Three sure-fire picks for NFL Week 8

For those of you who don’t care how we come to our predictions, and trust us with our 15-13-1 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:

Buffalo Bills +7 vs. New England Patriots

Atlanta Falcons -3 vs. Green Bay Packers

Arizona Cardinals +3 at Carolina Panthers

We’re ready to move on from Week 7 and get back to our winning ways. As we’re about to hit the halfway mark for the regular season and have been over .500 the entire year, we’re ready to increase our margin beyond the 15-12-1 that we’re at against the spread on the year.

In Week 8 there aren’t the deceiving margins that we saw last week when there were seven differentials over 5 points. This week we have a much more reasonable three differentials over 5 points (all over 7 points) for YPP and five more in the 3.5 to 4 range. While EW has six differentials over 3 points, three of those over 5 points.

Without fear, we’re sticking to the numbers. Here’s how it all breaks down.

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Our YPP picks of the week

Buffalo Bills +7 vs. New England Patriots

First of all, we’re well aware that the Patriots YPP numbers are a bit deflated due to four of the seven games they’ve played being without Tom Brady. They’ve risen up the rankings and now stand fifth in the league per YPP differential, in the process they’ve looked nothing short of unbeatable with their quarterback back.

So with that in mind, we adjusted New England’s offensive production to reflect how they’ve played under Brady and not the four games prior (we left the defensive numbers exactly the same). The results were very interesting, with New England averaging 6.7 yards per play in the three games since Brady’s been back. That’s second to the Atlanta Falcons in the NFL and would put the Patriots just slightly ahead of the Falcons with a positive differential of 1.3, best in the league.

Our YPP adjusted line with Brady

When we apply the adjusted numbers to the spread, you can see that while it does change our suggested YPP spread it doesn’t to the point of New England meriting such a high advantage. Add the fact that the Bills are the one team that has beaten the Pats and have looked good lately, on top of the game being played in Buffalo and you could see how the Bills shouldn’t be such heavy underdogs.

The scary part with this one is the revenge factor, as Rex Ryan’s team beat a worn down version of New England, with Jacoby Brissett at quarterback and the team playing like they were ready for Brady’s return. However, the Bills are coming off a tough divisional loss themselves and will be up for the game.

EW also likes the Bills quite a bit. Not as much when we adjust the EW numbers as well (shown also in the table above) but still a 5 point differential is significant with those numbers.

Atlanta Falcons -3 vs. Green Bay Packers

This is a spread that both the numbers and the old football brain really like. So please jump on this -3 spread while you still can and then read the rest of the paragraph at your leisure, seriously I’ll wait… The Atlanta Falcons remain at the top of the NFL for their YPP differential (with the exception of the New England with Brady) and despite coming off a tough close loss to the San Diego Chargers they’ve stayed there.

The Packers, on the other hand, keep getting greater public respect than they deserve. They have a negative YPP differential (-0.2) and have for a few weeks now, as they rank 20th in the NFL per the stat. The more telling statistic is that their offense ranks 25th in YPP, right below the struggling Jacksonville Jaguars and above the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. That’s not what you’d expect from an offense with all that firepower at its disposal. That’s been the exact problem in Green Bay, the top wide receivers seem to have lost a step, the running game is always absent and Aaron Rodgers isn’t looking like his usual phenomenal self on a week-in-week-out basis.

The Packers looked far from sharp last week and were lucky that the Chicago Bears offense fell off once Brian Hoyer went down. The difference between these two teams is far too great, the Falcons are -10 point favorites per YPP for a healthy 7 point differential. Give us the Dirty Birds in Atlanta, all day long.

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Our consensus pick of the week

Arizona Cardinals +3 at Carolina Panthers

We’re calling this the consensus pick of the week because it carries the biggest differential using the EW metric, but also carries the fourth biggest YPP differential. Arizona remains projected to win 11.5 games on the season while Carolina’s total is only 7, that puts  the Cards as huge 12 point favorites for a 15 point differential from the actual spread.

While the YPP differential is only 4 which is right at where we’d ideally like to bet, the Cards are significantly better per the metric. In a neutral field, Arizona would be -4, in Carolina, they’re only -1 point favorites still a significant difference from the actual spread.

Arizona is coming off a crazy 6-6 tie, while the Panthers just had their bye week which should have helped a banged up backfield get healthy. Even with Cam Newton and Jonathan Stewart in better shape, the Carolina defense seems to have few answers to fix things. Look for Arizona’s talented offense to put up points and the defense to get after Newton for a big win as our one road dog of the week.

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Numbers, news, and notes

You’ll notice in the differentials this week that the Chicago Bears are well liked by the YPP numbers though EW is clearly in disagreement. Chicago has seen a steady rise in numbers with Brian Hoyer at the helm and will be without their quarterback this week. Jay Cutler should return, but he’s far from a sure thing. We can project the Bears numbers with Cutler and they still are liked by YPP, but after two consecutive letdowns and going against a Minnesota Vikings team that’s coming off its first loss we just didn’t think it wise.

Our YPP adjusted line with Cutler

Interestingly, this week the quarterback injuries are all condensed into one matchup, the New York Jets at the Cleveland Browns. Which means we only have one game instead of multiple that are still lacking a spread at this point in the week, which is nice for once.

The Jets have lost Geno Smith after a brief appearance in Week 7 before blowing out his ACL. So Ryan Fitzpatrick is thrust back into the starting spot and the alternatives don’t seem all that appealing. After having amazingly gone through six quarterbacks already this year, the Browns now need to go back through the Rolodex as rookie Cody Kessler is now out. There’s a possibility of Josh McCown could be pushed back into the lineup and there are no projections we can give for him playing given his limited time in Cleveland.

We’re offering up both our YPP and EW spreads, but be careful the Browns number is very unreliable with a new quarterback.

As always, below you’ll find both our YPP and EW suggested spreads with the differentials we’ve talked about as well for every game this week.