Week 16 Notes

[recovering77]

I believe the site had issues and I couldn't post last week. Will update the system record anyways.

Last play would have been a Buffalo, Houston, Dallas ML parlay (******* Dallas, ******* JJ).

I know the "must win" angle isn't a good one to use, but it's usually 50-50. What we saw last week shocked me in that KC -5.5, Detroit +5.5, and Dallas -5.5 all lost the game outright in a "must win" scenario. Maybe it has better luck this week. Detroit and Dallas still have a narrow path, but KC is officially eliminated.


System 1: Would have been Baltimore - W, KC - L, LV Raiders - L, NY Jets - L , Arizona - L, Buffalo - W, Denver - W, Indy - W, Dallas - L
Total Record: 4-5

System 2: Would have been Detroit +5.5 - L, and Dallas -5.5 - L
Total Record: 0-2



System 1 liked Seattle (I woulda took the ML) on Thursday, but I don't count Thursday games.


Washington +7 vs. Philly. Keeping it short. Washington has been bad this year, but in the NFC east, the crappy out of contention team usually stuns the division leader in primetime at some point during the year. I like Washington to win this game OUTRIGHT, but will take the points. The Giants did it to Philly earlier in the season though, but that had the wild card of Jaxon Dart's first couple of starts.


Green Bay +1.5 at Chicago. I think people are getting a bit tired of fading the bears, but this is a decent spot to take a fan favorite type team like Green Bay. Fresh off a loss and losing Mica Parsons with the Bears off a blowout win.


Dallas -2 vs. LA Chargers. Chargers are a fan favorite team, yet sneak by people sometimes. Think this is a good spot to take Dallas. They let JJ Mccarthy move the ball at-will against them, and Chargers are fresh off dispatching Patrick Mahomes from the playoff hunt for the first time in his career. The Chargers have a 90% chance of making the playoffs. I think they'd probably be in with just 1 win in the 3, though all 3 matchups are a tossup on who will win.


Detroit -7 vs. Pittsburgh. I'm not going to lay this many points, but will likely take the ML here.


Baltimore ML vs. New England. Not concerned about where New England is mentally after blowing that 21-0 lead against Buffalo. Still running playoff scenarios on what Baltimore can do and still win the division. Pittsburgh has a 1 game lead currently, but they're 7 point underdogs to a desperate Detroit team this week. At the same time, Baltimore plays at Green Bay next week and will be underdog there. Pittsburgh plays at Cleveland, but I've been circling that matchup for months to take Cleveland. Then Baltimore can make up a game in Week 18 against Pitt.

So I would say that a Baltimore does not HAVE to win this week, but the path would be narrowing if they didn't. And it would still be wide open if Pittsburgh lost to Detroit.

Baltimore is a very slight underdog to win the division. With a likely Steelers loss, I don't think I can pull the trigger on this one.



Houston ML vs. LV Raiders. At whatever price I feel it's worth it to throw this ML into any parlay you're doing, or attaching it to a straight bet to make it +104 instead of -110. I'm going to do this myself.




System 1 (25-13-2): This is 7-9 since topping out a couple of weeks ago.

Green Bay -1.5 / +1.5 (The shift is due to Parson injury i believe. Not sure which line I will count likely +1.5).
Cleveland +10
NY Giants +2.5
Dallas -2
NY Jets +6.5
Arizona +3
Detroit -7
LV Raiders +14
New England +2.5




System 2 (5-11):
Washington +7
Green Bay +1.5
New England +3

[recovering77]

There will be some lessons learned from this season. The main one being me trying to figure out how to bet individual weeks based on who I think is going to win the division. I started doing that back in like Week 6 or 7, which was way too early. Or a conspiracy angle about the NFL wanting meaningful week 18 games. You really can't predict which games a team will need until you get to the very end.

Yes, I think Baltimore wins the division. But that could come even with a Baltimore loss today. That division is all about week 18 one way or another. Baltimore probably as a small road favorite at Pittsburgh.

I haven't looked at the scenarios, but I believe as long as Baltimore goes into Week 18 down 1 game they can still win the division. And personally, I think Detroit thrashes Pitt this week, which puts Baltimore no worse than 1 game behind Pitt even with a loss against the Patriots.


I also feel pretty strongly about the Texans winning the division. So that means Denver would beat Jacksonville today, and Houston would handle business as a 14 pt favorite against the Raiders. This one is the most straight forward to me.


I was completely wrong about the NFC East being even an interesting race. I caught on one week too late apparently. I saw Dallas was +800 to win the division before the season started, which absurd value for a team with a potent offense with 20 years of no repeat champions. They only made it interesting 2 weeks ago, but it was never going to go into the last week. My mistake there.

[recovering77]

Sometimes you have one of those weeks, and it looks like this is one of those weeks for me.