Week 3 in the NFL was a bloodbath for a lot of bettors and my picks personally were terrible. If you’ve been betting a while you know how it is and there will be weeks like that no matter how well you handicap games. It sucks to say that but it’s the truth. Of course there are people and sharps who won in Week 3 but that was the small minority.
The first three weeks in the NFL has been the perfect storm in my opinion – we all just saw an NFL season where a lot of public favorites won and the Patriots went 16-3 ATS (84%). Fading the Browns, Rams, and 49ers cashed almost as often and those three teams went a combined 12-34 ATS (26%). Betting the best team and fading the three worst teams was the winning formula last season and a lot of old school handicapping methods didn’t work – sharp money forced reverse line movement on the Browns more times than I can count. And lost. Favorites who were playing back to back road games were winning often. The Raiders and Broncos were winning often in east coast games. Needless to say it was a frustrating season for sharp money and sportsbooks as Vegas sportsbooks reported a loss of $8.25 million in January 2017 on football, their second worst NFL month ever. Only November 2005 was worse.
This anomaly of a 2016 season has set a lot of people up for the bloodbath that has been these past three weeks. Even the Cowboys winning Monday night for the public didn’t help much because the majority of people’s bankrolls took a hit from Sunday. Probably the best way to approach Week 4 is to try to chip away at the hole that the first 3 weeks have caused. It’s going to take a string of a few winning weeks to get out of the early season hole but a conservative, logical approach over the next few weeks could get you back swinging with momentum soon. Two or three wins above .500 in Week 4 could bring some momentum back and give your bankroll some life. Trying to make it all back in Week 4 is a recipe for disaster so it looks like a grind-it-out approach over the next few weeks is the best way to make up for September.
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There are a lot of division games for Week 4. Seven in fact. I will post a breakdown of each game with the recent history of how the teams have performed ATS and with totals. I’ll also have breakdowns on how each team has performed so far and how both team’s personnel matches up with each other.
