TeamRankings NFL & College Football Products For 2021

September 10, 2021 - by Tom Federico

Ryan Tannehill and TeamRankings subscribers are well-equipped for the 2021 season (Photo by Zach Bolinger/Icon Sportswire).

We’re excited to announce our premium products and subscription packages for the 2021-22 NFL and college football seasons.

What Premium Products Does TeamRankings Offer For Football?

The vast majority of content on TeamRankings.com, including tens of thousands of pages of football stats and rankings, is free to use.

We’re able to offer all that free content because our business generates revenue from selling premium picks, tools, and content to both football bettors and football pool players.

These services all leverage data and proprietary algorithmic models we’ve developed to help football bettors and pool players make more informed and profitable decisions.

Football 2021 Premium Products Overview

This season, we’re offering the following premium products for NFL and college football:

(We also have a premium pool picks product, Bowl Pick’em Picks, that provides picks for college bowl season pools. However, that product typically doesn’t launch until early December, after bowl game matchups have all been announced.)

You can click on the links above to visit each product page. Otherwise, keep reading for a summary of each football product, including information on our subscription packages.

NFL Betting Picks 2021

Our NFL betting picks leverage multiple algorithmic models we’ve developed over the years.

These models incorporate 10+ years of historical data and millions of individual data points to predict the outcomes of NFL games.

We publish the outputs of these multiple models on the site, and also combine their predictions and generate the following types of picks for every NFL regular season and postseason game:

Game winner picks
Point spread picks (ATS)
Over/under picks (totals)
Money line value picks

Each of our models for NFL betting picks applies a different mathematical approach, enabling you to compare multiple algorithmic perspectives on a game. Some examples:

Decision Tree Model. Creates predictions using a sophisticated modeling technique, random forests, that can identify complex and/or subtle predictive factors that are often impossible to identify via manual analysis.
Similar Games Model. Analyzes the results of historical games between statistically similar opponents, and creates predictions by weighting past game results using an overall matchup similarity score.
Power Ratings Model. Derives a predictive rating for each team based on past game results and opponent strength, then creates predictions by comparing team ratings and adjusting for game location.

Having multiple models also enables us to improve the accuracy of our picks by using an “ensemble forecasting” approach to game prediction. Leveraging multiple predictive models often produces better predictions than using any one model alone, since specific models each tend to have their particular blind spots.

(We’ve actually also built several different variants of the models listed above, so in most cases we’re analyzing closer to 10 different algorithmic models to come up with our official TR picks for a game.)

Our subscribers use our NFL betting picks in different ways. Some subscribers play all of our “playable” rated picks, which are projected to deliver long term profitability. Others only play our top-rated picks. Still others take our top-rated picks as a starting point, and use their own methods or preferences to filter the list down to a few plays each day or each week that they like most.

Many bettors use our predictions as an input into their own more complex handicapping process, taking into account several other information sources in addition to TeamRankings models. This makes a lot of sense to us. While a strong data foundation is critical to making objective predictions, there will always be less quantifiable information relevant to a game which, if processed intelligently, will likely improve one’s success at sports betting.

College Football Betting Picks 2021

Our college football betting picks employ a similar approach as our NFL betting picks.

Multiple math models make predictions for each game. We publish those underlying predictions, and also incorporate them into an overall game winner pick, point spread pick, over/under pick, and money line value pick.

On the college football side, our game winner and betting picks cover all games between two FBS opponents, plus all postseason bowl games and College Football Playoff games.

Football Pick’em Picks 2021

Our Football Pick’em Picks is the only product that provides customized picks, tools and data for football “pick’em” style contests. In these contests, you have to pick the winners of a slate of NFL and/or college games each week, though some pick’em contests involve picking against the point spread as opposed to picking game winners.

The most popular form of contest football pick’em contest consists of picking every NFL game, every week. Pools like those typically have an end-of-season prize for the entrant who picks the most games correctly, and often also have a smaller weekly prize for the top scoring entry of each NFL week.

Our product covers a broad range of pick’em pool formats and scoring options, including:

Picking straight-up game winners or point spread winners
The ability to customize weekly point spreads to match your pool
Assigning confidence points to each pick (i.e. confidence pools)
Picking NFL games, regular season college football games, or both
Picking all games, some games, or choosing which games to pick each week
Optimizing picks to win season-long prizes vs. individual week prizes

To start with, Football Pick’em Picks uses the most accurate and objective methods (e.g. Vegas odds and our algorithmic models) to predict individual games.

