Week 5 sides and totals
Plus a recap of all the action in Week 4
I told you guys at the beginning of the season, I love when the calendar turns to October. I felt good about last week’s slate of games, and fired off a season-high eight plays, and that paid off with a 6-1-1 week. That brought our season record on official sides and totals to 13-8-1, though members of the Discord will know I took Denver -3 Thursday night in that debacle to fall to 13-9-1 as we currently stand.
Over the first few weeks of the season, I’d probably seemed a little biased in my recaps, as it felt like the 7-7 record in Weeks 1-3 featured some strong wins where we were clearly on the right side, and a couple of those tough losses that could have gone either way. Week 4 was the opposite, and was a good reminder not to get too caught up in the record any given week. The one loss last week was the Seattle-Detroit under, a hilariously wrong bet that the Seahawks and Lions nearly doubled up. Meanwhile, while there were some strong plays like the Titans on the moneyline that looked right throughout, bets like the Titans-Colts under relied on a missed field goal late to hit, and pulling off the Ravens-Bills under while pushing Buffalo -3 required a goal-line stand from Buffalo late in that one on a fourth-down decision the Ravens were criticized for.
Certainly, it took some good fortune to get to the 6-1-1 record last week. We didn’t get that kind of good fortune in the Broncos-Colts game, where both teams looked totally inept, but Denver I think was still the better side and is a bet I’d make again. Prior to Russell Wilson’s late interception in the end zone, the Broncos were 97% to win in some win probability models, and if they hadn’t had a field goal blocked and thrown two interceptions in field goal range — not to mention missing on better touchdown-scoring chances than the Colts got — they should have definitely still won that football game, if not covered.
There’s a lot of variance in this stuff on a week to week basis, and the hope remains to get our money in good in most cases and catch a few breaks. We did have some fairly comfortable wins last week with the Cardinals and Chiefs taking down road victories by 10 points each, as well as the Cowboys easily covering against the Commanders. Let’s take a look at the Week 5 card, which is a little lighter than last week’s eight bets.
All plus bets are to win one unit and all minus bets are risk to win one unit, unless otherwise stated in the writeup.
Pittsburgh Steelers at Buffalo Bills
Pick: PIT +14 (-107, PointsBet)
Pick: Over 45.5 (-110, widely available)
This combo bet could also be played as an over on the Steelers’ team total of 15.5, which comes in as the lowest in Week 5. I’m not in love with the situation for a rookie QB, as Kenny Pickett is making his first start on the road in Buffalo. The weather is expected to be good, moving from sunny to cloudy throughout the day but with little chance for precipitation and a decent amount of wind getting up around 15 mph but nothing crazy.
Pickett looked good in his first action last week, where all three interceptions he threw were either not on him at all (the late Hail Mary, arguably also the second pick to Pat Freiermuth on the sideline) or at least partially not on him (the first interception which was a poorly thrown ball but also featured limited effort from Chase Claypool and an unfortunate deflection right to a secondary defender). Setting aside those interceptions, Pickett completed all 10 of his other pass attempts, including two over 20 yards and three more in the 10-20 range. One of those was a rollout left where he threw moving to the harder side and made a nice pass to Freiermuth on the sideline. He also got George Pickens involved downfield, and if that carries over at all, suddenly the Steelers have a really nice receiving corps with Diontae Johnson and Freiermuth looking mostly reliable in the short and intermediate ranges, and Pickens and Claypool offering playmaking ability downfield.
There’s a little bit of a hedge here taking both sides of this, but the +14 stands out like a sore thumb as the market seems to be penalizing Pittsburgh for starting a rookie QB, though I think you’d be hard-pressed to make a case knowing what we know now that Pickett makes them worse than they would have looked with Mitchell Trubisky starting. My argument is if Trubisky was starting, this line might be more like +10, so I’m willing to take those extra points. The hedge element is the way the Steelers don’t cover this is if the Bills do what they can do and put up an easy 30-plus points, in which case the over looks really nice. I don’t see a lot of outcomes like 24-3 here, so I’m willing to take both sides of this on the idea the Steelers will at least be in range for a backdoor cover late, and will be playing hard through the final whistle as they try to get some stuff going with their new QB, even if they are down 17 or so with a scoreline of something like 31-14.
If the Steelers’ defense is able to cause some problems for the Bills early, I think we’ll be looking at a competitive game where the +14 feels good, and we’re hoping for Buffalo to get going late to get us to something like a 28-20 over.