Happy Holidays and Happy New Year to you all.

Crazy Week 17 and it should be a wild Week 18.

One piece of advice, don’t buy the narratives. The whole “must win” thing is super overrated. Most of the time, you should be fading those story lines.

Be safe out there fam, one more week till the playoffs!

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 Packers are currently my highest rated team and they are 6.5 points better than an average team. The average team is 0 points. So, from my power rankings if the Packers played the Ravens, I believe they should be 6.5 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 Green Bay is playing the Ravens in Baltimore, according to my Power Rankings, Green Bay should be about a 4 point favorite (accounting for a Ravens 2.5-point home field advantage). Another example from the list below is the Patriots should be a 12 point favorite over the Carolina Panthers on a neutral field. If the game was in Carolina, the Patriots should be a 10.5 point favorite. If the game was in Foxborough, the Patriots should be an 14.5 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.