Week 4 sides and totals
Plus a recap of a big Week 3
You might have sensed my optimism last week as the Week 3 slate looked pretty fun. I ended up making nine picks, certainly more than usual, and hitting seven, including the Packers easily covering in Tennessee, the Panthers looking great in Vegas for both their +6 plus the over, the Seahawks easily covering at home against the Dolphins, the Steelers covering at home while also preserving the under against the Chargers, the Chiefs narrowly covering on Sunday night. Of the two losses, the Texans on the road in Minnesota was a huge miss, while the under in 49ers-Rams had a real shot until the 49ers couldn’t take care of business late.
So it was a 7-2 week, and it brought us to 13-9-1 in the early part of the year. We’ve since fallen to 13-10-1 after the disappointing Thursday night bet, where Brandon Aubrey missed a late field goal that would have covered our number, but there was also a clear subtext that the game opened at -4.5 or -4, and closed at -5 at a lot of books, while I took -5.5 (it finished 20-15). Obviously there’s a lesson in there about getting the best number, but for those of you wondering why I take the games when I do, I’ve written before that for me, it’s about when I can get the analysis done and get to where I’m comfortable with the picks.
Does that mean I give up a little equity sometimes? Yes. But betting is about understanding your edges, and to the extent I have any, they would be in evaluating the way a game might play when I know the full extent of the injury report, have reviewed my whole week’s worth of research, etc. They would not be in looking at a model or some early-week numbers and deciding how I can get CLV.
That doesn’t mean I’ll never take early numbers, but I do a ton in the fantasy football space in the early part of the week, and it’s just not my priority at that point. Again, it leaves some equity on the table, I’m not denying that, and Thursday night was a great example of it.
At the same time, Mike McCarthy rushed his kicking unit on the field late in the play clock, they got set with under 10 seconds remaining and snapped with about three or four, and I literally saying, “Just use a timeout,” as they had all three and there was no reason not to run the clock all the way down and then also give your guys the opportunity to make sure the set-up would be clean. The only thing I can think is McCarthy worried calling a timeout might ice his own kicker, and decided to be a noninterventionist so something going wrong wouldn’t be on him. It was without a doubt the wrong choice, before the kick was missed, but the normally automatic Aubrey pushed the kick by a couple yards with 31 seconds to go. Rough beat.
So we start Week 4 with a loss, but there are plenty of games left to go. I’m not taking nine picks today, but I do have a few I love. As always, all minus bets are bet to win 1 unit, all plus bets are risk 1 unit.
New Orleans Saints at Atlanta Falcons
Pick: Over 40.5, -110 (FanDuel)
This game has a pretty low total for a dome game with some talent and competent QBs and coordinators on both sides. That’s presumably driven somewhat by it being a matchup of the only two NFL teams who have been at -9% PROEs or lower in all three games so far. But I’m not sure that’s necessarily who both teams will be; the Saints found a ton of success in the first two weeks, but that ran out in Week 3, and Alvin Kamara is banged up, while the Falcons have Kirk Cousins presumably getting healthier by the week and also have Bijan Robinson a little banged up with a shoulder thing.
My default expectation would be both teams are going to set a season high in PROE here, but the question is just whether that still means a run-heavy game or if it could potentially be one where either or both offenses really come out of their shells a little bit. I do expect this to be a competitive game, and it’s the mild injuries to both starting RBs that has me hoping we’ll get those pass rates up a little bit, and get this game into the twenties on both sides.