NFL Week 11 Predictions, Rankings, and Tips: The Weekly Rundown
November 13, 2014 - by Tom Federico
Here’s a quick-hit list of weekly highlights from the vast array of NFL content we publish on TeamRankings. We’ll also share some predictions and picks for Week 11 and beyond.
Just announced: Our NFL Week 11 contest is open! Total prize pool $2,249. Claim your spot now.
Denver back to form. After returning to form by crushing Oakland, Denver retains its position as the clear #1 team in the NFL, 2.5 points better than #2 New England in our Predictive Ratings.
Humdrum week overall. There wasn’t much huge movement in the rankings based on Week 10 action. Green Bay was the biggest winner ratings-wise, climbing one spot to #4 and increasing its rating by 1.4 points after destroying Chicago. Our ratings have been relatively high on Green Bay all year, but they still tail #3 Seattle by a little more than half a point, after a strong Seahawks result too (38-17 over the Giants).
Four top contenders to Denver. Entering Week 11, New England, Seattle, Green Bay, and to some extent #5 Indianapolis have distanced themselves from the rest of the good teams. Around a point worse than Indy is the next tier of teams, consisting of #6 San Francisco, #7 Philadelphia, #8 Baltimore, and #9 New Orleans. The Eagles have been steadily playing their way up the rankings, while the Saints weren’t hurt too badly by an overtime loss to the highly-rated Niners.
Examining Arizona. At 8-1, #10 ranked Arizona is an outlier in the Predictive rankings, but the Cardinals’ resume helps explain things. The season opening one-point win over San Diego doesn’t look nearly as impressive anymore; the 21-point loss to Denver hurt; and so far, schedule strength has been just mediocre. However, a big factor is also Arizona’s preseason rating. While we thought the Cardinals would be better than most people believed this year (we had them at #11 preseason, vs. an implied Vegas rating of #18), we still didn’t think they would be a great team, and so far they’ve significantly outplayed even our higher expectations. So based on only a 9-game sample size, there is still uncertainty that the Cardinals are actually this good. We’ll see what happens now, especially with QB Carson Palmer out.
No big shakeups in Super Bowl odds. Denver’s Super Bowl champion odds inched up from 25% to 22% this past week, with New England the second most likely champion at 14%. Arizona is still at 9% to win it all thanks in part to their likelihood to win the NFC West and avoid a Wild Card game against Seattle or Denver, and Green Bay and Seattle (both 8%) are now close behind.
Philadelphia more in the picture now. The next higher Super Bowl odds are now Indianapolis and Philadelphia (both 7%) and Detroit (5%). No other team has more than 3% odds to win the Super Bowl, according to our simulations.
AFC division winner projections. Our current projected AFC division winners are New England (85% AFC East, vs. 78% last week, thanks to Miami and Buffalo losses), new favorite Baltimore (37% AFC North), Indianapolis (in near-lock territory at 92% AFC South), and Denver (still at 84% AFC West, with Kansas City emerging as San Diego fades).
NFC division winner projections. Our current projected NFC division winners are Philadelphia (climbing to 71% NFC East), Detroit (50% NFC North, but it’s a coin flip with Green Bay at 49%), New Orleans (only down slightly to 77% NFC South, thanks to Carolina losing), and Arizona (66% NFC West, with a high-leverage Seattle matchup looming in Week 12).
Other notables. San Francisco is down to only 8% odds to win the NFC West now, but still has about 42% odds to make the playoffs. Although Kansas City is only 15% to win the AFC West over Denver, the Chiefs’ playoff odds are all the way up to 70% now, while San Diego’s are down to only 20%. The current winner of the “good record, but low playoff odds” award is Cleveland (6-3, but only 33% to make the postseason); the AFC North is still a 4-team race thanks in part to Cincinnati’s recent slide, which could set up a painful situation or two come playoff time.
No hope for the playoffs? Our season simulations currently give 10 teams (down from 11 last week) less than a 10% chance of making the playoffs: the NY Jets, Tennessee, Jacksonville, Oakland, the NY Giants, Washington, Minnesota, Chicago, Tampa Bay, and St. Louis. Carolina’s loss and Atlanta’s win means that the Falcons played their way off this sorry list this week (just barely).
Last week’s advice. We didn’t give any pound-the-table pick’em advice last week, but our models (and by Sunday, Vegas too) ended up favoring Buffalo over Kansas City. The Bills carried at 13-3 lead into the 4th quarter, but couldn’t get it done. For weekly prize pools, Tampa Bay looked like a relatively risky upset pick, but still probably worth the risk. That didn’t work out either.
