YTD 5-3
we never brag here and we never get overconfident. in fact, when we win bets, we often think we got lucky and when we lose, we acknowledge what shitty bets we made (see AZ last week). we know that brutal week is always just one week away. but, in the interest of trying to help people understand how we bet the nfl, it's worth mentioning the detroit game last week. i read some threads in the nfl forum every now and then and i have no idea how these people are making their plays.
anyway, to paraphrase the old A team, that plan came together perfectly.
if you read the newsletter last week, you know i was looking ahead to two games. the first was atlanta (i didn't end of playing it and it was an easy winner, of course. good call
). the other was san francisco. the idea was that detroit would handle the jets easily on mnf and then SF would be -3 over detroit. i liked SF at first because SF looked much better against minnesota than the stats would indicate and detroit was such a better matchup for them. but that didn't happen and detroit somehow got demolished by the jets. and then SF goes to -6.5 when they should have been -3. not only did we not bet SF but we switched to a play on detroit. why?
a few reasons. one, when we expect a line to be 3 and it moves to 6.5, you have to consider playing the other side. but even moreso, when a line is 3 to 3.5 points off just because the other team was really bad the prior week, that's an overcorrection. when that bad week was week one, that's a stupid overcorrection. and this is particularly true with detroit. detroit is basically the same team every season. questionable defense, very good offense against average to weak defenses, pretty average team. they look the same this season. SF has issues on defense. the detroit team we know, if you ignore week one, should have no problem either outscoring SF and winning, keeping it close or getting that backdoor cover.
so, some good lessons from that game. never fall in love with a side. if the number isn't right, don't bet it or maybe even consider the other side. never overreact to one week. never, ever overreact to week one. when vegas is giving you free points that are not warranted, consider taking them. at best, don't handicap yourself by giving them.
ok, enough of that. maybe that helps someone. or maybe you think it's bullsh*t. feel free to comment either way.
on to week three. i treat week 3 like week 2. it's still too early to start making assumptions about most teams. start doing that next week. so, we don't overreact to just two weeks of performances. like last week (see the dallas game), in many cases i'd ask, what would this line be if this was week one. if the number is pretty far off, we need to ask why.
back after lunch.