NFL Week 4 Picks: Ravens, Jets Underrated In Pick’em Pools

September 28, 2017 - by Tom Federico

Our Data Grid provides the up-to-date info you need to make the most informed picks.

Ready to make your NFL Week 4 picks?

In this post we highlight several games that should be on your radar screen for pick’em and confidence pools.

Editor’s Note: Our customized Week 4 picks for NFL pools are now available in our Football Pool Picks product.

NFL Week 4 At A Glance

Based on Vegas odds on Thursday morning, we can group this week’s favorites into tiers.

Point spreads are listed in parentheses:

Tier 1: Seattle (-13 vs. Indianapolis) is the week’s only double digit favorite.
Tier 2: New England (-9 vs. Carolina), Atlanta (-8 vs. Buffalo), Kansas City (-7 vs. Washington), Green Bay (-7 vs. Chicago), Arizona (-6.5 vs. San Francisco) and Dallas (-6 vs. LA Rams) are all home and favored by 2-3 field goals.
Tier 3: Everyone Else. No other team is favored by more than 3 points.

There are a total of 9 games in Tier 3, in which the underdog has a 40% or better chance of winning. That’s similar to last week, so the odds are again decent that we may see a number of upsets in Week 4.

NFL Week 4 Picks Strategy

This week we’ll highlight five matchups where it may (or may not) be worth bucking the crowd with your NFL Week 4 picks.

Just remember that breaking news, betting line movement, and shifts in public picking trends may have happened since this post was published, and changed the Week 4 landscape.

If you want the latest numbers before you lock in your Week 4 picks, we update our football pick’em picks and tools multiple times per day.

Seattle vs. Indianapolis
Seattle is the biggest favorite of Week 4 by a significant margin, and in the early going betting lines shifted in favor of the Seahawks. So we’d be careful about reading too much into “momentum” here after Seattle’s Week 3 loss and Indy’s Week 3 win. If you want to get crazy with an upset pick, it looks like there are other underdogs on the board with a better risk vs. reward profile than the Colts.

Denver vs. Oakland
Recency bias is a thing, and after Denver’s upset loss at Buffalo, public opinion appears to have quickly soured on the Broncos, who were public darlings in Week 3. In fact, it was the Raiders who underperformed Vegas expectations by a wider margin last week in their loss at Washington. Denver is only a 3-point favorite right now, so they could easily lose this game, but the Broncos have the lowest pick popularity of all Week 4 favorites of 3+ points. Consequently, we’d think twice about picking Oakland in this one.

LA Chargers vs. Philadelphia
It’s important to watch how the betting odds trend on this game, but as of Thursday afternoon the Chargers were a 2-point favorite, while being picked only about 30% of the public. It’s pretty much a coin flip game, so if the line holds or even moves just a point against LA, you’ll be getting more value for the same price (i.e. odds to win) with the Chargers here.

There are a couple field goal underdogs in Week 4 that look like worthy considerations for pick’em players looking to make an upset pick or two, especially if you only care about winning weekly prizes and not an end of season prize. Based on win odds, at least one upset is expected to come out of the two games below:

New York Jets vs. Jacksonville
This game looks like yet another opportunity to exploit the public’s recency bias. After the Jaguars’ 44-7 drubbing of formerly undefeated Baltimore last week, almost 90% of the public is picking Jacksonville to win. That’s despite this matchup being the Jaguars’ second straight road game, and the Jets handily outperforming expectations in Week 3. The Jaguars were only 3 point favorites at post time, yet the public is picking them at the same rate as a 6- or 7-point favorite. So the Jets have the value.

Baltimore vs. Pittsburgh
The good news for Baltimore is that QB Joe Flacco almost certainly can’t get worse than he was last week in London. Teams and players have fluky bad games now and then, and on the season, the Ravens have outperformed expectations in 2 of 3 games — that’s more than you can say for the Steelers. As a 3-point favorite, Pittsburgh has around 60% win odds here. However, close to 80% of the public is picking the Steelers, so Baltimore is significantly underrated for a team with a legitimate shot to win.

Making All Your NFL Week 4 Picks

We’ve highlighted five games of interest above, but remember that you can’t look at NFL Week 4 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 the characteristics of your pool.

We built our Football Pool Picks product to optimize your pool picks for you. First, it aggregates key data like Vegas spreads, win odds, and pick popularity, and automatically updates it multiple times per day. Then it does all the math needed to identify the picks that give you the best chance to win an end-of-season or weekly pool prize.

Picking Against The Crowd in Week 4

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 4 picks. If you found this post valuable, please check out one of our premium products:

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