Man, if I'd only just not played all those lame props and teasers I would've been right back to even for the regular season, lol.  Oh well, hopefully all my peeps were wiser than I and didn't play them, or at least not the "1st to score loses" bets, which went 0 for 4.  Honestly, that's a wager I've never made before in my life but thought that all of the dogs had a chance to score first in losing efforts.  Didn't happen.

I don't know if it's ironic, or fitting, or what, but totals FINALLY performed both well statistically and in actual results, cashing for +3.4 units for the week.  Unreal what a bad ride we've had on these all season, but at least the last week was reassuring heading into the playoffs and next year at least.  Always my bread and butter bets, it seems like every turnover or special teams play hurt the total bet we had played.

The week would've also been much better if not for backing some of the big dogs who had nothing to play for versus teams that did.  Specifically, the Colts (Curtis Painter you worthless sack of dung), the Bengals (it's like their wide receivers had their fingers amputated before the game), the Giants (thank you for firing the defensive coordinator the next day, but it didn't help rescue the Giants +9 play), and the Saints (who were the lone dog here that probably should have covered -- they got pretty deep twice near the end of the game, once in the red zone before a turnover killed their chance of covering the +7 and +10 plays we had on them).

Year to Date:

Another week of beating the market to the tune of 14 points on line moves, but small losses as some of the most lopsided luck of the week came in the games where we had action, and we also had a bad turnover ratio of -14 or so in games where we had a side.  You hear about how even the best handicappers can have a down year every 5 or 6 years -- well, after 5 straight winning seasons this season is in jeapordy of being a losing one, as we're currently down 4.1 units for the regular season.  Now, in the long term scheme of things that isn't much, as we were up around 130 units last season alone, but it's frustrating and painful to go through an entire season up until now and not turn a profit.  I don't charge a lot for my service, but it's an extra expense for my followers who may also be in the red this season (I don't expect that every subscriber follows every single play as some of them are unique to certain online sportsbooks, etc.).  Proper money management should have the losses as minimal at this point, but I also don't expect everyone else to also practice the same small bankroll % per play that I do.

At any rate, in this handicapping business so much based on "what have you done for me lately" I'm going to give my past clients'  a leg up by starting off not charging next season until I reach a certain number of units won.  I'm thinking of eliminating season subscriptions and just charging single payments for each units won threshold that I set.  In essence, I want my clients to have their subscription payments already paid for many times over in profit before any dollars come out of their pocket next season.   NFL handicapping is a part time job for me, and I don't rely on gambling or subscription payments as a regular part of my income -- I'm not in this to make as much money from people as I can whether the plays post a winning record or not.   I'm more interested in anyone following my plays to make money more than anything else.  Because I don't rely on subscribers for income (though it's been a nice help to my family), I'm more than happy to change the way I'm compensated for my services -- I want subscription payments to come from the books' pockets, not my clients.  Some time next year I will finalize my plans for the site next year and post what I plan on doing.

Year to Date:

The season of road dogs with nothing to play for losing their bark is suddenly upon us, as evidenced by the abysmal efforts of the Lions and Rams last week.  Every week we back a 7+ point dog that outgains their opponent and fails to cover.  This last week it was the Broncos.  Down 5+ units for the week thanks to a couple of salami plays and imaginary matchup plays newly discovered at TheGreek, but top plays did well, with both 2 unit plays, CAR and WAS, winning.  It was probably the worst week for my lines this season, as both spreads and totals graded out at 40 something percent where I had an opinion, and both underachieved hitting 30 something percent, and the percentage of Good Plays was just below 50% after many weeks at 70-80%.  Another positive though was that after starting 0-2, 2nd half plays finished winning 7 in a row, so hopefully all subscribers were diligent picking up the 2nd half plays.

Year to Date:

...but there was honestly more bad luck than good once again.  Looking at the Quality Control table for the week you can see that we had a negative turnover ratio in 9 of the 12 games where we had a side involved in a wager, with a total turnover ratio of -11.  We were really unfortunate with 3 of our side plays for  the week, which brings us to...

