NFL Week 5 Predictions, Rankings, and Tips: The Weekly Rundown
October 2, 2014 - by Tom Federico
Here’s a rapid-fire list of weekly highlights from the vast array of NFL content we publish on TeamRankings. We’ll also share some predictions and picks for Week 5 and beyond.
Just announced: Our NFL Week 5 contest is open! Total prize pool $2,249. Claim your spot now.
It was a week of blowouts. Seven teams won by at least 20 points in Week 4, which makes for an exciting week in the rankings, since margins of victory are the primary drivers of our predictive ratings.
New England sets a new low. New England’s 41-14 loss at Kansas City was a crusher, dropping the Pats from #5 to #8 and shaving nearly two points off their rating. However, to the surprise of those who think the Patriots are terrible this year, as of Thursday afternoon the Vegas point spread only favored #3 Cincinnati by one point in this week’s matchup at Foxboro. Our ratings project it as a nearly even game.
Continued stability at the top. The top four teams in the rankings stayed constant this week. The top three ranked teams (Seattle, Denver, Cincinnati) were all on byes. San Francisco survived a scare by #15 Philadelphia and managed to maintain its spot at #4, but our ratings thought the outcome was a little too close for comfort. Despite winning the game, San Francisco’s rating dropped by a couple tenths of a point.
Getting better by doing nothing. Interestingly, despite being on bye weeks, both Seattle and Denver’s ratings increased this week. This was because teams they have beaten (e.g. Kansas City, Indianapolis, and Green Bay) and also the team that Seattle lost to (San Diego) all registered solid wins in Week 4.
New England’s loss was San Diego and Baltimore’s gain. The #5 Chargers have now cracked the top five after a bigger than expected win over Jacksonville. They’re still a decent step down (1.5 points) from San Francisco, but one more week’s worth of results could change that.
Ravens get help on two fronts. Trailing San Diego in the rankings by only the smallest of margins, #6 Baltimore logged a great win by thumping Carolina 38-10, and increased their rating by 1.5 points. In addition to the win, Baltimore’s 7-point home loss to Cincinnati in Week 1 doesn’t look as bad to our system as it did originally, thanks to Cincinnati’s rise over the past few weeks. That 1-2 punch has helped the Ravens climb all the way from #16 in Week 2 to a virtual tie for 5th entering Week 5.
Carolina! Carolina! Can you hear me down there? On the heels of our Week 3 jinx based on their promising start, Carolina extended its freefall for a second week, plummeting all the way from a #9 to #19 ranking.
Gotta love those division wins on the road. The blowout of Chicago, a team that our ratings have been relatively pessimistic about so far, still did a lot for Green Bay. The Packers’ rating increased by 1.4 points, which was enough to vault them to a #7 ranking, up from #14 last week. That’s also bit of a facade, though, as they are really in a more of a four-way tie for seventh with New England, Arizona, and Indianapolis.
Latest team clusters. Team clustering in our predictive rankings now looks like this: two elite teams (Seattle and Denver), two top-tier challengers (Cincinnati and San Francisco), and then six teams all rated within half a point of one another, that are all strong threats (San Diego, Baltimore, Green Bay, New England, Arizona, Indianapolis). New Orleans, the New York Giants, and Detroit aren’t running too far behind, either.
Who is New Orleans really? The case for New Orleans as a top contender in 2014 seems to be dissolving quickly, but…it’s complicated. The 21-point loss at Dallas dropped the Saints’ rating by almost a point and a half, and the Saints are now barely clinging to a #11 ranking. Still, it’s worth noting that the Saints are currently dead last in the NFL in turnover margin, at -1.5 per game compared to -0.2 last year, and they’ve played three of their four games on the road. All told, they’ve had a deceptively difficult schedule, plus at least some bad luck. It’s still too early to count them out.
Dallas gets the credit, though. On the flip side, Dallas’ surprise blowout win leapfrogged them over a big group of average teams this week, thanks in part to the fact that our ratings are still giving New Orleans the benefit of the doubt. The Cowboys’ rating went up 1.3 points, but that was enough to rocket them from #20 all the way to #14 in the Week 5 ratings. Still not elite, but better than average.
