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Last week was a little rough overall, but on games I'd actually make bets on it worked out quite nicely. Overall Against the Spread the Winning Stats Predictor was 8-8, and that's with a caveat. I almost exclusively use the LV SuperContest lines so that I have a consistent measure to go from, and if I did that the Predictor would have been just 7-9. The game that changed was the Saints at Browns, where I had the spread at -6.75 to the Saints. The SuperContest had it at 6.5, but I found it at 7, which put it into a "must bet" category (last year home dogs, via the Predictor, that were getting too many points hit over 60% of the time), so because of that I'm counting that as a win. Picking Straight-up was a disappointing 8-8 as well, something you never strive for just picking winners. Season totals: ATS 17-15, SU 19-13.
This year I'm trying something a bit different than I've done in years past, as I'm continuing to incorporate some of last year's data into the Predictor, in the hopes of smoothing out any anomalies we might have seen in the first two weeks. By Week 6 we'll be fully into 2014 with no past data, but the numbers look much better than they did before I included a baseline for each team.
Week 3 started out with a ton of points and an ATS loss for the Predictor. Gotta make up for it, and I have some I really like this week. Here are the picks:
| Home | Score | Away | Score | Probability |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Falcons | 28 | Buccaneers | 27 | 54.4% |
| Bills | 22 | Chargers | 25 | 57.7% |
| Eagles | 22 | Redskins | 20 | 56.7% |
| Bengals | 25 | Titans | 15 | 75.4% |
| Rams | 25 | Cowboys | 26 | 54.4% |
| Giants | 19 | Texans | 20 | 51.8% |
| Browns | 20 | Ravens | 23 | 58.4% |
| Lions | 27 | Packers | 23 | 60.7% |
| Jaguars | 17 | Colts | 27 | 75.9% |
| Patriots | 29 | Raiders | 18 | 77.1% |
| Saints | 27 | Vikings | 21 | 65.7% |
| Cardinals | 23 | 49ers | 21 | 53.1% |
| Seahawks | 27 | Broncos | 28 | 52.1% |
| Dolphins | 23 | Chiefs | 22 | 53.5% |
| Panthers | 26 | Steelers | 20 | 65.2% |
| Jets | 25 | Bears | 27 | 55.6% |
SuperContest went 3-2 last week to move us to 7-3 on the season. Sometimes it's easier to just be so completely wrong on a pick (like the Vikings and Raiders were last week) than agonize for three hours only to lose in the waning seconds. Here are the five for this week:
- Chargers +2.5 at Bills (still love the Bills though)
- Ravens -1.5 at Browns
- Giants +2 vs. Texans
- Colts -6.5 at Jaguars (first use of the Colts this year)
- Bears +3 at Jets
Survivor Pick: Thanks to Colin Kaepernick we've been eliminated from the survivor pool, but we're going to keep picking for those of you who didn't listen to me. New England is getting most of the play this week, so in order to not be like everyone else, we're going to go with the Colts this week. If they can't win in Jacksonville something is really wrong.
USED: Jets, 49ers