Good Plays Gone Bad

#1:  TEN +7.5:  We hit this line early when it briefly peaked at +7.5 before dropping and closing at +6 or +6.5.  The Titans outgained the Colts in total yards and statistically should have lost by just one point.  Instead they lost by 10, failing to cover the +7.5.  Always frustrating to outgain an opponent while failing to cover as a touchdown+ underdog.  The Titans' peformance in the red zone was dreadful, and the playcalling didn't help.  4th and goal at the 2 and you have Vince Young throw a corner fade?  WTF?  Seems to me like your best options there are either a pitch wide to Chris Johnson or a bootleg with VY, as both plays give your top two playmakers the ability to make someone miss needing only to pick up 2 yards.

#2:  TB +7:  We hopped on the +7 (-115) opening number, beating the market to the punch as usual as the number closed around +4.  The Bucs went on to outgain the Panthers by 160 yards and 0.8 yards per play, but their swashbuckling ways crashed on the rocks of the red zone on almost every occasion, with I believe 3 interceptions thrown inside the 10 yard line, with 5 interceptions thrown overall.   Come on, Freeman, mistakes in the red zone aren't free, man, they cost you the game.  A huge outgaining performance failing to cover as a touchdown dog.

#3:  SF +1:  Again we beat the closing market by a couple of points as the market correctly ended up favoring the currently better performing of the two teams, the 49ers.  The 49ers outgained the Seahawks by 68 yards and a whopping 1.9 yards per play, but went 1 for 13 on 3rd down conversions and their dreams of paydirt gold didn't pan out as a first half muffed punt gave Seattle a short field that led to a touchdown and a 37 yard drive with 21 seconds remaining in the game set Seattle up for the game winning field goal.  That's back to back weeks the Seahawks have won on the back of having the big plays go in their favor.

Bad Plays Gone Good

Nothing, really.  By the stats the KC/DEN total should have ended up near 37, not far from the 37.5 and 38 where we bet the Over.  That literally was the closest thing we had to winning a bet we didn't deserve -- in other words every other single bet we made for the week deserved to win, according to the stats of the game.  Do we often in plays we don't deserve?  Doesn't seem like it, lol.  The Steelers certainly didn't deserve to cover as -13.5 favorites (the early number we bet them on), but they narrowly did deserve to cover the -2.5 we needed to finish off a 4 team teaser which would have given us a 3 for 3 sweep on teasers for the week.  Instead, the Raiders had an improbable 3 touchdown drives in the 4th quarter, including the nail in the coffin score with 9 seconds remaining.

Our Good Play percentage was once again very high at 80%.  The Bad Plays staying bad (graded as not good plays) for the week were NYJ/BUF Over 3.5 (Thanks for dropping that wide open 80 yard touchdown pass that would have given us the Over, Braylon), the CHI/STL Over 41 (the Rams were masters of crossing midfield and then punting in that game), and the Steelers (Gradkowski had homefield advantage being from Pittsburgh, as it turned out).  That's it, of all the side and totals we played for the week.

One final note on poor luck on the week -- if you watched a lot of games or saw the highlights for the week, what were the two biggest pass drops you remember seeing?  I only remember seeing two huge drops that would have probably resulted in touchdowns -- the aforementioned Braylon Edwards drop that ultimately cost us the Over, and Nate Washington's drop of a perfectly thrown Vince Young bomb that almost certainly would have been for a touchdown instead of the zero points the Titans ended up getting on that drive, costing us a team total bet on the Titans and the game cover at +7.5. 

I'm not content to have a good week and be back in the black for the season -- I feel like bad luck kept us from having a double digit winning week.  We did get some backdoor covers with the Bengals and Lions, but you can't really say those are a product of luck -- both teams executed on final drives that resulted in a score, that's not luck, that's football, and that's the advantage of betting on big dogs.

Overall it looks like we should have gone 11-4 on all sides instead of the 9-6 we did for thepredictiontracker.com, though I'm still #1 averaging all the categories.

Year to Date:

Finally caught a few late breaks instead of being broken by them, and we ended up having a good week that included going 10-5-1 on all side predictions, putting me back as the probable #1 overall at thepredictiontracker.com for the season.

Good Plays Gone Bad

DAL/OAK Over 39.5.  Dallas had almost 500 yards of offense, and Oakland had just over 300, by normal averages this game should have scored into the 50s, but only ended up with 31.

STL +3 -- The Rams outgained the Seahawks by 100 yards but lost the battle of big plays including a fairly long pick 6 against them.

Bad Plays Staying Bad

CHI +10.5 -- The Bears were the one real stinker play of the week, as they got absolutely cremated in every possible way in their game versus the Vikings.  The Vikings continue to play at a very high level on both sides of the ball.

Year to Date: