Week 5 sides and totals
Plus looking at some splits so far
After a big Week 3, Week 4 became a survive and advance week. We missed on Thursday night, then needed the help of some defensive points and fortunate late-game situations to get there on a couple of the low-total overs I’ve been playing, and the only clean spread pick was Denver +8 with the five bets on favorites going 0-4-1 on the week.
But we got out alive at 3-4-1, and we’re at 16-13-2 for the season now. I wanted to get an early look at some splits as we’re about a quarter of the way through the season.
After the rough Week 4 on sides, I’m down to 9-8-2 there, with a clear bias toward favorites, having picked them 15 times versus only four underdogs. And following past seasons, my underdog picks have been solid, with a 4-0 record there, while the favorites side has been 5-8-2, and away favorites — my forbidden fruit that I can’t stop picking — being the real culprit at 1-4-1 (home favorites are 4-4-1 so far).
I’ve also taken just one underdog moneyline so far, and I’m 0-1 (Commanders Week 1), but three of the four times I’ve taken the points, the underdog has won outright, including some longer-odds options like the Panthers in Week 3 and Broncos last week. The long-term trend has been clear and is tracking again this year; I have a bias toward favorites, but when I do decide to pull the trigger on an underdog, it’s usually a strong play. (I do try to be cognizant of that, but it’s not always easy to adjust to aggregate trends when putting together a card for a specific week.)
For the totals, I’ve taken a ton of overs, but that’s been sort of by design, as there’s uncertainty early in the season but the lines are very low in the aggregate. Vegas has been asking bettors to take overs, and bettors are doing it in big numbers. We’re all super aware of the “Cover-2 shell” meta and where we’re at with the league, but for me the move to overs has been calculated: There’s uncertainty early in seasons and I think you always want to be looking for spots of overconfidence or overcorrections on the macro level.
I think that’s been effective so far, as I’m 1-1 on my two under bets, and 6-3 on my nine overs, for a 7-4 record on totals. As I mentioned, some of that is due to fortunate scoring environments this past week in Week 4, but that’s also part of what’s baked in when you take overs on totals like 40 and 36.5, which were the numbers we hit on last week. Football is a tricky game with odd bounces, and those are low numbers. Of my nine over bets, seven have been on lines of 43 or lower, and five have been at 40 or below (interestingly, I hit on both of the bets higher than 43, and I’ve tried to be aware that even the potential shootout lines seem to be biased toward the under, with some games between two good and fast-paced offenses that might have been 50-point totals in past seasons seemingly coming in around 47 more frequently).
Anyway, I’m not overly concerned about the biases in my bets so far. The bias toward overs is by design, and I will be looking for opportunities to level that out if scoring dictates a rise in the average weekly game total. I’ve made it a point to be cautious with game totals early this year, though, because of how early 2023 went, and I’ve done that well.
The favorites bias is one I know well, but as I’ve talked about before, it’s not as simple as “just take more underdogs,” because there’s something there where I’d be leaning into bets I’m less confident in. I should probably take fewer favorites, of course, but traditionally I’ve been good on sides and less consistent on totals overall, and I do want to be taking more sides than totals when comparing those two groups at large. And then when knowing that, I also have to acknowledge that my process on sides — even with the bias toward favorites, which I am worse at picking — has been overall profitable. So if it’s to be the core of my picks, and I’ve found success, I’m not really looking to change that up.
(That also doesn’t mean I’m issuing some kind of guarantee that “Ben Gretch’s underdog picks” are some kind of supersystem. I keep taking favorites I do like, and I take underdogs I think are sharp bets, and they run hot sometimes and sometimes they don’t. I also think the underdog spots are easier early in the season when the market doesn’t know what these teams are, but that is certainly fading a bit.)
Let’s get to this week’s picks. As always, all minus bets are bet to win 1 unit, all plus bets are risk 1 unit.
New York Giants at Seattle Seahawks
Pick: SEA -6.5, -120 (FanDuel)
I already took this in the Discord when it was still -6.5 at a few more books, but it’s hanging there on FanDuel at -120 if you haven’t gotten it yet. There are some who think this is a spot where the Seahawks could overlook the Giants, after a Monday night game in Detroit and with a Thursday night matchup with the 49ers on deck.
I do get it, but I just don’t buy it here. These types of “overlook” spots are memorable in hindsight — we internalize and try to understand the result way more when it’s a major upset than when the better team just does its job — but there are plenty of situations where it feels like it could be this type of spot and it’s just not. And the Giants are in a tough situation this week, as I wrote in Discord when I shared this play there.
Malik Nabers is officially out. Seahawks are the better team. Giants have found some success with the offense focused on Nabers but I think he’s created space for everyone else, including Wan’Dale Robinson and Devin Singletary. I expect the offense to look far worse than they have, and this fall off to be bigger than most offenses who are missing a WR. No player — not just rookies — has earned a higher rate of target per route so far than Nabers.
Note that Singletary has since also been declared out, and while he’s not a special back, Eric Gray is essentially replacement level, and so there’s a lot on Tyrone Tracy to be very dynamic as a rookie in his first NFL action. His background is that he didn’t even play RB until later in his collegiate career, after switching from WR, and while there’s theoretical upside for him to be more impactful than even Singletary, you could be talking about protection issues on major third downs, etc. Seattle gets loud, and Daniel Jones is not exactly the QB I’d expect to lead a short-handed offense through that environment.
In trying to figure out how this goes south, it would really take the Seahawks coming out very flat and playing down to their opponents. And they’ve looked mostly good offensively, and are coming off a tough loss in Detroit where their defense really struggled, and to me it feels almost like a get right spot where they reestablish they are a good football team. It’s not like they are coming off a big win and in position to overlook the Giants from that perspective.