Strategy for season prize pools. For Week 11, your best strategy in NFL pick’em pools that only have season prizes is to continue to remain conservative and not go crazy picking upsets. (Even if you’re a bit behind in the standings, it’s not time to get more aggressive yet, but that time is coming soon.) This week we’ve got two nice contrarian choices available: Kansas City over Seattle and Indianapolis over New England. Both KC and Indy are favored by both our models and Vegas, but are being picked by less than 50% of the public.
Strategy for weekly prize pools. Pools that only offer weekly prizes call for a different strategy, one that needs to give much more weight to how your opponents are likely to pick this week. KC and Indy are no-brainers here, but it’s tough pickings for value-laden upset picks after that. Houston over Cleveland (40% win odds, 18% picked) looks like the best bet, but it’s pretty risky.
Strategy for YOUR pool. Just remember, the optimal strategy for your specific pool, including how many favorites vs. upsets you should pick this week, depends on a lot of factors: the number of entries in your pool, the rules, the scoring system, the payout structure. That’s why we developed our Football Pick’em Pools product to apply our analytics to your specific pool.
Another quiet week overall. Pittsburgh and Cincinnati combined to eliminate about 11% of still-surviving entries in survivor pools last week, so it was a largely uneventful week.
But we took a loss. Unfortunately for us, Cincinnati looked like a solid pick as of Thursday (before the game started, ha) and our last surviving pick set for single-entry strategies that we were tracking went with the Bengals. So at this point, the four pick sets for single-entry strategies that we were tracking this year have all been eliminated. All pick sets based on our models’ predictions ended up outlasting over 93% of all survivor entries this year.
More pool win reports coming in. Of course, many of our customers who play multiple entries in pools are still alive, as we didn’t advise putting all entries on Cincinnati last week. More reports of Survivor pool wins and pot splits have continued to come in on our Survivor forum.
Don’t pick this team in Week 11. This week, there’s a pretty wide spread of public picks across teams, with no one team being overwhelmingly popular. That places more emphasis on conservatism. Several teams look like OK choices this week, but Pittsburgh is not one of the top options if you want to maximize your odds to win your pool.
NFL Week 11 Game Predictions & Betting Picks Update
Public one-ups TR. The public (i.e., the user consensus picks from ESPN’s pick’em game) went 10-3 picking game winners last week, one game better than our models, which went 9-4. The difference was Kansas City vs. Buffalo, where the public favorite (yet Vegas underdog) Chiefs ended up winning.
Game winner picks still behind the public on the season. As of now our game winner picks are 96-50-1 on the season, which lags the ESPN user consensus by four wins. (Most of that came in Week 1, when the public went a ridiculous +3 on us). Our game winner picks are currently 8-5 against the 13 ESPN NFL experts.
Down week for betting picks. It was a bad week overall for our betting picks, with playable point spread picks going 2-4 (1-2 on 3-star picks) and playable totals going 1-3 (1-0 on 3-star picks) against Sunday lines. Our 2-star money line value picks went 1-1, hitting on the Jets +171, but all money line picks went 2-6 for -2.6 units based on flat betting.
Season performance update. That performance means that our playable rated NFL spread picks against Sunday lines are now 41-39 for the season, while playable over/under picks are 30-32. 2-star money line picks are -5.9 units for the season based on a flat-betting strategy, while all starred money line picks are currently -14.7 units.
Top confidence Week 11 picks. The top confidence game winner picks from our models are currently San Diego at home over Oakland (79%), Denver on the road over St. Louis (77%), and Washington at home over Tampa Bay (73%).
Most likely Week 11 upsets. The most likely upset of the week according to our models is currently Carolina over Atlanta (a 1-point favorite as of this writing), with a 49% chance of happening. The most likely upset of a Vegas favorite of more than three points is currently the New York Giants over San Francisco, but with only a 35% chance of happening.
sschluss takes the gold in Week 10. User sschluss won our 161-entry NFL contest on FanDuel this past week, squeaking past second place finisher blimes by just over three points with this lineup. Fine work, sschluss, and that’s good for a TeamRankings Season Pass ($249) in addition to your FanDuel winnings.
62% of entries won cash! Because of our guaranteed prize pool, an amazing 62% of the entries in our weekly contest doubled their entry fees last week. Sadly that did not include us (again) this week, as our teamrankings entry ended up in 146th place. Man, we’ve gotten smoked the past two weeks.
Come play with us! We want you to get in on the Week 11 action with us. Another 100 entries will win cash this week, and this is your chance to beat the TR Nerds head to head. Claim your spot now in our weekly tournament.
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