Intro by Yank
We’ve gotten into the meat of the season now. Many of the teams are who we thought they were. Your boys are who you thought we were too; dumb and bad at gambling. At least Sam has been able to find some momentum. Let’s get into the recap.
The Recap
Sam ended last week’s intro by saying we needed to stick with the principles and trust the process and he was absolutely right. Our best bet of the week was in The Collaboration where we correctly backed the best team and offense in the league (how bout those Chieeefs) for a never a doubt win and cover. Sam made a similarly smart pick in The Isolation cashing in on a bounce-back spot from the Packers awesome offense against a bad Texans team. My Isolation pick was also in the right vein, as the Panthers looked feisty in a division game against the Saints all day and covered the spread, but much like the Jags in week 2, could not pull out the win for my Moneyline bet (one day I will learn). Finally, in one of the best matchups in The Confrontation to date, the Steelers stormed out to an early lead but the Titans ultimately had a chance to tie on a makeable field goal. Sam took the money but we both felt good about our picks and both teams’ offenses and coaching staffs.
A key aspect of our success last week was paying greater attention to perceived momentum, and also the psychological aspect of the game. For example, the Packers could not have had less perceived momentum, their stock was way down after getting blown off the field in Tampa. Conversely, the Texans, who are bad, were stock up after a couple of solid performances. Moreover, the Packers also badly needed a win to keep up with the Bears in the NFC North. Unsurprisingly there was some value to be had on the Packers. This type of analysis of who is stock up or stock down will impact how we think about which lines may be advantageous for us moving forward. We also are going to hone in on teams who really need the win (or are already resigned to a loss). I also haven’t been picking against the spread enough and that is something that will be easy to change.
So to recap the recap:
- Stick to the principles!
- Consider perceived momentum
- Examine the psychological state of each team
- Profit
The Principles
Stay away from bad QBs and bad HCs.Only bet on HCs and Offenses you are confident in.- Bet for a team not against their opponent
- Parlay (and tease) at your own peril.
- Due to the salary cap, there isn’t a significant talent gap between the vast majority of NFL teams.
- If you’re going to pick a dog Week 1, play the money line.
- Division games are less predictable than non-division games, due to team/scheme familiarity.
Nominated Principles:
- Vegas knows better. Some lines don’t look like you think they should – be very careful.
Week 8 Picks
The Collaboration (4-3 ATS; 1-1 bonus bets):
The Dallas Cowboys @ The Philadelphia Eagles-9.5
Yank: Let’s put the moose on the table early. Do we trust Carson Wentz to throw a football three feet much less to throw three TDs? Probably not. However, let’s consider some other factors in this game. Doug Pederson-solid coach. Mike McCarthy-very bad coach. Under center for the Cowboys will be James Madison alum (Go DUUUKES!) Ben DiNucci, who is a rookie drafted in the seventh round. Carson Wentz is…not a rookie from a 1-AA school picked in the seventh round. The Eagles are generally getting healthier while 3 of the 5 starters from the Dallas OL project to be out. The Cowboys have also been completely run off the field in the last two weeks by the Cardinals (who are respectable) and the Washington Football Team (who…are not). This last part plays into the psychological aspect of this game that makes us really like the bet.
Sam: In some senses, this pick goes against Principle 2. The Cowboys suck right now and what do we think is going to change? To Yank’s point, is Ben DiNucci going to come in and throw all over the Eagles? I mean, maybe, but I’m not going to waste an opportunity to go against a bad team while I still have a reasonable spread. I think you could even argue this could be closer to the Chiefs-Jets line. That being said, there are reasons to like the Eagles here too. I like Carson Wentz, even though he has struggled some this season, but I think that can be explained by a lack of protection up front and not having playmakers. It does seem like the Eagles are starting to find some weapons and getting even a tiny bit healthier helps them (Jason Peters is back and maybe Lane Johnson too. The Cowboys discarded 3 starters on defense, which doesn’t bode well for stopping a good QB in Wentz. Additionally, the Cowboys just got beat down, reports have come out about how the players hate the coaching staff, and the Eagles played last Thursday. The extra rest helps most teams and should really help this Eagles team. We’ll be resting easy with the Eagles laying 9.5 to the Cowboys.
