Orb Analytics Week 7 Recap – Performance & Results

The Orb had a brutal Sunday, missing all four spread picks and went into Monday night’s doubleheader needing a miracle to perform damage control on the weekend. An 0-2 or even 1-1 performance on Monday’s picks would have cemented a Week 2-esc negatively season-altering performance. But a miracle is exactly what we got and this season-long trend of non-Sunday picks outperforming the Sunday slate has never been more stark than it was in week 7. It is getting a little out of hand to be honest as our models had a clean sweep Monday night hitting on the Ravens and Cardinals to both cover and win outright. On top of bringing the week’s total to a very manageable 3-4 losing week against the spread, the Orb also hit its only underdog moneyline pick of the week as it correctly predicted Arizona to upset the Chargers at home. Even more so than the modeling and the analysis, the main foundation of the Orb project is transparency in a field that sometimes lacks it, particularly when it comes to addressing picks that miss and making our season-long performance always available. I hope that we have built enough trust with our readers for you to know that this streak of premium wins isn’t some sales gimmick to try and persuade you to sign up for a premium subscription. I addressed it last week, but the same models are making picks for Thursday/Monday games that are making picks on Sundays so from a data perspective I have no answers as to why this has happened so far this season. Small sample size trends can be fascinating! I have a section at the bottom of today’s post that goes a little more into the 9-game premium winning streak so if you are curious, or even skeptical, check it out below.

While there are plenty of negatives from the Orb’s week 7 performance I weirdly am taking a lot of positives out of it. Again, a bad performance Monday night would have resulted in a 2-5 or 1-6 week against the spread which would have been a 3+ unit loss on the season and could have dropped our overall accuracy rate by almost 10 percentage points. It just goes to show how much more a bad weekend can hurt than a good weekend can help. 3-4 ATS doesn’t seem so bad in the context, particularly when we see how badly the individual models performed below. Another positive to take away is our moneyline model. It was heavy on the favorites on Sunday and then hit on the underdog Cardinals which resulted in a +1.974 unit performance, and is now +units overall for the first time this season! Both our spread and moneyline models are officially profitable on the year through week 7. 

I see every spread pick as falling into one of four categories:

1. The ‘right’ pick that hits (a team the Orb picked deserves to cover and does)

2. The ‘right’ pick that misses (a team the Orb picked deserves to cover but doesn’t)

3. The ‘wrong’ pick that hits (a team the Orb picked does not deserve to cover but somehow does)

4. The ‘wrong’ pick that misses (a team the Orb picked does not deserve to cover and doesn’t)

This week I think that at least two out of three of the winning picks fall into Category 1. The Broncos and Ravens deserved to win those games big, although both opponents either came into the game with injuries or suffered big ones once the game started. The Cardinals pick could be argued for Category 1 or Category 3 as some things went their way, but others didn’t. I would be fine with putting it in either. The Falcons and 49ers comfortably fall into Category 4 as they were the wrong picks and neither deserved a chance at covering. If you were to simulate those exact games 10 times each might win/cover just 1 or 2 of them. Credit to the Seahawks and Chiefs who both deserved their dominant wins. I would argue that the Packers had a chance of being the ‘right’ pick that missed. Yes, they only missed covering by 0.5 points but that isn’t entirely why. Green Bay’s defense held Stroud to just 86 yards passing and Houston’s biggest non-Mixon play of the day came from a special teams turnover which led to one of their two touchdowns. The game I do feel comfortable putting in Category 2 was the Dolphins who really shot themselves in the foot. The Colts’ only touchdown of the day came off of a Miami fumble that resulted in good field position. The Dolphins then later fumbled in the redzone and missed a field goal late in the game and had a real chance to stay within 3 or even win this one outright. I say all this not to complain that things didn’t bounce our way, we have had many games that have luckily gone our way this year, but more so to break down why I think there is more to this game than just picks that win and picks that lose. Process over results! 