Then, it uses proprietary algorithms we built to customize weekly pick recommendations based on your pick’em pool’s size, scoring system, payout structure, and your current position in the standings. No other approach does a better job of maximizing your odds to win a prize in a pick’em pool.

Finally, subscribing to the product gives you the ability to set up and get customized picks for as many different football pick’em pools as you want.

NFL Survivor Picks 2021

Our NFL Survivor Picks product provides picks, tools, and data for NFL survivor pools. These types of pools are also sometimes referred to as knockout pools, eliminator pools, suicide pools, or last man standing pools. (Can we settle on a name?!)

In the most common variant of survivor pools, players need to pick one NFL game winner per week. If your pick loses, your entry is eliminated from the pool. The kicker is that each team can only be used as your pick once during the season, so you need to decide when it’s best to “burn” a specific team.

The complexity involved in maximizing your odds to win an NFL survivor pool can be staggering. In short, making the best possible pick each week requires some educated guesswork and a whole lot of math. You need to evaluate each team’s odds to win, project each team’s expected popularity as a pick in your pool, and understand the precise expected value of picking a certain team now vs. saving it to pick later.

Our NFL Survivor Picks product does all that math for you, providing a ranked list of top picks for your survivor pool every week. It’s also the only product that:

Uses historical data to project a team’s expected pick popularity in every future week
Adjusts pick advice based on a wide range of common survivor pool rule variations
Optimizes weekly pick “portfolios” for people playing multiple entries in a pool and/or playing in multiple pools

Subscribing to NFL Survivor Picks currently gives you the ability to set up and get customized picks for multiple different pools. On account of the computational intensity of the product, though, each subscriber is limited to getting picks for a grand total of around 30-40 different survivor pool entries. (The exact limit will vary according to how complicated the rules of your pools are.)

Premium Subscription Packages For Football 2021

We offer several different subscription packages that provide access to our premium products and tools for football. The more products you sign up for, and the longer you sign up for, the more you save.

Here are the three football-related packages that offer the biggest savings:

1) Yearly All-Access Subscription
The best deal we offer, this annual subscription includes access to all betting picks for the five sports we currently cover (NFL, NBA, MLB, NCAAF, and NCAAB), plus all four of our pool picks products (Football Pick’em Picks, NFL Survivor Picks, Bowl Pick’em Picks, and NCAA Bracket Picks).
Sign up now

2) Football Season Pass 2021
This package offers a discounted price on all NFL and college football betting picks through the end of the 2020-21 NFL and college football seasons (even if they end much later than usual), plus our three football pool picks products (Football Pick’em Picks, NFL Survivor Picks, and Bowl Pick’em Picks).
Sign up now

3) Pool Picks Subscription
Our most popular subscription for pool players provides a huge discount on access to all four of our pool picks products (Football Pick’em Picks, NFL Survivor Picks, Bowl Pick’em Picks, and NCAA Bracket Picks). If you play in more than one type of pool, it’s your best value.
Sign up now

We also offer the following shorter term or more tailored packages:

4) Monthly All-Access Subscription
This package provides access to all of our betting and pool picks on a month-to-month basis.
Sign up now

5) Weekly All-Access Subscription
This package provides access to all of our betting and pool picks on a week-to-week basis.
Sign up now

6) Football Pick’em Picks 2021
Our picks and tools for NFL pick’em pools for the 2020-21 season, plus predictions for college football games. (Does not include college bowl season.)
Sign up now

7) NFL Survivor Picks 2021
Our picks and tools for NFL survivor pools (also known as eliminator, knockout, and last man standing pools) for the 2020-21 season.
Sign up now

A Note On Betting Picks Packages

We currently offer betting picks for NFL, NBA, MLB, NCAAF, and NCAAB. Any subscription package that includes betting picks will include all of those sports; we do not sell betting picks packages for individual sports.

We made that decision to keep our subscription options simple, and we charge what we believe is a very fair price. Many handicappers charge hundreds of dollars (or more) for a season’s worth of picks for a single sport. On TeamRankings, that amount will get you access to all premium picks and tools for all five sports we cover. We based our pricing on the assumption that most of our users will only be interested in some, but not all, of the sports included.

Have A Question?

If you have questions about any of our football premium products or subscription packages, don’t hesitate to send us an email at support@teamrankings.com. One of us will get back to you as soon as we can.