Over the past few weeks, we have been looking for direction. Either the underdogs to keep winning or the reversal to occur. It hasn’t happened, but we have been careful to remain profitable through the uncertainty.
Part of this comes from recognizing ‘traps,’ while the other part is scaling back how aggressive we can be. To that point, you may have noticed that, after a few weeks of routinely listing seven or eight confidence picks, we have hovered around six or seven. Indeed, this is partly due to fewer games being played – and I try not to devalue confidence picks by listing more than half of the games as such in a given week – but it is also a necessity to not give back some of our fantastic gains.
Amazingly, this week appears to be another in a long stretch in which underdogs have the edge. Therefore, if we are waiting for a signal that the current trend is reaching its apex, it isn’t clear. If anything, we might get more of these scattered results, in which teams are giving value more than the overall outlook of the league.
We shouldn’t mind this. Because, if we can’t spot the exact direction of the overall landscape, we can still remain locked into which teams are repeatedly burning those who try to chase them.
And we can remain on the right side of them.
Below are predictions for each game against the spread. Spreads have been taken from various websites and are subject to change. The spread in parenthesis denotes the selected team. An asterisk denotes a confidence pick.
*Confidence Picks – 2018 Season: 26-14-2 (Last Week: 3-2-1)
(2017 Season: 53-48-4) (2016 Season: 53-67-3) (2015 Season: 69-45-2) (2014 Season: 61-46-2) (4-Year Total: 236-206-11)
All Picks Against Spread – 2018 Season: 52-34-7 (Last Week: 8-5-2)
(2017 Season: 137-119-11) (2016 Season: 123-136-8) (2015 Season: 143-117-7) (2014 Season: 149-114-4) (4-Year Total: 552-486-30)
Listen to Episode 3 of our free podcast here:
Denver Broncos at Arizona Cardinals
We must have gotten spoiled. Sure, last week’s matchup between the Eagles and Giants proved to be lopsided but, prior to that, we had the Patriots and Rams playing on back-to-back Thursdays. Now, we get the 2-4 Denver Broncos against the 1-5 Arizona Cardinals.
The problem with the matchup is not its lack of appeal, but the growing realization that neither team will be able to make a real playoff push in another month or so. In reality, it is probably too late, anyway. With this level of ineffectiveness, we also lose the reliance on a team’s strength. Because, quite frankly, what strength does a one or two-win team have?