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Hedging the Bet with Gabe Sousa and Ben Julian is your go-to sports betting podcast, dropping every Friday to prep you for the weekend’s action. Each week, Gabe and Ben break down the top matchups across the world of sports—offering sharp analysis, expert picks, and all the insight you need to place your bets with confidence. Whether you're a seasoned bettor or just looking for smart plays, Hedging the Bet is your winning edge!
Ladies and gentlemen, it is my honor to bring you the second episode of this weekend for the Hedging the Bet podcast, week three of the NFL season. I can't believe we're already here, and I'm not alone today. This will certainly be a curveball than normal schedule. We've had many a guest on this program. Ben Julian, our college basketball guy.
Gabe:Also Hunter Frank, kind of a versatile bullpen ball knower, if you will. Clark Souza, he's just here for the vibes. But today, we have my father, Jason Souza. I appreciate you being here today.
Jason:Thanks for having me. The studio looks better already.
Gabe:Okay. Alright. Yeah. You sound you sound just like Clark. You sound just like Clark.
Gabe:And I appreciate you as of 6PM last night. You weren't necessarily sure if you're gonna be in East Lansing this morning. But
Jason:Yeah, we moved some things around. I mean Move
Gabe:some yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Busy guy. Always.
Gabe:Always. Always. Always. Ready at a moment's notice. To come up today and talk about a team that you and I have been watching probably for about ten years now, right?
Gabe:We're getting close to that decade mark when we moved back here. Of course, him and I, Lions fans, being from the Metro Detroit area, shout out to three thirteen, I guess.
Jason:Yeah, there were some years in there where you strayed and you were a Niners fan.
Gabe:Yeah. I was. So, yeah. I was a I was a San Francisco Niners fan, 49ers fan, but then that quickly changed when I saw the great team that was the Detroit Lions. I really had no reason to switch over.
Gabe:The 49ers were great. They went to the Super Bowl in 02/2012, which they lost, but at least they went.
Jason:You knew something great was on the horizon. Yeah. That's what it was.
Gabe:Yeah. So actually, I wanted to ask you. You were around for the Barry days. Some call those the glory glory days of the Lions. There certainly were.
Gabe:And do you think right now, what's the better viewing experience for you? These new these brand new Lions right now in the JGE which is the Jared Goff era or the Barry era.
Jason:That's that's interesting. I would say now. Yeah. Now, it's more of a complete team. With Barry, you had those sparks.
Jason:You had Herman Moore and Barry and you know, some some offensive spark but it was only provided by those two people, right? Like, you had two great players and that was the excitement, the anticipation of something that great great that might happen But now, you have just a more complete team. You've got a greater chance for turnovers or sacks. You have so many offensive weapons. So it's just there's just more to watch and anything can happen at any time.
Gabe:The Lions have to play better teams this year, including Baltimore, and a lot of people a lot of people are expecting the same result. They're saying, oh, this guy, Jared Goff, he can't play outside. Jared Goff is a dome quarterback. That's been the narrative for the past three years really. Four years since he's been with Detroit.
Gabe:The Lions struggle on the road which is true. We statistically play better at forward field at a clip that's higher than you expect for a team to perform at home. And there's a lot of people who picked the Ravens to win this football game. In fact, it's 77% of betters have their money on the Ravens to win this football game. And that makes sense.
Gabe:Yeah. And the Ravens have looked great. They lost a very close game. One of the best games most likely of the season on Sunday night football week one to the Bills, which are a lot of people Super Bowl favorites for the AFC side, and then they the Ravens stomped the Browns as you would expect them to do week two. But although there is not high expectations for the lines, I believe that there are some guys you can target here to build a nice little parlay for Monday night football on ESPN.
Gabe:It should be fun. So I've conjured up two parlays here, basically six legs. And I'm gonna go over why I think that you might wanna toss some dough on them. Let's start off with a guy that that no one knows more than you that I've been a fan of since before he was good. Amon Ra St.
