Week 12 sides and totals
Plus our Underdog winner of the week!
It’s Thanksgiving week, so I need to get my picks out early, and we’ll be getting our Underdog winner out early, too. This week’s $100 Underdog winner is Matt Porter. Congrats, Matt! That will be deposited directly into your UD account.
For anyone who hasn’t signed up yet, sign up at this form one time this season and you’ll be entered into our weekly $100 giveaways all year long, thanks to Underdog and their super fun Pick ‘Em game.
A quick recap of Week 11 which went mostly right, other than missing both sides of the Lions-Bears game. It was a 5-2 week, where my comments of feeling “in position” on both the Texans and Jaguars based on winning bets in games they were in the week prior both paid off.
That moved us to 17-11 for the season on spreads, 4-4 on moneylines (with a slight profitability there since those are essentially all plus money), and a hilarious-if-it-wasn’t-so-depressing 8-25 on totals, for a 29-40 total record.
Let’s get to the Week 12 bets, starting with a couple for Thanksgiving. As always, all minus bets are bet to win 1 unit, all plus bets are risk 1 unit.
Washington Commanders at Dallas Cowboys
Pick: Over 48.5, -110 (widely available)
Pick: DAL -12.5, -110 (widely available)
Right off the bat, these are aggressive picks in the 2023 landscape, so this isn’t for the faint of heart. But let me explain.
The bet I want to make in the over. Since their bye, Dallas has been extremely pass heavy, with four of their five highest PROEs of the season, including their three highest. They’ve also shown to be one of the most aggressive teams this year while leading, and have had recent blowouts “shoot out” a little bit late, because they seem to be still interested in scoring, which opens up garbage time points for their opponents, like in their 43-20 win over the Rams and 49-17 win over the Giants.
Mike McCarthy seems hellbent on winning awards for offensive statistics, and after the offseason discussion around him taking over play-calling from Kellen Moore, you understand that. This is that team this year that’s never going to let up in the regular season (but then maybe won’t have quite the playoff success you hope for because they kind of burned themselves out in some ways, but who knows?).
Anyway, Washington is already such an obvious “over” bet weekly given their leaky secondary and full-season aggressiveness in terms of PROE. They don’t give up, even when down by several scores, and will continue throwing all game. The way I see the over missing, though, is on the efficiency side — specifically, if the Commanders can’t score enough, even though we know they’ll keep pushing until the final whistle.
That’s why I’ve added the DAL -12.5. I more or less see no way Dallas doesn’t score a lot of points in this matchup, given how aggressive they’ve been lately, how the Commanders (don’t) defend the pass, and Dallas’s willingness to stay aggressive with leads. So the bet is if this stays under, it does so with a scoreline like 31-10. There are some scorelines like 28-17 that become concerning, as we’d lose both sides of that if it’s, say, 28-10 before a backdoor Commanders TD. That’s a risk I’m willing to take, because I really don’t see a lot of ways this plays out on national TV where the Cowboys — barring like a Dak Prescott injury — aren’t scoring well into the twenties and most likely thirties.
And while Sam Howell can maybe punch back a little bit, and there’s some potential for a backdoor cover where we split these bets (at a scoreline like 31-21), something like 38-21 where both sides get there feels far more likely than missing both ends of this. Famous last words.