NFL Power Rankings & Week 11 Recap

Quick Week 11 RECAP & Thoughts

Short week due to Thanksgiving so I’ll keep it brief.

Here’s what I learned. If you love a large dog, bet the money line. Even if it’s just a little. I LOVED both the Colts and Texans this past week. Hit the money line on both. These are better investments than ridiculous 9-team parlays that never hit. Yea, you seem them hitting on Instagram. What you don’t see is the 55 other parlays that person put in and never hit.

The Bucs are still the best team in football, even if its by default.

There are a lot of bad teams this year. As a bettor, you need weed through shades of shittiness to cash tickets.

Hanging on to the past too long, makes you a dinosaur. I love me some Russell Wilson. Have been saying he’s the best QB in football for a long time. Thing is, his finger isn’t right. The Seahawks minus Russ are a really bad team. Bottom quarter of the league bad.

Sometimes the books try to trick us. This happens a lot, actually. In hindsight, in what world should the Dallas Cowboys be the public dog at +2.5 in Kansas City? If I told you even 3 weeks ago that the Chiefs would be laying less than a TD to the Cowboys at home in a cold weather, important game, you wouldn’t wait to lay KC. Be careful of the traps.

Some old adages just hold true. Bill Belichick is a wizard. It’s better to not fade him. Mike Tomlin does great as an underdog. The Jets are hideous.

POWER RANKINGS

If you are unfamiliar with the way power rankings work, here is a crash course. Power rankings are a way to show how strong or weak a team is from an “average” team. This is a system to derive my own point spreads. By having this system, I can say, “this line is off” due to my power rankings.

An easy way to explain this is using an example from the list below. The Bucs are currently my highest rated team and they are 5.5 points better than an average team. The average team is 0 points. So, from my power rankings if the Bucs played the Bengals, I believe they should be 5.5 point favorites on neutral field. There are variables that are not inherent in this list, such as home-field advantages, injuries and other unknown intangibles. The list assumes point differential on a neutral field. If Tampa Bay is playing the Bengals in Cincinnati, according to my Power Rankings, Tampa Bay should be about a 4 point favorite (accounting for a Cincinnati 1.5-point home field advantage). Another example from the list below is the Ravens should be a 5.5 point favorite over the Carolina Panthers on a neutral field. If the game was in Carolina, the Ravens should be a 4.5 point favorite. If the game was in Baltimore, the Ravens should be an 8 point favorite, according to my power rankings.

It is important to keep in mind that all home field advantages are not the same. In theory, I think Green Bay’s homefield advantage is probably 3.5 points, while the Los Angeles Chargers are more like 1 or 1.5 points. Another caveat is to be mindful or intangible factors, such as motivation, coaching issues (firings / hirings), travel, etc.

The most important concept in handicapping sports is you should ONLY bet if you DISAGREE with the line. There is no value if you agree that the line given by the sportsbook is correct. Why would you bet and lay juice (-110) on something that you think is correct? Literally, the odds are not in your favor. If you want to bet any way, that is degeneracy. While I don’t encourage degeneracy, I do believe that as a handicapper, the goal is to benefit off of others’ degeneracy.