Week 1 sides and totals
Plus a breakdown of past results
The season is here! The preseason period has been an absolute blast, and I know you guys are appreciating all the awesome full-season props Dalton’s uncovered. If you’re a paying sub not in the Discord yet, make sure to rectify that. You can find instructions at this link. You can find your Discord invite in the automated welcome email you should have gotten the day you subscribed. If you can’t find it, make sure to check your spam folder and/or promotions tab.
In case you’re just getting up to speed, the idea here is Dalton is a killer on props, and I’ll dabble over there but I’ve had a blast picking sides and totals the past couple seasons over at OddsChecker. Not to remove any accountability, but it’s important for your bottom line to understand that sides and totals markets are far more efficient, meaning it’s much harder to beat the books over a long timeline. There is a ton more money bet into those markets every week, and limits are far higher than in the props markets for a reason.
Of course, most of us got our start in sports betting picking sides and totals, and most of us enjoy betting from an entertainment perspective. What I won’t do in these weekly game picks columns is pretend I have a secret sauce that can consistently beat the books picking sides and totals. But I watch close to every snap of NFL football every season, have studied the game from a young age, and every week during the year write a thorough breakdown of every team from a fantasy football angle over at my other newsletter, Stealing Signals. That process — as well as incorporating a few key betting-specific metrics I’ve added over the years that I’m fond of — led me to post profitable lines over each of the past two seasons in these challenging markets.
Some notes on those last two seasons of picks. Each week, I was assigned games where part of the job was making a pick, so even if I wasn’t fond of the lines, I couldn’t take “no bet.” Those games were typically the three primetime games each week plus usually one more big game from Sunday. Despite not being able to pick which games I wanted to hit — and needing to take either the favorite, underdog, over, or under in every game — I was in the black both seasons. That’s including the vig, which one other slight disadvantage I had in that setup was getting the line at time of publishing, which was sometimes hours after I’d submitted the pick and sometimes meant losing a little juice if the line moved.
These notes aren’t meant to add any additional certainty to whether I can consistently beat the books, but rather to lay things out in full transparency. If your goal signing up for Stealing Lines is purely to be as profitable as possible, my honest recommendation would be to be diligent in how much you’re playing my picks. If it was my money and that was my only objective, I’d be following far more of Dalton’s props.
The specifics on my records the past two seasons, with notes on how I’m adjusting my approach to follow:
47-39-2 for a +6.9 unit profit and 7.8% ROI in 2020
38-35-0 for a +1.15 unit profit and 1.6% ROI in 2021
I did sporadically take the underdog on the moneyline, going a combined 7-3 on 10 such bets across 2020 and 2021, bumping my returns a bit thanks to more favorable payouts on those bets
I had a bias toward the under and was more profitable in that area, going 29-26-1 on under bets and 16-19 on overs across 2020 and 2021
I had a bias toward favorites, going 25-25-1 on favorites but 8-1 on only nine bets taking the points with the underdog (in addition to 7-3 taking the underdog on the moneyline, for a combined 15-4 picking underdogs)
From a timeline perspective, my results were skewed to areas of the calendar:
In 2020, I was 7-9-1 over the first three weeks, then had a massive October, going 15-2 from Week 4 to Week 7. I went 24-21 from Week 8 to Week 17 before a putrid 1-9 playoff stretch (had a lot of fun betting against the Bucs’ run that year ).
In 2021, I was 2-4 over the first two weeks, then went 29-15 from Week 3 to Week 13, including a 16-6 stretch from Week 7 through Week 11. I similarly closed 2021 poorly, finishing 7-16 from Week 14 through Week 18 (I didn’t make postseason picks last season).
There will be a lot of variance in results like these, at these sample sizes, but it’s also important to analyze our results and get a feel for what might be driving successes and failures. There are a couple keys ways I intend to respond to my past results that I’m hopeful will be positives for my results.
First, in relation to my biases toward favorites and the under, it’s probably the case that these were driven by the setup last year where I had to make a pick in all games I analyzed. Based simply on the quantity of picks I made, it’s likely I leaned toward the under or the favorite when my preference was “no bet,” which I can say anecdotally would have been my guess and it doesn’t surprise me that my overall volume leaned those ways.
