Week 10 sides and totals
Plus a review of Week 9
One of the things I’m often trying to communicate in my writeups of picks is how I handle uncertainty. When I’m picking these games, a huge part of my process comes down to acknowledging there are various ways a game can go. I talked about this a little bit with the Bills-Jets under bet last week where I was trying to think through the pick that could hit if what I think is most likely happens, and can still hit if the next most likely thing happens. I took that under because I liked the Bills to win but didn’t want to give the points, and felt that the under had a shot to hit whether the Bills did cover or not (which is to say that if I was wrong about how they’d play, I thought I’d be wrong in a low-scoring way).
I don’t always communicate how I’m thinking through the uncertainty effectively, but hopefully it will help you to read into the picks that way. The one miss last week was Miami failing to cover -4 on the road, but they definitely had a shot had the late-game situation played out a little differently.
My main thought there was Miami’s offense is really good, but I missed on how the Bears might perform offensively, and they looked strong, too. That game went way over, but I don’t necessarily think that means the over was the clear bet or anything — the other ways I was thinking this game could go included new Dolphins acquisition Bradley Chubb immediately bolstering the Dolphins’ pass rush in a way that really crushed the Bears’ offense. But Justin Fields was fantastic, and the Bears kept pace.
Still, the Dolphins won, and they could have covered with a late, long touchdown, if Tua Tagovailoa hit Jaylen Waddle in stride on a late downfield pass on a third down during a sequence where Miami was mostly trying to run clock. Waddle got behind the defense and nearly had an exclamation point long touchdown that could have meant a 10-point Miami victory. That aggressiveness — which showed up in this case in a willingness to throw deep in a salt-the-game-away situation — is definitely part of the reason I’m bullish on Miami overall right now, and it nearly paid off even as the Bears played better than I thought.
Similarly, I missed in my analysis of P.J. Walker and Carolina, but we still hit the over there. It was kind of a footnote of that writeup that I felt confident in the Bengals in that spot, and my writeup focused on whether Carolina would push them and if the Bengals would be aggressive enough offensively. I noted the way I believed the over in that game missed was if the Bengals inexplicably played conservative on offense and played down to their opponent a bit, which they do sometimes. As it turned out, the Bengals didn’t need to be pushed at all — Walker played poorly and got benched, and he wasn’t actually the key to that bet. My main thought process, which I hardly wrote about in the analysis — that the Bengals could really bounce back after their bad performance against the Browns the previous week, and were an offense to be on in that spot — was all we needed to get to the over.
This was a good week for examples that fit that uncertainty concept. I believe most bettors get into trouble looking at a matchup and thinking about one possible outcome that they see as most likely, and then backing that. Sometimes you nail it, but it’s tough to be consistently profitable predicting the future. As I wrote about recently, in many cases I’ll avoid games where I have an initial lean but can’t really crystallize alternate possibilities that seem baked into the line. The best bets, to me, are the ones where you can see pretty clearly multiple ways the game could go, and feel pretty solid about the relative probabilities of each game flow, and then you’re finding a side where you feel pretty good the majority of the time the game will wind up there. That’ll never mean you’re 100% or even 80% confident, and most of the time it’s saying, “I feel good I’ve thought through all the possibilities here, and there’s a side where 60% of the time I should be solid.” And when I say all the possibilities, we’re talking the sporadic good or bad games (especially at key positions, like when a QB looks significantly different than usual), injuries, fluky plays that can swing any football game, and more.
Switching gears, there’s one thing I didn’t mention in last week’s breakdown of year-to-date results that I wanted to touch on. I mentioned back in Week 1 my results by month over the past couple years have tended to be strong in October and into November, which I suggested was due to getting some information but maybe not robust enough information that the lines get too sharp. That’s where someone like me who is relying more on football knowledge than analyzing gambling trends would presumably be able to exploit small-sample variance and take some stands.
That’s proven pretty correct again this year. Since the start of October, we’re 19-11-1, and we’re in the black in four of five weeks. Week 6 was the one tough one in there where I went 1-4, and I wrote about how all five bets flipped from what seemed likely at halftime of their games to the end result — the one bet I had written off mid-game wound up the only winner.
Hopefully we can keep that hot streak going, but as I mentioned this preseason, my results took a turn down the stretch the past two years. There’s been enough crazy stuff this season that I feel like there are spots to exploit here into November, but I’m definitely going to be more discerning with my selections as the ranges of outcomes become more robust for each of these teams.
The other thing I uncovered in my full breakdown of results last week was my poor results taking big favorites on the road, and that’s what made me second guess my Bills pick and moved me to the under there, while I stayed on the Dolphins. Through one week, that self analysis has proven helpful — I also took Jacksonville as my first home underdog based in part on that research, and hit on that, while the Buffalo pivot turned that bet from a would-be loser into a winner, and the Dolphins’ one I took was an “I know better” despite the trends and was my only loser of the week. Strong early returns there, and definitely something I’m going to keep in mind.
Overall, we’re at 26-19-1 on the year on sides and totals, with the occasional underdog moneyline thrown in. Unfortunately, this is a tough week where I don’t see a lot of spots like I described above. I’m only rolling with three official plays this time around, but I’ll include a couple leans at bottom.
As always, all plus bets are risking one unit and all minus bets are risking slightly more, to win one unit. Let’s get to the Week 10 picks.