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NFL

NFL Week 4

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Fresh from a couple of posts criticising people who didn’t pick Carolina following on from Drew Brees injury, we have a similar situation this coming into week 4 in the NFL. The Colts are at home to the Jags and Andrew Luck is an injury doubt, he hasn’t properly trained all week. The Supercontest line is the Colts -9, and at the time of writing it is doubtful that he’ll play. The proper bookies currently still don’t have any lines up for that match.

So suiting up at QB for the Colts will be a hurt Andrew Luck, or 40 year old Matt Hasselbeck who hasn’t started a NFL game since November 2012….ok then. Considering either one of those options I’m taking the Jaguars +9.

The Saints are at -3 at home to Dallas. Weeden will start for Dallas while Brees is expected to be back for New Orleans. Even with an injured Brees, I don’t want to back the Saints -3. So I’m staying away from this one.

Next up are 2 teams that I don’t think are getting enough respect by the market: The Bengals -4 at home to KC and Carolina -3 at Tampa Bay.

Bengals -4 at home to Kansas City is effectively saying that on a neutral field the Bengals would only be favoured by a point or 2. I’m not having that, the Bengals should be favoured by more. Cincinnati are underrated.

Is it my ginger hair?

Similarly the Panthers are only at -3 against a team that is terrible, even at home, in Tampa Bay. Admittedly the Panthers are 3-0 without playing anyone good. But this is a team that has legit playoff aspirations. Another week supporting SuperCam.

Final picks are the Browns+7.5 at San Diego and the Rams +7 at Arizona. San Diego’s performance thus far don’t merit a line of -7.5 points. And while I like Arizona, I think they’re going to the playoffs for sure, the Rams are no mugs and are a step up from the 3 duffers they’ve played so far.

Other thoughts: 2 other potential picks were Oakland -3 at Chicago, and Washington +3 at home to Houston. Even though it’s approximately 34 years since Oakland were favoured on the road, they’re playing a stinker of a team that I think have given up on this season with the trade of Jared Allen for a 6th round pick. Washington are a team that isn’t as bad as what they were feared to be and everyone still seems to love Chip Kelly and his amazing hype machine er I mean Offence.

I’ve got in early with some real money on the following underdogs at prices that were too high on the ML: Minnesota, Browns, Rams and Washington.

BS ATS stat of the week

I read this on another site as part of their reasoning to back the Giants +5.5 at Buffalo:

Buffalo are 7-28 ATS following a game against Miami

Wow. Just wow… There’s a glimpse inside the mind of square.

NFL

Turnovers

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I went 3-2 in week 2 in the NFL. For my Supercontest picks the Colts let me down losing at home to the Jets on Monday night. But when you lose 5 turnovers and only gain 1 it’s nearly impossible to win that game. I can’t whinge too much about that when I put actual real life money on Denver to beat the Chiefs the previous Thursday, and they were on the right side of a 5-1 turnover differential.

Turnovers are key

Bet you’ve heard that cliché plenty of times already this season? Well it’s true. I’m always harping on about it too. Check out the table below on turnovers:

TO Diff
Data from 1991 to 2010

So the table above shows that the bigger the turnover differential, you more likely you are to win. Sorry if I’ve blown your mind. I’ve mentioned 2 games this past week where the winners had 4 more turnovers in their favour. In that data there’s only 15 teams from 310 games that have won the game despite having turned the ball over 4 more times.

But that table above does not account for the context of those turnovers. If a team is losing and there’s very little time left, then they’re in desperation mode and are more likely to throw riskier passes, thus increasing the chance of an interception. Case in point was in the Ravens Raiders game. The Ravens were down by 4 points with only 26 seconds left in the game. Flacco had to throw a long pass down field which got intercepted. So the game stats show the Ravens had 1 more turnover than the Raiders, but that last turnover wasn’t the reason that they lost.

Nevertheless turnovers are very important. A game of NFL is pretty random (“Any given Sunday”). One of the reasons for the “randomness” is turnovers. Some turnovers are a product of skill, but most are due to luck. Any team can beat another team as there’s only about 12-15 possessions for each team per game, so one turnover or more is going to have an important bearing on the result. In the aforementioned Colts Jets game; there were 22 total possessions, 11 possessions for each team. So out of 11 Colts possessions they turned it over 5 times. It really is no wonder why they lost this game.

After only 2 games let’s look at the totals turnovers so far by team:

2015Week2 TO table

Top of the table are a bunch of 2-0 teams lead by the Jets while rock bottom are the Colts who currently have no luck at all (sorrynotsorry). Both the Jets and Colts have totally unsustainable turnover differentials which are the main reasons for their current records. Coming into this week I was hoping for value backing the Colts and opposing the Jets. Well the Jets are only -2.5 at home to the Eagles. So the betting market must still have a raging hard-on for that “Chip Kelly offence”. All things considered; that Jets D, but 1st choice QB out and the unsustainable TOs; the Jets are probably still underrated and I like the -2.5 on them.

But the bet of the week in my eyes is the Colts at -3/-3.5 at the Titans.

Remember before the start of the season the Colts season wins total was 10.5, the Titans was only 5.5? Well, 2 games later the line is only -3.5! The overreaction is due to Marcus Mariota having a great game against the er, mighty Buccaneers and the Colts giving up 8 TOs. Sure the Colts O line is looking terrible, but there’s no way they’re going to continue to give away turnovers at this rate. They’re still a playoff-quality team and the Titans certainly are not, even with a promising rookie QB. I’ve put some money on the Colts at -3.5.