Our nine ATS picks for week 4 NFL Sunday appear below. The line is not listed yet for Buffalo at New England, but if our approach generates a play for this contest we will publish it separately.
We show in the table above our against-the-spread bets for NFL Sunday week 4, including the vigs we actually paid and a quantitative indication of our conviction (measured in point margin). All indicated wagers are available at Bovada.lv as of the original date and time of this post, save the Chiefs and the Broncos plays (see just below for details).
[Note: We took Kansas City and Denver before all inputs into our models were available, at levels that 'looked' cheap (more accurately, our week 3 ratings supported Chiefs +6 at Steelers and Broncos -3 at Bucs; Kansas City and Denver both won last week, while Pittsburgh and Tampa Bay both lost, thus while not able to quantify the change, we knew that the gap between these teams would widen for week 4, per our primary factors). Both games indeed became official plays when all the data came in, and both saw meaningful positive line value. Fortunately though, our framework still regards the Chiefs +5 and Broncos -3.5 as plays.]
Our week 4 selections are heavily skewed toward underdogs (seven picks) and home teams (six plays). We noted previously that home teams have been a losing proposition in recent years, covering less than 49% of all games played over the last four completed seasons. In line with the historical norm, the local team is 22-23-1 ATS so far this year. While not a money-maker, home teams are making a move, having achieved profitability in weeks 2 and 3.
On the other hand, as we reported in weeks 3's Under the Hood, dogs are 24-20 ATS this season, for a 54.5% hit rate--superior to the 53% average win ratio over the last five seasons. Our work implies that recent trends in favor of underdogs and home teams will persist through week 4's NFL Sunday.
Happy betting!!