Orb Analytics Week 8 Preview – Picks & Insights

If you missed the recap of last week’s results, you can find them linked here. 

While we still have over half of the season left, 7 weeks of data is starting to become a significant sample size. Over a large enough sample, we expect a relatively even split cover rate between favorites and underdogs. A perfect 50-50 split means that the oddsmakers and markets are doing their jobs to perfection. This is when picking a side on spreads represents a coin flip in terms of your probability of being right. While favorites have an edge overall at the moment, this season has been a tale of two halves so far. Between weeks 2-4, underdogs dominated causing favorites to cover only 39.6% of games. Since then, favorites have flipped the script and covered 69.8% of the time. While this leaves us with a fairly even distribution overall with favorites covering 53.8% of all games since week 1, we have seen both extremes on the path to get here. This created challenges for human handicappers and predictive models alike. Our individual models that make up the Orb have been fairly consistent in both of these time splits, all picking favorites and underdogs within 5% of a 50-50 rate. The extremes in outcomes are why our confusion matrix breakdown showed the models performing so well on underdog picks to start the season and why the accuracy on favorite picks has increased so highly in the last few weeks. Our models are predicting the pendulum to start to swing back towards underdogs on Sunday, as they are picking some ugly spreads. Interestingly, the Orb is going back to some teams they have missed on recently and doubling down against teams that just proved our models wrong. 

Underdogs (and Vegas) had a good start to the week last night as the Rams beat the Vikings in a game with 87% of the money on Minnesota -2.5. Thankfully our multi-model strategy saved us from a spread pick loss as two models were on the Vikings and one was on Los Angeles so we head into Sunday with just a moneyline loss and a -1 unit hole. With no spread pick last night, the Orb will be going for its 10th consecutive non-Sunday premium spread win in Monday Night’s game. 

Here is what our models predict will happen on Sunday:

Spreads:

• Patriots +7

• Titans +11.5

• Bills -3

• Raiders +9.5

• Steelers/Giants (MNF - Premium)

Moneyline:

• Vikings (TNF - Premium) ❌

• Bengals

• Packers

• Ravens

• Lions

• Bills

• Broncos

• Chiefs

• Steelers/Giants (MNF - Premium)

Part of the Orb project is to try to gain a data-driven advantage over public sentiment. The public’s opinion of a team helps drive the market of any spread. We as fans can sometimes overvalue a good or bad performance we watched early in the season and let this incorrectly impact what we think a team is now. I took a look at offensive and defensive efficiency trends over the last three weeks to see what directions different teams are trending in. I can play around with it, but I think a 3-week lag will work best to help us stay on top of trends as they are happening and not after the public catches up and it is too late to get any value. Here is how each team is trending on both sides of the ball heading into week 8 compared to where they were heading into week 5:

Again, these are trends and not overall rankings. For example, the Commanders still rank 24th in defensive efficiency according to EPA heading into Sunday, but they have had the biggest positive change over the last three weeks. While many may still think of them as having the worst defensive groups in the league, we see here they have been playing much better recently and may not be as bad as the public still thinks they are. Moving forward I will be adding these 3-week lag trends in our Snapshot Analysis, but thought the results were pretty interesting and wanted to share them with everyone here first. 

Teams that are trending positively on both sides of the ball:

• Packers

• Chiefs

• Eagles

• Patriots

• Dolphins

• Lions

• Jaguars

• Bears

Teams that are trending negatively on both sides of the ball:

• Saints

• Vikings

• Jets

• Seahawks

• 49ers

• Panthers

• Cowboys

• Bills

---

If you're enjoying the content you're reading and want to help support our company's growth, consider taking action with one of the options below:

• Become a paid subscriber

• Share the page with a friend

• Follow us on social media

• Comment and send us suggestions for improvement

We need you— THE Orb Faithful —to be the driving force behind our success, helping us rise to the next level among startups. We love you, we appreciate you, Orb to the moon!

- Team Orb Analytics

.

.

.

.

.

.

DISCLAIMER:

The information provided on this website is for informational purposes only. It is not intended to be gambling or financial advice, and should not be relied upon as such. We are not responsible for any actions or decisions taken by readers based on the information provided on this website.

The picks and predictions provided on this website are based on our own research and analysis, and are intended to be used for entertainment and informational purposes only. We do not guarantee the accuracy or completeness of the information provided, and we are not responsible for any losses or damages incurred as a result of using this information for gambling or other purposes.

By accessing and using this website, you acknowledge and agree to the terms of this disclaimer, and you assume all risks and liabilities associated with your use of the information provided on this website.