As Dalton has outlined on the props side, unders are typically the sharp bet in a lot of markets, and I’m comfortable with my distribution and results picking totals. But my splits picking favorites and underdogs are perhaps more interesting and actionable. The strong (albeit small sample) results when picking underdogs both with the points and on the moneyline coupled with my bias toward favorites suggests the spots where I felt enough confidence to take the underdog may have been a signal of a stronger bet. I’m not sure that means I should be looking to take substantially more underdogs, but rather trying to identify those spots where I feel strongly that an underdog is mispriced as a potential edge.
As for the timeline results, I find it pretty interesting that I had a lot of success after we had some data but not a robust enough sample for most advanced models, meaning after just a few weeks of results. While I look at a lot of data, what I think makes me a successful fantasy analyst is an ability to synthesize potential outcomes that didn’t actually occur and think probabilistically about how things might have otherwise gone. That means there is definitely an element of feel to my process, where I have to be aware of potential biases but am in some cases betting that what we’ve seen is not a reflection of what a team actually is, and is reflected in poor pricing in the market.
To the extent this thesis might be accurate, it would make a lot of sense that I find success when data is not quite robust yet, but we’ve seen some things from these teams. It might also explain why I finished poorly each of the past two seasons, as data gets stronger the further we move into the season as the sample gets larger. I’ll add one other potential explanation for my late results might be more human in nature — there’s a fatigue element that sets in for me later in the season after months of this rigorous weekly process that might have impacted the strength of my analysis in December and January the past couple years. As a result, I do intend to be more aggressive early in the season and more diligent later.
We’ll find out together if these analyses prove accurate or my results in 2020 and 2021, which weren’t even that impressive, prove to be a fluke. Either way, I’ll be here every week putting this type of energy into giving you picks that are worth your time.
Let’s get to the Week 1 picks. I might add to these in the coming days, but I’m headed to Vegas for some last-minute fantasy drafts through Saturday, so I also might not. Most weeks, expect to see my weekly picks drop on Friday or Saturday, with any Thursday night plays probably limited to Discord.
As for recommended bet sizes, all minus bets are bet to win one unit, all plus bets are risk one unit.
Buffalo Bills at Los Angeles Rams
Pick: Bills -2.5 (-108, FanDuel)
The Thursday night opener brings us a doozy, and I’m stoked to like a side in this one. First things first, this line is more widely available at -110, and I like it at that number, too.
The Rams may have won it all last year, but the Bills were the better team in 2021 and they are again in 2022. Buffalo’s dynamic offense has frankly gotten better in multiple ways, some of which was addition by subtraction after they played veteran wide receivers alongside Stefon Diggs for a lot of 2022. After the late-season pivot to featuring Gabriel Davis more, the Bills ascended to a new level on offense in their epic playoff loss to the Chiefs that I’ll argue to anyone who will listen was decided by the overtime coin flip, because those two offenses were absolutely locked in.
Davis is back this year in a featured role, and the Bills didn’t lose much in the slot by replacing Cole Beasley — who was maybe underrated at times in his career but was 32 last season — with some combination of Isaiah McKenzie and Jamison Crowder. Offensive efficiency tends to be the bigger driver of year over year success in the NFL, while defensive efficiency can be more variable, and the Bills should be in great shape on the offensive side of the ball to start this season.
The Rams are a little different story. I’m taking head coach Sean McVay at his word and not particularly concerned about Matthew Stafford’s elbow, but their running back room is banged up with questionable efficiency, and the switch from Odell Beckham to Allen Robinson at the WR2 spot isn’t a clear upgrade, and could prove to be something of a downgrade if Robinson’s 2021 results weren’t purely the result of a lack of effort in a tag season. Third receiver Van Jefferson is banged up, and Stafford’s elbow injury matters at least to the extent that he might not be sharp with the new weapons early in the season after what we have to assume was a less-taxing throwing program in August than expected.
This game is in Los Angeles, and it has many liking the home underdogs in the opener, but with plenty of time between the final preseason game and Week 1, Buffalo’s travel schedule in not a concern. I like the Bills to come out determined to make a statement after their 2021 season ended on unfortunate terms.