“Pick Five” NFL Betting Contest, week 9 – Betting against, rather than for, 5 teams

05 November 2022

Does NFLbets even have to say it? Yet another two out of five on the NFL betting contest ticket last week, pitiably chasing up a nice 4-1 showing in week 7. Probably the best strategy to make a few sure Moneys off NFLbets’ picks in this thing is simply to fade all five of the below picks.

On the week 9 “Pick Five” NFL betting contest card, NFLbets has:

• Buffalo Bills -11½ at New York Jets. What a difference two points makes! For some reason, the sportsbook is offering Bills -11½ as opposed to the -13 or -13½ standard for this game in proper point spread betting. While underdogs of 13½ points or more are 49-45-1 ATS since 2013, underdogs of 11½ points or more are 69-81-1 in the span. Put another way: underdogs of 11½ to 13 points are 20-36 ATS for a winning percentage of .357. NFLbets has no idea why this should be so, but all things being equal, we’ll take the Super Bowl favorites.
• New England Patriots -5½ vs Indianapolis Colts. NFLbets has gone to the Patriots’ well a tad too many times in 2022 for our own good, including getting on the wrong side of that spanking by the Bears on Monday Night Football. This pick is more about betting against the 3-4-1 SU/3-5 ATS Colts, who have Sam Ehlinger in his second NFL career start at QB. Also figuring that slightly more than competence can beat the third-lowest scoring team by a touchdown.
• Carolina Panthers +7 at Cincinnati Bengals. Ever heard of the “Super Bowl Hangover…?
• Seattle Seahawks +2 at Arizona Cardinals. Perhaps another well we’ve gone to too often this season is Seattle, but why should we quite them now?
• Los Angeles Rams +3 at Tampa Bay Buccaneers. This is admittedly a risky pick, but Tampa Bay is coming off increasingly more out of sorts by the week. The Bucs are 3-5 SU/2-6 ATS and haven’t won ATS since week 2; opposition scoring has gone from 9.0 points per game in weeks 1-3 to 24.8 thereafter, all while managing more to score more than 22 just once – against Kansas City, and thanks to two TDs when already down by 21 points. The numbers suggest that TB has to win ATS at some point, but we’re (again, perhaps riskily) guessing that Sean McVey can put together juuuuuuuuuuuuuuust enough during the bye week to get the W.

Now come on, that’s a good pick-five card, right? Good for four wins at least and … ah, who is NFLbets kidding. Fade us.

– written by Os Davis