5-0 last week! Our first undefeated weekend. Been waiting for that one. They’re tough to get, of course, but there’s so much chance involved that if you pick long enough the odds favor eventually getting one. We enjoyed it. Pushes our YTD up to 25-22-3 (53.2%). We were 4-1 in the WSJ (dropping a winning Thursday night pick and picking up a losing Miami -2.5 when the line moved against us), making us 13-13-1 (50%) there.
Lots of picks this week. Kind of surprsing how many, and how large the edges are. We disagree with the market pretty strongly on a few teams, many of whom seem to be paired this weekend. Not sure we’ve ever had so many big plays. Will be interesting.
One important methodological note. As discussed in a blog entry we just posted, we’re adding a couple of adjustments to our game predictions. Digging through historical performance we find that teams perform better in the week after a Thursday game, and after a bye. So, going forward we are increasing a team’s prediction by 1.5 points the week after a bye and 0.75 points after a Thursday game. These adjustments are not responsible for this week’s long slate – without them we’d still have all but the Jets.
Otherwise, as always, our lines are calculated directly from our power rankings – we don’t consider injuries, weather, matchups, etc. Lines are from Bookmaker (via sbrodds.com), as of Tuesday, 11/7, 9:30pm EDT. “Big Plays” are games with at least 4-point edges, while “Other Plays” are those with 2.2- to 4-point edges.
Big Plays (11-8-1 YTD)
SF (-11) vs STL [MP= -16.2]
SD (+3) at TB [MP= -1.7]
MIA (-6) vs TEN [MP= -10.6]
NO (+2.5) vs ATL [MP= -1.9]
CIN (+4) vs NYG [MP= -.3]
Other Plays (14-14-1 YTD)
JAC (+3) vs IND [MP= -.7]
HOU (+1) at CHI [MP= -2.5]
NYJ (+6) at SEA [MP= +3.3]
Note that Minnesota-Detroit is currently off the board due to some WR injuries. We have that game as a tossup.