Gabe:Brown. Amon Ra St. Brown has been a staple in our household for four years now, three It's years beautiful to watch. Yeah.
Jason:He's a workhorse. Yeah. He's efficient.
Gabe:Yeah. Never drops the ball. He doesn't drop the ball. I'm in Ross St. Brown right now in EA Sports.
Gabe:Madden has the highest catching overall, and for good reason. He doesn't drop the ball when it's thrown his way seemingly last week, obviously put on a great performance, three touchdown game, erupted for three touchdowns. And he certainly struggled week one, but we, as NFL fans and especially as Detroit Lions fans, have learned that you can't overreact when a team plays Green Bay. They certainly look like the best defense in the league right now because the Washington Commanders who we know are a great offense also struggled week two against Green Bay. Couldn't get anything going.
Jason:Yeah. I mean, the thing is, we were expecting a great game. We were expecting Lions to do a lot better. Yeah. Green Bay is a better team than than we thought that they would be.
Jason:We struggled to hit our stride. Nothing seemed to be going well. Again, this was a good team that just smothered just smothered the Lions and that and that was that was a big problem. So it's like, how do you how do you hit your stride when they're stopping you, you know, in every aspect of the game and they're just you know, they're dominating you and they're playing at home and all of that.
Gabe:So To kinda touch on your point, no one had a stellar performance on the Lions side of the ball in that Green Bay game. Certainly offensively, Jamere Gibbs set the record for or I guess it's a record if you wanna call it that, but he gained the least amount of yards in NFL history on 10 receptions. He had 31 yards receiving on 10 receptions, and Jared Goff was a check down merchant. And I you can honestly expect more of same. In the podcast that Clark and I, I'm sure you're familiar with Clark, recorded yesterday, him and I had to pick a leg for for our lock of the week, and we decided to go with Junior Gibbs receptions.
Gabe:He's averaging six on the season, and this is something that I would look forward to in a Lions parlay. Junior Gibbs is averaging six perceptions on the season. Obviously, that's inflated because he had ten week one. But you can expect the Lions to be in a negative game script. You can expect the Lions to be down at some point in this game most likely.
Gabe:I could see the Ravens getting ball and scoring on the first offensive drive of the game. And Jared Goff is not afraid to check it down to his running back.
Jason:I think he has to.
Gabe:Oh, I agree.
Jason:There's not Well, I think he need The Lions need a very balanced attack. Yeah. You have a lot of weapons, and I I think in order to beat them, not to get ahead of ourselves, but in order to beat them, you have to keep the ball out of Lamar's hands. Yeah. You have to wear down their defense.
Gabe:Mhmm.
Jason:You have to force some mistakes by Lamar,
Gabe:I think. Of course. Which he doesn't do often.
Jason:You have to contain him.
Gabe:Mhmm. Which is easier said than done. Which the Lions have struggled with mobile quarterbacks seemingly my entire life. So
Jason:Yeah. But I think the difference between between this upcoming game and the Green Bay game is we hadn't hit our stride yet
Gabe:and Yeah.
Jason:My hope is that this is more of a breakout game. Last week was different because the Bears aren't a good team, but it was good to see all cylinders firing, a balanced attack, basically all facets of the game going well, and even though it's a lesser team, you need that so that you can kind of build some confidence up and get that timing down between golf and the receivers and just the the whole team, you know, just just seeing seeing success out there.
Gabe:Yeah. I mean, he had a golf had a, you know, maybe he was just rusty week one. He was, of course, the star of the show quarterback on Netflix and, you know, he's coming back down to Earth from Hollywood from his fame.
Jason:Talk about a bounce back. Yeah. Between games.
Gabe:Yeah. Of course. Yeah. Week one, one touchdown, one interception, touchdown was garbage time, whatever. Next week, five touchdowns, zero interceptions.
