The season got off to a sluggish start, with both our official plays losing, though our one lean was victorious. As I mentioned last week, we’re weighting the market number more heavily early in the season, so the threshold for something to quality as a pick is a little higher than in the past. I tend to be overly conservative on this, but that’s in my nature. As a refresher, we expect our Big Plays to cover at a 55% or greater clip, our Other Plays are 54-55%, and our Break-Even or Better leans are 53-54%. The predicted cover rates are conservative, since the predictive weight I assign the M-P line is based on its historical predictive weight relative to the closing line. I expect to do a little better, but I prefer to undersell (which is hard when I’m giving things away) and over-deliver.
And before I move on to the picks, I want to shamelessly plug some other content that *I* think is more interesting than picks. I posted game grades for CFB Week 1 last week, and I’ll do the same thing for last week (and for NFL Week 1) once I get these picks posted. The premise is, given how a team played (controlling of opponent and location) in the metrics that we use to model teams predictively, how would they do against an average team on a neutral field. It gives you a basis to make an apples-to-apples comparison of teams’ performances each week, and is a great lens to see which teams were lucky or unlucky in the game outcome.
Also, keep your eyes open for our season projections for both CFB and NFL, where we simulate the rest of the season a gazillion times (literally). Apologies for the irregularity of content these last two weeks. We’re still trying to figure out our routine.
Big Plays (0-1 YTD)
- Kansas City +2.5 at Houston [MP Line: KC -1.6]
Other Plays (0-1 YTD)
- New Orleans +5 at New York Giants [MP Line: NO +2.4]
Break-Even or Better (unofficial leans) (1-0 YTD)
- Miami +6.5 at New England [MP Line: MIA +4.2]
- Seattle -6.5 at Los Angeles [MP Line: SEA -9.5]
M-P Lines on Remaining Games
- Buffalo -0.5 vs. New York Jets (yes, I know the game already happened)
- Detroit -7.3 vs. Tennessee
- Baltimore -3.9 at Cleveland
- Pittsburgh -3.6 vs. Cincinnati
- Washington -5 vs. Dallas
- Carolina -12.4 vs. San Francisco
- Arizona -6.2 vs. Tampa Bay
- Denver -4.3 vs. Indianapolis
- Oakland -4.2 vs. Atlanta
- San Diego -5.2 vs. Jacksonville
- Green Bay -1.2 at Minnesota
- Chicago -3.1 vs. Philadelphia