The curious case of the New York Giants. The New York Giants have avoided a worst case scenario for the first four games of the season, after a frightening first two. Now things get really interesting. As weekly readers will recall, our preseason ratings were much higher on the G-Men this year than most; we had them at #9 preseason. That certainly looked like a bad prediction early on. But all of a sudden, the losses to Detroit and especially Arizona don’t look quite so bad anymore, given how strong those teams appear to be, and the wins over Houston and Washington have been by solid margins, which is a strong predictor of future results. We have the Giants back to #12 now. The plot thickens…
The Chiefs still have something to prove. Kansas City’s rating increased by a full 2 points after crushing New England, but the Chiefs had — and still have — a lot of ground to make up to join the top teams. Their current #18 rating, up from #22 last week, does understate their expected future performance level, though. From a ratings standpoint, we do currently see KC as a (barely) above-average team.
They’re not as good as you may think. The lowest ranked teams with three wins so far are #15 Philadelphia and #16 Houston. The lowest ranked teams with two wins are #22 Chicago, #23 Miami, and #24 Buffalo.
They’re not as bad as you may think. The highest ranked team with only one win is New Orleans at #11, which is a big anomaly — the next best 1-win team is Washington, all the way back at #26. The highest ranked teams with only two wins are #4 San Francisco, #7 Green Bay, and #8 New England.
Who’s had the toughest and easiest schedules? Now that four games have been played by most teams, we took an early look at our new Strength of Schedule ratings. The top five toughest schedules so far: Tennessee, Seattle, Denver, Green Bay, and Arizona. The top five easiest schedules so far: Washington, Miami, St. Louis, Houston, and the NY Jets.
Winning teams with easy schedules so far. Teams with .500 or better records that have played particularly easy early schedules include Indianapolis (#27 SOS rank), Philadelphia (#26), and Pittsburgh (#25).
Losing teams with difficult schedules so far. Teams with losing records that have played particularly difficult early season schedules include Tennessee (#1 SOS rank) and Jacksonville (#6).
Teams with the highest NFL champion odds. The six most likely 2015 Super Bowl champions are currently Seattle (18%, up from 16% last week), Denver (16%, up from 14%), Cincinnati (12%, even with last week), Arizona (6%, up from 5%), and then a tie between San Diego and San Francisco (both at 5%, even with last week). The Patriots’ disaster at Kansas City knocked New England’s Super Bowl champion odds down from 8% to 4%, and the increased likelihood that the Pats are not as strong a contender as previously thought is primarily Seattle and Denver’s gain.
AFC division winner projections. Our current projected division winners in the AFC are New England (50% AFC East, vs. 66% last week, thanks to the big loss and a Miami win), Cincinnati (64% AFC North, vs 63% last week), Houston (51% AFC South, vs. 51% last week, holding steady after a win but also an Indy win), and Denver (61% AFC West, vs. 61% last week, holding steady on a bye despite San Diego’s win…see next bullet).
Other AFC division winner threats. Outside of the current favorites, Indianapolis remains the biggest division winner challenger in the AFC, with 43.5% odds to win the AFC South, up from 36% last week. The Colts are basically sucking the playoff odds blood directly out of Tennessee’s neck, as the AFC South has recently trended into a two-horse race. Baltimore is now up to 27% to win the AFC North. Perhaps most interestingly, San Diego’s odds to win the AFC West dropped to 31% from 35% last week, despite a win and a Denver bye. As it turns out, Kansas City’s blowout of New England exerted a much bigger impact on San Diego’s odds to win the division than it did on Denver’s, since we have Denver rated as the better team, and since Denver has already beaten KC.
NFC division winner projections. Our current projected division winners in the NFC are new favorite Dallas (36% NFC East, jumping the Eagles after blowing out New Orleans), Detroit (44% NFC North, up from 43% last week), Atlanta (36% NFC South, vs. 35% last week, as the top three teams in the division all lost), and Seattle (53% NFC West, vs. 52% last week). So in terms of division winner favorites, it was kind of a snoozer of a week outside of Dallas.
Other NFC division winner threats. After the Week 4 action, though, the NFC East now joins the NFC West as divisions completely up for grabs. In the NFC East, the Giants have now surged back onto the scene; they’re only one win behind Dallas and Philly, plus they currently have a higher predictive rating than either of those teams. So now Dallas, Philly, and New York all have between 31-35% odds to win the division. New Orleans’ prospects in the NFC South faded a bit this week, but it’s still very much a 3-dog race there with Atlanta and Carolina since, lucky for the Saints, no team is in the division is better than 2-2 right now. In the NFC West, Arizona now has almost twice the odds of San Francisco (30% vs. 17%) to win the division, and Green Bay is still strong threat in the NFC North (34% odds to win it).
