Week 11 NFL Picks

2-1 last week as the Panthers got blown out and we won two games where our teams got completely outplayed and probably should have lost, especially the Redskins. I will say that I have always been a believer in the idea that the better team going into a game will get "luckier" on average due to having better players, who are more likely to make big plays or avoid giving up big plays. Certainly that is the case in college football but I'm not as sure about the NFL.

Anyway, thanks to those two easy locks offset by the bad beat on the Panthers we are now up a couple of units on the season. For those of you backing these plays with max bets you should be up a quarter milly at least with your 2.15 units of profit:

Record through week 10

This week we have an action-packed two game card:

Week 11 Picks

The Atlanta pick is mostly just an injury-based play as Atlanta has been getting healthier while Dallas has a lot of guys either out or questionable, especially on defense where I tend to value injuries more highly. Atlanta has been almost historically bad on defense and if you take the numbers at face value the current line of a little more than 3 seems about right, but defense tends to regress to the mean much harder than offense, even this late into the season.

As for the Jags this is more of a motivation-angle fade as their season is basically over at this point while the Steelers seem to be picking up momentum after their strong win last week. The injury list for the Jags is a mile long although it is inflated a little by injuries to backups and special teams players, who hopefully don't matter much. In other words, every reasonable narrative in this game favors Pittsburgh so we are taking the Jags.

As for the Le'Veon Bell situation, basically irrelevant and the Steelers are smart not to pay him. Unsurprisingly James Conner has had a monster season although hopefully he doesn't play this week. While RB doesn't matter, at some point there has to be an impact, due to lack of familiarity with the starting role, if nothing else.

Good luck to all with your NFL plays and remember that this late in the season, the line is probably right, so don't bet much money.