NFL Betting Picks: Backing the Saints and New York Giants ATS

The Saints and NY Giants have covered one and two games, respectively, so far this season. New Orleans and New York are slated to face the bettor-friendly Indianapolis Colts and New York Jets in week 8 (the Colts are 4-3 versus the number, while the Jets are 4-2).

We suspect the betting public's recency bias is tilting favor too heavily towards the better teams in these matchups, so we are taking the points with these two unloved squads.

Supporting our perspective, we cite the tendency for normalization of ATS win rates once teams work out early-season kinks. The observation indicated in the following graphic makes this point.

This angle has proven good for a statistically significant 18% return on investment over the examination period, and has delivered losing ATS records in only three seasons.

Our hypothesis is that casual bettors tend to expect covering teams to continue to beat the number, and struggling to continue to experience hardship against the spread. As bettors unduly flock toward covering teams and shun ATS losers, lines move accordingly, until value is ultimately created with organizations boasting the worst records versus those with better tallies versus the number.

Supporting our hypothesis, note that the consensus for ATS picks submitted to Covers.com as of the time of this writing indeed overwhelming rejects the two highlighted teams with poor ATS records and supports the opposing ATS winners.

As an aside, the operative system actually highlights five plays for week 8, but we disqualified the Patriots, Panthers and Broncos from consideration due to conflicting signals from similarly reliable systems. As such, we count the only the New Orleans Saints -2 and New York Football Giants +3 among our NFL betting picks for this week, pursuant to this approach.

Happy betting!!