Trusting the Process + Best Bets for Week 14
It was a rough week and week 13 was a great example of what this 2023 NFL betting season has been like. It feels like any time we’ve crawled ourselves back up from being in a hole we get punched right back to where we were.
We went down 5.88 units last week and frankly none of the bets that we lost were really close to winning.
I’m not entirely sure what to say right now.
BennyP from our discord said the following in our chat this week: “This is my first year with this and i’m wondering if i should stop and try again next year. I was out of state last week, so i haven’t had a positive NFL week since week 6. Not trying to bring negativity to the chat. Wondering how people continue to bet through the losing weeks.”
I think the topic is something I wanted to talk about and address because it’s something I’m sure we’re all feeling to some extent if you’ve been following our work for the 2023 NFL season.
We had some great responses from members of the community on how they deal with it and personally here’s where I stand with the whole philosophy:
Honestly it’s extremely tough and there’s no perfect answer. My best advice and experience is to take a step back and figure out whether it’s a process issue or whether it’s just bad variance. Sometimes it can be both and doing the best to decipher how to adjust is key.
For the NFL this year I’ve personally had a really hard time getting a grasp for week to week stuff as the process that has worked very well for me the past two years suddenly isn’t working as well. I know a lot of people in this industry are personally feeling this was also about the NFL this year when it comes to betting in 2023. As far as bankroll goes if you’ve got to the point where current unit sizing is an issue and want to tone it down a bit that’s fine, but if you’ve determined that it simply is bad variance (which happens all the time and sometimes longer than we’d like) then sizing down might not exactly be the best move.
The reason I say that is because the moment good variance does come your way you won’t be able to even out those losses as much. And this obviously isn’t a perfect science and I’m not saying this will happen by any means but some of my biggest winning weeks/stretches have come after stretches of bad weeks.
This whole year personally hasn’t been easy for me and it’s really hard to keep chugging along when you’re in a bad stretch. If you wanna talk about it more please feel free to reach out, I’ve been through some wild stretches dating back to my card counting days.
Those were some thoughts from me but I wanted to touch a little bit more on the philosophical answer behind this.
There’s two aspects to what I do, there’s a process that I follow and use tools and stats to give educated guesses on which player props to bet on. And then there’s the results.
And this year the results have been absolutely terrible. But what is most important is the process.
Generally the process is closely tied to results, but there are cases where it isn’t. I’ve joked with friends but I’m kinda serious when I say if I blindly picked 10 player props a week without doing any research I legitimately might have a better record on the season than I do now.
Does this mean if I continued to blindly pick 10 player props a week verses spending hours and hours on research to back my player props bets that I would have a better record from here on out?
Most certainly not.
In fact in a hypothetical scenario where I was up 15 units on the year blindly picking props but down 11.5 units with research behind the props which would be the better plays to bet from here on out?
Certainly the research behind them.
And this certainly comes down to the philosophy here. If we don’t believe the process of what we are doing then it doesn’t matter. We can’t control the outcomes of these games or what happens inside of them. The best we can do is simply try to predict what is going to happen.
I mentioned this early on in the year about when I was counting cards how it took me 160 hours to break even after what felt like bad beat after bad beat and then all the variance hit at once.
What I’m trying to say is if you believe in the process and have reason to believe that the process is correct then the results don’t matter in the short term.
Because if the process is tried and true over the long run it will win out. And the process doesn’t care about what happened last week. Or what happened the last month. Or what happened this whole season.
All the process does is take a step forward and use research and knowledge to best predict what is going to happen in the future.
The moment we place the bets before the games start we should be content that to the best of our knowledge we placed well researched bets. If we can’t be happy with the process BEFORE the games are played out then nothing else matters.
Because it’s simply all we can control.
Now I know it may seem like I'm not taking any blame for the results this season and instead blaming it on bad variance with great process. And to an extent I am.
But I’m not without faults myself and there are parts of the process in which aren’t perfect, but over the sum of everything I’m generally happy with the process I’ve put together this year.
I’d say for the high majority of weeks I walk into the kickoff of Sundays confident in the plays I’ve put together and can strongly back up all my sides with well researched information.
And I did the same last year, but the difference was these bets were hitting and hitting well.
But my main point here was that if you’re frustrated or feeling discouraged about this season, it’s best to take a step back and look at the process.
Because if you TRULY believe in the process and can look yourself in the mirror and self evaluate then it won’t matter if you’ve lost the last three weeks or this season because the process is going to win out in the long run.
I want to thank BennyP for the talking point because it’s not easy when this is happening and it truly can feel like no matter what we bet it will lose, but there is going to be a point where if the process is correct that it will turn around. And the week that you quit betting or pause for a bit could also be the same week it turns around and all the variance comes back.
Underdog Pick ‘Em of the Week
It’s been two straight weeks where we’ve hit the right QB/WR combo but the third pick ‘em has lost.
I don’t have as much confidence in the Josh Allen/Diggs combo as I have had in other QB/WR combos in recent weeks, but it’s a solid one on the board and we know we want to correlate these types of plays together.
Best Plays for Week 14
Rachaad White under 61.5 rushing yards -113 (Caesars)
I’m unsure how White keeps getting respect as a runner when he’s been arguably the worst rusher in all of football this year with a -59 RYOE. He’s simply been a volume player and had two of the easier matchups in the league the last two weeks.
The Panthers were last in rush D DVOA this year and the Colts have been bottom three in each rushing metric since Grover Stewart got suspended in week 6. Outside of those two cake matchups White has only been over 60 yards rushing twice and each time it took 17+ carries to do it.
If we exclude to take out the last two games which seems kinda fair considering how easy the matchups were he’s averaged 45.9 rushing with 3.26 YPC in his other 10 games.
He’s going against the Falcons where he went 13 for 34 last time. The Falcons are 2nd in rush EPA/play allowed this year presenting a tough matchup for White.
This line is quite high and should be around 56.5
Risk 1.695 units to win 1.5 units
Play to 57.5