Week 3 NFL Picks

We got destroyed last week going 1-4 bringing us to 7-7 on the season. Someone I trust told me the totals picks are shit, which makes sense since two of them had no chance to win. The Bears pick was particularly notable as we got a pick six and a trash touchdown and still didn't cover! I think we will set the totals aside for now as the approach I use probably doesn't adjust fast enough to teams who are taking a radically different offensive approach. With that said, I am a degenerate and will bet big on totals anyway.

Amazingly I won money on my own betting having taken NO in a Wong teaser. With CLE kicking the extra point to go up 1 with a minute left I had to be drawing dead with NO -2.5 but the next three kicks went miss-make-miss, probably a 1 in 10 shot meaning they instead won by 3 and the other two legs (MIA +9, Jac +8) covered as well. I had some other winners that I didn't tout here due to QB injury questions or line moves.

Anyway I don't have any interesting write-ups on these plays and instead I am just going to post the plays and lines here. Teams I pick are in bold.

The Rams/Chargers game is a rare intracity matchup. Travel time and time zone / circadian effects used to have a big impact on NFL HFA but my studies have shown that teams have figured out how to travel better and these no longer matter. Still, there is reason to believe that there should be a lower home-field effect for teams playing in the same city.

Having bet the AFL (Aussie Rules) in the past, intracity matchups are common in that league as something like half the teams play in Melbourne. In these games the HFA is 2 points compared to 8-10 in intercity games (closer to 10 when a team from Western Australia travels to the east coast of that country and closer to 8 in other games). To me the AFL is close enough to NFL football that I don't mind going with this, meaning we will go with 1 point of HFA here instead of the usual 2.8. If you don't agree, I would pass on the Chargers.

Week 3 Picks