Surviving Week 3

No Paywall

It’s funny, I never look ahead, and I’m more than happy to burn top teams because every top team loses at some point, and getting a win out of them is the best you can hope for, whether it’s Week 2 or Week 10. Moreover, some top teams lose QBs midseason and are no longer top teams, and you’re always happy to have used them when you did.

The one exception in the Circa contest is teams that play on Thanksgiving or Christmas which count as separate weeks. I already burned the Eagles Week 1 who host the Bears, and I used the Ravens last week (who also play on Thanksgiving) because I figured I wouldn’t want to use them against the Bengals. Oops.

In any event, I still have the Cowboys-Chiefs game reserved and Lions-Packers if needed, and the Bengals losing Joe Burrow is a good reminder that it’s worth saving both as you never know what things will look like when the time comes. At the very least I’ll save both sides of the Chiefs-Cowboys game.

The reason to burn those good teams early is to be alive in Week 3 which I am. The bad news is so is everyone else, a highly improbable scenario given how many were on small favorites both weeks. But it is what it is, and the more out of phase with my pool I am, even if I have worse choices on its face, the better.

. . .

This week I have a dilemma. The obvious choice is the Bills home against the Dolphins, but I have a slightly bad vibe about it. I can see the Bills crushing them easily, but I can also see a division rival with an NFL quarterback giving them trouble on a short week. The last time these two teams played the Bills won by three points. The Dolphins are desperate at 0-2, and the Bills coming off an easy win and facing the Saints next week could be coasting a bit. It feels more plausible than the Vegas number which is 87.5 percent. Maybe 75-80 percent to me.

The alternatives are the Seahawks hosting the Saints (Sam Darnold makes me nervous, and the Saints stayed in it against the Niners last week) and the Falcons at the Panthers (I was impressed by the Falcons Sunday night, but this would be a second-straight road game off a short-ish week.) The Panthers just seem bad to me, and they lost two offensive linemen. The Falcons are without their top corner AJ Terrell.

The pot odds considerations are negligible. Here are the projections from SurvivorGrid:

While the Falcons are only 5.2 percent owned, the Bills are not moving the needle much at 26.7. I can’t consider the Chiefs (need them for Thanksgiving), and I don’t trust the Bucs who have been life and death in both games. The Packers are an option, but the Browns defense has been stout, it’s a road game and they too are desperate. Plus they are a Thanksgiving fallback.

For me it’s the Bills or the Falcons, and it’s a question of use the best pot-odds-adjusted team, don’t think twice, or trust your instincts knowing you are going to have to get by on instincts a lot to make it to the end of the year. Yes, you are taking more risk, per the market, but if you’re just going on pot odds you’re basically saying you have a small edge over the field and are hoping to get very lucky. I don’t want merely to reduce my odds from 1 in 18,000 to 1 in 10,000. I want to win, and to do that I’ll have to trust my reads.

Falcons it is.