NFL Point Spread Picks Week 5 - First Official Picks of the Season
Pick 1: Atlanta -9.5 
Pick 2: New England 0
Pick 3: Dallas +9
The first official week of NFLpickles point spread picks starts today. I'm very excited for the season and hope that it's another winning season for us all. First a reminder that the most important feature to optimize revenue is personal discipline. No jumping on bets, staying on course with bankroll strategy, and never put all your eggs in one basket or week. Then we remove all our emotions and only judge by what the outcome say. Sometimes they won't make sense and that's ok. Always check for major injuries in each team and remove any bets/games that have these injuries. Remember that this is a law of large numbers play and not a get rich quick scheme. Finally, if you forgot why I started doing this, just read my first post this season.
As for my thoughts on the 3 picks of the weeks are that Atlanta looked well rounded on offense in the last game and I think they will be able to dismantle the Jets. I like New England over Cincinnati and Brady continue to polishing the rookies. Finally, Dallas bet instead of Denver. Denver is being doing well against the spread but as a home underdog where the prediction is not that far off is coming with high confidence, so I have to stick with it. Dallas will keep it a close game and who knows if they might get greedy and try to take it from the Broncos.
We start the season by betting 15% of bankroll. To make it easy for everyone to track, I'm going to use an bankroll of 10,000 simply to be able to track ROI as I've done in previous seasons. For this week we have a total of 3 picks so we bet evenly across all games, $500 per game. Good luck everyone and the only best ROI for the season.
How to read the table:
Pick 2: New England 0
Pick 3: Dallas +9
The first official week of NFLpickles point spread picks starts today. I'm very excited for the season and hope that it's another winning season for us all. First a reminder that the most important feature to optimize revenue is personal discipline. No jumping on bets, staying on course with bankroll strategy, and never put all your eggs in one basket or week. Then we remove all our emotions and only judge by what the outcome say. Sometimes they won't make sense and that's ok. Always check for major injuries in each team and remove any bets/games that have these injuries. Remember that this is a law of large numbers play and not a get rich quick scheme. Finally, if you forgot why I started doing this, just read my first post this season.
As for my thoughts on the 3 picks of the weeks are that Atlanta looked well rounded on offense in the last game and I think they will be able to dismantle the Jets. I like New England over Cincinnati and Brady continue to polishing the rookies. Finally, Dallas bet instead of Denver. Denver is being doing well against the spread but as a home underdog where the prediction is not that far off is coming with high confidence, so I have to stick with it. Dallas will keep it a close game and who knows if they might get greedy and try to take it from the Broncos.
We start the season by betting 15% of bankroll. To make it easy for everyone to track, I'm going to use an bankroll of 10,000 simply to be able to track ROI as I've done in previous seasons. For this week we have a total of 3 picks so we bet evenly across all games, $500 per game. Good luck everyone and the only best ROI for the season.
| Game | Vegas Line | Estimate | Prediction-Vegas | Confidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NY JETS @ ATLANTA | -9.5 | -12.5 | -3.0 | 60.1% |
| NEW ENGLAND @ CINCINNATI | 0 | 5.3 | 5.3 | 59.0% |
| DENVER @ DALLAS | 9 | 5 | -4 | 58.3% |
| JACKSONVILLE @ ST LOUIS | -12 | -17.9 | -5.9 | 54.8% |
| PHILADELPHIA @ NY GIANTS | -2.5 | -2.3 | 0.2 | 52.5% |
| BALTIMORE @ MIAMI | -3 | 2 | 5.0 | 51.5% |
| HOUSTON @ SAN FRANCISCO | -7 | -10.5 | -3.5 | 51.3% |
| CAROLINA @ ARIZONA | 2 | 3.1 | 1.1 | 50.3% |
| NEW ORLEANS @ CHICAGO | 0 | -0.7 | -0.7 | 50.0% |
| BUFFALO @ CLEVELAND | -4 | -4.5 | -.5 | 50.0% |
| DETROIT @ GREEN BAY | -7 | -8.8 | -1.8 | 49.9% |
| SEATTLE @ INDIANAPOLIS | 3 | 2.5 | -0.5 | 49.8% |
| SAN DIEGO @ OAKLAND | 5 | 6.9 | 1.9 | 49.3% |
| KANSAS CITY @ TENNESSEE | 3 | -5.5 | -8.5 | 49.1% |
How to read the table:
- Vegas Line: A NEGATIVE number implies the spread favors the HOME team
- Estimate: NFL Pickles' point spread prediction
- Pred-Vegas: Subtraction of the previous two. POSITIVE implies VISITING team will cover spread.
- Confidence: The probability that the spread pick is on the correct side.
Comments
Also, I have a question about your estimate and confidence. How do you calculate them? I have a stats degree myself, and if I was doing this, I would have set the estimate to be the median, and the confidence would represent the probability of the team covering the Vegas line. Inherently, the confidence would always be at least 50% that way. However, you usually have a few games under 50%. I'm curious as to how you estimated that Tennessee should be -5.5, but the probability of them covering +3 was under 50%.