#066 - NFL Season Recap

It's hard to believe that the NFL season has already come and gone. Sure, the playoffs are here and I'm as excited as anyone for the playoffs, but the regular season in the NFL is the most salient regular season in all of pro sports. There are so many opportunities for fan interaction with the game, and you can't pitch a stone without hitting someone who follows the game. I'm a prime example of this, as I take part in numerous activities that are closely linked with the NFL season. Here's a recap of how they went this year.

1) Weekly Confidence Pool

12 people, $45 entry

I had a relatively poor start to my weekly confidence pool, which involves picking the winners of every game each week and ranking them with a point value 1-16. I ended up winning the pool on two separate weeks, earning $30 each time, but fell short of the overall season championship. I came in second, 21 points behind the winner, my dear friend and personal hero, James Moran. Still, +$15 on the season isn't bad, especially for a $45 entry. There are a possible 2282 points in the game (17 weeks, 136 pts per week, less 30 for byes) and I scored a final total of 1658 (72.7%). Honestly, I don't know what this means. But I'm recapping the results, and that is a result, so there it is.

2) ESPN.com Fantasy Football

2 leagues, 10 teams each; one free, one $50 entry

I ended up with first overall pick in both of my leagues. Sure, I should have taken Rob Gronkowski or LeSean McCoy, but could you blame me for going with Adrian Peterson? Considering how the year went, it was not good news that both of my teams were built around Peterson and Philip Rivers. On draft day, I couldn't have been happier. Today, I'm a little disappointed. Still, I managed fairly solid seasons, making the playoffs in both leagues (though I honestly stopped paying attention to the free league, an unfortunate side effect of not having prize money to play for). In the pay league, I waded through debilitating injuries to Peterson, Fred Jackson, and Miles Austin (who played maybe two games as the Miles Austin I expected), while Beanie Wells was habitually questionable and Rivers simply stunk up the joint. I squeaked out a third-place finish, though, thanks to ridiculous performances by Matthew Stafford, Jordy Nelson, CJ Spiller, and Aaron Hernandez. This earned me my entry fee back, so the league was a wash.

3) ESPN.com Pigskin Pick'em (Against the Spread)

Free entry, no prizes

This is perhaps the best free, prizeless contest you can participate in, because it's simple to enter and gauges your performance against tens of thousands of other contestants. ESPN.com also always enters its spreads with half-point values to eliminated the possibility of pushes, which is nice and simplifies the results. However, this results in better-than-expected performance against the spread, as there is typically an extra half-point of value added in to the side you want. I bounced around the top 1% of entries for most of the year, and finished ranked #506 overall. I'd guess there are about 75,000 entries who picked all the games, with probably 75,000 more that gave up for portions of the season. The overall winner had 160 correct, for a record of 160-96 (62.5%), pretty remarkable for an entire season. To put that in perspective, this person would have won 19 cents for every dollar they bet, had they placed a bet on every game (assuming odds of -110). My final record was 146-110, 14 off the pace of the leader, good for a win percentage of 57.0%. If I had been able to bet on these spreads every game, I would have made 9 cents for every dollar I bet. If I had bet $20 per game on every game across the season, that would result in a $460 profit. Not bad, considering you need to start with at least $320 before Week 1 to do that. However, you normally can't

4) Hilton Supercontest (Against the Spread)

Free; just tracked picks

I didn't actually ENTER the Hilton Supercontest (contest explained here) because it costs $1500 and requires contestants to turn in their picks IN PERSON to the Las Vegas Hilton (or what was the Las Vegas Hilton) every Saturday, but I did follow along, using the pool provided spreads and making my own picks. You need to pick 5 games every week from the list provided by the casino, and the eventual winner took home over $300,000 this year. The winner, a group by the handle Sans Souci, went 58-22-5 (72.5%), for a sick 60.5 points (pushes are worth 1/2). Using the comparison from above, they would have won 36 cents for each dollar they bet over the course of the season. If they had taken the $1500 they needed for the entry and bet it on 5 games a week, $300 per game, they would have profited $9180 for the season. Instead, they entered the pool and walked home with $300,000. They are smart (and lucky) dudes. My picks were not as good. For the season, I finished 48-36-1 (57.1%) for 48.5 pool points, good enough for 56th place had I entered the pool. Only the top 20 places get paid. Again, this would have netted me 9 cents for every dollar bet. So if I had just used the $1500 entry fee and put it towards 5 games a week at $300 per game, I would have made $2295, instead of losing the entire fee by not finishing in the top 20. Food for thought. Considering I started off the year 5-10-0, I'll take that finish, as I went 43-26-1 the rest of the way (62.3%).

5) Cash Money

Lots of cash in; lots of cash out

It's kind of sad. I went back and looked at my performance in past years in the "put your money where your mouth is" department, and it was pretty awful. I know the cliche is 99% of sports bettors lose money (which is funny because you never meet anyone who has ever lost money) but I will fully admit I was one of those 99% for the last three years. As well as I could do in the contests, I just made bad decisions when it came to real money, and would often wager on things I had no real knowledge of, like college football and Italian soccer. I firmly believe you can't be successful by passively following something, which is how I deal with college football. I like it, I can talk it, but in the past, I felt like the money I was making with NFL bets I was throwing away on college. So I decided to scrap it. The NFL is my primary interest, and that's what I wanted to focus on. So this year, I went for that. And the results were much better.

