Back to winning, analyzing our Week 6 picks

While going 2-1-1 on our picks isn’t the best, things are really turning around with our metrics and there truly isn’t a better time to be doing this. Vegas has slowed our roll just a little but things are looking up, some of the reason why will be unveiled soon on our site, where we always give you the freshest numbers to tackle the spread and we’ll also be updating our EW metric which should significantly up the ante.

There’s also there’s reason for optimism as the YPP numbers from Week 6 did great. With differentials of 2 points or more from our YPP suggested spread we went 6-2-1, the problem with our picks was that the differentials were still fairly slim and we didn’t pull the trigger on a few (more on that below).

With that, we’re 14-8-1 on the year. But have no fear as the YPP spreads differentials are much larger this upcoming week as things begin to take a turn toward statistical reliability.

Here’s how it all unfolded in our Week 6 picks.

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The big upset of the week and the one that could have been

Sometimes you just have to trust the numbers. It was hard from a football perspective to really justify picking the Miami Dolphins to cover against the Pittsburgh Steelers. Miami had lost most of its games by heavy margins and despite not being high in YPP ranks, the Steelers were rolling. That’s the thing of approaching these picks through a numerical lens; sooner or later you have to believe teams will regress to the mean and the numbers will bear out. We believed in Miami, who was favored in YPP by 4.5 as an outright winner (amazingly even on a neutral field setting). The 12 point differential couldn’t be ignored and the game played out exactly as predicted.

Miami pulled off the massive 15 point upset, with a huge game from freshly minted starting running back Jay Ajayi – who went off for 204 yards and 2 touchdowns. This is what the numbers have told us all along: the Pittsburgh defense is a bottom 10 unit and even their prolific offense isn’t making up the difference.

The other pick we were bullish on this week was the Atlanta Falcons going to the Seattle Seahawks and covering 6.5 points. After a slow start, Atlanta didn’t just look poised to cover the spread with ease but also to pull off the upset. YPP had this game as a pick’ em and that certainly proved to be the case.

Seattle ultimately won but there were two very important instances in which the game could have gone either way. First being the Earl Thomas interception, a play in which Julio Jones doesn’t hold onto the ball and the Seahawks safety is able to pick up the ball as it’s tipped in the air. 99 out of 100 times Jones makes that catch or drops it in a way where it doesn’t fly in the air for the easy pick. The second instance is obviously the pass interference that wasn’t called on the Falcons very last offensive snap on fourth down.

Winning in Seattle is never easy but Atlanta’s performance is just another validation of the YPP stats that rank them so high. This team is playing some very good football right now.

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What goes around comes around

So we’ve gone over our two picks that worked, now it’s time to cover what didn’t. First are the Chicago Bears who at home were only 2.5 point favorites against the struggling Jacksonville Jaguars. Everything looked nice and easy in this game for the first three-quarters with Chicago up 13 to zip.

Then Blake Bortles found a way to mentally play as if it was garbage time (where he’s done his best work) and managed to pull off a 17 point final quarter for the comeback win. One play in particular here was the gut punch; down 16-10, Bortles found Arrelious Benn who caught the ball and slipped in unison with the cornerback covering him, Benn then got up and ran for the rest to finish off a 51 yard TD play and take the 1 point lead. That’s football folks, you can’t make this up.

The Bears continue to rank highly in YPP while Jacksonville is inching closer and closer to the NFL’s top 10, currently sitting 13th in the metric. If the Jaguars can find a way to move the chains with greater consistency on offense this team could surprise.

Like the Bears pick, our Houston Texans -3 on the Indianapolis Colts selection didn’t have our preferred differential of 5 points or more, with both in the 4 range. So we took a chance and I just told you how the Bears game went. The Texans pick was the exact opposite, while Chicago seemed like easy money for the majority of the game Houston looked awful early on. If you had money on this team this was an incredibly hard game to watch.

With the Texans entering the fourth quarter down 20-9 and their offense looking anemic this game seemed done and done. After all Texans fans were leaving the stands at this point while booing their offense and quarterback. Despite all of that, we managed to get a push out of this one (meaning our bet on Houston ties, money back for you and no loss on our record) with Lamar Miller putting on a show and the Texans closing it out in overtime.

Entering OT we hoped there might be a situation in which Houston would cover, but we’ll take the push and winning record for the week.

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A couple of missed opportunities

We hinted to how there were some missed opportunities this week with the YPP suggested spread going 6-2-1 in differentials of 2 or more. No matter how hard you try there’s always human error and sifting through the differentials just under 4 takes skills when there aren’t large margins.

There were four games with differentials of 3 or more points that we didn’t pick that could have paid off big as those games went 3-and-1. We thought about it but ultimately didn’t pull the trigger.

The biggest disappointments were not picking the San Diego Chargers and Washington Redskins. The Chargers were favored per YPP by 2.5, however with the Denver Broncos returning some injured players on offense including a QB we just didn’t feel confident. Mind you the spread was only Denver by 3.5 and with the Bolts propensity for blowing games late we stayed put. Too bad.

The Redskins only had a 3 point differential in their favor, which isn’t very much, but EW liked this line in particular with a 5.5 differential toward Washington. With EW being less reliable as the season goes on and the Skins only 0.5 favorites at home vs the Philadelphia Eagles (per YPP) we stayed away.

The other two games were the Cincinnati Bengals, who did not cover as 9 point underdogs to the New England Patriots, and the Arizona Cardinals covering by 7.5 on Monday night. We never considered the Bengals, wanting to see a bit more from this Pats team with Tom Brady back. While the Cardinals were just a risky play with Carson Palmer’s form being unclear.

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A last look at this version of EW

As we do every week in this column, we like to turn the page on the previous week and look at what’s to come with our EW estimated spreads. Those numbers derive from what the spread would be based on how each team was valued in the preseason. We’ll be switching that up with more current EW numbers for greater accuracy.

These numbers have been very good to us and are a big reason for our good start. We’ll be able to trace back to them throughout the year but this is our last regular look at the EW spreads with these sets of numbers.

Stay put for the big update and our picks next week as the tide is truly begging to turn.