Six red-hot NFL picks for Week 7

For those of you who don’t care how we come to our predictions, and trust us with our 14-8-1 record on the year, you will find the picks at the top of these posts for the rest of the season. The explanations for them are below. Enjoy!

The BSN picks of the week:

Chicago Bears +9.5 at Green Bay Packers

Cleveland Browns +9.5 at Cincinnati Bengals

Jacksonville Jaguars -1 vs. Oakland Raiders

San Francisco 49ers +1.5 vs. Tampa Bay Buccaneers

Tennessee Titans -2.5 vs. Indianapolis Colts

Miami Dolphins +2.5 vs. Buffalo Bills

As we hinted in our Week 6 analysis, there seems to be a real turn of the tide with the YPP numbers in Week 7. The differentials are the biggest we’ve seen since the numbers weren’t crazy Week 2 when there were 20 point differentials.

After a superb week for the metric, Week 7 promises to have some real surprises as YPP’s suggested spreads differ from the actual spread by 5 points or more in 7 games (!!). That’s a lot folks, so get ready to have some fun. There are also two more 4 point differentials, so this promises to be an interesting week. Without any further delay let’s jump in.

We’re still going to refer to EW here as we’ve update the numbers and will explain that tomorrow. All numbers as always are below, now for the explanation of it all.

Our YPP picks of the week

Chicago Bears +9.5

The Bears have managed to miss the cover the last two weeks but remain a top five YPP team in the NFL, as they’re fourth per the metric. The Bears offense ranks fourth and the defense is tenth so things are clicking even though the wins aren’t coming due to poor play late in games.

Chicago goes to divisional rival Green Bay’s house and is getting tons of points. YPP says the Bears should be slightly favored (-1) even at Lambeau, for a 10 point differential our biggest of the week. We saw this last week with a team like the Miami Dolphins coming off a bad loss and then surprising everyone with the upset against the Pittsburgh Steelers. On top of that, the Packers are in full panic mode with the offense looking like the problem for once. We’ll see.

Now remember that this is a Thursday night football game, which can at times be fluky especially for away teams. However, we didn’t pull the trigger last Thursday when the numbers strongly suggested the San Diego Chargers, we won’t sit back again. Bear down!

Jacksonville Jaguars -1

This line is surprising as the Raiders, a hot team in the offseason and early in the year are not favored on the road in Jacksonville. The Jaguars are liked by YPP where they’re 13th per the metric all thanks to their fifth ranked defense.

That’s been the problem in Jaguars land this year as the offense has struggled mightily but the defense has been a pleasant surprise. The Raiders have been the exact opposite as the ‘D’ has struggled and the offense is coming off their worst performance of the year against the Kansas City Chiefs.

Ideally, given how different public perception is on these two teams you could try waiting for this line to go to even or shift Oakland’s way. But even at -1 YPP likes the Jaguars by -8.5 points in this one which is a significant jump for the actual number. Give us the Jaguars, in hopes that the Raiders defense might just be what the doctor ordered for their struggling attack.

Miami Dolphins +2.5

We nailed Miami +7.5 last week against the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Dolphins actually won outright. Well, YPP loves the Dolphins again. According to the numbers, the Dolphins should be favored on a neutral field over the Bills by 1 point, meaning that they should be -4 at home. That’s a vast difference from the current Vegas average that has their opponent, the Bills, at -2.5. With a 6.5 points difference from YPP to Vegas, we have no choice but to stick with Miami again this week. Especially when YPP has the dog winning outright.

While the Bills are on a hot streak now they’re below Miami per YPP and the Dolphins seem to have found a new weapon with Jay Ajayi dominating the Steelers defense. Despite the Bills defense playing better lately, their run defense is only 19th in the NFL. We’ll see if Miami can prove us right again at home.

Analyzing our consensus pick:

Cleveland Browns +9.5

We’re back to Cleveland, with the caveat this time that they’re the team most lacking depth at quarterback so they’re really just a Cody Kessler injury away from the wheels completely falling off the bus for their offense. However even with Kessler, the Browns are no slouches. They’re 2-and-4 against the spread (compared to their 0-6 record) while ranking 26th in YPP, one spot below the Bengals.

That’s the thing about this; the Bengals haven’t shown they’re good enough to be favored by over a touchdown against anyone. Cincinnati has simply been average in just about every area of the game so far, they’re only 3.5 point favorites per YPP and the line seems to be climbing in their favor. Give us the Browns.

San Francisco 49ers +1.5

Here’s another matchup of bottom YPP teams. These two teams make up the worst three in the YPP ranks (joined by the Indianapolis Colts) with the Bucs at the very bottom.

Obviously with San Francisco being slightly higher in the ranks and playing at home means YPP loves the 9ers. YPP has Chip Kelly’s squad as 4 point favorites for a nice 5.5 differential, amazingly our lowest out of theses six picks. The 9ers recently made a quarterback change but their numbers and team is basically the same regardless of who’s playing under center. As Tampa is in a free fall we’ll happily take the points with them on the road and enjoy. Our new EW also like San Francisco here (-3), if public perception thinks the Bucs are better that’s fine by us.

Tennessee Titans -2.5

Betting against the Colts is becoming a regular thing for YPP here, but the fact that our newest EW is in agreement gives us a bit more certainty. Sure, Indianapolis has managed to pull a few wins out of a hat and has also played teams closer than expected but this team is bound to show their true colors.

The Titans are very much on the upswing here. Marcus Mariota is playing decently enough at quarterback and they’re running the ball well.  They currently rank 12th in YPP this year, while the Colts are 31st. Even though the Titans are favored here at home the spread is really slim, YPP has them as 10 point favorites for a whopping 7.5 point differential (our second largest of the week).

This seems like a classic matchup of two teams going in the opposite direction here; we’ll see if the Titans can keep on improving and beat the Colts by more than just a field goal.

William Hill Super Bowl odds

For our new and notes this week we’re going to mention NFL Super Bowl Outright odds at William Hill. The New England Patriots lead all teams with 10/3 odds. Followed by 13/2 Seattle Seahawks. These are the clear cut top two which makes sense as they’re ins separate conferences have both been to the mountain top before and are playing well right now.

The Minnesota Vikings and Green Bay Packers are third and fourth followed by the Steelers and Cowboys. The Vikings and especially Dallas are big surprises of the early season and we can see that in these early odds. Afer that the Atlanta Falcons, Arizona Cardinals, Denver Broncos, and Kansas City Chiefs make up the rest of the top teams. Atlanta and Dallas are the only two teams who didn’t play in the postseason in 2015 so we can see that the odds are still heavily skewed towards the “old guard.” Already seeing Minnesota so high and Atlanta is a sign of changing tides. Stay tuned for more updates.

The Numbers

So there you have it. As always below are our YPP numbers and you can also see our new EW suggested spread. Stay tuned as always to BSN ATS throughout the week as we’ll have our weekly podcast, we’ll introduce our new EW numbers as well as our weekly college football picks. Don’t miss out!