You can probably count these teams out of the playoffs. Our season simulations currently give six teams less than a 10% chance of making the playoffs, up from five last week. Jacksonville and Oakland have now been pretty much eliminated from contention; both have less than a 1 in 1000 chance to make the postseason. Tampa Bay’s last-second win over Pittsburgh keeps a glimmer of hope alive for the Bucs, but their playoff odds are only 2.5% (a 1 in 40 chance), the same as St. Louis. The Jets sit at 5.4% (1 in 20 chance) to make the playoffs, and ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the Washington Redskins to our list this week. The home blowout loss to a division rival was a crusher in several ways, and dropped Washington’s current playoff odds down to a paltry 3.7%.
For the third week in a row, we’re all equals. 7-6 was the magic record last week for picking NFL game winners. The public (i.e. the ESPN user consensus picks), Vegas spreads, and our game winner prediction models were all 54% accurate. We liked Green Bay over Chicago, which the public got wrong. But public opinion beat us on Detroit over the New York Jets.
Pick’em user performance data from 2013 just published. Yesterday we published a bunch of hard data showing how our picks for football pick’em pools did last year in users’ pools. We encourage you to check it out to see how our pick’em picks performed, to understand how we measure success, and to pick up a few strategy insights from our performance research.
Underrated teams came through big time. The most underrated picks from our Week 4 Pick’em Data Grid — defined as teams with the biggest difference between win odds and public picking percentage — did quite well last week. Here were the six most underrated picks of Week 4: the NY Jets over Detroit (lost), Minnesota over Atlanta (won), Tennessee over Indianapolis (lost), Tampa Bay over Pittsburgh (won), NY Giants over Washington (won), and Kansas City over New England (won). If you happened to pick all of those teams, each of which was less popular than it should have been, then going 4-2 in those six games would have been huge. Our pick’em advice last week was to pick Green Bay over Chicago, and that win was a nice one, given that the public was on the Bears.
Week 5 strategy for season prize pools. For Week 5, your best strategy in NFL pick’em pools that only have season prizes is to remain conservative, and not go too crazy picking upsets. One game to watch out for this week is Tennessee vs. Cleveland. The public is quite down on the Titans after recent blowout losses, but they’re significantly underestimating their chances to win at home. We’d pick Tennessee. The #1 underrated team this week is again the New York Jets. They have about a 33% chance to beat San Diego, according to our models, but are currently only 4% picked.
Week 5 strategy for weekly prize pools. Pools with weekly prizes call for a different strategy, one that needs to give much more weight to how your opponents are likely to pick this week. Tennessee currently looks like a no-brainer in these pools, as does Carolina over Chicago. In terms of upset picks, it’s tougher going this week; there’s a lot of value out there, but most of it is on very big longshots that probably aren’t worth the risk of picking. New England over Cincinnati looks like a wise play in bigger weekly prize pools though, with the Pats at home after a blowout loss on Monday Night Football.
Week 5 strategy for YOUR pool. Just remember, the optimal strategy for your specific pool, including how many favorites vs. upsets you should pick this week, depends on a lot of factors: the number of entries in your pool, the rules, the scoring system, the payout structure. That’s why we developed our Football Pick’em Pools product to apply our analytics to your specific pool.
Mayhem was avoided, but not totally. Last week could have been utter mayhem in NFL survivor pools, with a full 90% of the public’s picks concentrated on three teams: San Diego, Pittsburgh, and Indianapolis. The nuclear scenario was avoided, but Pittsburgh’s last second loss to Tampa Bay, along with a few other upsets, ended up eliminating about 22% of remaining survivor entries.
We took Miami, and saved the Chargers. Given the huge concentration of public picks on the top three teams, our advice for single-entry pools in Week 4 was to avoid all of those teams and hope for one or two upsets. After all, there was only about a 45% chance that San Diego, Pittsburgh, and Indianapolis all won last week. So we took a calculated risk and went with Miami (cue stares of disbelief), who ended up crushing Oakland in London. That move both avoided the PIT loss, and saved us San Diego to use later this season, which could have a ton of value.
Don’t pick this team in Week 5! This is a bit of an unusual week in that the public’s picks are quite spread out, with only about 60% of picks on the three most popular teams, vs. 90% last week. That changes optimal survivor pick strategy quite a bit. There aren’t really any popular picks this week where we’d pound the table with a STAY AWAY! recommendation. At the same time, we don’t see any compelling reason to take Green Bay. The Packers’ 19% pick rate and moderate future value keep them out of the top tier of survivor picks this week.
