Stealing Lines

This is genuinely so bittersweet for me writing this right now. I want to say thank you to each and every one of you who has supported and believed in us here at Stealing Lines over the past four years. When I first started creating content around football and sports betting not in my wildest dreams did I ever think I would get burnt out by the same thing I originally spent all my time doing but I guess here we are.

When Dalton and I started Stealing Lines four years ago, our goal was to do betting content with a certain type of honesty and transparency. Implicit in that goal was an idea the betting industry can be a little much, with a vibe that if you don’t adhere to certain accepted rules, you don’t belong. Any industry has its norms and best practices, of course, and it’s only natural these things developed in an industry awash with shifty touts who shouldn’t be trusted.

Got asked if I had anything for Stealing Lines subs for the Super Bowl, and the short answer is not really, but I figured I’d talk through the though process anyway so you guys could play it how you want. Coming into this postseason, I felt like this was a pretty wide open field, and a tough one to handicap.

Last week was a fun one to sweat, and we officially finished 3–1. Dalton Kincaid’s over was the lone miss, and I still think it was a strong play. We had roughly six yards of CLV, and he was one close incompletion away from cashing. The issue, in hindsight, is that he still doesn’t look fully healthy — something we couldn’t have known with him being completely removed from the injury report. Omarion Hampton was simply a good news read.

Look, I don’t have a lot to offer after an 0-5 performance last week, but I’m going to go through the same process as always. As always, all minus bets are bet to win 1 unit, all plus bets are risk 1 unit.

The cold streak continued yesterday, with an 0-2 day on Saturday that included the epic Bears’ comeback that put them in a bucket with just the 28-3 game in terms of playoff comebacks. The Rams-Panthers under play was pretty clearly wrong, as Carolina did show up in a big way. I didn’t get this piece written up in time, but played the Buffalo-Jacksonville over in Discord, so hopefully you saw that. Let’s get to the plays for the rest of Wild Card weekend.

Happy Wild Card Weekend! For football fans like us, this is easily the best weekend of the year. Apologies for getting this out a bit later than usual. When I’m not sending out props, I’m running Apex Fantasy Leagues — and with playoff drafts in full swing, it’s been a busy week. Last week was an excellent one. We finished 5–0, which was a great breakthrough after hovering around breakeven for a few weeks. For tracking purposes, we now sit at 51–34, up 10.34 units with a 10.42% ROI.

I think since the start of Stealing Lines, I’ve never done Week 18 picks, but I felt compelled to do a few last week. That went great, with an 0-3 record. The Bucs failing to cover -3 after a blocked field goal could push them from 9 to 12 and then the Panthers converted a fourth-and-8 with a 40-yard pass play with about three minutes remaining to eventually score a TD and turn that 9 into a 2-point final margin was a tilting backdoor. The other two were just clear misses.

Typically, I don’t do Week 18 bets, because it’s so difficult to ascertain motivation and every year we see some teams act rationally and others don’t. This year’s been a little bit unique, though, with a lot sorted even before Week 17, so we got some idea of how the different teams are approaching it. We also have some clear showdowns here in the final weekend and there are a couple I do like.

The football season flew by, and suddenly we’ve reached the final week of the regular season. Last week we finished 3–2 once again. Quentin Johnston went way over, and Jacory Croskey-Merritt unfortunately busted our under with a single big run, but the other three plays came through. For the season, we’re 46–36, up 5.34 units with a 5.71% ROI. I’d always like the record and ROI to be higher, but there was a learning curve with this being my first year sending out NFL bets.