The NFL Rundown: Rankings, Picks & Tips For NFL Week 2
September 11, 2014 - by Tom Federico
Here’s a quick-hit list of weekly highlights from the vast array of content we publish on TeamRankings.com. Of course, we’ll also share some predictions and picks for the current NFL week and beyond.
Vikings surge, Seattle now King Kong. Minnesota was the top gainer in our new predictive rankings this week, shooting from a preseason #25 ranking up to #18 after trouncing the Rams 34-6 on the road. Detroit’s three-TD victory at home over the NY Giants moved them from #14 to #9, a quite significant move as there is a decent drop in rating value between Detroit at #9 and San Diego at #10. Seattle made a statement with its blowout of Green Bay, and the Seahawks are now the undisputed king of the hill at #1 in the league, almost a full point better than our preseason #1, Denver.
Some Week 1 upsets not as big as you think. While Tennessee’s road upset of Kansas City and Buffalo’s road upset of Chicago moved them both up in the rankings somewhat (TEN from #26 to #21 and BUF from #29 to #26), the impact wasn’t as huge as most people would probably think. The reason why is because our preseason ratings pegged both Kansas City (preseason rank #23) and Chicago (preseason rank #22) as teams that would be worse in 2014 than in 2013. These two upsets may provide the first evidence of that — we’ll have to wait and see. But bottom line, these two upsets were much more shocking to most people than they were to our ratings.
NY Giants in rankings free fall. The big loser of the week was the New York Giants, a team that our preseason ratings expected to improve this season. After Week 1, New York plummeted all the way from a #9 preseason ranking to #17. It’s going to be interesting to watch how the G-men unfold this season. It’s way too early to come to any conclusions about teams, but installing a completely new offense (and projecting what’s likely to happen as a result) is one of those things that our preseason ratings don’t even consider, because relevant historical data about these sorts of situations is quite scarce. As a result, our preseason ratings could end up being completely wrong on the Giants this year. On the other hand, Eli and company could get things together after a few games, close out strongly, and still surpass most people’s expectations.
Why quantitative NFL ratings are so awesome. After beating the Saints by 3 in overtime as an underdog, the Falcons actually dropped two spots in our new predictive rankings, from #18 to #20. However, closer examination shows that Atlanta’s RATING did indeed improve from last week, even though their ranking went down. In other words, yes, we think the Falcons are a better team now than we did last week. But the dynamics of Week 1 just meant that other teams, such as Miami, improved their rating by a greater amount, and ended up leapfrogging Atlanta in the overall rankings.
Denver still the 2015 Super Bowl favorite. Because of an easier projected path to the Super Bowl compared to Seattle (aka, not having San Francisco in its division), Denver’s odds to be 2014-15 NFL champions (20.5%) are still tops in the league, even though Seattle has a better power rating. It’s a slim margin, though, as Seattle’s Super Bowl win odds stand at 19.7%. Then, it’s a decent drop to San Fran at 13.8%, Cincinnati at 6.3%, and New England at 6.0%.
AFC division winner projections. Our current projected division winners in the AFC are New England (44.5% AFC East), Cincinnati (55.5% AFC North), Houston (43.6% AFC South), and Denver (82.3% AFC West). So Denver and Cincinnati are the only teams currently expected to win their respective divisions. Miami, at 37.5% to win the AFC East, is a strong threat to New England.
NFC division winner projections. Our current projected division winners in the NFC are Philadelphia (41.3% NFC East), Detroit (39.7% NFC North), Carolina (43.9% NFC South), and Seattle (51.9% NFC West). So Seattle is the only team expected to win its division, albeit barely. However, Seattle’s projection would be a heck of a lot higher if the 49ers lived somewhere else. At 40.2% to win the NFC West, SF is nipping at Seattle’s heels, and New Orleans (34.2% to win the NFC South) is stalking Carolina.