NFL Week 5 Betting Picks & Game Predictions Update
Not a great week for betting picks, but a few highlights. Our playable point spread picks against Sunday lines went 4-4 overall, with 7 of those 8 games being clear cut wins or losses. However, line movement towards our pick did end up in us recording a loss on 2-star pick Philadelphia, which froze on Sunday at +4. However, that line was at +5 or +5.5 for most of the week, so if you played the pick earlier you either pushed or won it. Also on the plus side, our NFL money line value picks logged their third winning week of four, assuming flat bets on all starred picks. Miami -174 was the only 2-star pick come Sunday, and 1-star picks included Minnesota +186, NY Giants +151, and Tampa Bay +289 (lucky).
These ones hurt, though. Overall, our Week 4 spread picks went 5-8 (1-2 on 3-star picks), and playable totals picks went a bruising 1-5 (0-2 on 3-star picks). Although our playable NFL betting picks are still doing well overall (see bullet below), we’ve done particularly poorly so far this year on our 1-star rated / low confidence spread picks, which are now 9-17-1 on the season. Those are picks we recommend bettors avoid, since they have less than 52.4% confidence odds, the win rate you need to break even at typical -110 juice. But still, 35% is pretty horrible, and much worse then we’ve done historically. Hopefully we see some reversion to the mean soon.
Season Performance still solid. Despite last week, our season performance for playable NFL betting picks remains strong so far: 20-14 for spread picks, 15-12 for over/under picks. All over/under picks, including low confidence 1-star picks, are currently 34-26-1.
Game winner picks still lagging the public. As mentioned in the pick’em section above, both our models and the public went 7-6 this week picking game winners. So we’re still lagging the ESPN user consensus this season in terms of game winner accuracy, by three games, entirely on account of the public’s freakishly stupendous performance picking upsets in Week 1.
Fewer upsets than expected, for the second week in a row. Overall, out of the 11 Week 4 games listed on our Most Likely Upsets page, we expected four upsets to happen based on our win odds. Three happened, including (for the fourth week in a row) our most likely upset in games where the Vegas spread was at least three points: Minnesota (a 4-point underdog) over Atlanta.
Week 5 playable NFL betting picks. As of posting time, we had 8 playable spread picks, 6 playable totals picks, and 5 two-star money line value picks for NFL Week 5, which is a greater number of playable picks than last week. Four of the top money line value picks are underdogs, and our one 3-star over/under pick is on New Orleans/Tampa Bay.
Don’t call them the Week 5 locks of the week. The top confidence game winner picks from our models are currently Seattle over Washington (81%), New Orleans over Tampa Bay (77% — our models think this game will be closer than the betting lines currently imply), and Philadelphia over St. Louis (76%).
Most likely Week 5 upsets. The most likely upset of the week according to our models is currently New England over Cincinnati, with a 51% chance of happening (the Pats are underdogs in Vegas right now, but our models like them slightly better). The most likely upset of a Vegas favorite of more than three points is Baltimore over Indianapolis, with a 41% chance of happening.
It keeps growing. The number of entries in our Week 4 NFL contest surged to 167 from 100 the week before…nice! In addition, since the contest ran with some overlay, you had a 60% chance of doubling your money if you entered. Woot!
gebarriga crushes it. Huge props go to Week 4 tournament winner gebarriga, who absolutely killed it, using this awesome lineup to edge second place finisher mike95050.It was a high scoring week in the NFL, so we expected some big scores, and gebarriga’s 169.56 beat monst4r‘s previous season high score by more than 13 points. Well played, gebarriga. We’ll be contacting you soon so you can claim your free premium Football Season Pass to TeamRankings, in addition to your cash winnings from FanDuel.
Week 5 scores blitz the season leaderboard. Because of the high scoring week, a slew of new names also took over our “Top 10 scores of the year” leaderboard, and positioned themselves to win Amazon gift cards and other prizes at season’s end, provided nobody else comes along and bumps them down. Check out the current leaderboards.
Why 50/50’s are nice. It wasn’t the best week ever for the TeamRankings Nerds, but we still managed to snag 52nd place with this lineup, no thanks to the Steelers defense. Not spectacular, but good enough to win, so we’ll take it. That finish makes three cashes in four weeks for us, which is better than we expected we’d do at the beginning of the year. Now that I’ve said that, I’m 99% sure we’ll run cold for the next five weeks.
Come play with us. We want you to get in on all the Week 5 action with us! Another 100 entries will win cash this week, and this is your chance to beat the TR Nerds. Claim your spot now in our Week 5 tournament.
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