Here is how each pick performed in week 7:

Spread:

• Broncos -2.5 (TNF - Premium) ✅

• Falcons -3 ❌

• Packers -2.5 ❌

• Dolphins +3 ❌

• 49ers -1.5 ❌

• Ravens -3.5 (MNF - Premium) ✅

• Cardinals +1.5 (MNF - Premium) ✅

All spread picks: 3-4, 42.9%, -1.273 units

Moneyline:

• Broncos (TNF - Premium) ✅

• Jaguars ✅

• Bengals ✅

• Vikings ❌

• Falcons ❌

• Packers ✅

• Bills ✅

• Colts ✅

• Commanders ✅

• Rams ✅

• 49ers ❌

• Ravens (MNF - Premium) ✅

• Cardinals (MNF - Premium) ✅

All moneyline picks: 10-3, 76.9%, +1.974 units

Overall a +0.701 unit performance.

Week 7 Model Performance: 

Favorites covered 8/15 games (53.3%) and won 10/15 outright (66.7%).

Weekly spreads:

Weekly Moneyline:

Season-To-Date Model Performance: 

Not including week 1, favorites have covered 49/91 games (53.8%) and won 58/91 (63.7%) outright this season.

Season spreads:

Season moneyline:

Official Orb Picks Season Results:

Season spread picks: 22-15, 59.5%, +5.0 units

Season moneyline picks: 34-20, 63.0%, +0.3 units

Confusion Matrix:

Overall a negative performance from our spread models but a positive from our moneyline ones. Our official season accuracy dropped just below 60% for the first time since the end of week 4. But again, one or two more misses this week would have resulted in a more significant percentage drop. This was the first week that a losing spread performance was lifted by a greater +unit moneyline one and resulted in a winning weekend overall. It was the opposite of week 5 where we technically lost -0.7 units because of the moneyline models but had a winning week from our spread predictions, which we care more about. After starting our official season -6.7 units overall in week 2, it is really rewarding to see both models above the profitability line and and at their highest overall unit total so far this year. 

Premium Spread Winning Streak:

As mentioned above, this streak of premium spread wins is getting a little crazy. I have tried looking deeper into the numbers to see if there is any sort of rhyme or reason as to why the models are performing so much better on non-Sunday games and I can’t find one. We are still just six weeks into the Orb official season so with a small sample size we can see crazy outlier events like this. Ideally by the end of the season over a larger sample size, the Orb’s performance on Sunday vs. non-Sunday picks should be more similar. That is not to say that the Orb will start hitting on Sundays at the rate that it has on premium games, but more likely we may start to see more misses on Thursdays and Mondays. I would love it if this winning streak continues forever and we can continue to give our paid subscribers winners every week, but we always want to be realistic and transparent about probabilities when trying to predict future outcomes. Remember, the Orb doesn’t make picks on every game, it only does when all of our models agree on the same outcome. That is why there hasn’t been an Orb spread pick for every single Thursday and Monday game. Here is how our non-Sunday premium picks have performed so far this season:

• Week 2, TNF, Dolphins -2.5 vs Bills ❌

• Week 3, MNF, Bills -5.5 vs Jaguars ✅

• Week 3, MNF, Commanders +7.5 vs Bengals ✅

• Week 4, TNF, Giants +5.5 vs Cowboys ✅

• Week 5, TNF, Falcons -1.5 vs Buccaneers ✅

• Week 5, MNF, Chiefs -5.5 vs Saints ✅

• Week 6, TNF, 49ers -3.5 vs Seahawks ✅

• Week 7, TNF, Broncos -2.5 vs Saints ✅

• Week 7, MNF, Ravens -3.5 vs Buccaneers ✅

• Week 7, MNF, Cardinals +1.5 vs Chargers ✅

So overall the Orb is 9-1, 90%, +7.181 units on premium picks through week 7! Let’s see if our models can make it 10 in a row and keep the dream alive on their next non-Sunday pick.

- Team Orb Analytics

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