Week 7 Picks

It's been a busy week, so I am just posting these without any write-up. Thought I should first point out, though, that there have been 4 games where Pinnacle has moved the line at least one-half point since Wednesday, and 3 of those 4 games the move has been toward Massey-Peabody's number. This is not surprising--in fact, this has been the trend throughout the season. If our system has predictive power not contained in the point spread (and historical data indicates it does), we would expect these kinds of line moves, since the closing point spread is generally more efficient than the opening (and mid-week) point spread. So, to summarize, if line moves tend to be predictive, and Massey-Peabody has predictive power controlling for the closing line, we would expect line moves to be toward the Massey-Peabody line more often than not, so betting opportunities should be better early in the week.

Ok, on to the plays...here are the strongest, which I would feel comfortable blindly betting:

Green Bay Packers -2.5 vs. Minnesota Vikings (M-P Line: GB -7.5)

Cleveland Browns +13 @ New Orleans Saints (M-P Line: CLE +8.2)

St. Louis Rams +3 @ Tampa Bay Buccaneers (M-P Line: STL -0.2)

The following plays offer a smaller edge:

Chicago Bears -3 vs. Washington Redskins (M-P Line: CHI -5.6)

Oakland Raiders +8 @ Denver Broncos (M-P Line: OAK +5.5)

Marginal plays (we expect to be correct more than 50% of the time, but the edges are not great enough to recommend a bet against a standard -110 vig):

New England Patriots +2.5 @ San Diego Chargers (M-P Line: NE +1.1)

New York Giants +3 @ Dallas Cowboys (M-P Line: NYG +1.6)

Jacksonville Jaguars +9.5 @ Kansas City Chiefs (M-P Line: JAC +8.1)

Miami Dolphins +3 vs. Pittsburgh Steelers (M-P Line: MIA +1.7)

The rest of our lines:

ATL -3.0 vs. CIN

TEN -2.7 vs. PHI

BAL -12.5 vs. BUF

SEA -7.6 vs. ARI (was a play early in the week when line was SEA -5.5, but line has moved to SEA -7)

Edit: Omitted one large edge play (second grouping)...

San Francisco 49ers -1 @ Carolina Panthers (M-P Line: SF -4.3)