Model Picks Week 1 Results

This is a review of the picks and bets we made last week. Let’s see how we did Week 1.

I was kind of hoping we would hit it out of the park Week 1, everyone would see what geniuses we are, our picks would go viral, everyone would sign up, we’d quit our jobs to do this full time, and I’d lose 50 pounds.

Instead we got a pretty typical week where The Model had some good ideas and some bad ideas, the picks that overlapped with Jeremy did well, we made some goofy bets that cost us, and we ended up around even. Fun!

How Did The Model Do

Here are the Week 1 picks, including the actual results for the week.

This image includes the actual margin of victory (negative if the away team won) and whether or not The Model picked the winner, picked the winner vs the spread (i.e. to cover or win with points), and if the odds picked the winner.

The odds favorite won in 88% of games. So, not a particularly good week for under dogs. The Model on the other hand only picked the winner 63% of the time. A lot of those were close games, but the model really goofed up with the Dolphins pick and the Lions pick. Daniel Jones was a wild card, and he got the job done. In the Lions game, we saw an improved and healthy Packers team that seems to be starting the year off well.

How Did Jeremy Do

I don’t think I have the patience to quantify Jeremy’s picks and give % results like I do for The Model, plus I like to keep him in a more fluid frame of mind when making picks. However, I will highlight a couple of his comments that impacted our bets and results.

On our call, I thought he was more excited about the Dolphins than he really was. By Sunday, things had changed a bit (e.g., the Packers defense was boosted by Micah Parsons), and Jeremy questioned our bet on the Dolphins. “I wasn’t THAT excited about them.”

I usually make the picks without a back and forth from him. In hindsight, there likely were better games to bet on than that one.

Jeremy’s comments kept us from betting on the Eagles to cover (good!), but also kept us from betting on the Commanders to cover (bad), although the model wasn’t super confident in that pick.

How Did Our Picks Do

We ended up about exactly break even. We bet $780 on all bets. We won exactly $780 on those bets.

• Our big winner was the Tampa Bay game, where we bet 2 units. (This was balanced by losing the 2 units we bet on the Lions.)
• We won on our Ravens bet just barely using the points. (This was balanced out by our loss on the Dolphins pick.)
• We won one of our 3-game parlays.

Could have been worse. I am kicking myself though, because I broke a couple of rules I had for making bets.

• Never use the same teams in our straight up bets as we do in our 3-game parlays. When the Lions and Dolphins lost, that ended up blowing up 2 of our 3-game parlays as well. We could have found other teams to include in those.
• Always make an odd number of bets in each category. Instead of betting 4 games straight up, I should have bet only 3… or bet 5. This just helps to avoid the even week result.

You never know, but I think if I kept these rules in mind when making the bets last week, we would have ended up with a small profit instead of breaking even.

Onto Week 2

I’m going to process the new stats for Week 1 and come up with some new Model Picks, which should be posted some time tomorrow.

Starting next week, The Model will take Week 1 results into account. We should consider fading The Model’s picks around the Dolphins and Packers if we buy into the narratives around those teams, since The Model will mostly be predicting results based on last year’s numbers. And we should strive to make an odd number of bets of each type, and avoid using the same teams in our straight up bets and our parlays.