Kiss Those Playoff Hopes Goodbye? At this point, our season simulations are giving six teams a less than 10% chance of making the playoffs: Jacksonville, Kansas City, Oakland, Chicago, Tampa Bay, and St. Louis. Coming out of Week 1, Chicago may be competing in a tougher NFC North than many people think this year, and our models are relatively low on KC and high on San Diego in the AFC West.
Titans > Green Bay! The biggest playoff odds shocker at this point is probably Tennessee, with a 43.1% chance to make the postseason, thanks to a solid Week 1 result and a relatively wide open division that also happens to include Jacksonville. That means Tennessee’s playoff odds are currently higher than teams like Green Bay, San Diego, and Atlanta. That doesn’t mean we think Tennessee is better than Green Bay — we don’t (at least, not yet). It all has to do with the dynamics of NFL division and schedule strength, based on what we know about the league so far this season. And with only 16 games to play in a season, being 1-0 compared to 0-1 is significant. We’ll see how things shift after the next few games.
The public gets lucky. The public had the week of its collective life picking NFL game winners to start the 2014 season, with the ESPN user consensus picks going 12-4 in Week 1, compared to a 9-7 result by the closing TR model picks and Vegas odds. Ouch. The difference makers were the public picking Vegas underdogs Cincinnati, Carolina, and Minnesota all to win, and going 3-for-3.
Luck evens out in the long term. Still, with over 200 picks left to make in the season in most NFL pick’em pools, that’s no cause for concern. Favorites usually win, and the public performance in Week 1 should be exposed for what it almost certainly is — a lucky week — soon enough. (This is also a good time to remind customers of our NFL pick’em picks that around 70% of our active users were “in the money” in their NFL pools heading into Week 17 of last year, which means they were beating almost all of their opponents.) Week to week performance can always vary greatly, but in the long run, skill trumps luck.
Value pick city!The top FIVE Four of the top five value upset picks listed in our Week 1 pick’em data grid all won last week (thanks to “j” in the pick’em Q&A forum for pointing out my initial error there), despite a few of them being decent long shots. Consequently, if you were in a huge pick’em pool with weekly prizes and you ended up picking several of our top value upsets, you may have struck major gold in Week 1. We’ve received several emails and comments from users who had great finishes in their weekly prize pools in Week 1.
Week 2 strategy for season prize pools. For Week 2, your best strategy in NFL pick’em pools with season prizes is to remain conservative, in order to exploit the public’s tendency to make too many upset picks early on. In addition, there is always an overreaction to Week 1, and that is already manifesting itself with Baltimore (vs. Pittsburgh) looking undervalued and Detroit (at Carolina) looking overvalued this week.
Strategy for weekly prize pools. Pools with weekly prizes call for a different strategy, though, that needs to give much more weight to how your opponents are likely to pick this week. Per the last point, Baltimore and Carolina are odds-on contrarian picks right now (50%+ win odds, yet picked by less than half of the public) and should be no-brainer picks in most weekly prize pools, while Cleveland over New Orleans looks like the best long shot value upset pick if you want to take a big gamble.
A big week for eliminations. 28% percent of survivor pool players were eliminated in Week 1, thanks largely to Chicago’s overtime loss to Buffalo. That’s a pretty big chunk of players, but if Jacksonville hadn’t imploded in the second half and had hung on to beat Philadelphia, that number would have been a whopping 70%! Now that would have been exciting.
Avoiding Philly almost paid huge dividends. Our survivor advice got off to a solid start, as we generally advised avoiding Philadelphia in favor of Detroit and/or the New York Jets. Both those teams won, and the Jets look useless for the rest of the year, so that’s nice. And if Philly ends up being good, at least we’ve still got them.
Don’t pick these teams in Week 2! In Week 2, as usual, there are a few popular picks you need to avoid if your goal is to maximize your chance to win your survivor pool: New Orleans and Green Bay. You can read some of the reasons why in our Week 2 survivor highlights post.
