaching Decisions and Game Theory

What were you saying, a couple situations? The Jags game, when they only have the one timeout and there's a minute left, would you have knelt the ball, made them burn it, and then, you know, get it down, or I guess they were out of timeouts, so you kneel the ball, you get it to like what, 30-second range to be safe to give yourselves a little time?

I thought, and I get it, you're on the road, but I was like, man, this team is a great kicker. The kickoff rule now shortens the field. I'm all for, I get it, you can't get tricky, but you have the best player on the planet who's dominating this game. The tush push had been working, or the Josh push, or whatever you want to call it. That was a pretty big risk by McDermott that ended up paying off because they get the pick whatever a couple plays later. But I was like, damn, that's, I was crazy. I thought 1000, I tweeted it out immediately. I said, you have to knee, you have to quick knee and then score. What would you run it down to, like 25?

Yeah, 25 seconds, because you also had a timeout, so they had a couple. So like time wasn't an issue for you, but just think about it from a probability standpoint. The chances of you scoring a touchdown on second, third, and fourth and goal, you can get three chances with Josh Allen and the tush push. It's 99, it's maybe 98. You could have a false start, there could be a fumble on the snap, that could happen on first down too. But those chances are so much higher than the chances of you scoring right away and then kicking off. There's a chance the Jags started at the 35. He, Cam Little, was kicking, was making 70-yarders in pre-game warm-ups. He's two of two from 67-plus in his career. The rest of the NFL in NFL history, all the kickers are zero of 22 from 67-plus. You might only need one first down to get in field goal range. That probability is so much higher. So they completely botched it. They got away with it because Lawrence threw a pick, but he also missed the touch. There was a wide open guy on that play that could have ran for a touchdown. I thought McDermott completely botched that. You have to go down there.

There's two other reasons why that was the bad move, that was the incorrect move from a game theory perspective. One, the Jags money line, or the Bills' live money line in the live market, when they scored on first down, their odds went down to win the game. So the market was saying, okay, now the probability of them winning the game is lower than if they would have waited. And number two, the Jags let him score. So the Jags knew that they needed to let the Bills score there to give them the best chance to tie the game and to force overtime. So yeah, it was the wrong move. McDermott almost pulled a, you know, a Chiefs 13-second repeat from a couple years ago when they messed up the kickoff and then they let Kelce catch a pass at the seam to get in field goal range. Now no one will ever talk about it again because Lawrence threw a pick, but I thought it was clearly the wrong move, but they got away with it. Allen was incredible, and I mean, yeah, you just, you just have to go down there. There's no way that they're stopping Allen on three downs from the one.

Yeah, I'm totally with you. Obviously the Eagle game, you know, to lose to that 49er team, wallow from practice squads to Eric Kendricks, who was kind of out of the league, trending toward his career being over, making game-winning plays against you. Kyle is not a trick play guy. I can count on one hand the trick plays he's run in the last five years, but they've all come in big spots. One in the Super Bowl, one in that famous Deebo threw a pass to Jennings against the Rams, Week 18, the Niners had to win to get in the division. They were getting blown out in the first half. I was actually at that game. So he's not, Kyle's not some Ben Johnson with the trick plays. So when he busts them out, he clearly, he's on tilt, knowing his season was on the line, obviously in a playoff game it is. But the underdog mentality, we'll get into that game a little bit later against Seattle. I think they might need like a fake punt or a fake field goal. They should be using some of that type of stuff this week potentially. But man, that was, you know, looking back, it's one of those, I didn't have much faith just because, and part of it was recency bias, it wasn't even just the Seattle game, it was the week before against Chicago when they were just scoring and it's like, will, like this defense is just out of bodies. But I mean, what, you know, we talk a lot about coaching performances, but Kyle and Salah coming out of that, I mean, that's a pretty legendary performance by those two guys. Unbelievable. They deserve all the credit.

That's the beautiful thing about, and it makes it tough to bet on, obviously lines are really efficient this time of year, but this is, you know, I'll spend all week diving into tendencies and NFL teams change on a week-to-week basis, but especially in the playoffs, you can flip right, and that's when you, you can flip everything, these highest leverage games. But I thought Salah did a tremendous job with his fifth, sixth, and seventh string linebackers. Part of what, you know, like Salah deserves a ton of credit for what he's working with and what he's done all year, but part of that was the story of the Eagles all year. This is a team, they went 20, they went a stretch after they went on a 96-yard touchdown drive, they went 27 plays for 24 yards over that. This just happened all year, no matter who they played, and it is just how many hitches can you run? They couldn't run the ball on anybody. But I thought Shanahan, because that Eagles defense, which was healthy too, was one of the most elite units in the NFL all year. Additionally, you had wind going up against that defense, going up against a Fangio defense that in four head-to-head meetings, Shanahan had never cleared 15 points, averaging 10.25 points per game. Clearly had Shanahan's number, so he made, I just thought he called a hell of a game, used the trick play at the right time. I didn't think they were going to be able to hit that many pass explosives. DeMarcus Robinson looked like Jerry Rice out there. So I thought Shanahan was unbelievable to lose Kittle too, to go down that, that drive to take the lead was awesome. But it also was a fitting end, you know, microcosm of the entire season for the Eagles. Although I didn't expect a defense to get torched like that, but the offense, it was an overdue that that's how they would, that they would end their season because Petula and that offense, it was just a disaster from day one.

