Need some advice for your NFL pick 'em contests or confidence pools? The experts at TeamRankings are here to break down which underdogs and favorites have the most value, highlighting five NFL Week 4 picks that you should think twice about.
Can the Bills and Lions pull off upsets again? Can the Cardinals and Texans get the their first wins? Will the Fitzmagic officially end in Chicago?
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As we point out every week (but many forget), to gain an edge in your pick 'em pool, you must think about win odds (i.e. the risk involved with each possible pick), as well as pick popularity (i.e. how much you stand to gain if you pick a winner). The risk-vs.-reward profile of your weekly picks has to be appropriate for your pool. For a quick primer, see our article on NFL pick 'em pool strategy.
For those unfamiliar with TeamRankings.com, their Football Pick 'em Picks is the only customizable product on the market for weekly pick recommendations for your specific NFL pick 'em pool. Last season, 81 percent of TeamRankings subscribers reported taking home a prize in a football pick ’em contest. TeamRankings also offers data-driven NFL survivor pool picks and NFL betting picks.
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Football Pool Strategy: Lessons from last week
Last week, we cautioned against even considering the Bills as a big upset pick, since based on the data, Washington over Green Bay or San Francisco over Kansas City looked like much smarter gambles. If you were one of the two percent of the country that had Buffalo, congratulations -- you just called the biggest NFL upset since 1995, based on the closing point spread.
Despite the Minnesota loss, we had our third straight week of winning value picks, also advising Miami over Oakland (win), Pittsburgh over Tampa Bay (win), and highlighting Washington (win) and San Francisco (loss) as potential value gambles, if you wanted to take the risk.
Because we're mostly focusing on teams that are underrated in terms of their pick popularity, hitting the majority of these games will have an outsized positive impact on your performance in NFL pick 'em contests and confidence pools.
Week 4 Rankings:
Quarterback | Running Back | Wide Receiver | Tight End | D/ST | Kicker
Expert Week 4 NFL Picks Advice: Pick 'em pools
As always, we've selected five games this week that stand out based on the win odds and pick popularity of the teams involved. Deciding which way to go on these games is crucial when making your NFL Week 4 picks.
Keep in mind that we are not saying you should make all of these picks. The best picks for your specific pool depend on a number of different strategy factors, such as the number of entries; whether your pool uses confidence points; and whether it offers season prizes, weekly prizes, or both. Our Football Pick 'em Picks product figures out the best pick strategy for you.
Note: Win odds and projected pick popularity data below may change between publication time and kickoff time. Our Football Pick 'em Picks product updates multiple times daily with the latest information.
Big Favorite At A Reasonable Price
Green Bay (vs. Buffalo)
Yes, the Bills pulled off an historic upset of the Vikings last week, but it usually pays not to overreact to a single game result. With Vegas having the Packers as a 10-point favorite (implying nearly 80-percent odds to win), a momentum-based Bills upset pick just isn't worth the risk. In pools that only have season prizes, Buffalo's one-in-five chance to win this game is simply too much of a gamble, and other smaller underdogs this week offer better value (see below). Even if you're set on picking one of the biggest favorites of the week to lose, there is a better alternative. Jacksonville is only a 7.5-point favorite according to Vegas odds, but it's still a more popular pick than Green Bay. With lower risk and higher reward if they win, the Jets are a better upset play than Buffalo in comparison.
Sidenote: Using the "transitive property" to evaluate matchups in the early season isn't a great approach. For example, the Packers tied the Vikings in Week 2; the Bills stomped the Vikings in Week 3; now the Packers are favored to beat the Bills by 10 in Week 4? It doesn't seem to make sense. But again, you can't read too much into the results of one game, when factors like randomness and motivation can have a big impact. If you think there is no way the Bills will lose this game by 11 or more, Vegas will be more than happy to take your bet right now.
Fairly Valued Favorites
Dallas (vs. Detroit)
Both Vegas odds and our models have Dallas as a slight favorite in this game, giving the Cowboys around 60-percent win odds in this battle of 1-2 teams. The public, though, is slightly less confident about Dallas' chances (57-percent pick popularity). This might be a spot where the Week 3 game results are still very fresh in people’s minds, given Detroit's upset home win against the storied Patriots in a prime-time Sunday night game, while Dallas lost by 11 to an 0-2 Seattle team. Two weeks earlier Detroit got smoked by the Jets, but people tend to quickly forget things like that. Based on this profile, you'll do better sticking with the favorite here, which also happens to be a slightly underrated pick -- an attractive combination.
Chicago (vs. Tampa Bay)
It's worth watching the numbers on this game over the course of the week given that Tampa Bay played in the Monday Night game in Week 3. As of Wednesday morning, host Chicago looks fairly valued, as the Bears' Vegas implied win odds of around 60 percent are just slightly higher than their pick popularity of 58 percent. Our models are also a bit higher on Chicago’s odds to win than the Vegas line is. All things considered, similar to the Dallas situation above, there are a lot better contrarian plays on the Week 4 slate than Tampa Bay, and sticking with the favorite here makes sense.
MORE TEAMRANKINGS: Week 4 Survivor Pool picks | Intro to data-driven NFL picks
Value Gambles
Houston (at Indianapolis)
As a 1.5-point road underdog, Houston might be worth a gamble this week, considering that only 40 percent of the public is picking them. Although the Texans and Colts both lost in Week 3, Houston is now 0-3 after losses to the Patriots, Titans, and Giants. Though all those games were relatively close, Houston losing to the 0-2 Giants as 6.5-point favorite last week likely left a very bad taste in the public's mouth. Despite Houston's slow start, our models are more optimistic than Vegas about their chances here and see this game as very close to a 50/50 toss-up. Even if you believe Indy has a slight edge, the Texans still look like a decent undervalued pick, especially if your focus is on winning weekly prizes.
Arizona (vs. Seattle)
This game features Week 4's biggest discrepancy between a team's win odds and pick popularity. It’s understandable that the public doesn’t consider winless Arizona to be a good team, and the public is likely correct. However, the love for Seattle in this game is irrational. The Seahawks have roughly 60-percent win odds as field-goal favorites, but 80 percent of the public is picking them. Sure, Seattle has big-name players on both sides of the ball and just earned its first victory at home over Dallas, but there’s not much evidence to suggest that the Seahawks are a particularly underrated or elite team so far, and they’ll be on the road away from the friendly confines of CenturyLink field against an Arizona team presumably hungry for its first win. If you want to gamble on an underdog, Arizona provides more value this week than Tampa Bay or Detroit, on account of being a far less popular pick. While too risky of a play for most season prize pools, the Cardinals are a very solid play for weekly prizes.
Which Of These Five Picks Should You Make?
Maybe all of them, maybe most of them. We're not dodging the question -- the reality is, it takes a lot of math to get to the right answer.
We built our Football Pick 'em Contest Picks to do all this number crunching for you. You answer a few quick questions about your pool, and it customizes weekly pick recommendations to give you the biggest edge. We use data from national pick 'em contests to estimate pick popularity for every team. We compare a team's pick popularity to its win odds (or point spread cover odds, if you're in a point spread pool) to determine if it's being underrated or overrated by the public. Finally, we use algorithms to identify the exact set of picks each week that offers the best risk vs. reward profile for your pool.
The result? In our postseason survey last year, 81 percent of our subscribers reported winning a weekly or a season prize in a football pick 'em contest. We invite you to give it a try for free during Week 4.
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And don't forget about our Survivor Pool Picks and NFL Betting Picks, too.