When only 2 underdogs win, you know we're going to have a bad week.
In the end, it could have been worse. The only two winners in the entire NFL who weren't favorites, were the Bears - who were favored all week but flipped to slight underdogs hours before kickoff - and the Colts, who gamed the injury report to announce Joe Flacco 90 minutes before kickoff, forcing us to scramble to change our pick from Tennessee to the Colts.
I sent out a notification to app users, and in the Discord, about the Colts game. If you don't already have the Pickwatch app, this is a perfect example of what it's good for. A number of users were able to back the Colts because of this.
In the end, however, no other underdogs won. The Broncos rallied, but couldn't overturn a 23 point Chargers lead, while the Commanders fell a touchdown short against the Ravens in an entertaining game. The Jags... well we won't talk about the Jags.
We had a spirited discussion about picks in the Discord on Sunday. I'm introspective about what we can do better with the column, and I never rest on my laurels, even when we're winning. The simple truth is that this is a column dedicated to picking underdog winners, and no matter how I'd have picked last week, and pretty much the week before, the odds are stacked against us when the NFL bucks the trend of 35% of games ending in an underdog win.
| Week | 2013-2023 average Underdog wins | 2024 Underdog wins |
Difference |
| 1 | 5.8 | 3 | -2.8 |
| 2 | 5.9 | 8 | +2.1 |
| 3 | 6.1 | 8 | +1.9 |
| 4 | 5.5 | 7 | +1.5 |
| 5 | 5.1 | 3 | -2.1 |
| 6 | 5.1 | 2 | -3.1 |
| 7 | 4.7 | ? | ? |
I'd also emphasize how unusually distributed the underdog winners have been. Yes, the numbers have been below average generally speaking (31 underdog winners vs an average of 33.2) but the wilder part is that this is the first time since I began tracking underdogs that there have been 3 weeks with 3 or fewer underdog winners in the first 6 weeks of the NFL season.
| Year | Weeks with =< 3 underdog winners |
| 2013 | 1 |
| 2014 | 1 |
| 2015 | 0 |
| 2016 | 0 |
| 2017 | 0 |
| 2018 | 2 |
| 2019 | 0 |
| 2020 | 1 |
| 2021 | 0 |
| 2022 | 0 |
| 2023 | 1 |
| 2024 | 3 |
What does that mean? Of course in our world, it means even though our weeks 2-4 were pretty good, we were always highly likely to make a loss in the other weeks. That's not an excuse - I'd still have liked more winners - but it's one of the reasons why things have been lean this year.
The good news is there is such a thing as regression to the mean, and in the long run, this may even help us, as the odds for underdogs may become even longer.
For now, all I would say is to keep the faith! I've been doing this long enough that most people understand the bad weeks don't last forever.
Top picks
We won 1 of our 4 top picks, the Colts, for a -9 unit loss. We're now -41.7 units on the season.
All underdog picks
Our only other underdogs were the Jets, who contrived to lose despite two field goals that would have won them the game. We were -5 units, so a total of -14 units on all underdog picks. We're now -16 units on all undersogs on the season.