Week 8 was a big bounce back week after suffering the first losing week of the season in Week 7 but what this week really highlights is how often ATS wins and losses come down to a single play or bounce. There were 2 games I was dead wrong on (No @ Ind, Min @ Det) and 2 games that I was definitely on the right side (Hou @ Mia, Cle @ Stl) the 3 other games were all toss ups and luckily they all went my way. Luck or not, wins are wins and reason to strut a little.

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 Week 7: 5-2

Season ATS 26-15-1

Week 7 Results

What Went Right

• Dan Campbells Dolphins– For the second week in a row, Miami blew out the opposition and dominated the game on the ground. Everything went right for the Dolphins who scored 21 in the 1stQ and lead 41-0 at half. Campbell’s commitment to Lamar Miller and the Miami run game paid off big again as Miller ran for 175 yards on just 14 carries as this game was over early.
• Todd Gurley and the Rams Defense. The Browns came in with the 31st ranked run defense and the Rams took full advantage averaging 6.1 yards per rush and 2 TDs. The Rams pass rush also won their matchup, they had 16 pressure plays including 4 sacks. The Browns seemed to get worn down as this game went which is how I thought the game would play out.
• Nick Folk and Plinko– Gill Alexander, @beatingthebook on twitter, hosts the best NFL betting podcast on the planet “The NFL Megapod” and often compares betting NFL games to Plinko, the old Price is Right game. I often use Gill’s line here because it is really a perfect description of how so many games are determined. This week all the plinko bounces went my way. Nick Folk hit a 55 yard FG with under 30 seconds left to save a Jets cover in a game that they were within 1 score the whole way until the last 2 minutes. The Giants were outplayed most of the game but got 2 Def/ST TDs including a game winning TD on a 100 yd KR. In the 6pt teaser on MNF, the Ravens had a chance on the last play of the game to tie the game and kill the teaser but came up 4 yards short. Plinko for the win!

What went wrong

• Andrew Luck- I loved the Colts in their game vs the Saints this week, NO was coming off of a smoke and mirrors win on TNF where they caught the Falcons in a bad spot and I thought that after a good showing by Indy vs New England that they would keep it going this week. What I didn’t count on was Andrew Luck continuing to be terrible, Luck threw 2 Ints in the first half and was the main reason the Colts trailed 20-0 at half. Colts did make a comeback late but it was too little too late as Luck finished with a dismal QBR of 19.3 and basically never gave his team a chance in this one.
• The Lions Pass Defense– This game featured two terrible units facing off,  the Lions 32nd ranked pass defense vs the Vikings 30th ranked pass offense. The Lions defense was worse, way worse. Teddy Bridgewater came in averaging 6.2 yards per pass attempts an had an average passer rating of 80.4 but in this game passed managed a passer rating of 118.3 on 316 yards passing (7.1 per attempt) and 2 TDs. The Lions pass defense really can’t be trusted against even the worst performing passing games in the league.

What did we learn

Key numbers for Totals don’t really exist: I often find myself staying off  games because the line has moved and it feels like the value is lost but after this weekends games I began wondering how much of a difference line moves or even key numbers matter for Totals. The reason this week’s results brought this question up for me was that we had some real extreme results for totals, while 10 games opened or closed between 42 and 48, we had 4 games finish with 36 or fewer and 4 more that finished with 60 points or higher. So how important are key total numbers?

For point spreads we know the key numbers, 3, 7, 6 and 10 for Totals we often here a lot of different ones, 41 42 45 47, which ones are there and how important are they?

All of the following Data comes from cleanuphitter.com specifically http://cleanuphitter.com/nfl/stats/nfl_common_scores.php so hat tip to them, This is info is based on the last 15 years of NFL games 2000-2015

First we see key numbers for point spreads.

We can see how important 3 and 7 are here and why moves through those numbers are so important.

Now lets look at totals.

41 and 44 show up here but compared to the numbers above for point spreads the actual number means a lot less but lets look at this in another way to see if these numbers have any added significance.

Here we see a significant jump between 40 and 41 and even bigger from 41 to 39 so if you want the under the difference between 41 and any number below seems important. We also see some significance in the middle around 44, Playing Under 45 or over 43 would have some impact but really outside of those we have a relatively small change in occurrences.

In summary, there are really only 2 numbers that should make you think twice about losing value on a total, 41 and 44 the rest really have such little relative impact from one to the next that they shouldn’t chase you off a game.