NFL Week 4 – 2021

Intro by Sam

As the saying goes, even a broken clock is right twice a day. Well, we might be two broken clocks, but we were certainly both right twice last week, each going 2-1 on our picks. There’s some promise to what we have going, so let’s turn back the hands of time and look at where we went right in Week 3.

The Recap

Things started out great for us with the Saints unmasking the Patriots Scooby-Doo style with our Collaboration pick. We were all over the stock up/stock down narrative that moved the line towards the Pats by 3 points from the look-ahead lines. The Saints were coming off of a bad loss to the Panthers, while the Patriots beat up the hapless Jets. But we never thought the Patriots were all that good and the Saints were never all that bad. Don’t let weekly randomness and excitement get the best of you! 

In the Confrontation, I might have let the excitement of the Raiders get the best of me, with Yank scoring yet another victory over me (*whispers* in this case, do NOT let him get hot!). At the end of the day, this game was a toss-up. I grabbed the line at 4 and it was in reach until a last-second touchdown by the Phins put them into overtime, effectively sealing this one for Yank. From the look-ahead lines, the Raiders were originally favored by 1 point. I almost grabbed it then, but we haven’t quite worked out the strategies for those lines. That’ll be a future-us problem. In the meantime, I will be monitoring line movement to see how often lines move *too* much. Raiders-1 would have been a lock, but once it got to -4, it missed. We’ll keep you posted as we get more data.

And from the Isolation, I got our first win of the new season by accurately sniffing out the LA Chargers as the tease killer of the week. I’ll happily take the points and the money in my account but may look to integrate a little ML play as well as the spread into my future underdog bets. Yank, unfortunately, was on the wrong end of the tease killer strategy… and it wasn’t even close. Matt Nagy might possibly be the worst coach in NFL history and that’s a lesson I’m sure Yank won’t forget soon. Before we move into the picks for Week 4, I’ll leave you with this: I shit you not, the Bears technically managed 57 total team yards the entire game. I mean, I’ve never seen that. All but 1 of Fields 68 passing yards were negated by 67 total yards lost to sacks… wow. They had 1 yard of passing as a team. 1 yard!!! That’s incredible. I’ve never had to refer to yards in the singular before. What a world. Thank you Matt Nagy for this incredible opportunity.

The Strategies

1. Watch line movement carefully. Sharps move the lines and we want to be on the side with them.
2. Pick more underdogs. Even though many of them lose more than 50% of games, they still cover about 50% of the time.
3. Put in bets earlier. Once you get to Sunday, the lines are close to perfectly efficient.

Week 4 Picks

The Collaboration (2-1): 

The Pittsburgh Steelers @ the Green Bay Packers-6.5

Yank: We begin with a matchup of old QBs going in ostensibly opposite directions. After a rough first outing in Jacksonville, Aaron Rodgers has rebounded with two huge passing days and two victories. Meanwhile, the Steelers are in free-fall after a nice opening week victory over the Bills in Week One, getting demolished at home two weeks in a row. This one seems easy you may say to yourself, and we here at One Last Line think that would be your first mistake. We like the Steel Curtain and Brainless Ben Roethlisberger at the very least to take a little bit of a dead cat bounce here as we enter the month of Halloween. 

Sam: Some weird things to report here. First of all, the look-ahead line in this matchup was Packers-6.5. Well, guess what? It’s still Packers-6.5. As Yank pointed out about the direction of these two teams, doesn’t that seem a bit odd to you? Another big loss with no signs of life on the offense, and the line doesn’t budge? Strange. Also, the Bengals moved the ball decently well against the Steelers last week. Maybe that vaunted defense isn’t so scary anymore, or maybe TJ Watt was out and he’s one of the best defenders in football. Don’t worry, he’ll be back for this one. 

Yank: To Sam’s point, everything about the line for this game has been kinda funky. The Packers are home, so if you factor in the normal 3 point advantage for home field, this line suggests the Packers are 3.5-4 points better on a neutral field. Based on recent results, that seems… off. Moreover 80% of the public is backing the Packers and this line has not moved at all, if anything it has moved slightly towards the Steelers. Finally, on the actual field, I read in Sheil Kapadia’s picks piece on The Athletic that Mike Tomlin Steelers teams cover the spread 76% as underdogs and only 43% of the time as favorites. The coaching matchup is unquestionably the reason to believe in the Steelers. After last week, I told Sam I’d take a team with a good coach coming off a loss to beat a team riding high off a win as The Collaboration every week if I could. Here’s another entry into that category. 

Sam: Yank finding that gem about the Steelers covering the spread as underdogs checks out. We’ve operated on this principle in the past, but it bears repeating: Good coaches perform above expectation. Before we close this Collaboration out, I wanted to leave you with one last nugget I’m monitoring. In games where the look-ahead line doesn’t move in either direction, Underdogs are 7-0 straight up, not just ATS. Small sample size? Absolutely. Trend? Yes. Predictive? We’ll see. Those teams are the Cardinals, Steelers (Week 1), Raiders, Falcons, Lions, Chargers, and Packers. For the most part, that seems like a pretty good list of coaches.

