Week 16 sides and totals
Plus a recap of Week 15
Today we embark on a stretch with NFL games in 8 of the next 10 calendar days. That’s awesome as a football watcher, but a little tough as we try to get you guys picks over the holiday season.
As always, keep an eye on the Discord, because when the regular weekly structure doesn’t exist, the timeliness is crucial. I’m sure Dalton will be spinning up player props from the bathroom of holiday gatherings all week.
Last week was a minor positive at 4-2, but I’m not going to pretend like the picks have all been fire lately. I spent the better part of the year arguing that a lot of the hits were always right and a lot of the misses had a real shot but fell victim to variance, and I do believe if you’re making smart bets that’s where you need to be, and you need to live with the reality that sometimes the bets go the other way.
Obviously not every pick fits into a specific category, but lately, I’ve felt like the broad trends have felt like the opposite. I wrote a few weeks ago it had been a while since I felt completely wrong about a game from the first whistle, but that’s happened with alarming frequency over the past few weeks. That said, we’ve been on the right side of variance on some of those closer picks that weren’t exactly analyzed right but did go our way.
Take the Jets -3 at the Jaguars last week. They didn’t look great, and also the Jaguars looked feistier than I expected, to the extent New York was trailing well into the fourth quarter until a 71-yard Davante Adams TD pushed them ahead by 3. But we weren’t going to stop at a bailout push. The Jaguars answered with a field goal, and then the Jets got another big Adams play on a blown coverage on an underneath route where he just ran forever. And even still, the obvious decision was to run out the clock and take a game-winning field goal for a 3-point win, but the Jets have lost some games due to late field goals, and so they decided to plunge in a 1-yard touchdown with 1:05 left, a clear error in game management that gave the Jaguars a chance to tie things and force overtime again when they essentially should not have gotten that opportunity. They did not have all three timeouts so three kneeldowns could have essentially run the game out before a field goal.
At any rate, the Jets won by 7, and the bet cashed. We’re obviously not complaining about that. We got a similar situation in the Falcons-Raiders game where I think the analysis was at least half right — Desmond Ridder was awful all game — but the Falcons couldn’t score, and the backdoor cover was wide open, and the Raiders were basically all the way through before a fortunate blocked extra point would up keeping the final score at 6 points, instead of 5, on the 5.5-point line. In fairness, Younghoe Koo had missed a very makeable field goal the prior possession that the Falcons really needed to push the game to 15 points, so in some ways the two missed kicks canceled each other out on the karmic scale. Still, Atlanta was really bad offensively, and did not play like a team it felt good to be backing to win by 6 points on the road. They punted from plus territory twice, posted the fifth-lowest Pass Rate Over Expected of the entire NFL season at -21.5%, and pretty much refused to score points.
The over in the Bills-Lions game was probably the cleanest hit of the week, where it was that huge total but it still went way over it, totaling 90 points. Colts-Broncos got a fortunate runout late, as well, but also got unfortunate earlier with Jonathan Taylor dropping the ball right before scoring a touchdown, and I’d argue the over was right in that one, too. Lucky, but more deservedly so.
And then at least one of the misses, Seattle +2.5 at home against the Packers, was just atrociously off from the jump. Maybe I’d make a small comment that Geno Smith’s injury didn’t help anything, because Green Bay got ball first and jumped to a big first-half lead, but Seattle did have some chances to chase later where they got multiple big second-half stops and got the ball back down 10 with some meaningful time left on the clock, only for Sam Howell to show no signs of being able to put points on the board. But I do think even if Smith plays four quarters in that game, the Packers still wind up covering. They wound up scoring again after the sequence I’m describing, and essentially even in a world where a healthy Smith punched back, Jordan Love seemed to have answers.
The other loss was Washington -7.5 in New Orleans, and while this game wound up coming right down to a 2-point conversion at the end, football’s a game of possessions, and this was one of those games where the fourth-quarter possessions just didn’t go our way. Washington was up 17-0 in the third quarter before a WR threw a touchdown to a one-handed Alvin Kamara catch, and then the Commanders moved downfield but had to settle for a field goal, and then the Saints hit a FG, Commanders punted, and Saints hit another FG, bringing us inside the 7.5 for the first time since the half, at a 20-13 scoreline with 7 minutes left. But Washington still drove downfield, losing a huge first down play down to about the 10-yard line with just over 2 minutes left to a holding penalty, which would have likely ensured they went back up by at least 10. Instead, they wound up settling for a 54-yard field goal, missing it, and never seeing the ball again. I felt like that one was kind of a bad beat, to be honest.
Anyway, 4-2 was the record, with maybe one bad beat, but also a couple fortunate wins, and overall I feel fortunate about that outcome last week after the 2-4 Week 14 (which also had some big misses). We’re up to 61-53-4 on the season, for +3.19 units. I’d obviously like to be in the black by double digits, but we have to save that for Dalton on the props with his +39.17 current mark.
Let’s get to the Week 16 picks, and we’re opening it up a little bit this week. As always, all minus bets are bet to win 1 unit, all plus bets are risk 1 unit.
Pittsburgh Steelers at Baltimore Ravens
Pick: BAL -7, -105 (DraftKings, BetMGM, bet365)
Pick: Under 44.5, -105 (FanDuel)
Frustrated I got this out a little later this week and we missed Baltimore -6.5, but I think the Steelers without George Pickens are a much worse offense, and even though this is a big spread for teams with these records at this point in the season, I do like Baltimore to win this one solidly. Another minor element hitting the Steelers’ offense is no Justin Fields, who didn’t clear the concussion protocol. His rushing packages provide a needed playmaking element at times, but they won’t have that to turn to.
I’m adding the under because the way Pittsburgh covers the spread is in a lower-scoring game, but if Baltimore wins handily, we should also see a run-heavy second half where they suffocate the game a bit and it stays under. The way both of these bets lose is if the Steelers are surprisingly competitive offensively, and stick with the Ravens for not only a close game, but also one that gets up there in scoring a little bit. But even something like 23-20 is a split. The bet is we’re not talking about a 31-27 game here, but stuff like 27-13 is firmly in play.