NFL Week 5 Picks: Avoiding Landmines In A Risk-Filled Week

October 5, 2017 - by Tom Federico

Only TeamRankings applies data and game theory to optimize your NFL Week 5 picks.

Ready to make your NFL Week 5 picks? Here are several games that should be on your radar screen for pick’em and confidence pools.

Editor’s Note: All of our Week 5 picks for NFL pick’em pools are available in our Football Pool Picks product.

NFL Week 5 At A Glance

Brace yourself for what could be carnage in NFL pools this week, because only one team, the Steelers, is favored by at least a touchdown.

Based on Vegas odds on Thursday morning, we can group this week’s favorites into three tiers (point spreads in parentheses):

Decent favorites (-8.5 to -5.5): Pittsburgh (-8.5), Philadelphia (-6), New England (-5.5)
Slight favorites (-3 to -2.5): Cincinnati (-3), NY Giants (-3), Dallas (-3), Oakland (-2.5), Detroit (-2.5)
Toss-ups (-1.5 or less): Indianapolis (-1.5), Kansas City (-1), Cleveland/NY Jets (pick), Seattle/LA Rams (pick)

Two games (Tennessee at Miami and Minnesota at Chicago) were “off the board” at sports books at post time, presumably until starting QB’s are announced for Tennessee and Minnesota.

NFL Week 5 Pick Analysis

To win an NFL pick’em pool, you need to take advantage of smart opportunities to make unpopular picks. Below are five matchups from this week’s card where a contrarian pick may (or may not) make sense.

Note that betting lines and public picking trends may have shifted since this post was published, and changed the Week 5 landscape. If you want the latest data, we update our football pick’em picks and tools multiple times per day.

Pittsburgh vs. Jacksonville
The Steelers are technically overrated; they have close to 80% win odds but 95% of the public is currently picking them to win. Nevertheless, Pittsburgh is the biggest favorite on the board in a week full of very close games, and the public is more biased toward a few other favorites much more likely to lose. So compared to other possible upset picks this week, Jacksonville doesn’t look very attractive in pick’em pools.

Cincinnati vs. Buffalo
The Bills have made waves in recent weeks with two straight upset wins against Denver and Atlanta. The Bengals’ public brand, on the other hand, still suffers from their atrocious first two games. However, the public may be undervaluing Cincinnati’s recent turnaround. After barely losing at Green Bay, the Bengals outperformed betting market expectations by 21 points last week at Cleveland. The Bengals are the favorite here (-3 point spread), and also offer value as only half of the public is picking them.

Tennessee at Miami
After yielding 57 points to Houston last week, the Titans aren’t inspiring much confidence in Week 5. However, it’s worth noting that Tennessee committed a whopping five turnovers compared to Houston’s one, and turnover luck is unlikely to break so badly against Tennessee this week. If the Titans end up as 2- or 3-point Vegas favorite after their starting QB is announced, then they should be fairly valued in pick’em pools. If the line is closer to even, picking Miami starts to make more sense, since Tennessee is currently the more popular pick.

Baltimore at Oakland
It’s been a Jekyll and Hyde season so far for the Ravens, who outscored their first two opponents by a combined 44-10, then got outscored by a combined 71-16 in their past two games. Unsurprisingly, the recency bias-influenced public is now scared of Baltimore. However, Oakland hasn’t exactly impressed in their last two games either, and with QB Derek Carr injured, the Raiders are less than a field goal favorite. If you want to take a gamble on an upset pick, especially in pools that only offer weekly prizes, Baltimore’s risk/reward profile looks solid.

San Francisco at Indianapolis
Both the betting markets and our models view this game as very close to even. The Colts have been volatile this year, outperforming expectations at home and getting blown out on the road by the Rams and Seahawks. Meanwhile, San Francisco has outperformed expectations on the road, and should have escaped Arizona with a win last week. The Colts are a very slight Vegas favorite, but with 75% of the public picking Indianapolis, the Niners have an attractive profile as a not-too-risky upset pick.

Making All Your NFL Week 5 Picks

We’ve highlighted five games of interest above, but remember that you can’t look at NFL Week 5 picks in isolation. Rather, you need to make sure the risk/reward profile of all 16 picks you make this week — your “portfolio” of picks — isn’t too risky or too conservative for your pool.

We built our Football Pool Picks product to optimize your picks for you. First, it aggregates key data like Vegas spreads, win odds, and pick popularity. Then it does all the math to identify the picks that give you the best chance to win a pool prize.

NFL Week 5 Picks Strategy

Finally, if you’re curious about how we apply data-driven strategies to maximize your edge in football pools, here’s a quick primer.

You’ll notice from our analysis above that in addition to considering how likely each team is to win its game this week, we pay just as much attention to how likely your opponents are to pick each team. Here’s why.

Winning NFL pick’em pools involves balancing risks with potential rewards. If you follow the crowd all season long, only picking the most popular teams and trendiest upsets, you’re unlikely to be a long-term profitable player. Among other things, increasing your odds to win requires you to identify smart plays that will help differentiate your picks.

In the ideal situation, you can pick an unpopular team that’s actually favored to win its game. Sometimes, though, an underdog is so unpopular that it’s worth taking some additional risk to pick them, depending on the context of your pool.

Until Next Week…

Enjoy another week of football and good luck with your NFL Week 5 picks. If you found this post valuable, please check out one of our premium products:

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