The Tennessee Titans-7 @ The Cincinnati Bengals
Yank: We also have a special treat for you this week, a second collaboration pick, an occurrence as rare as a full moon on Halloween. Transparently, this Titans matchup against the Bengals was one I have been stumping for in our text thread all week. Rooting for the Titans last week, even when they were down significantly in the first half, I was confident that they were strong enough on offense, and well coached enough on offense to mount a comeback even though the Steelers are one of the best teams in the League. Sure enough, they should have sent the game to OT. Conversely on the Bengals, everyone loves “Joey Covers” who keeps the game close every week. When this game opened as Titans-4 right away I felt like this was a classic stock down (Titans off a loss) vs stock up (Bengals off another cover) matchup to jump on. Since then Vegas has validated the inefficiency I was noticing, the line has moved up THREE points to Titans-7. We need a Titans blowout to win this bet. The Bengals basically never get blown out. Have zombies eaten our brains?
Sam: Unless you have an elite – and I mean top tier – defense, a team’s offense wins football games. As John Madden as it might sound, it’s the offense that puts points on the board and the team with the most points when the clock strikes :00 wins the game. The Titans have the winning kind of offense. As Yank noted above, and I noted in my comments over the last two weeks, the Titans system just works. Teams want to get Derrick Henry in the backfield before he picks up steam. If you fake the ball to him, it sucks up all the linebackers and you will have plenty of space to operate with over the middle. Tannehill has the guts to lead and the arm talent to make accurate and deep throws. We like Henry and Tannehill. Currently, Tennessee has the 3rd ranked offense overall by DVOA only behind the Chiefs who we like and the Seahawks who we also like. What about the Bengals you ask? Well, they have the 28th ranked offense by DVOA.1 On the other side of the ball, the Titans have an okay defense (17th ranked defense by DVOA) that swallowed up the Steelers in the second half. The Bengals? The 26th rated defense.2 The eye test with the Bengals makes this game feel like it should be close, but Yank and are here to capture this kind of matchup. Give us a bad team (albeit high variance) vs a good team everyday of the week. A theme the last two weeks has been that despite random outcomes of games from time to time, your opinion about a team doesn’t need to change with the outcome of one game. There is nothing wrong with barely losing to the Steelers – one of the best, most complete teams in all of football right now. The Titans are still very good at football despite no longer being undefeated. In other words, stay calm and Titan Up!
Yank’s Play: $5.50 on the Eagles-9.5 (-110) and $5.50 on the Titans-7 (-110)
Sam’s Play: $5.50 on the Eagles-9.5 (-110) and $5.50 on the Titans-7 (-110)
The Confrontation (4-3 Sam):
The Pittsburgh Steelers @ The Baltimore Ravens-4
Sam: Before I get into the details of this pick, boy am I excited for this matchup! Not only do we get two of the best teams in the NFL, but we also get a heated division rivalry. This is for AFC North supremacy. What I like about this bet is that I get the Steelers as underdogs (even if it’s because they’re on the road). I laid out the case for the Steelers in last week’s Confrontation and they were one of my Week 6 Isolation picks as well. What I’m banking on is a disciplined Steelers’ defense that can shut down a non-existent rushing attack from the Ravens (outside of LJ) and put enough pressure on Jackson to make him hurry up his tempo. The fear with putting pressure on a guy like LJ is that he can escape the pocket and make plays with his legs or buy extra time. But that’s where I think Tomlin and these vets on defense will pay off. They are so well-coached and so good at what they do, that they should be able to execute what they need to. Plus, let’s not downplay the psychological effect here. The Steelers went 8-8 last year with essentially me as their QB. They are PO’ed and motivated to get back on top of the AFC North. Sunday will be a critical step in that direction.
Yank: Here is my case for this bet: why on earth did this open as Ravens-5.5? Would any reasonable person who’s seen these teams play this year think the Ravens are almost 6 points better? This is a Vegas knows something game. And once you start to think of it like that, the rationale starts to fall into place. The Steelers are 3rd in Total DVOA, the Ravens are…2nd. They both have great defenses. They both have solid offenses. All of my arguments about the Steelers from last week still hold. Are we sure Ben Roethlisberger can carry this team on his 38 year old back? If Stephen Gostkowski was still a real NFL kicker the Steelers would have scored enough points to be tied with the Titans at the end of regulation last week. Will 27 points be enough in Baltimore this week? Lamar Jackson is still awesome. Missing Devin Bush is still a problem, and it will be even more on display against the most creative ground attack in the league. And speaking of motivation, the Ravens are a game back in the division and everyone has written them off? Because the Steelers happen to have not played the Chiefs yet? The winner of this game almost always wins by more than a TD (4 times in last 6 matchups). I think the Ravens win this game.