Gabe:Maybe MVP front runner. I wanna go back to the Jamere Gibbs what we were talking about. Jared Goff will find him when necessary, which will be often. And his over under right now for receptions is three and a half. I have the over personally this week.
Gabe:I believe that Jamere Gibbs is absolutely gonna catch one ball a quarter, and he's too talented to not get his yards right now for receiving his 23 and a half. He's too talented, too fast, too athletic, too smart, too handsome, I guess. Good looking dude. Maybe. To get that yards total, and if you throw on a touchdown on top of that, of course, you can get that through the air on the ground.
Gabe:It's a nice little three leg parlay, but I also wanna go back. We were starting to talk about how was an Amarah St. Brown fan and the difference from week one to week two for him. So he has three touchdowns on the year, all those coming against Dud Bears. He he is an interesting pick to get the ends on this week.
Gabe:He is not usually someone that you target in this Lions offense to get a touchdown. Usually, if you're looking for a safe pick, you go to that Montgomery and that Gibbs Well. If you're looking for a higher end, higher odd pick, you look at that Sam LaPorte, Jameson William bomb touchdown. I'm gonna run Sam Brown usually floating from the plus 100 to plus one fifty range. And the reason why I like him this week, obviously, he's golf's favorite target.
Gabe:Every every quarterback, if you ask them who their favorite wide receiver is, they'll say whoever's open. Mhmm. And that is true for two reasons. Number one, whoever's open for Jared Goff, he's gonna throw the ball too. But number two, that's usually Amon Ra St.
Gabe:Brown.
Jason:He gets open.
Gabe:So by default, Amon Ra St. Brown is probably Jergoff's wide receiver, and that's statistically backed up as we've seen over the past three years. But just talking about his volume. Amon Ra St. Brown has been targeted at a clip that we have not seen from a wide and wide receiver since Megatron, and that's high praise because Matthew Stafford Matthew Stafford didn't necessarily target Megatron.
Gabe:He saw Megatron somewhere down the field and he was like, alright, here we go.
Jason:Yeah, even if it was a jump ball, he knew he was gonna get it.
Gabe:He was targeted three times on the goal line last week. And what were the results there? They were good. Three touchdowns. Yep.
Gabe:He has one of the he so right now, according to sports books, for a plus odds player, he's giving a 52.5% chance to find the end zone, which is the highest among plus odds players across the National Football League. So this is basically in poor man's terms. This is this is right now, this is the best bang for your buck. He's the highest odd player to get in the end zone being a plus odd player, you so have an opportunity to double your money at above 50% chance, given those odds all day.
Jason:It's tough though, because you have there are so many weapons, right? And and he's coming off a monster game.
Gabe:Mhmm.
Jason:So you would think that Baltimore would would game plan against him and and try to stop him. But you just never know. That's why you go back to the balance attack. You know, if if if our running game is established and we're actually getting these chunk plays positive field position. I mean, then, it's gonna be tough to to really it's gonna be tough to predict who's gonna find the end zone.
Gabe:Yeah. I mean, there's gonna be, obviously, against the Bears, if you let's say you picked any player from the lions offense to score a touchdown, you had about seven opportunities for your player to get in. For the lions, if you pick a player, it you might only have one or two opportunities on, you know, within the five yard line for them to get that touchdown. And when you're talking about probability, of course, Jamere Gibbs is the number one guy, but I like Amon Ross St. Brown to be that reliable, maybe a safety blanket for Jared Goff in that close game, must win game in Baltimore.
Gabe:And speaking of Jared Goff, we're gonna look at his passing yards here. I like the over. Safer ult line at 225, you could take as well. The Ravens have been a bit of a pass funnel. They're gonna make you beat you.
Gabe:They're gonna make teams beat them through the air versus on the ground, and that's something another reason to believe that Jamere Gibbs is going to perform well through the receiving game. But this is about Jared Goff, and Jared Goff is projected to have 36 pass attempts. Of course, that is based on a negative game script that the sports books would suggest that the lions are not going to be winning most of this game. So what was great about last week against the bears, the lions the lions gave the ravens a lot of film to review because every single player on the Detroit lions played well last week on both sides of the ball. But now that Jared Goff last week, Jameson Williams had a great week.
