DadBodFootball Week 15 NFL Picks Against The Spread, Totals, and Implied Totals
Spreads, Totals, Implied Totals, and TNF Revisited to Inform Your Betting Habits
The holidays represent arguably the busiest time of year for many of us - the end of the quarter/fiscal year, family time together, increased pressure to perform egregious acts of affluenza… As such, I’ll be keeping the posts brief the rest of the year. Why? This is so I can maximize your time to understanding the data model and visualizations in DBF and less time trying to understand or relate to this meandering introductions…
As such, unless there’s a really compelling story - expect these posts to be abbreviated and the Chasing Zebra’s section to be condensed.
Chasing Zebras - Revisiting Thursday Night Football
If you read my weekly early line previews, you can probably recite my feelings on Thursday Night Football verbatim…
My hatred of betting on Thursday Night Football is well documented - from a modeling perspective, these games…
Favor the Over - 53.5% of games hit the OVER, compared to ~44% of Sunday/Monday games.
Favor The Home Team To Win and Cover - 63.6% of home teams win, compared to 54.5% of Sunday/Monday games.
After checking the box score at 3 AM of last nights Rams vs. 49ers game to see if my “against the grain” Rams ML, UNDER bet hit (It did, but I still lost money) - I began to wonder… does 2024 Thursday Night Football adhere to the historical trends above.
For overs, we’re 8/15 - good for an almost identical 53.3% rate - Which actually means that these games are neither tilted towards the OVER or UNDER relative to 2024 season averages (52.2% Over).
Verdict: Overs and Unders are in line with season long trends
For Home Teams Winning and Covering - in a very limited sample size, the home team won and covered in 8/15 matchups - good for 53.3% rate. Now, the season long average of the home team winning and covering is 48.3%, so even here, I’m not inclined to believe that these games carry any significant deviation from season long trends… BUT!
Verdict: Home teams are no longer the guaranteed bet to win and cover that they were…
In short, Thursday Night Football games have been closer to season averages, but that also means that we’re less likely to be able to exploit their outcomes due to being an outlier to season long data…
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.
For example, the Browns play the Kansas City Chiefs and have an implied total of 19.5 points. Their season scoring average is 17.8 points - good for a APS Delta of -1.7; adjusted for a stout defense like Kansas City, and we could expect them to score around 14.6 points - a DBFPE Delta of -4.9 which gives us a Double Delta of -6.5… Bet the Browns Under 19.5 points.
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.
For instance, the Ravens participate in games with totals around 50 total points (~7.5 above 43 point scoring average). The Giants participate in games that are the opposite - nearly 7.5 points below the 43 point mark… 42.5 as a Total looks fair, and with an implied total of 13 for the Giants and 29 for the Ravens… I’m inclined to stay away from all total bets in this game.
NFL Week 15 - 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)
22-10-1
This Week
Washington Commanders -7.5 vs New Orleans Saints (If D. Carr and Kamara can’t go), Saints Under 18, Commanders OVER 25.5
The Saints can’t stop anyone on defense, and if their offense is missing their two legitimate starters in Derek Carr (QB) and Alvin Kamara - I don’t see this being a particularly close game nor do I see them being able to score 18 points against an aggressive Washington defense.
New York Jets -3.5 vs. Jacksonville Jaguars, Over 40.5 Points, Jets Over 22
Another game that I don’t feel will be particularly close though may hit the over if the Jaguars are able to score ~15 points. I suspect the Jets will put in a bit more effort towards the win as there are certain players auditioning for a role in the NFL next season.
Cincinnati Bengals -5 vs. Tennessee Titans, Bengals Over 25.5
Rock solid offense meet… scissor consistency defense? (Rock-Paper-Scissors? - I still don’t get why paper beats rock, but oh well). Don’t over think it - the Bengals are averaging 28 PPG, the Titans are a bottom 5 defense.
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 7-4 with a WAR of 21.78. This isn’t a particularly impressive WAR - meaning that we missed some big swings and hit mostly little ones. The biggest net losses were the Eagles -13.5 and the Bills -3.5.
On Totals, we went 2-8 with a WAR of -123. Excuse me while I vomit in to the trash can… BUT! As I tell almost anyone who will listen (which is no longer my wife and kids…) I’m done betting Totals in 2024… I’ve moved on almost exclusively to implied totals and have had much better luck
On the season that brings us to…
Spreads - 106-80-9; WAR:1313.1 given we run this model and record for ALL matchups, the model is absolutely humming on spreads (in that it is correctly predicting what spreads are outliers relative to the data).
Totals - 93-87-9; WAR: 352.1; I made some adjustments to the model’s defensive efficiency calculations used to grade individuals matchups so we’ll see if it makes any difference this week.