Live Bet Sunday | August 9, 2026 | Hour 6

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
This is Live Bet Sunday on VSiN, the Sports Betting Network.

**Scott Seidenberg** (0:07)
Back here on Live Bet Sunday, I'm Scott Seidenberg with you on VSiN, the Sports Betting Network, always on Twitter, at Scott's on Air and at VSiN Live. We're about 20 minutes or so away from the start of the Sunday Night Baseball game between the Padres and the Astros. We do have the same game parlay that we built for this game, so we'll have fun sweating that out as well. We are on the Astros on the Money Line, plus 107 best line in the market right now. But I want to talk data and trends and systems, and no one better than VSiN's own data analyst, Steve McKinnon. You read all his work in the NFL and are now published College Football Betting Guide. And of course, the great articles that Steve publishes every day up on vsin.com. And Steve joins us here on the Progressive Guest Line. Steve, I know it's been a labor of love getting these betting guides out. I thank you for all the work, all the readers, thank you for all the work. And just how excited for you that the Hall of Fame game was played already. And this Thursday, we actually have the start of week one of the NFL preseason.

**Steve McKinnon** (1:11)
It's definitely an exciting time to be alive, as they say, Scott. This is one of the best weeks of the year. You see football coming and you know we're here, you know we've made it.
I appreciate kudos on the prep for the football seasons. But I've gotten myself over the last decade into a real nice routine on how I prepare for the first NFL season, then the college season. I have just a number of boxes I like to check, make sure I got the key information. I'm looking forward just to get ready for the season. And I do share that with VSiN readers every season.

**Scott Seidenberg** (1:44)
I love that. And one of the things I'm looking forward to, I know coming up this week up on vsin.com, you have a preseason project that you're working on. But just talk to me in general. What are some of the things that you're looking for here during the NFL preseason that's going to affect the way that you prepare for week one, let's say, of the NFL season? Or maybe it's season long stuff, or maybe it's betting week two of the preseason, or week three of the preseason. What are some things that you're going to be paying attention to the most come Thursday?

**Steve McKinnon** (2:15)
Ironically, Scott, it's kind of all of that.
You're right. I got a three piece series coming out this week. It'll be Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, helping everybody get ready for the preseason handicapping. The first one's going to be about different strategies and systems that I've found to work very well in betting the preseason. They deal with anything from the different line ranges that are key.
How home field advantage means very little in tight spread games, that type of thing. How, looked at how teams do in a week before where they had a great offensive performance or a great defense performance and vice versa. There's certain angles there that really tend to, they're great trends. They just repeat themselves. So it's a good way to handicap preseason football. The second one's going to be about basically team trends. How each of these teams sort of fares and how the coaches fare. Coaches are a big part in how they strategize for the preseason. If you're not looking at that, you're missing a big part of what wins. Then finally on Wednesday, the piece is going to be about analyzing the DraftKings betting split. Where the money is going and if it means anything, if there's a high percentage of bets on a certain game, should you go the other way? That type of thing. So some interesting information for the preseason coming this week for me.

**Scott Seidenberg** (3:37)
We'll be looking forward to that. I know one of the things that I've been talking about, as I've done the research over the years, is on how much quarterbacks play in the preseason. I know the big story here is Patrick Mahomes likely not going to play in the preseason for the Kansas City Chiefs and how that affects teams going into week one. And if you look back over the past, I look since the start of the 2021 season, because the world changed post-COVID and everything.
And we see that for quarterbacks that take zero drop backs in the preseason, Steve, their teams underperform in week number one, whether it's an ATS margin or their team total, their first half totals. So is that something that we really should be paying attention to in the preseason, not just about what we're betting, but who's not playing here for these teams?