Yank’s Play: $4.00 on the Steelers (+240) 

Sam’s Play:  $5.50 on the Steelers+6 (-110) and $2.00 on the Steelers ML (+220)

The Confrontation (Yank 3-0; Sam 0-3):

The Arizona Cardinals @ the Los Angeles Rams-4.0 (-110)

Sam: It’s truly possible I will never win a Confrontation this season. As I’m sure Yank will point out, this matchup falls readily in line with our strategies, and thus I’m not super confident in this pick either. That being said, I’m testing out a corollary to our strategies. Essentially I want to test if the line can move *too* much in one direction. The original look-ahead line was Rams-5.5 and swelled up to -6 at the beginning of this week, before falling all the way to -4 and -4.5. Our strategies would have us believe that line movement follows sharp money, and while that might be true, I think it’s possible that either the sharps or the casinos end up moving that line just a little bit too far once the casinos get word of which direction to move it. Currently, Favorites are 5-3 ATS when the line moves 1 to 2.5 points in the direction of the Underdog. This line has moved anywhere from 1 to 1.5 (on look-ahead lines) to 2 to 2.5 (on lines from earlier this week) towards the Cardinals. From a football perspective, Kyler Murray has been awesome but he hasn’t gone up against a defense like this and a bad Cardinals defense hasn’t held up well against offenses that can execute. I expect the Rams to win this one, and I hope it’s by a touchdown.

Yank: This game is not about big data and playing the percentages for me, this game starts with a feeling, a feeling that is represented in our strategies to Sam’s point. That feeling is fairly simple; I feel like most good teams go 1-1 against each other in division games. The Cardinals and Rams know each other well and have both proven their mettle as good teams through three weeks. There are three reasons to take a shot on the Cardinals from my perspective. First, as Sam points out the line has moved 1.5 points towards them, which indicates the smart people like their chances this week. Second, this is a huge letdown look ahead spot for the Rams coming off a big win over the Bucs and with a big matchup against their rival Seahawks coming up on Thursday. Finally, everybody and their brother loves the Rams right now, and while I have shown my own love for McVay and the Rams many times in this space, I’m not sure they are definitively the best team in the NFC West, much less the NFC or the whole league. I think parity rears its ugly head here. I like the Cardinals to win this one outright, so the 4.5 points feel like a gift. 

Yank’s Play: $5.00 on the Cardinals+4.5(-114) 

Sam’s Play:  $5.50 on the Rams-4.5 (-110)

The Isolation (Yank 0-3; Sam 1-2):

Tennessee Titans @ New York Jets+6.5

Yank: I am betting on the Jets. That seems like a terrible idea on its face. On the surface there is not a ton to like about the Jets. Their offense is bad. They’ve been getting blown out left and right. Meanwhile the Titans are a team that has been playing well. Here’s the thing. Vegas loves loading idiots like us up on the obvious side. Titans to cover this feels like a no brainer. Every idiot you know will have the Titans in a tease. Vegas is right more than us. A huge percentage of the public likes the Titans, and this line has moved down from 7 to 6.5. I was able to get a good price on Jets+7.5, which avoids Sam’s theory about the line getting moved too far. This feels like an absolutely terrible idea to me, but that is sort of the point. Sometimes the best value is on the worst seeming ideas. Give me gang green to definitely lose, but by less than you’d think. 

Yank’s Play: $5.00 on the Jets+7.5 (-125)

Sam: As you’re well aware by now, one of our main takeaways from last season is really trying to ground ourselves in where spreads come from, how they’re set, and how they move. At an obviously high level, we have covered the idea that the spread is supposed to be a method for creating a 50-50 proposition on who will win. If you follow gambling closely, it’s always amazing how close the lines ultimately are. I mean, how many games each week come down to a last-minute score to determine the outcome of a bet ATS? It feels like a lot. So, what if I told you that the Denver Broncos, who no one likes, have consistently outperformed expectations ATS? Sure, maybe you’d say that you expect the Broncos to not only beat the teams they’ve played so far, but you’d also likely think they should win ATS. Well, not only have they beaten every spread, but they’ve also consistently dominated ATS. Here are the scores for the Broncos vs. the closing spread I caught it at:

• The Broncos were road favorites by 3 against the Giants and won by 14 (with a meaningless last-second Giants TD).
• The Broncos were road favorites by 5.5 against the Jags and won by 10 (and could have scored a TD at the end of the game too).
• The Broncos were favored by 10 against the Jets and won by 26.

So if you look at the spread as the expectation, the Broncos are performing far above what’s expected of them. I expect that trend to continue this week against the Ravens. Absolutely no one believes in the Broncos. Earlier this week, Yank had it as 80% of the money on the Ravens. The public likes to cry out: “the Broncos haven’t beaten anyone!” Well, have you looked at the defenses that the Ravens offense has played? The Raiders – middle of the road. The Chiefs – bad. The Lions – also bad. And yet, it took a conversion on 4th and 18 and the world’s longest field goal kick in the history of football to knock off the Lions. The Ravens are a play or two away from staring down the barrel of 0-3. So while the Ravens defense is legit, let’s not pretend like there aren’t problems on the Ravens sideline either. Ask yourself this: if the Ravens are so much better than the Broncos, why did the line shift from Ravens-1 to Ravens+1 over the last week and a half? *it moved back to +1 towards the end of the week* With all of the money on the Ravens, you’d think it would move in the other direction… In summary, if you’re going to lose, you might as well lose going against the public.

Sam’s Play:  $5.50 on the Broncos+1 (-110)

The Bank-Week 4

	Yank	Sam
Starting:	$111.71	$87.50
Risk:	$14.00	$18.50
Potential Earnings:	$17.99	$19.40
Record:	5-4	3-6
Record Against The Spread:	3-0	1-4

Authors: Sam Mattson and Michael Yanckello