NFL Week 7

NFL Week 7 October 18, 2017

Week 7

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Underdogs have covered ~66% of the last 70 games. Take the favorites in every early game (Thurs Night Football and 1PM EST games on Sunday)! Over/Unders don’t appear to be offering great plays this week, but watch the Bet Trackers live through Sunday to see if that changes Watch for Miami to actually run away with a win on Sunday.

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2017 Picks Record: 65%

We like Pitt to actually steal a win from Cincy (coming off a bye) using their OFFENSE not their Defense! Stay tuned to your emails Sunday before the 4PM Games start to get our update on the Dallas game and the other Mid Day Games!

Week 6 Results: Another positive week, though just barely. We lost 3 of our halftime bets by single possessions. It doesn’t change our stance to look for great hedge bets or value bets at Halftime. Follow us on Twitter to make sure you get all of our tips! @thecleverbettor

The Week 7 Report is being distributed for free! Share with your friends! Normal reports are provided to members only every Wednesday, join today at cleverbettor.com. $12.50 a month gets you access to all of our tools and downloadable data sets with spreads and fantasy data going back to 2000

Cleverbettor Bet Trackers: Cleverbettor.com tracks every game against the spread. When you look back at history, the number of away teams that cover the spread compared to home teams is ~50/50. The same applies to Favorites compared to Underdogs (udogs), and overs compared to unders. In fact, since 2010 these are the totals and break down of each of those categories:

As we mentioned in Week 1, we will refer back to this frequently. Week 6 continued to go the way of the underdogs meaning Underdogs have covered the majority of plays every week so far in 2017. This casts our bias to the favorites and finally out Fav/Udog Bet Tracker is in full agreement (discussed below). As always, you can view the Bet Trackers live on the site at: cleverbettor.com Away/Home Bet Tracker (Last 100 games) Each time an Away Team covers the spread we move the position up 1 (+1), each time a home team covers the spread we shift the position down 1 (-1). The further the position is from 0, the more one side of the bet has covered than the other. Trackers only look at the last 100 games.


The Away/Home Bet Tracker has climbed steadily from it’s low of -9 over the last 2 weeks with the Away teams (primarily underdogs) covering the spread. There are a fairly high number of home underdogs this week which is usually a good play when looking for the home teams to regain ground, but because of our Fav/Udog Bet Tracker, this week that is not the case. Fav/Udog Bet Tracker (Last 100 Games)

Each time a Favorite covers the spread we move the position up 1 (+1), each time an Underdog covers the spread we shift the position down 1 (-1). The further the position is from 0, the more one side of the bet has covered than the other. Trackers only look at the last 100 games.

The Favorite/Underdog Bet Tracker is at -15 with the Titans covering as a favorite on Monday Night Football (spread fell to 6.5 before game start and that is what we are using, if you go off original spreads, which was Titans -8, this would actually push the Bet Tracker even more into an extreme position at -16). This gives us a VERY strong bias towards the favorites and based on our Bet Tracker system means we will recommend taking all the favorites in Thursday Night Football and the early games on Sunday. We will hold off on recommending games on the Mid-Day (4PM EST) games until just before game time, or even wait for halftime spreads for those games so that we can determine how these Favorite bets turn out and what the Bet Tracker is telling us at that point. Remember, the Bet Tracker system works off the idea of mean regression, so you have to play all the games to put it into max effect. The idea is that when we have a bias, it means a majority of the games should go to one side of that bet (in this case the favorites) than the other. Playing all of the games knowing you will likely lose some of them is recommended strategy. The Week 7 Report is being distributed for free! Share with your friends! Normal reports are provided to members only every Wednesday, join today at cleverbettor.com. $12.50 a month gets you access to all of our tools and downloadable data sets with spreads and fantasy data going back to 2000

Over/Under Bet Tracker (Last 100 Games)

Each time the Over covers the Over/Under number we move the position up 1 (+1), each time the Under covers the Over/Under number we shift the position down 1 (-1). The further the position is from 0, the more one side of the bet has covered than the other. Trackers only look at the last 100 games.

We are seeing a perfectly even Over/Under Tracker for the 2nd week in a row. This offers us little help in making picks and we advise to stay away from over/unders unless something is significantly appealing. Week 7 Game Schedule Full schedule is below, highlighted games will be discussed in the Picks section.