Petula, and you've been rattling off stats, like statistically he is dramatically worse than the Ben Johnson offense, which was obviously struggled, but the quarterback has to get some shit. If he doesn't, he doesn't want to run anymore. That would have been a game Lamar Jackson or Josh Allen would have ran for 85 to 100 yards. He couldn't, in the one play they got two high shells, they wanted to run, the one play they got called back, he could have had that play all game long. Quarterback sweeps, quarterback, but he doesn't want to do it clearly because it's not like the staffs, like let's just outrun Jalen, they're not that dumb. It's the quarterback. I told this to Colin on Sunday night, I think he views himself like Russell did, like once they won the Super Bowl, like I'm a pocket quarterback, I'm not running anymore. And Russell was even less of a runner than like Jalen is. Jalen is a natural runner in the open field, but he just doesn't want to do it because you should have called like minimum like five quarterback powers. A couple of probably would have hit for like 20 yards.

Yeah, it was that, that was the, that was the defense that you're doing it against. Yeah, there's a Petula doesn't, he gets, he deserves a ton of blame, but certainly not all of it. Hurts should get a lot. The offensive line also was way worse. How many times, no matter who they played, does Barkley, it's not like Barkley lost a step, you can see him once he hit, once he has a hole, still has the same explosives. How many times all year did they hand the ball off to Barkley and immediately he's, he's led the league, led the league touches behind the backfield, you're behind the line of scrimmage. And that, like the 49ers run defense, a team that doesn't get pressure, they were in the backfield all day. So the offensive line deserves some blame as well. And then I think Sirianni and how, I don't want to say that his, the offense was almost, it could kind of took on like his arrogance. Like they would just, they felt like they were just like too cool for school sometimes and they would put a drive together and then they would just be lax and there was no, never any energy. But when he went after, he went after AJ Brown for not getting off the sidelines, they get in each other's face. And then AJ Brown doesn't have a catch the rest of the day. AJ Brown is, it seems like he's the type of guy that is just like, all right, I'm checking out of here. Like Kobe, I ain't shooting. You have to know how to handle the personalities of your team. I would be shocked if he's back in Philly if Sirianni is.

Stucky, AJ Brown is a lock to be traded in the next, probably after the combine, it'll be announced he's been traded.

Yeah, has to be. But like, yeah, what a waste. You have, they have talent. You have AJ Brown, Devonta Smith, Saquon Barkley, you know, Dallas Goedert. On paper, you have one of the better offensive lines. And then the, what a waste for that offense and a talent of roster. But credit to the 49ers for going on the road and getting a win that, you know, not a lot of people saw, including myself, saw happening.

Sharp Bettors and NFL Playoffs

Do you consider yourself, you know, when people said the sharps are on so and so, do you consider yourself a sharp?

I would, I mean, yeah, I would say so. It's, it's, it's all right. Like there's going to be, when one of the things that I will say is that when like last week, the books, they are, they said the sharp sides were like the Jags, Pittsburgh, the Packers. Yeah, the Steelers. I wasn't on the Steelers, but I was on the Jags, the Packers, the Eagles at an early number. And so I tend to be on similar sides. But the number one, there's two, two key points here. The numbers matter. So like when sportsbooks will come out and say like our sharp or accounts, and these are our accounts that are, that are respected and that they'll move on. And you know, you could come in just a guy off the street or Floyd Mayweather and bet even way bigger than some of these respected accounts, they're not going to move off it. But these sharp accounts that win, they'll move the line or respect it based on where some of these accounts are betting. But the number one, the numbers matter. So like there were, there was sharp money on the Eagles, but that was, you know, it opened three and a half, it got up to six. There also was some sharp money that came in on the 49ers at six, right? So numbers matter. There's different entry points. And then there's also going to be conflicting, you know, some sharp groups might like, you know, like the Jags, but there was also some sharp money that came in on the Bills when they got to plus two, plus two and a half. So all of that is just speaking in generals, but it was a rough weekend for a lot of sharp bettors, and including myself.