Gabe:Sam Laporta has Nikki good week. Isaac Tesla
Jason:Yeah.
Gabe:Had a okay week. You know, great catch. Jamere Gibbs,
Jason:David see him more involved. I agree. You know, like just having two highlight plays, that's awesome. It's a great start to your career, but like, what what does a what does a normal game look like? You know, where he's where maybe he's targeted five times, six times, whatever.
Gabe:Jergoff has a lot of weapons out there. They're kinda we saw last week, they're molding into their offense. They're figuring out. The Ravens are gonna have a lot of guys to cover, and another week, lines are even better. I like Jeregoff over for passing yards.
Gabe:Last couple legs here I got for this game is is really following the same philosophy, which the when I first started betting, I was like, okay. Let me look up how does sports bet. Let me look up how to do this. And
Jason:You got the Sports Betting for Dummies book?
Gabe:Yeah.
Jason:Read through that?
Gabe:Yeah. Yeah. And I think Clark wrote that actually, but but Strange. I the first I'll never forget this video. I said I said, you're you're you're betting should follow a script.
Gabe:It should follow a story.
Jason:I remember.
Gabe:If you have, say, give me a running back, any running back. Derrick Henry? Sure. If you were to bet on Derrick Henry to have over rushing yards, don't bet on a wide receiver to have over receiving yards or don't bet for Lamar Jackson to have over passing yards. Right?
Gabe:You need to if you were to bet Derrick Henry to have over rushing yards, take a touchdown with him. Take the under on the game. Right? If it's gonna be through the ground and losing time, you have to your bets have to make sense. Mhmm.
Gabe:And so we've talked about how we believe Jared Goff is gonna throw the ball a lot in this game. How the lines could be in a negative game script. You're gonna see a common theme here. Jamere Gibbs receptions we touched on earlier. Amon Ross Saint Brown receptions right now.
Gabe:Over six and a half receptions, he's had double digit targets in the last two games. This is plus one twenty five. Amon Ross Saint Brown is gonna be a weapon. Touchdown, receptions, anything you want of Saint Brown here, am certainly not afraid to take. If you are taking all take over five and a half, take over four and a half, whatever you'd like, this ball is gonna be flying through the air for the Detroit Lions, and that's why I also have Jared Goff for two passing touchdowns.
Gabe:Now on away games on their own, the Lions like to punch the ball in through the ground for for touchdowns. And so that's why Jared Goff is not at the odds you expect him for two passing touchdowns. Obviously, he gets the majority of his touchdowns through the air at home. The lions might not have success running the ball, which seems hard to believe. If you said last year that the lions couldn't run the ball against a team, I would say, is this a team full of superheroes?
Gabe:Is this the avengers that they're going against? It didn't seem possible. And then this year, week one, the Lions could not run the ball against Green Bay, which now we know is one of the best defenses in the league, but the the Lions proved to be human week one.
Jason:Well, there were a lot of mistakes, and they were trying to get you know, they were out of sync, and I think they were shell shocked against a great Green Bay team.
Gabe:Absolutely. But what I'm saying is that if the Lions come out and they're not able to run into the ball against Baltimore, it won't be the first time this year that we weren't able to run the ball against the team and one that we're gonna have to win through the air. The Lions were, I believe, were going into that Green Bay game, believing that they could win on the ground, and they could not. And I think hopefully they've realized in this game against Baltimore if they struggle on the ground, which they're projected to do, that they're gonna have to win through the air. And so if you believe in the Lions performing well, scoring touchdowns, Jergoff following that trend of scoring four touchdowns in in high over under games.
Gabe:Jergoff, two passing touchdowns. Seems like a good bet to me. Absolutely. Do you have any do you have any final thoughts over there?