5a) Preseason Bets (from here)

Losses: 144, Wins: 180.99, Net: +36.99

Losses
-Cincinnati Under 5.5 Wins; 50 for 40
Yikes. This was nowhere close. But, they had an offense full of rookies and a defense that let go of its top cornerback. How was I to know they'd do so well? Oh, maybe because their schedule was very easy.
-Detroit Under 7.5 Wins; 25 for 28.75
Well, I was taking a chance. I knew everyone was all over the Detroit bandwagon. But Stafford and Calvin Johnson played every game, which was the first time in basically ever. And they had those three crazy comebacks early in the year. Without those, where do they finish?
-Pittsburgh Under 10.5 Wins; 25 for 25
It was even odds, their defense is sliding over the hill, and I expected something of a Super Bowl losing hangover. None of it happened. Also, their finishing schedule was insanely easy. That hurt.
-St. Louis Over 7.5 Wins; 25 for 25
I thought either San Francisco or St. Louis was going to win the West this year. I bet on the wrong one.
-Jamaal Charles Rush Title; 4 for 40
10-to-1 odds on Charles didn't seem bad, since he was going to have a bigger role in the offense this year. Of course, that bigger role led to his season ending injury. Oh well.
-Philip Rivers MVP; 15 for 150
Damn him. I mean, given how Rodgers and Brees played, I'm not sure Rivers would have won MVP even if he played safety and returned kicks. But he played poorly most of the year, primarily early on and during a crushing loss at Detroit to end their playoff hopes. I think he might have been injured.

Wins
-Indianapolis Under 9.5 Wins; 50 for 52.50
What a charm. Had this wrapped up in Week 9. The only regret I have is not going stronger on it.
-Green Bay Over 11.5 Wins; 25 for 28.75
Given the better-than-even odds for this, I'm disappointed I didn't bet it more heavily.
-New England Over 11.5 Wins; 25 for 21.74
They had to lose to the Giants to momentarily put this bet in doubt. But an easy finishing schedule brought it home, no problem
-Philadelphia Under 10.5 Wins; 25 for 30
Insanely good odds on this. It was part emotional hedge, part smart play. I'm an Eagles fan. I know we don't do well with immense expectations, and I also know we don't do well with a quarterback writhing on the ground. Both played a factor this year.
-Maurice Jones Drew Rush Title; 4 for 48
12-to-1 odds on MJD. Seemed like a decent call. His only real competition was McCoy, but the factors supporting MJD are easy: he's durable, and he's about the only good thing on that offense.

5b) Weekly Bets

I went ahead and logged all of my weekly bets this year, something that I think will be good as I move forward next year. I started the year off quite rough, skipping Week 1 altogether and then only winning ONE bet during Week 2. From there, though, things went well. Between Week 6 and Week 17, I had 8 winning weeks and only 4 losing weeks, culminating with a monster 96% return during Week 17.

Overall, ATS picks were okay. I was 92-81-9 ATS which turned out to a -6.00 loss. However, starting with Week 6, when I switched sports books, I was 68-56-6 for +202.00. THAT'S what I need to keep going with heading into next year.

I only placed a few ML bets during the year, but they were the best of what I did. I was 4-1 for +124.85.

Totals were pretty pointless. I was 7-7, and lost -2.00.

Parlays were my worst enemy for the year. And I gave up on them after Week 10. I placed 13 parlays during the year, won 2, and lost -171.94 on them. Yikes.

Turns out that teasers were my favorite utility that I had--but instead of betting atrocious 3-team, 10-point teasers like I have in years past, I stuck primarily to 3-team, 6.5-point teasers this year. The payouts are much better, and if you pick selectively, you can turn quite a profit. I was 27-26 on all teasers, which is not the greatest percentage, but it turned a +563.00 profit. That's the advantage of betting something that has better-than-even odds. You can go .500 and still win. The 3-team, 10-pointers are -110, which means if you bet 4 and win 2, you're losing money. Maybe teasers are still a sucker's bet, but I'm focusing on doing them properly--which is to move numbers across as many key values as possible. Instead of teasing something from -14 to -7, look for more opportunities to turn +2.5 into +9.5. (Ending on a half-number with teasers are important. A push is a loss, so having +10 is no better than having +9.5. It's the same result.)

Some of the things I need to be careful with next year are forcing things where they don't belong. That is, if it's Sunday night and I want to run one more bet before the end of the week, I'll sometimes pick a 3-team tease for the Sunday and Monday night game and throw in a total on one of them. This is not a good strategy. Good strategy is to find value in the market, not to bet just for the sake of betting (even though it's fun to do and hard to stop). Another problem I ran into a couple times was having too much dependent upon one team. If you make three or four bets and include the Falcons in every one of them, well, you better hope the Falcons pull through. I was pretty good about this all year, but fell into the trap this past weekend during the playoffs, when I was heavy on the Saints/Lions Under. Look how that turned out.