Betting Public's Bullishness On Texans Makes Sean Pendergast Nervous
Sean Pendergast believes in the Texans. But the betting public's faith in them makes him nervous. He talked about that here with Seth Payne.
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00:00My my big reason that I am nervous about the Houston Texans uh and the Colts this Sunday
00:07has nothing to do with really any matchup or anything like that. I think the Texans have a
00:11good chance of handling Anthony Richardson. I think the Colts, I think it's going to be
00:15tough for them to find answers to CJ Stroud in this passing game uh to the point of our
00:20conversation with Ross Tucker in the previous segment. I am kind of interested to see how the
00:24mouths all get fed on Sunday. I'm not nervous about any of that. What I'm nervous about is
00:28you people out there that are hammering the Texans at minus two and a half. How many of you?
00:33Well I don't know the exact sheer volume in terms of bodies but I can tell you in terms of
00:39percentages that out in Vegas and the various sports books across our great nation, 85 percent
00:45of the bets, 91 percent of the money are on the Houston Texans minus two and a half on the road
00:55at Indiana. And Indy's not a bad team. They're not a bad team. Like normally
01:00you're favored on the road by nearly a field goal. You're probably playing you know unless
01:04you're the Chiefs and you're favored against everybody. You're like the Texans that either
01:09the Colts are getting disrespected here or the Texans are getting incredible respect.
01:14Yeah and I think whenever the public jumps on one side like the public that this is where I
01:20know it makes you nervous. When the public jumps on one side it's a lot of times an indication that
01:28people aren't thinking with their brains as much as their hearts and their guts.
01:32And it makes you nervous. I don't think it should make you nervous Sean in that
01:38the look the odds makers as close as they actually saw this game had it pretty close
01:45to an even matchup. And a lot of that like that doesn't change. The Texans were favored on the
01:53road. I think the odds makers and even if they had already adjusted for public perception at some
01:58point. I think they look at the Texans as right now a better team. If only you go by the fact that
02:04both have a lot of good a lot of pluses on the offensive and defensive side of the ball.
02:08But CJ Stroud is a much more proven commodity at this point than Anthony Richardson. That's a
02:13the giant wild card is that nobody really knows just what Anthony Richardson is as a quarterback
02:19right now. I agree with that. I think this is also a function of the the kind of almost Texans
02:27infomercial that this offseason has been with pundits around the league. You know like they
02:31everybody loves the Texans. They're everybody's surprise team. They're everybody's you know new
02:36contender. They're the answer to many people's who can challenge the Chiefs in the AFC
02:42question. I think it has I think it that has a lot to do with it as well like there's
02:48the the segment that we did like two weeks ago where we took Joe Fortenbaugh's thoughts on the
02:54Texans on on first take. Joe Fortenbaugh's a betting expert on ESPN and they had to do like
03:01who's the team that you think is going to be a disappointment and he he picked the Texans and he
03:05had some reasons for it. I don't know if I totally agree with them but they were sound debatable
03:09reasons for why. I just remember doing that segment. I'm like this is one of the only guys
03:14you can find right now in the national media who's saying this about the Texans. Everybody else for
03:19the most part is saying that the Texans are ready to take that next step and I think that's I think
03:23that's why the line started with the I mean the Colts were favored at one point in the offseason
03:29in this game by one. This thing has gone through the zero to the Texans now being minus two and a
03:34half. I forgot that they were plus one. They were yeah they were like the Colts were favored.
03:39The Colts were favored at one point during this offseason for again for the spread to move is one
03:43thing but for the public to decide we don't think this team is going to win that team is going to
03:48win is a big deal. And there's there's not anything really I guess the the one substantive thing that
03:53might have skewed things from the odds makers perspective was Anthony Richardson in that final
03:58preseason game where he threw a pick six. I thought that from an Anthony Richardson perspective
04:06going back and watching that game and they're going versus the the the Bengals twos and threes
04:10like honestly in watching that game it was a pain in the butt because I had to go back and find an
04:14old depth chart because half the guys on the Bengals defense aren't even on the Bengals team
04:19anymore. There I thought I saw more good than bad and I also think that Shane Steichen was specifically
04:26instructing Anthony Richardson not to run on a lot of the RPOs and the zone reads and things like
04:32that. So yeah I think that I think substantively nothing's changed other than that Christian
04:40Harris isn't going to be available for sure and and Will Anderson is injured so that shouldn't
04:46make it that heavily of a Texans favorite. The the injury report this week is is a is a is an
04:53interesting one to see if is you know I'm guessing totally guessing but Will Anderson
04:59should we hope for limited in practice like that would at least indicate that he's
05:04gonna play this weekend? I'm man all right he's been running for a couple weeks now
05:08and I think he plays I think right now it might be more gamesmanship than anything else that
05:14they're gonna we've seen this with the Texans they've done a good job of it it massive they've
05:18held things close to the vest when it comes to hey you know Davis Mills is nobody knew for sure
05:25who was going to start that game against the Titans and people assumed it was Davis Mills
05:28because the Texans didn't give out any information about it. I think that I think he's going to play
05:34but I think they're going to be very very coy about it. Yeah I'm just yeah I'm anxious to see
05:39how he's categorized going into this game Will Anderson with this ankle injury. Text message
05:44I think Indy runs the ball down our throats. I hope not. Right and that's it's one thing we
05:50talked about this a little bit earlier because Shane Steichen is so good at the RPOs and because
05:55that puts your linebackers in such a bind when you play against the Colts I think there is a little
06:00bit of you instructing your linebackers to be very very careful about being hyper aggressive versus
06:09the run. This is one thing that Anthony Richardson does well is raw and unpolished as he is as a
06:15passer he's got it he's got incredible arm talent despite his weird delivery and everything else
06:21like that he does have the ability to make really good throws but he's also still very young in some
06:26respects and unpolished both with his accuracy and some of his decision making but he's really
06:33good with his mechanics on the RPO side of things executing his fakes all of that and I think in
06:41some regard he is as tough as it was playing against Gardner Minshew in the RPOs it's that
06:48much harder with Anthony Richardson so I think they'll concede some yardage in the run game.
06:53I think that I think it's going to be very much about like we can't get we can't get crushed with
06:57play action the way we did so much of last year so I'm I'm not sitting here saying that it's cool
07:03if Jonathan Taylor runs for 188 yards but I think he's going to get his I think he's going to eat up
07:08a little bit. That makes sense.