Orb Analytics Wild Card Weekend Picks
Alongside the Orb’s picks, we also put together a playoff guide full of data visualizations to help you form your own data-driven playoff decisions. We couldn’t fit the two together or even email it out separately due to the size of the file, so instead you can find it linked here: Orb Analytics Data Playoff Guide.
Wild Card Weekend is finally here! After mostly meaningless games in Week 18, we finally are at the best part of the season. As I’ve mentioned before, we treat the playoffs differently from the regular season from a modeling perspective due to the sample size of games and a lack of updated predictor data. But I’m always curious to see how the Orb performs in the postseason and will be tracking our unit performance as a new, clean slate.
I took strategic steps this season to increase the threshold confidence to give out official predictions and therefore limit the volume of picks the model gives out. My goal is to reduce the number of picks but increase the confidence in each one, and thereby hopefully increase the accuracy as well. Because there is such a small, and weekly decreasing sample size of games to pick from in the playoffs there is a strong possibility that we could get to the Conference Championship week or Super Bowl and not have a spread pick that would have met the threshold to be given out in the regular season. And that's no fun for anyone. So throughout the playoffs, I may have to limit the conditions needed to give out a play since there are so few games to choose from. While that is not the goal of the project, the playoffs are separate from our official record anyway so let's have some fun with it. Here is what the Orb predicts will happen in Wild Card Weekend:
Spreads:
Bills -8.5
Moneyline:
Bills
Eagles
Buccaneers
After the dominant performance from favorites down the stretch of the regular season, all three of our models predict it will continue on Sunday of round 1. They are not predicting any moneyline upsets and all three are on the Bills to cover at home vs. the Broncos. With the models predicting a chalk Sunday, what could possibly go wrong? Let’s have a great start to the playoffs and hopefully put ourselves in a position to end the post season +money!
- Team Orb Analytics
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