DadBodFootball - Week 11 Early Lines, Totals, Implied Totals

The Under Won't Go Away, and Never Trust The Bills (apparently)

The Ebbs and Flows of the 2023 season are in full effect after Week 10 delivered a return to normalcy for so many teams. Scoring was WAYYYY Up (639 Points, 50 points above Vegas’s expected TOTAL for the week), and we saw four teams return to their pre-season/early-season expected form - the 49ers, Lions, Cowboys, and Browns.

Some general notes on the week

• Spreads: Home Teams covered or pushed in 7/14 games (50%), and won 8/14 Matchups

• Totals: The OVER had it’s first positive week since Week 5 - going 8/14 matchups. Scoring totals were trending down for the past ~5 weeks, and Vegas finally saw the totals go TOO low, with a 50 point delta between ACTUAL vs. EXPECTED Points.

• Road/Home Dogs - 6 Underdogs, many with long odds, won on the week:

  • Texans (+205) at Bengals

  • Saints at Vikings (+125)

  • Browns (+205) at Ravens

  • Falcons at Cardinals (+105)

  • Jets at Raiders (+100)

  • Broncos (+295) at Bills

As for the Model - we went 10-3 ATS, with no bad beats; and 6-7 on TOTALS with an even split on losses for both the OVER and UNDER (meaning the model wasn’t more or less wrong on either score).

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Week 11 Early Lines

There are more large spreads (spreads >10) than I can recall seeing in a week, definitely in 2023 - though it may also hold true in 2022 as well - with 5 teams being favored by more than 10 points.

This could be a great week to evaluate games where the spread is >10 points and the model favors the OVER to make Implied Totals bets on the underdog. They usually have abnormally low totals against their season averages, and game script could usually see points in Garbage time.

A good example here is the Giants - Cowboys game from this past week, where the Giants scored a touchdown in the last 4 minutes of the game, down 42-10, to beat their IT of 11.

There are also some ML plays I’d consider this week -

• Bengals (+155) vs. Ravens - the model likes the Ravens at home, but a short week, TNF game for a Ravens team who appears to be afraid to win.

• Steelers (+160) vs. Browns - The Steelers like to lose to the Browns, but the Browns also like to lose to teams they shouldn’t

• Cardinals (+165) vs. Texans - return of Kyler Murray + let down after a huge win against the Bengals

• Vikings (+110) vs. Broncos - rise of the Passtronaut, the Broncos aren’t playing as well as their recent record would indicate