Rufus Peabody is a sports analyst and professional sports bettor, currently traveling the world on Remote Year. He is a 2008 graduate of Yale University, where he wrote his senior thesis on inefficiencies in the baseball betting market. Mr. Peabody was previously ESPN's 'predictive analytics expert' and many, many years ago got his start in the industry working as a statistical analyst for Las Vegas Sports Consultants.
Week 6 Recap: Excellent weekend, going 6-2 overall, bringing our season record to 20-13. After underperforming last season, and starting this season slowly, our Other Plays finally are in the money after a 3-0 Week 6. Kansas (+26) pulled through with a late touchdown, taking our play from a push to a win, while Arizona State (+11.5) and Northwestern…
Week 4 Recap: Week 4 was light on official plays, but had five games that made our unofficial Break-Even or Better listing. Our Big Plays went 1-1. The New York Giants (+4) benefitted from a third-quarter Kirk Cousins clinic on how not to be an NFL quarterback and embarrassed my Redskins 45-14. The Bears (+1.5) could not figure…
Week 5 Recap: Week 5 was our highest volume week of the year, and ended up close to a wash. Our perfect record on Big Plays was snapped when Oregon State (+9) lost to USC, 35-10. I was personally very impressed by USC coach Steve Sarkisian’s fourth-down aggressiveness, going for it multiple times inside his own 45 yard-line with a…
A happy recap this week, as our official plays went 3-0. We had two big plays on NFC (L)east teams. The first was Dallas (-1.5) on the road against a St. Louis squad starting some guy named Austin Davis. Massey-Peabody is the only rating system I know of that was bullish on the Cowboys going into the season. And…
Now that was the weekend we’ve been waiting for. Most of the credit goes to positive variance, but a 4-1 week is still satisfying. And on top of that, our two leans both won as well. We’ll start the recap of last week’s plays with our one Big Play. Vanderbilt looked completely out of sorts in their first three games, but due to…
I was asked a number of times last week about Arizona’s drop from a solidly above-average team to a subpar one. The answer to that, and many more of life’s mysteries, lies in how we treat quarterbacks. Not only do we rate each team’s offense and defense, we (attempt) to separate QB performance from offensive performance using some fancy-dancy…
Apologies for the website issues causing delays for this week’s picks. An excellent Week 2 for our picks, as for the second week in a row underdogs performed very well, and we happened to pick entirely underdogs! Our Big Plays went 2-1 for the second straight week, punctuated by a San Diego (+6) surprise win over Seattle. The Jets (+8)…
Apologies for not having picks posted sooner this week. We had a server issue, but it looks like things are better now. Unfortunately, we followed up a losing Week 2 with another losing week. Our Other Plays went 1-2, while our unofficial MP Leans went 0-2. The good news is that our picks had good value relative to the…
Week 2 was a bit of a down week for our picks. Iowa State (+12), our only Big Play, was our lone bright spot, leading Kansas State most of the game before yielding two late touchdowns to lose 32-28. Nevertheless, the Cyclones covered the spread comfortably. Tennessee (-16), our first Other Play, failed to cover by a mere one…
Week 1 felt like a grind, despite two of our three Big Plays winning. That can happen when your rating system takes a huge stand on the Cowboys (+4.5), as ours did, and looks completely foolish as the Cowboys get blown out. And guess what? We still think the Cowboys are a good team. As ugly as Dallas looked, we have to…