NFL Week 2 Betting Picks & Game Predictions Update
Great week for top NFL betting picks. It was a great start to the season for our top confidence NFL betting picks. Playable (2- & 3-star rated) NFL over/under picks went 5-1, while 3-star rated point spread picks (which locked at Detroit -4.5, Cleveland +6.5 and Tennessee +3) went 3-0. All playable spread picks went 5-3, including an OT loss on New Orleans -3. Our 2-star rated money line value picks generated a fantastic return, going 3-1 while hitting on two underdogs (Tennessee +151 and Carolina +181) and one favorite (Detroit -215).
That’s not going to be the norm. Don’t expect that level of performance (or anything near it) on NFL betting picks for the whole season; that’s a pipe dream. Week 1 was a very good week for us, and weeks like these balance out the inevitable losing weeks lurking in the future. So if you’re using our picks — or even if you’re not, it doesn’t matter — make sure to employ sound bankroll management practices.
Game winner picks should rebound. As mentioned in the pick’em section above, our game winner predictions had a crappy week when measured against the public. This is almost certainly just randomness at work, as the public is clearly not three games better than us or Vegas at picking weekly NFL game winners over the long term. The public is worse than us picking game winners long term. So enjoy your moment in the sun while it lasts, public.
Most likely upsets on target in Week 1. Our top three most likely upsets all came through last week (Tennessee over Kansas City at #1, Cincinnati over Baltimore at #2, and Minnesota over St. Louis at #3). We also had Carolina over Tampa Bay as our top upset play against teams Vegas favored by more than 3 points. (TB was favored by 4.) Overall, we expected 4-5 of our highlighted upsets to happen during Week 1, according to our win odds, and five happened.
Week 2 playable NFL betting picks. As of posting time, there are a relatively high number of playable NFL spread picks this week (10), including four 55%+ confidence picks. We also have our first 3-star total pick of the season, on Chicago at San Francisco. Since 2010, our 2- and 3-star NFL totals picks have performed very well overall, and that’s being measured against closing or near-closing lines. 2013 was a down year, though, so hopefully we see a longer-term rebound this year.
Don’t call them the Week 2 locks of the week. The top confidence NFL Week 2 game winner picks from our models are currently Denver over Kansas City (80.9%), Washington over Jacksonville (72.5%), and Green Bay over the NY Jets (71.5%).
Most likely Week 2 upsets. The most likely upset of the week is currently the New York Giants over Arizona, with a 48% chance of happening. The most likely upset of a team favored by more than 3 points by Vegas is Dallas over Tennessee, with a 41% chance of happening.
We ran a private FanDuel tournament. We ran our first one-day fantasy football tournament on FanDuel last week, which was fun. It was a private tournament just for TeamRankings users — thanks to all of you that participated! We plan to keep doing these, so watch your email for future private tournament invites. If you’re not signed up for FanDuel yet, please use the link above to sign up and we’ll send you an invite to play in our private tourneys.
70% Winners! We had 73 TR users enter the $10 buy-in contest in Week 1, and because of the guaranteed prize pool and payout structure, the top 50 scores out of 73 all doubled their money! So you had almost a 70% chance of doubling your money if you entered. Now that’s +EV (positive expected value)…
adamhasu dominates the field. Our congratulations go to the Week 1 tournament winner, adamhasu, who rode big performances by Megatron, Le’Veon Bell, Vernon Davis, Steve Smith, and even Atlanta kicker Matt Bryant to victory in our inaugural private tournament. To augment the cash prize pool, we will be giving adamhasu a free Football Season Pass to TeamRankings, a $249 value on top of the prize money won from FanDuel. Congrats! The TR nerds will be gunning after you in Week 2 though, fair warning… 🙂
And hey…we didn’t suck! We were thrilled and surprised by our own fifth place finish in the contest, which far surpassed our expectations. We are complete newbies at daily fantasy, we’re not big traditional fantasy football players, and we didn’t have a lot of time to do strategy or player/matchup research. So luck certainly played a role in our top-five finish, but we’ll be writing a post about the strategies we used to stimulate some discussion.
Come play with us! We’d love to have you play in these private tournaments with us. Again, simply sign up for FanDuel using our link above, or if you are already a FanDuel user, just email support at teamrankings dot com and we’ll put you on the invite list.
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