Yank’s Play: $5.50 on the Ravens-4 (-110)
Sam’s Play: $5.50 on the Steelers+4 (-110)
The Isolation (Yank 3-7; Sam 4-6):
The San Francisco 49ers @ The Seattle Seahawks-3
Sam: I really, really like this matchup this week. And I probably like it too much, but as Yank pointed out in the intro, we are trying to sniff out the real shifts in momentum from the fake ones. The Seahawks were undefeated headed into last week and were a potential Super Bowl favorite, but then they lost to the Cardinals and some cracks started to form in the Super Bowl armour. Meanwhile the 49ers have been dealt some injuries and are starting to get healthy. They beat the Rams and smoked the Pats. Everybody is ready to start the Super Bowl parade for the 9ers. But let me ask you, what has really changed? My hypothesis is, nothing has changed. The Seahawks are still very good on offense – and yes, I realize their defense is garbage – but Russell Wilson threw 3 interceptions in that game against the Cards. My money is on that not happening again, much like it was a bounceback game from Aaron Rodgers against the Texans, I believe in Russ to get back on track and squash the division opponents at home. And unlike last time, the Seahawks are only laying 3 points at home! That means Vegas thinks this is a tie game on a neutral field. Give me Russ in a close one any day.
Sam’s Play: $6.30 on the Seahawks-3 (-105)
The Kansas City Chiefs-20 vs. The New York Jets
The Chicago Bears+5 vs. The New Orleans Saints
Yank: I’ve made a lot of dumb bets in The Isolation, where I don’t have Sam’s wisdom to talk me out of them. Sam has also been doing a really smart thing recently which is just making picks against the spread down here that he feels confident about and has been mostly winning money. I’m gonna let that strategy rip this week and hope for similar returns, because there are a couple matchups I really like:
We have talked the Chiefs to death on the blog. Awesome offensive skill talent, incredible scheme, best QB in the league, they should put up 30+ every week. Enter the J-E-T-S Jets Jets Jets, the unquestionable worst team in the league. How pumped are they to make the trip to Arrowhead this week during this grueling slog of a season? They had a decent shot to hang around in a division game last week and their stock is weirdly somewhat up. Meanwhile the Chiefs offense was only ok last week in Denver, even in a blowout. I expect course corrections on both ends. The Jets have scored over 17 twice in seven weeks. The Chiefs could and should absolutely put up 40. Old me is scared to lay the giant spread here in an NFL game based on Principle 4 (old me’s main defining trait is losing money). The exception proves the rule. Start your Chiefs players in fantasy and sit back and enjoy the ride with me.
Let me start pick number two by saying I hate the Bears. They looked horrible against my Giants in Week 2 and I have not trusted them ever since. I am also dumb and bad at gambling, so my grudges often cost me money. The Bears have the number 6 defense by DVOA; Khalil Mack is a menace. This game is in Chicago, where it is projected to be 38 degrees with 15-20 mph winds at game time. Why is 40 year old Drew Brees favored by 5 in this spot? Look back at The Collaboration in several previous weeks where Sam and I lost this exact bet on perceived better teams laying 2-3 points on the road against perceived slightly worse competition. Based on that experience if this spread was 3-3.5 I’d still like the Bears. Wildly, this point spread implies that the Saints are 8 points better than Chicago on a neutral field which is patently ridiculous. The Bears stock could not be lower and we are getting 2-3 free points here because of it. If Foles can beg, borrow or steal 17 points I really like the Bears chances here.
Yank’s Play: $5.50 on the Bears+5 (-110) and $5.50 on the Chiefs-20 (-110)
The Bank-Week 8
| Yank | Sam | |
| Starting: | $77.29 | $93.74 |
| Risk: | $27.50 | $22.80 |
| Potential Earnings: | $25.00 | $21.00 |
| Record: | 11-15 | 14-3 |
| Record against the Spread: | 7-9 | 10-9 |
Authors: Sam Mattson and Michael Yanckello
References
- “2020 NFL Offensive Efficiency Ratings” revised as of 10/27/2020, https://www.footballoutsiders.com/stats/nfl/team-offense/2020
- “2020 NFL Defensive Efficiency Ratings” revised as of 10/27/2020, https://www.footballoutsiders.com/stats/nfl/team-defense/2020
One Last Line 