Welcome back! It’s been a long offseason, but during that time Cade and I have made some improvements on our model(s). We’ve also examined its historical performance more closely and critically, and found that our predictive value, relative to the market, increases as the season progresses. To folks who know the basics of our methodology, this shouldn’t be surprising, since with the exception of quarterback play, our priors leave out a lot. We don’t account for any personnel changes except QB (since we don’t account for personnel in general), so your favorite team’s great offseason moves…not accounted for. Sometimes this works to our benefit, when the market overreacts to a team “winning” the offseason (think Philly’s 2011 “dream team”), but even an ardent skeptic like me believes there is meaningful signal in offseason moves, and unfortunately, our model is not able to capture that signal. For this reason, you might notice a game that you think should be a pick fail to meet our threshold early in the season, since we’ll be more aggressively shrinking our prediction to the market number these first few weeks. While we’ve tweaked (improved?) our model over the years, our results have been remarkably consistent. Last year’s 41-33 record kept our streak of profitable seasons intact; in fact, since we started this little garage project back in 2010, we’ve never finished out of the money. Our Break-Even or Better “leans” have not fared as well, unfortunately, going 34-42.5 over three seasons. Variance giveth and variance taketh away.
| Season | Type | Win | Loss | Push | % | Units @ -110 |
| 2015 | Official | 41 | 33 | 1 | 55.41% | 4.70 |
| 2015 | Big | 24 | 14 | 1 | 63.16% | 8.60 |
| 2015 | Other | 17 | 19 | 0 | 47.22% | -3.90 |
| 2015 | BEOB | 9 | 10 | 2 | 47.37% | -2.00 |
| 2014 | Official | 36.5 | 30 | 1.5 | 54.89% | 3.50 |
| 2014 | Big | 19.5 | 20 | 0.5 | 49.37% | -2.50 |
| 2014 | Other | 17 | 10 | 1 | 62.96% | 6.00 |
| 2014 | BEOB | 15 | 25.5 | 0.5 | 37.04% | -13.05 |
| 2013 | Official | 51 | 30 | 1 | 62.96% | 18.00 |
| 2013 | Big | 17 | 10 | 1 | 62.96% | 6.00 |
| 2013 | Other | 34 | 20 | 62.96% | 12.00 | |
| 2013 | BEOB | 19 | 17 | 3 | 52.78% | 0.30 |
| 2012 | Official | 51 | 43 | 2 | 54.26% | 3.70 |
| 2012 | Big | 21 | 17 | 1 | 55.26% | 2.30 |
| 2012 | Other | 30 | 26 | 1 | 53.57% | 1.40 |
| 2011 | Official | 63 | 48 | 2 | 56.76% | 10.20 |
| 2011 | Big | 22 | 12 | 64.71% | 8.80 | |
| 2011 | Other | 41 | 36 | 2 | 53.25% | 1.40 |
| ALL | Official | 201.5 | 151 | 6.5 | 57.16% | 35.40 |
| ALL | Big | 79.5 | 59 | 2.5 | 57.40% | 14.60 |
| ALL | Other | 122 | 92 | 4 | 57.01% | 20.80 |
| ALL | BEOB | 34 | 42.5 | 3.5 | 44.44% | -12.75 |
(pats self on back) You might be tempted to say “damn, these guys are good”, but here’s a sobering reminder of how hard it is to distinguish signal in a haystack full of noise: Since 2006, college football teams that start with the letter “O” are 509-406 ATS (55.4%). By the way, in previous years, this might have been a separate post, but I’ve realized that 13501350% more people read posts that have the word “picks” in the title. So without further ado, here are the Week 1 picks: Big Plays (0-0 YTD)
- Chicago +6.5 at Houston [MP Line: CHI +1.8]
Other Plays (0-0 YTD)
- New Orleans -1 vs. Oakland [MP Line: NO -4.2]
Break-Even or Better (unofficial leans) (0-0 YTD)
- New York Jets +2.5 vs. Cincinnati [MP Line: NYJ -0.8]
Massey-Peabody lines on remaining games
- Carolina -4.4 at Denver
- Atlanta -4.2 vs. Tampa Bay
- Minnesota -2.8 at Tennessee
- Philadelphia -2.3 vs. Cleveland
- Kansas City -7.0 vs. San Diego
- Baltimore -3.1 vs. Buffalo
- Green Bay -3.0 at Jacksonville
- Seattle -11.2 vs. Miami
- New York Giants -1.3 at Dallas
- Detroit +2.1 at Indianapolis
- Arizona -6.6 vs. New England
- Pittsburgh -2.3 at Washington
- St. Louis -1.4 at San Francisco
