Orb Analytics Week 14 Preview – Picks & Insights

The second half of the season has been anything but friendly to our models so far. The now Orb looks to stop the bleeding and get back on the winning side of things. Unfortunately, we will have to overcome a one-game deficit as we found ourselves on the wrong side of the 0.5-point hook in last night’s game.

Here is what the Orb predicts will happen on Sunday:

Spreads:

• Lions -3.5 (TNF - Premium) ❌

• Buccaneers -6.5

• Seahawks +2.5

• Bills -3.5

Moneyline:

• Lions (TNF - Premium) ✅

• Buccaneers

• Steelers

• Eagles

• Vikings

• Cardinals

• Bills

• Chiefs

Week 14 Bonus Analysis:

Power rankings have been a good use of clickbait and have driven fans crazy for years now. However, they seem to be adopted more and more in the gambling space as an additional data point. No power rankings will ever be perfect and every fan or model would probably come up with their own unique order. So we figured why not get in on the fun and try it out for ourselves? Using advanced team stats that we think are good predictors, I came up with a formula that weighed each statistic in a way that made sense to me as a fan and also reflects the feature’s importance to our models.

Again, boiling down a team’s entire profile into one number is never going to be perfect. My own bias or influence was only put into metric weight and had nothing to do with the teams themselves. Here is the Orb’s first stab at power ranking the NFL according to our data:

I’m sure no fan base would have a single issue with where their team is ranked or which teams may be above them. A couple of teams to highlight right off the bat that stood out to me. The Chiefs and Steelers are two of the hardest teams to rank solely based on their advanced statistics. Any NFL fan will tell you these two teams, and particularly the Chiefs, have had a deal with the devil so far this season and the ball (or flags) keeps bouncing their way when it matters most. While both have beaten teams above them in the rankings, their stats just aren’t quite representing the winning that we see on the field. I personally would have Pittsburgh well within the top 10. No matter what the data says and no matter how much our models tell us they aren’t as good as they seem, they just win.

A team that may jump out as being ranked significantly lower than where some fans would have them in the Bengals. That is because defensive stats are weighted slightly more heavily than offensive ones, which is the case in most of our modeling. So the incredible season this offense is having is being heavily weighed down by their defense, just like it is on the field every Sunday. Having the largest disparity between their overall offensive and defensive rankings, they were always going to be one of the toughest teams to rank properly. Also, it doesn’t need to be said but the Giants are too high, right? I think the teams 25-32 could arguably be put in any order.

This ranking is for the season as a whole through Week 13 but does take into account recent form on both sides of the ball. Which teams do you rank higher or lower than our data does?

- Team Orb Analytics

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