Probably too good to be true: Selling high great ATS starts in Dallas, Atlanta and New England
The Cowboys, Falcons and Patriots are a combined 13-4-1 ATS through six weeks of action, and have covered their 18 games by an average of average of 6.3 points per contest. We expect this is as easy as it gets for these teams, we expect, and we are fading these squads in week 7. We lay out our empirically supported rationale below:
After the first quarter of the regular NFL season, fading teams with average cover margins of five of more has proven profitable versus teams worth no better then 60% cover rates.
This system has delivered a 9% return on investment since the 2005-06 season, and has suffered losing years only twice over this span. Further, this angle is 4-1 versus the number so far in 2022.
We suspect the betting public's recency bias justifies this system's profitability. Our hypothesis is that teams covering the spread early in the year breed the expectation among casual bettors of continued ATS beats going forward. However, data suggests easy success ATS is unsustainable—the average regular season cover margin for home teams is 0.06 points per game since 2005-06; this same figure is 0.2 points for favorites.
This angle highlights the following five plays in week 7.
Lions +7 -115 @ Cowboys
NY Giants @ Jaguars -3
Falcons @ Bengals -6
NY Jets @ Broncos +1.5
Bears +9 -120 @ Patriots
We are ignoring the signals on the Jaguars and Broncos, as we have observed conflicting signals for these games.
Happy betting!!