Last week we hit on two underdog winners, the Giants who were +175 at home to the Patriots, and the Bears, who were +150 on the road in Minnesota. That maintains our record of at least one underdog winner every regular season week since the start of 2022.

With underdog winners scarce over the last 5 weeks, we actually hit 2 of the 4 possible winners in week 12. Unusually, there have not been more than 4 underdog winners in a week since week 7

* Week 9, the Chiefs moved to an underdog just before kickoff, and week 10, the Raiders moved to an underdog in the same way.

That means there have been only 17 underdog winners out of 74 games (23%) across the NFL.

Our own record in underdog picks is 8 wins in 22 picks, or 36%. As much as the last few weeks have been lean, they've largely been decided by fractions. The Giants 22 second implosion against the Jets in week 8, the Titans getting intercepted on the goal line as time expired in week 9 against the Steelers, the Chargers losing to a walk-off field goal in week 10 against Detroit, Geno Smith getting injured in week 11 to cost us a win against the Rams, and the Browns somehow mounting a winning comeback against the Steelers, before last week, the Bills somehow managed to blow their own winning position against the Eagles.

The point? Sometimes, picks are way off, but we could list 10 of our picks in the last 5 weeks that have been decided by a last-minute play or drive, and that suggests that we're on the right track, and sometimes, you don't get the rub of the green. Ordinarily, we'd expect around 1/3 of NFL games to be underdog winners, so we will see if week 13 generates the big week we've been waiting for.