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 this case, off-season player movement. Lines are from covers.com this afternoon. “Big Plays” are games where we have at least a 4-point edge (i.e., the pointspread implied by our power rankings is at least 4 points different than the market pointspread), and “Other Picks” are those with 2.5 to 4-point edge.
Big Plays
Mia (+12.5) at Hou (MP= +5.3)
Det (-7) vs STL (MP= -12.5)
Cle (+9) vs Phi (MP= +3.8)
Ari (+2.5) vs Sea (MP=-2.0)
NYJ (-2.5) vs Buf (MP= -6.73)
Other Plays
None this week
Scratches: We’re scratching the Pitt-Denver game (we have it at Denver +2.47, while the pointspread is -1.0) because of the Manning trade. If you follow us you know we very rarely scratch picks, and more or less only for injuries to QBs. Denver seems to fall squarely into the off-season version of that category.