Week 11 sides and totals
Plus recapping a quiet Week 10
Last week was a quiet one, with just five picks and ultimately a 2-3 record, but it was also a good learning week. I wrote in the intro last week I didn’t love the slate, but I didn’t take the necessary step of realizing why.
I’ve talked before about my biases toward overs and favorites, like a lot of casual bettors. I tend to be OK with that, because I do generally find success, especially when I identify underdogs I like. Picking more underdogs would change that math.
What I didn’t recognize about Week 10 was I felt uncomfortable with the slate because of my biases toward favorites and overs. In other words, it was the kind of slate where I needed to be betting underdogs and unders.
Frustratingly, I tried to fit the spots I liked into the bets I’m biased toward, writing favorably about both Tampa and Denver as underdogs, but then deciding both were over bets, while both teams covered their spreads and the totals went under. That accounted for two of my three misses last week, and you could read the reasoning in the post and wonder why the bet was an over rather than just taking the points.
I did successfully pick big favorites to cover with the Eagles and Chargers, then the fifth bet was on Monday Night Football where I had the Rams -1.5 at home but the Dolphins got the road win. The other tough pills to swallow were in the games I decided were “no bet” options, which I wrote about in the intro emphasizing the high number of road favorites last week.
The Lions were one of the road favorites of more than a field goal in Houston, and the Texans wound up covering the 3.5 or 4.5, depending when you got in. The game also stayed under a high 49.5 number, even with seven turnovers leading to a bunch of great field position.
The Falcons were another 3.5-ish road favorite that didn’t cover, and the Saints were able to win that one outright at home, playing hard for their interim head coach. The Bills actually did cover as big home favorites, but in part because Joe Flacco handed them a pick-six on the Colts’ first play from scrimmage. Indy still had a lead late in the first half, and were only down 7 when they failed to convert a 4th-and-2 in the red zone late in the third quarter, but the Bills did pull away for good with 10 points early in the fourth quarter before a garbage time Indy TD. Still, that one felt like another lesson in how it’s difficult for road favorites to cover, and how the better team didn’t necessarily play to it, but rather needed a little help on some high-leverage plays.
Another one I looked at heavily last week was the matchup of two rookie QBs, with New England and Chicago. I was really into a potential over on a very low number, but everything I looked at suggested they couldn’t get there even on a sub-40 over/under. I considered taking the under after digging in more but felt like betting against my initial lean wasn’t solid and made it a no bet. In hindsight, I really should’ve gotten there. I was pretty confident the very low line was right and it wasn’t likely to go over, with neither play-caller being aggressive enough.
Anyway, I don’t like when the tone of the intros just becomes a bunch of hindsight bias, but I do think I should have done a better job of identifying that the discomfort I felt with the lines last week was due to no easy picks in line with my typical biases, and that I should have in turn been looking to find some good underdog and under picks. Could have been a great week.
We’re always learning, we’re always building. All that said, at this time of year, most of the edges feel pretty baked in. I’m never feeling hyper-confident in anything that the market isn’t seeing.
After three straight small loss weeks, we’re down to 42-36-4 and +2.97 on the season. As always, all minus bets are bet to win 1 unit, all plus bets are risk 1 unit. Let’s get to the picks.
Green Bay Packers at Chicago Bears
Pick: GB -5.5, -110 (widely available)
Pick: Over 40.5, -105 (ESPNBet)
After that intro, it was only right I started this week with a road favorite and an over paired. Look, everything I wrote up there was about bets I don’t necessarily feel good about. I do feel good about Jordan Love and the Packers coming off a bye. I do have Matt LaFleur as one of the underrated stars of playcalling where I expect him to get some easy looks for his guys after a week off to figure out why things have been faltering a bit lately.
And the Bears are at home, and in their first game under a new offensive coordinator. I don’t necessarily think a new coordinator is suddenly going to fix everything that’s wrong with this offensive design, but I do think that the potential for new ideas could manifest in a lot of different ways. Maybe it’s really focusing on getting the ball to specific guys that haven’t seen it a lot, like D.J. Moore, Rome Odunze, or Cole Kmet. Maybe it’s digging into areas of the playbook the players are more comfortable with that the last OC wasn’t utilizing enough. It could be something small, but you’d hope it can help create a few successful drives. And if the Bears really compete in this one, I would suspect it would be through sticking with the Packers more than holding the Packers down, as much as I do respect Chicago’s defense.
I’ve got the Packers comfortably getting into the twenties in this game, and probably approaching or exceeding 30. If they score 23, you’re talking about a scenario where the worst you’ll do is split these two bets. Something fairly modest like 24-17 wins both. But I guess if I was predicting a score, it would be something like 31-14. The weather by the way isn’t perfect — a little wind, maybe some light showers — but the current forecast doesn’t have it reaching the levels where it would impact the game.