Week 4 Newsletter and Picks

Week 3 is in the books, and it was a weird week of football. The big theme from the Orb’s perspective is that favorites are back, yet we saw some wild upsets with the Cardinals over the Cowboys and the Colts shocking the Ravens. Usually, either would be the headline from a Sunday slate, but neither compares to the Dolphins putting up seventy (70) points in a National Football League game over the Broncos. I get a little in my head when our models don’t have a +unit week, but show me an algorithm that predicted all that — crazy stuff. 

We want to reiterate our emphasis on transparency before diving into Orb’s week three results and week four picks. We believe the two most important ways to build trust in this project are accurate picks and transparency about the missing ones. Since starting this project, Andy Diamonds and I have done a lot of research into handicappers and similar people in the space. Some talented and entertaining folks do great work, but some don’t address when their picks miss, and we don’t want to be one of them. We obviously would prefer to have +unit weeks every week and not even have the option of addressing our model’s misses, but we hope you guys can appreciate honesty. As you can guess, week three overall was a slight miss. Our +unit Sunday going 3-2 on spreads had book-end misses from our Thursday and Monday night picks. Here is how our models performed:  

Spreads:

• Giants +10.5 (TNF) ❌ 

• Browns -3.5 ✅

• Jets +2.5 ❌ 

• Texans +8.5 ✅

• Ravens -8.5 ❌

• Steelers +2.5 ✅

• Rams +1.5 (MNF) ❌ 

Overall spreads: 3-4, 42.9%, -1.273 units

Moneyline:

• 49ers ✅

• Vikings ❌ 

• Jets ❌ 

• Bills ✅

• Ravens ❌ 

• Lions ✅

• Packers ✅

• Dolphins ✅

• Seahawks ✅

• Chiefs ✅

• Eagles ✅

• Rams (MNF) ❌ 

Overall moneyline: 8-4, 66.67%, -0.601 units.

The overall -1.874 unit performance differed from the +3.936 unit weekend we saw in week 2. Here is how each model performed individually against the spread:

• Model A: 6-10, 37.5%

• Model B: 8-8, 50%

• Model C: 7-9, 43.75%

As I mentioned in the opening, week three belonged to the favorites, who covered 10/16 games (62.5%) and won 11. This brings the season totals to favorites, covering 21/48 games (43.75%) and winning 29/48 games (60.4%) outright. 

We’ll find out this weekend if the favorites can continue to even the score or if the underdogs will get back to dominating. So far, favorites, and the Orb, are 1-0 in week four after Thursday Night Football as our premium subscribers got the Lions covering 1.5 points in Green Bay.  With yet another week of data to train our three models, here is what the Orb thinks is going to happen on Sunday: 

Spreads:

• Lions -1.5 (TNF) ✅

• Bills -3

• Texans +3

• Rams +1.5

• Panthers +4.5

• Titans + 2.5

• Chargers - 5.5

Moneyline:

• Lions (TNF) ✅

• Jaguars

• Bills

• Texans

• Vikings

• Eagles

• Broncos

• Browns

• Chargers

• Cowboys

• 49ers

• Chiefs

The Orb expects some closer games this weekend, predicting a lot of dogs to cover but the majority of favorites to win outright. Let’s get back on track with a great week four, everyone!

- Team Orb Analytics

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