Cade Massey is a Professor of the Practice at the Wharton School of Business. His research is on judgment under uncertainty, including overconfidence, optimism and under- and over-reaction. He is the co-author of “The Loser’s Curse: Overconfidence vs. Market Efficiency in the NFL Draft", co-host of "Wharton Moneyball" on SiriusXM 111, and co-director of Wharton People Analytics.

Week-6 Picks

We had our first losing weekend last week, going 2-3. Overall for the season we are 17-12-1 (58.6%). In the Wall Street Journal we actually went 3-1, pushing our yearly record to 7-4 (63.6%). As detailed in a blog entry last week, we’re tracking those picks separately since they are based on late-week lines. For…

Week-5 Picks

Last week was the best of the season, hitting 5 of 7 picks, including all 3 of our Big Plays. For the season we are up to 15-9-1 (62.5%). And, nice bit, we’ve been on the positive side of the ledger every week. Smaller slate this week so we’re being a little aggressive with our…

Week-4 Picks

Last week we were 3-2-1, pushing the NYJ-Miami game when it went to OT. The crazy Baltimore-New England game got us into winning territory at the end of the weekend. We’re now 10-7-1 (58.8%) for the year. Large slate this week, with picks on 7 of the 15 games (Pittsburgh and Indy have byes). “Big…

Week-3 Picks

Last week we were 4-3, splitting our Big Plays and hitting 3 of the 5 Other Plays. With two weeks of games in now we have an initial look at opponent strength, so the model’s at least covering all the bases. Remember we do not consider injuries unless we explicitly say so (and that’s quite rare).…

Week-1 Picks

This week is a sort of beta trial for us, as we’ve never before made picks based on anything other than same-year performance. However, back-testing says we can do this (about as well as our normal picks) so we’ll give it a whirl. Our usual caveats apply – we do not consider injuries or, in…

Priors

For the first time since we started this work we’re going to use priors in our rankings. We were driven to this because we wanted to make week-1 predictions, but we’re also hopeful it will boost our performance early in the season. We are doing this in the most simple, light-handed, and in some ways obviously…

Welcome to the 2012 season

Welcome to the 2012 NFL season. The Giants & Cowboys kick things off in just a few hours.  We’re back and striving to give you the cleanest look possible at the true ability of NFL teams.  As always, we do that by considering context, factoring out chance, and most important, weighing statistics for what they…