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Many NFL bettors start by looking at individual markets — like spreads, totals, teasers or props — and ask, “Which spread looks good?” or “What totals stand out this week?” This is a bottom-up approach, focusing on specific bets first.

In this space, we’ll take a different approach. We’ll focus on one game each week and use a top-down strategy to break it down. This means starting with the bigger picture — how teams, players or trends are performing — and then finding the best ways to apply that information to different betting markets.

While some of our bets may focus on traditional markets, like spreads or totals, we’ll often explore other opportunities to maximize value.

New Orleans Saints -6.5

Let us begin by examining the team fundamentals to establish a baseline for our analysis.

Here we see Timo Riske’s baseline team strengths, which paint a picture of a Saints team that has been strong defensively but below average on offense, and a Titans team that has been poor on offense and below average defensively.

While the Saints defense has graded above average, the market has been slow to adjust, failing to recognize it as one of the NFL’s top units. According to Inpredictable, which uses betting lines and lookaheads to assess team strength, the Saints are still ranked 21st in the league. However, over the second half of the season, this unit has arguably been the best defense in the NFL.

New Orleans ranks first in EPA allowed per play and has played well against both the run and the pass. The Saints also rank third in EPA allowed per rush and third in EPA allowed per dropback, while posting the best defensive success rate against the pass and giving up the third-fewest yards per dropback.

That profile suggests their defensive success has been down to down rather than turnover-driven. As a result, there appears to be value on the spread when properly accounting for a Saints defense that has quietly dominated over the second half of the season and presents a difficult matchup for Cam Ward and the Titans.

The Saints offense has also shown improvement over the past month, as Tyler Shough has emerged with the sixth-best PFF grade over that span. That progress has moved New Orleans closer to the middle of the pack from an EPA, success rate and yards-per-dropback perspective.

The counterargument is that Shough and the offense may have benefited from favorable matchups in recent weeks, but facing a Titans defense that ranks fourth-worst in yards per dropback, seventh-worst in EPA and disruption rate and last in perfect coverage rate sets up another favorable spot for Shough to continue his success.

Part of the Saints’ defensive evolution has also included a significant increase in blitz rate. Over the past month, New Orleans has blitzed at the seventh-highest rate in the NFL.

Cam Ward has struggled against the blitz this season, losing nearly 0.2 points per dropback on plays where the defense sends extra rushers. As the ground game has improved in recent weeks, Ward’s play has also trended upward, coinciding with a reduced number of obvious passing situations. Last week, just 33% of his dropbacks came in obvious passing downs, 18 percentage points lower than the next-closest week at 51% two weeks earlier and nearly half of his usual rate of 64%.

Against this Saints run defense and in a likely negative game script, however, Ward could find himself forced back into far more passing situations.

Those situations have been brutal for Ward, as he is again losing roughly 0.2 points per dropback and clearly ranks among the NFL’s worst quarterbacks on such plays. It would not be surprising, then, for Ward to struggle in this matchup, with the Titans offense again failing to generate points as its issues are compounded by a negative game script.

Add up the angles, and this sets up as an undervalued Saints defense facing a quarterback who has struggled against the blitz and performed poorly in obvious passing situations. That matters because New Orleans should be able to slow the Titans’ run game, which has improved in recent weeks, pushing Ward back to more obvious passing downs. It also strengthens the case for alternate lines, as a Saints lead would further compound those issues while New Orleans’ improving offense faces another favorable matchup against a struggling Titans defense.

From a game-flow perspective, the Saints’ ability to win by margin stands out as attractive relative to the market.