DadBodFootball Week 12 NFL Picks Against the Spread, Totals, and Implied Totals
Spreads, Totals, Implied Totals, and Refreshing Season Long Stats to Inform Your Betting Habits
I’m trying to keep this week’s post a bit shorter so that:
I actually finish it before the weekend
You might read the entire thing (doubtful)
In terms of prioritizing where you, the reader, spend your time - I’d definitely recommend the Spreads/Totals/Implied Totals and the Winning Quadrants sections. The Spreads/Totals/Implied Totals section’s value is obvious - it’s the output from the model. This week, I’m also calling out the Winning Quadrants as something that I use heavily in assessing a matchup (nearly 50/50 with the model) because of how it summarizes team tendencies. Ever wonder why you feel like the Chargers and Steelers participate in low scoring games, while the Ravens and Commanders participate in high scoring games? Well… it’s probably because they do, but what does that mean in terms of their opponent’s scoring potential and their own implied totals.
Do yourself a favor and check it out this week -
Chasing Zebras - 4 Stats That Matter for 2024
45.6% - Home Teams Against the Spread for 2024. This represents the lowest percentage since 2019 (43.2) and goes hand-in-hand with home teams (who are usually given 1.5 to 2 points for playing at home) winning straight up 51.6% of the time.
Takeaway: When in doubt, bet the road team to cover.
41.7% - Home Underdogs Against the Spread for 2024. Home underdogs covering and winning (27.4%) at historically low rates… My quick analysis showed that if they’re not winning, they’re getting blown out handedly.
Takeaway: Don’t bet against the Road Favorites; bet the Implied Total UNDER for the home underdog.
51.5% - Games that hit the OVER. Scoring showed a downward trend since the 2019 season, but 2024 is proving to be a resurgence year. The OVER has not carried a season since 2016 but appears to be primed to do so, despite Vegas continuing to raise totals
Takeaway: The UNDER is no longer the “safe bet”, but you can use team trends to understand what teams generally participate in matchups that result in a low point total (second call out for Winning Quadrants)
68.7% - Favorites Straight Up on the season. This is also a stat that is trending up, as in Favorites are both winning and covering at historic percentages. In Weeks 10 and 11, we saw 21 of 28 favorites win outright.
Takeaway: Continue leaning on your “favorite” favorites to carry the weight of your betting success down the stretch.
Spreads, Totals
Note: I model every matchup’s spread, total, and implied totals leveraging a data model rooted in historical (3+ seasons) worth of offensive and defensive scoring, team-specific efficiency (i.e. Red Zone TD %s), home and road performance, and variables like injuries to QBs, new head coaches, and Matt Patricia.
The only updates I generally make are to the variables - i.e. Davante Adams is unable to go this week. Lines will move throughout the week, so if the DELTA (the net difference between the data model’s predicted spread/total/implied total and the actual spread/total/implied total) is small, there’s a good chance that the guidance will go to neutral or to the other team as the week evolves.
Columns Explained
DBF Line - the model’s calculated line for the game
Real Line - the Vegas offered line for the game (usually within 0.5 points of most books)
DBF O/U - the model’s expected point total for the game
Real O/U - the Vegas offered line for the game (usually within 0.5 points of most books)
The DELTA - the net difference between the data model’s predicted spread/total/implied total and the actual spread/total/implied total provided by most betting sites. The higher the delta (in either direction) the more confident we are in the bet because, according to the data, the spread/total/implied total should be lower or higher than it is.
Implied Totals
For those new to implied totals (or wondering what the heck I’m talking about) - an Implied Total is the expected points for ONE team in a matchup (with a TOTAL being both teams).
DBF Data points - Interpreting Implied Totals: In the DBF Tracker below, I include the Implied Total and delta to two other important data points
Average Points Scored: Informs how many points a team scores on average against a neutral opponent
DBF Points Expected: The Model’s output for expected points including adjustments for opponent defense, weather, home/road performance, injuries
This allows us to calculate the DOUBLE DELTA - how far off both average points and DBF Expected Points an implied total is. The more negative or positive, the more… theoretically… likely it is to be OVER or UNDER.
