NFL Week 4 Pick’em Pool Strategy: Five Picks You Must Consider

September 26, 2018 - by Tom Federico

Week 4 Football Pick'em

We’re back for NFL Week 4 with five picks that need to be on your radar screen if you want to win your NFL pick’em contest or confidence pool.

Remember: Getting the biggest edge in your NFL pick’em requires a precise evaluation of win odds (i.e. how risky each potential pick is) as well as pick popularity (i.e. how much you’ll gain on your opponents if you pick a team and it wins). Then, you need to make sure the risk vs. reward profile of your weekly picks is appropriate for your pool.

For a quick primer, see our earlier article on NFL pick’em pool strategy.

Last season, 81% of TeamRankings subscribers reported winning a weekly or season prize in a football pick’em contest. How? They used our Football Pick’em Pool Picks. It’s the only product that customizes weekly pick recommendations for your specific pools. You can also check out our NFL survivor pool picks and NFL betting picks.

Review Of Last Week’s NFL Picks

Last week we cautioned against considering the Bills as a big upset pick. Based on the data, Washington over Green Bay or San Francisco over Kansas City looked like much smarter gambles. If you were one of the 2% of the country that had Buffalo, congratulations — you just called the biggest NFL upset since 1995, based on the closing point spread.

Despite the Minnesota loss, we had our third straight week of winning value picks, also advising Miami over Oakland (win), Pittsburgh over Tampa Bay (win), and highlighting Washington (win) and San Francisco (loss) as potential value gambles, if you wanted to take the risk.

Because we’re mostly focusing on teams that are less popular picks than they should be, hitting the majority of these games will have an outsized positive impact on your performance in NFL pick’em contests and confidence pools.

Week 4 Value Picks For NFL Pick’em And Confidence Pools

As usual, we’ve picked out five games this week that stand out based on the win odds and pick popularity of the teams playing. Deciding which way you want to go on these games should be top of mind when you make your NFL Week 4 picks.

Keep in mind that we are not recommending you make all of these picks. The best picks for your specific pool depend on a number of strategy factors, such as the number of entries in your pool; whether it uses confidence points; and whether it offers season prizes, weekly prizes, or both. Our Football Pick’em Picks product figures out the best pick strategy for you.

Note: Win odds and projected pick popularity data quoted below may change between publication time and kickoff time, rendering this advice out of date. If you want to see the latest numbers, our product updates multiple times per day with the latest information.

Big Favorite At A Reasonable Price

Green Bay (vs. Buffalo)

Yes, the Bills pulled off an historic upset of the Vikings last week, but it usually pays not to overreact to one game result. With Vegas having the Packers as a 10-point favorite (implying nearly 80% odds to win), a momentum-based Bills upset pick just isn’t worth the risk. In pools that only have season prizes, Buffalo’s 1-in-5 chance to win this game is simply too much of a gamble, and other smaller underdogs this week offer better value (see Value Gambles below). Even if you’re set on picking one of the biggest favorites of the week to lose, there is a better alternative. Jacksonville is only a 7.5-point favorite according to Vegas odds, but still a more popular pick than Green Bay. With lower risk and higher reward if they win, the Jets are a better upset play than Buffalo in comparison.

Side note: Using the “transitive property” to evaluate matchups in the early season isn’t a great approach. For example, the Packers tied the Vikings in Week 2; the Bills stomped the Vikings in Week 3; now the Packers are favored to beat the Bills by 10 in Week 4? It doesn’t seem to make sense. But again, you can’t read too much into the results of one game, when factors like randomness and motivation can have a big impact. But if you do think there’s no way the Bills will lose this game by 11 or more, Vegas will be more than happy to take your bet right now!

Fairly Valued Favorites

Dallas (vs. Detroit)

Both Vegas odds and our models have Dallas as a slight favorite in this game, giving the Cowboys around 60% win odds in this battle of 1-2 teams. The public, though, is slightly less confident about Dallas’ chances (57% pick popularity). This might be a spot where the Week 3 game results are still very fresh in people’s minds, given Detroit’s upset home win against the storied Patriots in a prime-time Sunday night game, while Dallas lost by 11 to an 0-2 Seattle team. Two weeks earlier Detroit got smoked by the Jets, but people tend to quickly forget things like that. Based on this profile, you’ll do better sticking with the favorite here, which also happens to be a slightly underrated pick — an attractive combination.

Chicago (vs. Tampa Bay)

It’s worth watching the numbers on this game over the course of the week, given that Tampa Bay played in the Monday Night game in Week 3. As of Wednesday morning, host Chicago looks fairly valued, as the Bears’ Vegas implied win odds of around 60% are just slightly higher than their pick popularity of 58%. Our models are also a bit higher on Chicago’s odds to win than the Vegas line is. All things considered, similar to the Dallas situation above, there are a lot better contrarian plays on the Week 4 slate than Tampa Bay, and sticking with the favorite here makes sense.

Value Gambles

Houston (at Indianapolis)

As a 1.5-point road underdog, Houston might be worth a gamble this week, considering that only 40% of the public is picking them. Although the Texans and Colts both lost in Week 3, Houston is now 0-3 after losses to the Patriots, Titans, and Giants. Though all those games were relatively close, Houston losing to the 0-2 Giants as 6.5-point favorites last week likely left a very bad taste in the public’s mouth. Despite Houston’s slow start, our models are more optimistic than Vegas about their chances here, and see this game as very close to a 50/50 toss-up. Even if you believe Indy has a slight edge, the Texans still look like a decent undervalued pick, especially if your focus is on winning weekly prizes.

Arizona (vs. Seattle)

This game features Week 4’s biggest discrepancy between a team’s win odds and pick popularity. It’s understandable that the public doesn’t consider winless Arizona to be a good team, and the public is likely correct. However, the love for Seattle in this game is irrational; the Seahawks have roughly 60% win odds as field-goal favorites, but 80% of the public is picking them. Sure, Seattle has big name players on both sides of the ball, and just earned its first victory at home over Dallas. But there’s not much evidence to suggest that the Seahawks are a particularly underrated or elite team so far, and they’ll be on the road away from the friendly confines of CenturyLink Field, against an Arizona team presumably hungry for its first win. If you want to gamble on an underdog, Arizona provides more value this week than Tampa Bay or Detroit, on account of being a far less popular pick. While too risky of a play for most season prize pools, the Cardinals are a very solid play for weekly prizes.

Which Of These NFL Week 4 Picks Should You Make?

Maybe all of them, maybe just some of them. We’re not dodging the question — the reality is, it takes a lot of math to get to the right answer.

We built our Football Pool Picks to do all the number crunching for you, and figure out when it makes the most sense for you to go with the favorite vs. the underdog. You answer a few quick questions about your pool, and it customizes weekly pick recommendations to give you the biggest edge.

We use data from national pick’em contests to estimate pick popularity for every team. We compare a team’s pick popularity to its win odds (or point spread cover odds, if you’re in a point spread pool) to determine if it’s being underrated or overrated by the public. Finally, we use algorithms to identify the exact set of picks each week that offers the best risk vs. reward profile for your pool.

The result? In our postseason survey last year, 81% of our subscribers reported winning a weekly or a season prize in a football pick’em contest.

You can find more information about our premium NFL products at the following pages: Football Pick’em Picks, NFL Survivor Picks, and NFL Betting Picks.