NFL Week 1 Newsletter and Picks
The first Sunday of NFL football is finally here! We are just days away from that first Scott Hanson “Seven hours of commercial-free football starts now” and we couldn’t be more excited here at the Orb. Week 1 is special because the whole season is ahead of us and anything is possible. Every fan base has something to be excited about, everyone has the best fantasy team in their league and no one has missed an NFL pick as of when I’m writing this prior to the season kickoff in Kansas City. Half the teams in the league will head into Week 2 0-1 and fans will overreact but as of right now, there is no dream too big for your hometown team. Except for maybe my Patriots. Most dreams may already be too big for us this season and that’s ok.
While the possibilities are endless, the data available for Week 1 is nonexistent. Meaning we have no data on the teams we will be watching on Redzone this Sunday. So for the Week 1 picks, we’ll have to use the next best thing which is why this week’s newsletter comes with a heavy disclaimer. I have to use data from the end of the last regular season as our predictors for the picks this week since we don’t have anything to use at the start of the year. Meaning that our models will see each team as they were to end last season, rather than who they are right now with any offseason changes. Teams bring in new players, as well as new coaches and schemes that will impact the numbers they put up this year. Unfortunately for this week’s picks, we are blind to these changes which is why Week 1 is considered a throwaway week from a data perspective. No matter how well or how poorly the Orb performs on the picks below, the results of this week won’t be added to our training dataset as the predictors going into the games are not a proper or fair representation of the teams. So in many ways, Week 1 is our models taking a shot in the dark. If you had faded the Orb’s picks in Week 1 last season you would have been able to pay off your mortgage as bad data in was bad data out. Zooming out, the first few weeks of the season as a whole are really interesting as they feel like the data version of the Wild West. Team data is so reactionary early in the season that a good start from an ultimately bad team, or vice versa, can throw our numbers or Vegas’ numbers off. While it's the time of year that we have the least information on teams that is also true for the Sportsbooks. It's when they are at their most vulnerable data-wise which can even the playing field. So I’m always curious to see how our models perform the first couple of weeks of the season. Hopefully, we are able to replicate last season’s early success. But before we get ahead of ourselves, we have to navigate through the blind spot that is week one. So using last season’s data as our predictors against Sunday’s lines, here is what the Orb predicts will happen:
Spread:
Dolphins -3.5
Colts +2.5
Chargers -3
Moneyline:
Dolphins
Bengals
Saints
Bills
Chargers
Seahawks
Last year, Week 1 belonged to the underdogs as they covered in 10/16 games and outright won 8/16 at +money. There will be weeks later in the year that underdogs dominate but the early success we saw last season could be in part due to a lack of data for the oddsmakers. A repeat of opening week success from underdogs would not bode well for many of the Orb’s predictions above, but only time will tell and we are just happy that football is back and our models are up and firing again.
Comment your favorite picks for Sunday below!
- Team Orb Analytics
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The orb has spoken 🫡