NFL Week 7 Picks: Can The Bears Pull Off Another Upset?

October 20, 2017 - by Tom Federico

To give you the biggest edge, we customize NFL Week 7 picks for each of your pools.

In this post, we’ll take a look at the NFL Week 7 landscape, then highlight four games of interest for making your Week 7 picks for pick’em and confidence pools.

Editor’s Note: All our Week 7 picks for NFL pick’em pools are available in our Football Pool Picks product.

NFL Week 7 At A Glance

After a somewhat lopsided week in terms of spreads (not that it mattered, since the Falcons and Broncos both got upset despite being double-digit favorites), no team in the Week 7 NFL slate is currently favored by more than six points.

It looks like there will be some tough calls to make. Based on Vegas odds on Friday morning, we can group this week’s favorites into four rough tiers (point spreads in parentheses):

Favored by two field goals (-6): Dallas
Favored by more than a field goal (-3.5 to -5.5): Minnesota, Tennessee, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Seattle, New Orleans, LA Rams, New England
Favored by a field goal(-3): Miami, Jacksonville, Buffalo, Kansas City (L), Carolina
Toss-ups: LA Chargers/Denver

NFL Week 7 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.

(We actually already highlighted Oakland over Kansas City as an intriguing matchup in our sister article published yesterday on Sporting News, but since that’s in the past now, we’ll add another game here.)

Note that betting lines and public picking trends may have shifted since this post was published, and changed the Week 7 landscape. If you want the latest data, we update our football pick’em picks and tools multiple times per day.

New Orleans at Green Bay
Of the seven teams favored by at least four points on Friday morning, New Orleans is the least popular pick. The public has shown some bias against New Orleans, and incorrectly picked 6-point underdog Detroit to beat the Saints straight-up last week. In addition, last week’s injury to Packers QB Aaron Rodgers caused betting odds for this game to swing dramatically in favor of the Saints, who have now outperformed expectations in three straight games. In a further twist, more recently betting lines have swung back toward Green Bay, and reduced our confidence level in New Orleans. However, the Saints remain the favorite, and given their lower popularity, players wanting to make an upset pick would do better focusing elsewhere.

Cincinnati at Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh is significantly more overrated than New Orleans this week, and as only 5-point favorites, the Steelers don’t have a much better chance to win. Pittsburgh has less than 70% win odds in this game, facing a resurgent Cincinnati team coming off a bye week, yet over 90% of the public is picking the Steelers. So the Bengals look like a smarter upset play than Green Bay from a risk/reward perspective — though they are a bit more risky. Cleveland over Tennessee and San Francisco over Dallas would be the honorable mentions for best bold upset calls of the week in pick’em pools.

LA Rams vs. Arizona (in England)
In an upset win last week as home underdogs against Tampa Bay, Arizona unleashed new RB acquisition Adrian Peterson and jumped out to a big early lead. The Cardinals ended up only winning by five, though, and the Rams are still the better team (currently favored by 3.5 on the neutral field). Even if you think Peterson will transform Arizona, remember that betting lines are already pricing in his expected impact. The public appears to be fairly valuing each team’s chances here, so in season prize pools, there’s not much incentive to make the riskier pick (Arizona). In addition, there are much better upset picks to choose from for weekly prize pools.

LA Chargers vs. Denver
Perhaps surprisingly, the 2-4 Chargers were the (slight) favorite in this game earlier this week, though recent betting line movement now has the game as an even pick’em. Still, almost 75% of pick’em players are going with Denver to pick up the road win. At even odds, the Chargers offer a better opportunity to differentiate your entry from your opponents.

Chicago vs. Carolina
Almost 90% of the public is picking the Panthers to win this game. That’s quite high given that Carolina is only a 3-point favorite on the road at Soldier Field, where Chicago beat 7-point favorite Pittsburgh only a few weeks ago. The Panthers are probably not as good a team as their 4-2 record implies, and with the Bears coming off an upset win at Baltimore, the public is underestimating Chicago’s chances here. The Bears look like they are worth the risk in weekly prize pools and upset focused pools.

NFL Week 7 Picks Strategy

Remember that you can’t look at NFL Week 7 picks in isolation. Rather, you need to make sure the risk/reward profile of all the picks you make this week — your “portfolio” of picks — isn’t too risky or conservative for your pool.

In addition, 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 from the rest of your pool.

Until Next Week…

Enjoy another week of football and good luck with your NFL Week 7 picks. If you found this post valuable, please check out one of our premium products:

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