NFL Betting Pick: New Orleans Saints +2.5
Photo by Chris Graythen/Getty Images
The Saints are coming off a 22-30 loss at the Rams last week, but won and covered the two games before suffering this setback. In aggregate, New Orleans is 7-8 SU and 4-10-1 ATS. In week 17 action, the Saints are slated to face the Buccaneers, who are 7-8 SU and 10-5 ATS, after knocking off the Jaguars last week, for their fourth win in a row and third straight cover. Intuition might press bettors to side with the very bettor-friendly Tampa Bay team, however, history suggests New Orleans is more likely to cover.
The angle indicated in the graphic above has delivered a statistically significant (at the 95% confidence level) 17% long-term return on investment, and has submitted a losing record in only three seasons during the examination period.
We rationalized the success of a version of this system as follows in a week 12 piece:
At the root of the success of this system is recency bias, which leads bettors to expect covering teams to continue to cover and vice versa. This erroneous extrapolation of the near past compels action on recent winners versus the number and avoidance of losers. These tendencies, in turn, lead bookmakers to shade lines, which ultimately creates value with poor ATS teams, we suppose.
As such, our NFL betting picks for week 17 include siding with Derek Carr and the New Orleans Saints for the cover, as slight road dogs Sunday.
Happy betting!!