Sorry to say that we’ll be pushing picks back to Thursday mornings. The good news and bad news is that publishing our picks appears to be having an impact on the market. I know that posting picks later means there may be less value, but I don’t have much of a choice in the matter, as I can’t justify compromising my own betting.
Week 7 Recap:
We went 2-1 on our three Big Plays last week, with New Orleans (+2.5/+3) and Kansas City (+4) winning while Carolina (+7) lost badly. Once again our Break-Even or Better recommendations continued to struggle for you action junkies, going 0-3.
Week 7 Closing Line Value
- Carolina: picked +7, closed +6.5, CLV +0.5
- Kansas City: picked +4, closed +3, CLV +1.0
- New Orleans: picked +2.75, closed +1.5, CLV +1.25
- *New England: picked -9.5, closed -9.5, CLV 0.0
- *Buffalo: picked -4.5, closed -6.5, CLV +2.0
- *Seattle: picked -6.75, closed +7, CLV -0.25
Week 8 Picks:
This week’s picks are based on Vegas Insider consensus lines as of 10:50am Vegas time on Thursday. As usual, we do not account for matchup factors or injuries (except QB). M-P lines are based on M-P ratings and a standard home field advantage, as well as adjustments for extra rest (byes and Thursday games).
Break-Even or Better selections should cover the spread between 52.5% and 54% on the time, our Other Plays 54%-55%, and our Big Plays should win more than 55% of the time. Our estimate for each game is based on our line for the game, regressed appropriately towards the market number, as well as the value of different points. How much we weight the market’s number is based on the historical predictive power of the closing line relative to our line. This makes our estimates conservative, since we generally expect lines to move in our direction.
Big Plays (9.5-4-0.5 YTD)
- Baltimore Pk at Cincinnati [MP Line: BAL -4.5]
Other Plays (3-3 YTD)
- Buffalo +3 at New York Jets [MP Line: BUF +0.2]
- Miami -6 at Jacksonville [MP Line: MIA -9.5]
Break-Even or Better (4-13 YTD)
- Atlanta +3.5 vs. Detroit [MP Line: ATL +2.0]
- Carolina +5 vs. Seattle [MP Line: CAR +3.0]
Our lines (mean forecast, not median!) on the remaining games
- Denver -9.3 vs. San Diego
- Tampa Bay -1.9 vs. Minnesota
- New England -5.4 vs. Chicago
- Kansas City -8.6 vs. St. Louis
- Arizona -0.8 vs. Philadelphia
- Indianapolis -3.8 at Pittsburgh
- Cleveland -7.1 vs. Oakland
- New Orleans -0.2 vs. Green Bay
- Dallas -9.7 vs. Washington
HOU/TEN is currently off the board at most places.
