It's Sunday night and I'm sitting at the In-N-Out in Carlsbad, Calif. (taking my kids to Legoland to celebrate my favorite baseball team, the Los Angeles Dodgers, losing in a second straight World Series). There is a woman in a David Ortiz jersey that keeps looking my way with a grin on her face and pointing to her Boston Red Sox hat. Can you at least give me a night here while I drown my sorrows in a double-double (animal style with chopped chilis) and a Dr Pepper?
More important, I'm trying to figure out if anything of significance even happened today in the NFL. This week, 10 favorites won games, and the three underdogs that pulled off upsets were all getting three points or less.
The Packers gave the Rams a run for their money and had a shot to hand the best team in Los Angeles (and the world) their first loss of the season. This didn't come as too much of a surprise, though, as I wrote last week that I projected the line in this game at under a touchdown. The +9.5s all week ultimately moved to +7.5s before kickoff, which is a pretty good indicator of the right side, even if the final score doesn't always show it. It worked in this case thanks to Todd Gurley.
Adam Vinatieri became the NFL's all-time leading scorer, which is a pretty cool feat. Vinatieri obviously won't get the recognition that Drew Brees received a few weeks back when he set the passing yards record, so consider this my personal shoutout to Adam. I once had a few friends bet me that I couldn't make 20 out of 50 field goal attempts from 30 yards with one month to practice. I had never attempted to kick a football in my life. It's harder than it looks, even if they practice the same thing over and over every day for the majority of their lives. Trust me, I was the first to yell at kickers through my television screen for missing kicks and costing me covers seemingly every weekend. I try to do this less now. (I won the bet, if you were wondering.)
We learned that the Jaguars and Raiders are, in fact, both in complete disarray, but we've suspected this for some time now. And Week 8 reminded us that sometimes the unexpected doesn't actually happen. When it comes to analyzing and betting these games, however, the data from these mundane slates of games is still useful (even if it kills the media narratives).
Let's dive into some of the other details that stuck out to me from Week 8 -- and we'll look at how we can apply them to our betting process for Week 9.
As we reach the halfway point of the season, there are some clear trends emerging that are worth paying attention to. Context is key, and any given line can be imbalanced in either direction, but the state of certain teams in particular is worth keeping a close eye on.
Buy: Houston Texans
I didn't want to risk