Best Bets for Week 6

Plus a week 5 review

Oct 13, 2024

∙ Paid

Season + Week Review

It was a great week five where we have now pushed our profitable weekly streak to now five in a row.

We went 10-4 on straight props last week profiting 8.25 units bringing us to a total profit of 23.27 units on the season.

Current splits on the season:

13-15 on overs (46%) for -3.93 units
32-13 on unders (71%) for +18.04 units
9-19 on alternate lines for +8.03 units

One quick thing I’ve noticed when betting overs is this: while I haven’t had a ton of success doing so, there have been quite a few times where we have bet some ladders on players and hit those. I think it’s shown I’ve done a decent job at finding weekly upside plays and when they hit they tend to hit big.

In fact, there’s been 12 “overs” I’ve hit that have included an alt of some sort. On those plays the base over is 9-3 (75%). It’s a very small sample so we can’t take any really actionable things away from this, but the overs in which I tend to play some alternate lines are the ones I’m most confident in.

So maybe this is just a friendly reminder to myself to make sure I’m really confident when betting an over.

This also means I’m 4-12 (25%) when betting all other overs.

And before doing this self analysis I had exactly two overs I bet this week without playing some alternate lines.

The first one already lost on Thursday Night.

Just some thoughts on how I’m evaluating some of my process for the rest of the year and hopefully when we get a bigger sample from this it can help decipher actionable things do in the future. But if things are trending the same way this is probably just more evidence to lean even stronger into unders.

Good variance

De’Von Achane under 55.5 rushing yards

Achane got hurt in the first quarter and ultimately did not return to the game.

This is obviously an added bonus to betting unders is we get this potential out, but it’s still extremely lucky when it happens.

Achane had 18 rushing yards on three carries and was pacing to hit the over here so it’s very possible that the injury changed the dynamic of this from a loss to a win.

We hate to win on plays like this but it happens.

Gardner Minshew under 190.5 passing yards

Started off with a 56 yard TD to Bowers, with around 130 yards at halftime when they benched him for O’Connell.

This was almost assuredly a loss and we got bailed out.

It was a part of the process mentioned how this mid game benching was possible but in reality this stuff rarely ever comes to fruition and a lot of times a benching will happen when a player is going to lose their bet, but this was the single reason we won our bet.

Extremely lucky circumstance and it’s completely possible that even if they gave Gardner Minshew even one more drive he could’ve hit his over before getting benched.

Bad variance

Kenneth Walker over 69.5 rushing yards

Seahawks had 18 plays by halftime and had negative game script against the Giants all game.

The Giants simply controlled this game from start to finish giving Walker absolutely zero opportunities to get going.

It’s wild considering in a game where the Seahawks were 6.5 point favorites that Walker only got five carries the entire game.

Thursday Night Play

Unfortunately we are now putting our five week winning streak at risk here starting off the week with a loss on our only play.

We bet Kenneth Walker over 55.5 rushing yards based upon the idea the Seahawks were going to feed him the ball this game.

And we were right about him getting the ball a ton, just not how we envisioned it.

He had 22 total touches but only had 32 rushing yards and eight of those touches were in the receiving game.

Thoughts for Week 6

I’m going to stick what is working for us this week with more of a heavy lean into unders.

Last week we had our highest ratio of bets to an under with 10 of the 14 (71.4%) total bets being an under. It turned out to be a great week for us again as we’ve been hitting unders at an extremely high (and likely unsustainable) rate.

This week we have 15 straight bets placed and 11 of them (73.3%) are unders. One of the four overs this week was already played so an even higher percentage remain on the slate this week.

With each passing week we are starting to understand more and more about these players and matchups they face with more conviction.

In the early weeks it can be tough fighting through some paper tigers who either emulate a very strong or very poor defense simply based on a small sample size of games.

The Seahawks are a perfect example ranking top 3 in both pass and rush defense after three weeks facing weak opponents, only to see them get exposed on defense these past three weeks against stronger offense.

This is the fun part of the year and historically even in a small sample of three years with Stealing Lines, the 2nd quarter of the season (weeks 5-9) has collectively been my most profitable quarter of the year.

So let’s hope to keep the winning streak continue with another strong week and bounce back after this Thursday night loss.

Join our Discord

This is a friendly reminder that if you’re a subscriber to Stealing Lines and not in our Discord you’re doing yourself a massive disservice. A rough average of 65-75% of the plays that are played in the Discord never make it to this Substack post mainly because the lines move.

Some examples this week of extreme line movement.

We bet some of the following:

D’Andre Swift under 61.5 rushing yards
Kenneth Walker over 55.5 rushing yards
AJ Brown over 67.5 receiving yards
Tank Dell under 56.5 receiving yards

Here’s where they are at now or closed at:

D’Andre Swift 50.5 rushing yards
Kenneth Walker 64.5 rushing yards
AJ Brown 72.5 receiving yards
Tank Dell 50.5 receiving yards

While not likely in individual cases, these movements can be the single difference between a win and a loss especially over a larger sample.

And these lines matter. We may have loved Walker at over 55.5 but maybe have a slight lean to the under at 64.5.

It changes our whole process and while on face value every week we are betting for/against players, in reality we are simply betting their lines.

So if you’re wondering why I preach to get in our Discord every week it’s because you’re simply not getting full value from the subscription without it.

You can find the link in your “Welcome to Stealing Lines” email.