The Plays: Washington @ Green Bay o47, Detroit @ LA Rams o51 & Chicago @ Tampa Bay o47

We identify three games from the week 7 NFL slate where we expect aggregate scoring to exceed the market's expectations. As such we are backing the OVER in each case.

As the basis for these picks, we have observed that in regular season, non-division NFL action featuring a home team that appeared in the prior postseason and where both teams were on one-game (or more) UNDER streaks, the OVER has delivered a statistically significant 20% long-term return on investment.

Further, this angle has delivered sub-50% cover rates in only three years since 2004-05, and is an unsullied 3-0 so far this season.

We hypothesize that the profitability of this system owes to the public's recency bias, which causes casual bettors to overweight the recent string of UNDERs in handicapping likely totals. As such, O/U lines are unduly bid down, we think. Durand, Patterson and Shank (2021), for instance, evaluated NFL outcomes between 2003 and 2017 and indeed validated the notion of overreaction in betting markets.

Separately, output from computer simulation routines we license likewise supports the prospect of shootouts in each of these contests.

Happy betting!!