NFL Betting Pick: Commanders +6.5

The Bills thrashed the Raiders 38-10 at Buffalo's Highmark Stadium in week 2 NFL action (to our chagrin). In fact, Las Vegas was held scoreless in the second half of play. 28 points represents an unusually large disparity, and we suspect this result will impact perception coming into week 3.

Since 2003-04, NFL road favorites have won by an average of less than five points per game. In instances when such teams are laying more than a touchdown, as was the case for Las Vegas at Buffalo, the average margin increases to a bit over nine points—still, not even close to the four touchdown difference between the Raiders' and Bills' scores last week.

We hypothesize that Joe Public's recency bias will lead to herding around Buffalo on the heels of this decisive win (to wit, as of the time of this writing, per data tracked by The Action Network, with more than 33,000 tickets written, the Bills at the Commanders is the most bet on game of the NFL week 3 slate, by betting volume...78% of spread wagers and 85% of ATS dollars staked are down on Buffalo).

Further, we suspect linemakers to react to the public euphoria surrounding the Bills by shading the line, creating value with the Commanders. Scant performance data a mere two weeks into the new season might render bettors more likely to overweight last week's result, we suppose. The observation indicated in the following graphic supports this thinking.

The system shown above has delivered a statistically significant (at the 95% confidence level) 21% long-term return on investment over the observation period, and is 2-0 ATS so far this season. Accordingly, we are endorsing the Commanders plus the points as our 2023-24 NFL week 3 #BUFvsLV betting pick.

As a final note, the overwhelming support for Buffalo versus the number may well push the line up from +6.5 to +7. As such, inclined bettors might be best served by exercising a bit of patience before jumping on the Commanders.

Happy betting!!