Winning Quadrants - Do Teams Win And How?
This is a mainstay of the weekly post - visit Week 10 of the 2023 season for a longer description Winning Quadrants graphic from Week 10. I’ll be adjusting to 2024 data right around Week 6.
Y-AXIS Net Points: The “higher” a team is on the Y Axis - the more team “Wins” by, and the “lower” - the more a team loses by.
X-AXIS Average Total Points (net 2023 NFL Scoring average of ~43.8 PPG) -The left-most teams participate in games with the lowest TOTAL points - the right-most teams participate in the highest scoring games. I netted (subtracted) season scoring average to show if they are above or below the average game.
How can you use this? Well - it’s an interesting way of aligning our “feel” about certain teams - the Ravens tend to win and score a lot of points - and identify how they generally align against their spreads/totals.
The Vikings and Bears both participate in low total games (left of the center line in the above), and with a game TOTAL of 39 as of Friday, even though the model predicts a 35 point game, I might stay away as there isn’t a substantial deviation in the total from reality/statistics for each team.
NFL Week 12 - 3 Pack
This new section is where I go a bit deeper on how the data and analytics in this post can be applied to a given week’s matchups. I wouldn’t say that these are picks - more how I’m feeling about a week’s set of lines, totals, and implied totals.
*** NOTE *** - I generally write these on Thursday/Friday before game day, so the lines may NOT be exactly as they are below, but the notes won’t change substantially.
Total Record (Since week 7)
20-6
This Week
Tampa Bay Buccaneers -5.5 vs. New York Giants, Giants UNDER 18.25
The Buccaneers are coming off of a bye and returning starters on both sides of the ball. The Giants are a dumpster fire and are starting a D3 QB in an attempt to avoid paying Daniel Jones and Drew Lock for the rest of the season. As a reminder, Away Favorites are winning 75% of the time in the last two weeks and are generally winning big… bet the road favorite here
Dallas Cowboys vs. Washington Commanders -10.5 , Washington Over 27.5
The Commanders will score against a leaky Dallas defense - though I predict most of their damage will come on the ground. The Cowboys will make small improvements against a mid-level Commanders defense, but I’d rather have the Commanders Implied Total OVER than over 45 points.
Denver Broncos -6 vs. Las Vegas Raiders, UNDER 41
The Broncos are clear favorites on the road against a limited Raiders team. The Raiders offensively have one option (Brock Bowers) that the Broncos will takeaway, and they don’t have a run game to rely on. The Broncos are participating in games with totals around 36.5 points, and I expect their defense to dominate pace of play.
What the model (probably) got wrong this week!
STAY AWAY FROM THE OVER IN THE CHIEFS - CAROLINA GAME.
Model Performance
Reminder - the model GUIDANCE and not PICKS. I run every game through the model to identify opportunities where the underlying scoring and efficiency data does not align with the Vegas Spread and Total. I’ll continue to include WAR score here and a link to the post explaining why / how we can use it to determine if we’re hitting our most confident bets.
On Spreads, we went 10-3 with a WAR of 712.6. This means that not only did the model accurately predict a majority of spreads, but it correctly predicted the highest confidence/largest delta spreads too.
On Totals, we went 7-6 with a WAR of -34.9. Two weeks in a row where we had .500 or above performance on Totals but a negative WAR… meaning we’re not accurately predicting deviation from expected totals. The difficulty here is any change to the model impacts both spread guidance and total guidance, so I’m holding on sweeping changes for the time being.
On the season that brings us to…
Spreads - 83-65-7; WAR: 1257.8; given we run this model and record for ALL matchups, vroom vroom, mother trucker!
Totals - 79-67-7; WAR: 280.4; We’re trending slightly negative the last two weeks but there’s no cause for panic. The OVER is crushing, scoring is up, so we’re bound to miss a few. The goal is to hover around .500 if we’re not cruising above.