Best Bets for Week 5

Plus a couple MVP bets

Oct 06, 2024

∙ Paid

Week 4 Review

Last week I had went 9-6 on straight player prop bets and after including the couple alts that were played we finished up 2.66 units on the week.

This now pushes us up to a count of a profit of 15.02 units through four weeks.

Good variance

I wouldn’t say there were a ton that qualified as us getting super lucky last week on the plays. I would say the two that would be closest would’ve been Josh Jacobs under rushing yards and Zay Flowers under receiving yards.

In both cases the games they were in quickly turned into blowouts and the ideal game scripts for our bets to hit came into play.

Bad variance

Jared Goff under 244.5 passing yards

If you were to tell me before the game that Jared Goff would have only 18 passing attempts against a top three passing defense in the league, I would have simply told you there was no possible way this bet would lose.

It did.

Jared Goff became the first QB ever to have a 100% completion percentage in a full game.

We nailed the analysis where we mentioned this would likely be a run heavy approach for the Lions, but instead of me taking the bet of under passing attempts, I went with the yards and that was the difference between a win and a loss.

Thursday Night Plays

For the Falcons/Bucs game on Thursday we played two props in the discord and hit both of those giving us a nice 2-0 start to the week.

Quarterly Review

If we want to include Thursday Night’s Plays up to this point, I’ve taken 59 total straight prop bets on the year.

In total I’m 36-23 for a 61% hit rate on these straight props.

But what I found interesting was the splits in which I was hitting these.

23 of my bets this year have been betting a player’s “over”

I’m 11-12 on those bets (48%)

36 of my bets have been on a player’s “under”

I’m 25-11 on those bets (69%)

In total I’m up 17.02 units so far which is a nice start to the year. Let’s keep it rolling

If anyone wants a link to the Stealing Lines tracker it’s right here.

I think a lot of this can be explained by the lack of offense we have seen so far in the NFL this season, but a large majority of that relates to philosophy as well.

Why we should bet unders

If you’ve been a subscriber for a while or have followed me dating back to when I started betting, I’ve frequently talked about the idea and concept of betting unders and why they are more profitable.

We’ve had an influx of new subscribers this year that may not be as familiar with me or my process so if you’re new, welcome and this piece could be something you may be interested in.

To summarize here are some of the reasons why:

Natural human tendency to be overconfident in outcomes
Injuries
Game-scripts
Player underperformance

In order for an “over” to hit, not only does the player have to play well, but there has to be a game-script good enough to warrant that player still getting touches as the game goes on.

And while it doesn’t happen a lot, injuries are an unfortunate part of football. You could have the perfect matchup and game script and the player is playing well, but they get an injury and miss the rest of the game.

While injuries are pretty rare in each individual game, if you’ve been betting the NFL for some time I’m sure you’ve personally ran into many scenarios where you have won or lost bets simply because a player got hurt early on in the game.

But not only the injury to the specific player we bet on but to teammates as well.

Like betting an over on a WR and their QB goes down or betting on a RB and their top offensive lineman gets hurt.

There’s so many more factors that could go wrong than can go right.

What I learned in my early betting days

My first year ever betting I didn’t really know what I was doing but I tracked all my bets I made.

My first natural inclination was to bet as many overs as possible.

The thought was “all these players are going to do really good this week” and so I just started betting players I like that I thought the market undervalued.

My first two weeks I actually did pretty well and was up a collective 16 units.

At this point I thought I was a genius at betting and invincible, thinking my analysis was so good I would continue to win.

So naturally I started betting even more placing a whopping 45 bets the following week.

Safe to say I got humbled and wasn’t a genius at betting.

After four weeks I was somehow down 4 units overall despite being up 16 just two weeks prior.

I was discouraged but after talking with Connor Allen of 4for4 football he helped me realize a couple things that have stuck with me since that moment:

To be very selective when betting
To fight against the urge to bet overs and instead have a majority of plays be unders

My total tally for my first year was 266 total straight bets

153 of those were overs

113 of those were unders

On those overs I went 76-77 (49%)

On those unders I went 66-47 (58%)

The math has been clear since then and I’ve continued to develop my process, but this is a base foundation of my process.

Funny enough what I went through my first couple weeks betting is something I still see a ton of today in the industry.

Here’s just a fun example from the game on Thursday courtesy of Julian Edlow of DraftKings

Just a quick observation can see how the majority of money and bets are on the overs.

Now this might be a bad example simply because this game was an absolute shootout and you would’ve went 14-7 on these bets just blindly taking the over, but this game was a complete outlier where Kirk Cousins threw for 509 yards and this game went into overtime.

I think we can all agree it’s much more fun to bet on an over. Our natural instinct is to root for players and upside scenarios to happen.

It’s super boring and a lot of times a buzzkill to be betting unders and actively rooting against players, but if our goal is to make money while watching a sport we all enjoy then betting unders is how we get there.

Plus I’d argue making money is fun.

And a big reason I bring this up is because I know there’s a ton of people who bet a lot and are wondering why they aren’t making money or seeing a ton of success in doing so. There’s a bunch of factors for why this could be the case but these tend to generally be some of the bigger mistakes I see for newer bettors.

Hopefully if you’re newer or are wanting to get into betting that I can help lend a helping hand into the process I go through on a weekly basis to help determine my plays.

My goal with Stealing Lines is not only to help everyone win bets and hopefully make as much money as possible, but if I can help you become smarter when it comes to betting and educate about certain things regarding this then that makes me happy.

I wouldn’t be where I was without the same guidance from people taking the time to help me in this industry when I simply knew nothing.

There’s a lot of noise out there in this industry that unfortunately some people are getting fed some really bad advice and poor analysis.

The great thing is there are some really good bettors out there who have an awesome track record and do look at the right things.

Hopefully this tidbit of the post today could help give a little bit of discernment in having a better idea of who these people are and who to trust.

Join our Discord

If you aren’t aware, every single pick that gets made for the week in our Discord. This is due to having to get picks out in a timely manner. If you’re a subscriber and aren’t in the Discord it’s highly recommended you be in there. The link to join will be in your “Welcome to Stealing Lines” email.

The picks that are sent out via Substack each week are some of the plays that I’ve made in the Discord that the lines haven’t moved much and are at prices where I would still bet them at.

I’m obviously going to jinx this by saying this, but so far on the plays I’ve sent out via the Substack each week have gone 15-4 so far this year.

Let’s keep that streak going.