NFL Power Rankings - 9/14/22
What an amazing Week 1. The NFL really is the best sports product in America and it’s not even close.
There were at least 3 games in the early window that came down to the very last second for victory or loss. Then throw in that the spread hung in the balance too! Just really entertaining stuff.
A very good week if you stuck with the old axiom of being on home dogs. If you were a public bettor – you got crushed. No other way to put it.
And there really is a lesson in Week 1. If something looks too good to be true, it usually is. Every public bettor on earth was on the Broncos. Almost 90% of the tickets. But that’s not where the money was. That line was 6.5 all week and closed 6. Which clearly told anyone paying attention that the money was on Seattle. Same goes for the Bears / 49ers game. While the entirety of the public was on the Niners, that line wouldn’t get to 7. That’s because the Books wouldn’t allow that.
As I’ve said on here before – the Books tell you what their intention is. They aren’t explicit about it but if you’re paying attention to the number, you can tell.
Another rule that is important is when a team is getting a lot of points in a spread with a low total. Sure, there could be various reasons to lay the points with the favorite but the rule should be taking the points. Common sense, a low total and one team getting a bunch of points. Pure math tells you to take the points and not lay. For example, the Bears / Niners game. For the Niners to have covered that line, they would have essentially needed to shut the Bears out. Not saying they couldn’t, just saying that 80% of the time, that’s not happening. There is an example of that this week. It’s a team that rhymes with New York Mess.
While the Jets lost this week, they kept it way closer than it should’ve been. Same for the Falcons. Another lesson here: if you want to win in the NFL, you will absolutely have to back ugly teams. Case in point – the Houston Texans. I loved this game at 8 but even at 7, it was a solid bet. You can’t NOT take a full touchdown with a divisional home dog. I don’t care if they’re as bad as Houston.
Everyone’s favorite Hard Knocks team, the Lions, made their game closer than it really was. Sure, the final score said they covered. But they had to go all out at the end to do so. And the Eagles had to play a bunch of prevent defense to allow it to happen. I suspect that if the Eagles were not blowing them out so badly, they would have covered. Can I prove that? No. Should I use that in my future handicapping? Yes.
Something to look out for this week: overreactions. You better believe that the public will overreact to what they saw in Week 1. They will assume that the Vikings will win the Super Bowl. And don’t get me wrong, I’m all over the Vikings this year. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. They will assume the Packers are done because they started slow and the receivers didn’t look sharp. I will be putting more stock in the back-to-back MVP, Aaron Rodgers, than that narrative. Long story short, Week 1 was one small sample point. The NFL only gives us 17 or so sample points a year. This isn’t baseball. It’s already hard to make definitive conclusions, let alone to make them off of one single week.
One conclusion that I did make though, is the Cowboys are donezo. Sorry, bandwagon Dallas fans that were kids in the 90s. It’s a wrap. There’s no way they will hit their 10 win total with Cooper Rush starting for the next 8 games. Just not gonna happen. Also, they pretty much have no shot at winning the NFC East now. Let me be clear: I am not saying that I won’t be betting the Cowboys. I absolutely will, if the number is right. It’s all about value and nothing about perception. The Cowboys also took the largest hit in my power rankings. I have Dak Prescott worth about 5 points to the spread. I have adjusted accordingly in the numbers below.
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 Bills 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 Bills played the Browns, 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 Buffalo is playing the Browns in Cleveland, according to my Power Rankings, Buffalo should be about a 4.5 point favorite (accounting for a Browns 2-point home field advantage). Another example from the list below is the Patriots should be a 7.5 point favorite over the Carolina Panthers on a neutral field. If the game was in Carolina, the Patriots should be a 6 point favorite. If the game was in Foxborough, the Patriots should be a 9.5 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.