Jason:I would love to see the Lions establish the running game. I know you're you're saying that you don't think that they will but David Montgomery, if he can just pound that ball up the middle and wear down their defense, then, it opens up a lot of options. Again, there are a ton of weapons and keeping that ball out of Lamar's hands is going to be and quieting the crowd is going to be key. So, if Lions can control time of possession and tire out their defense and make make Baltimore respect the run, it opens up more the passing game, and it's I think it's a little bit more fun to watch, and it quiets them down and doesn't it doesn't allow Baltimore to get kind of into their rhythm.
Gabe:Certainly a key to the game as expert cameraman over here. What's your title? What do you want your title to be?
Jason:I mean, I like anything with Chief in
Gabe:it Sure.
Jason:Is good. Yeah. So, you know, so Chief Podcast Guy is fine. Sure. Chief Camera Operator, Chief All Around Potty, Chief Potty, with D's.
Gabe:How do you feel taking your firstborn's job over there?
Jason:You know, there's a time, place for everything, and if his time is done, you know, I might have to move in. But I I think he might have a few more episodes left in him. At least Clark
Gabe:The the difference between you and Clark is is night and day. Okay. Clark Clark is wrong sometimes with confidence. And that's what I love about him.
Jason:Yeah. Yeah. That's good. It's like yeah. He's convincing.
Gabe:Yeah. Yeah. Maybe. He'll Clark Clark could tell you that your own first name is something that is not and you'd believe it. Yeah.
Gabe:Which is all you want on podcast hosts.
Jason:Maybe he should be a politician.
Gabe:Clark A lawyer. Clark gets fired up on the podcast too. He's he's into it. You know, he's he's
Jason:That's what you want though. Right?
Gabe:Yeah. You need that commitment. Yeah. Alright. Just to be clear, we like Clark around here.
Gabe:Yeah. We love Clark. Clark's always willing to do these podcasts on short notice and I appreciate you coming on on short notice.
Jason:I do sometimes.
Gabe:We're gonna head back down to the Metro Detroit area. Watch the Michigan State Spartans who are, well, you won't be but I have no choice to. Do know you what time they kick off tonight?
Jason:No, I'm just focusing on the on the afternoon evening golf round.
Gabe:Okay. That's true. We're gonna get some golf in.
Jason:Yeah.
Gabe:But the if you had to guess what time the Spartans kick off tonight, what would you say? Well, 07:30 or eight. It's 11:00 eastern.
Jason:Oh. Yeah. Yeah, because it's West Coast.
Gabe:Yeah, a nighttime West Coast game. Against USC is officially ranked within the number 25 in the nation right now, so might be a game be tough. Might be a game that I don't need to stay up for. Yeah. But anyway, I appreciate you coming on.
Gabe:It's such short notice. Through the magic of prep beforehand and my editing. We're gonna sound like geniuses here, so.
Jason:Just do me a favor when you do the end of the year highlight reel. Yeah. Just give me a couple snippets in there. Just just, you know, more than the pretty face and the smile, like actual Okay. Actual lines.
Gabe:Yeah. Yeah. I and you know what's funny too is I notice that Clark and I's podcasting style is is like is like a blend of you. Like you're you're you're nonchalant, ball knower, calm, collected. Clark is I like to say smooth.
Jason:Yeah. Yeah. Smooth.
Gabe:Yeah. And that's how I describe myself. Now the blend of that with Clark is well, first of all, Clark is not nonchalant. He's very chalant on the podcast.
Jason:You say almost too much chalant. Alright.
Gabe:I gotta stop hitting on Clark. Anyway, I appreciate you coming by as always, and I'd like to shout out Impact eighty eight point nine FM Studios, of course, for letting us use this beautiful studio. And when you walked in today, what'd you say? Wow. Yeah.
Gabe:Common reaction to No hesitation. People coming in. And and, yeah, this is week three of the NFL season. We'll be back next week, of course. As always, stay sharp and keep hedging your bets.