NYJ @ Miami – Sun Oct 22 This is another battle of bad teams. Don’t let last week full you, the Jets always play the Pats well, in fact 9 of the last 11 matchups between the two teams (going back to 2012) have been 1 possession games. Miami in 2017 has been outscored by their opponents by 37% (61 pts to 84). However if you remove the 20-0 pounding they were handed by the Saints that number falls to just 3%. Both of these teams have shown glimmers of hope, but both of these teams have had absolutely dismal games also. Our Monte Carlo Simulator’s 5000 results are quite mixed:

members have access to our game predictor pages for every game at cleverbettor.com The results with the highest likelihood are for a 0-3 point game either way, (the area circled in yellow in the image above). Miami has the highest degree of variance in their play though and thus if the game is not close, it is MUCH more likely to end up with Miami running away with the score over the NYJ. The Week 7 Report is being distributed for free! Share with your friends! Normal reports are provided to members only every Wednesday, join today at cleverbettor.com. $12.50 a month gets you access to all of our tools and downloadable data sets with spreads and fantasy data going back to 2000

We also view the tie game scenario as a positive. Our model does not play out overtime as we generally view overtimes as coin flips, especially with the current rule set. Who get the ball first usually decides overtime, but we do like to lean to the home teams in this scenario. Miami has also scored in the 4th Quarter of EVERY game this season (with the obvious exception of the shut out to New Orleans), which tells us that the Dolphins play significantly better in tight games coming down to the end. On top of this, the matchup card (view this or any matchup at the main site under Teams -> Team Matchups) gives the key stat of Avg Points Covering the Spread By to Miami. Nearly all other stats are relatively neutral between the 2 teams:

members have access to our team matchup stat pages for any team/matchup at cleverbettor.com

We respect the Jets in Division Games, but this week we are taking the Dolphins and Cutler to perform significantly more like his historical stats rather than his 2017 stats. Verdict: Miami –3 (Wait for -3 if you are unable to get it, some books are already offering it)

Cincy @ Pitt – Sun Oct 15 (4PM EST) Cincy is coming off a bye week which generally would give them an edge, but the Steelers may be stronger because they AREN’T. Bell has been struggling all year, but his performance last week was a throwback to the days of him being worth $9,000+ dollars on Draftkings (an unreasonably high number for those who don’t play in DFS). If you look at Bell’s historical performance, he is does not fall into the same trap that many RB’s fall in to where they cycle between very strong games and weaker games (stats wise). It’s actually a higher The Week 7 Report is being distributed for free! Share with your friends! Normal reports are provided to members only every Wednesday, join today at cleverbettor.com. $12.50 a month gets you access to all of our tools and downloadable data sets with spreads and fantasy data going back to 2000

likelihood that Bell has a good game if he had a single good game previously (it does not hold for 3 in a row, just FYI). Cincy is notoriously a team that plays consistently neutral, meaning they very often play to the level of their opponents, or just as good as they need to in order to have a CHANCE to win a game. This season they have scored nearly exactly as many points as their opponents with 60% of those games in Cincy. We expect more of the same from Cincinnati and a good showing from Pit as they continue to find their groove (on offense, their defense has been stellar).

members have access to our game predictor pages for every game at cleverbettor.com

We actually expect the Pit D to be a bit of a letdown this week as Cincy’s offense is likely to outperform, but Pit’s Offense will match them and win by 7-16 points. Verdict: Pit -5


Daily Fantasy QB: We like Cousins this week as a value pick at QB. We also place a lot of value in Brady this week, though he is expensive, games were Brady performs so-so are usually followed by Brady coming out firing on all cylinders. Expect a quick !st Q touchdown by the Pats, just a question of in the air or on the ground.

RB: Hunt may be overpriced this week, although his ceiling remains higher than nearly any other RB including LeVeon Bell. We think Bell will perform well, but at $9100 it is always tough to recommend unless you can find great value picks elsewhere. We think Gordon and Freeman tie for the highest value in the top 5 this week.


WR: Hilton disappointed last week, but he has a high tendency to bounce back from disappointing games to play incredibly well. In fact between Weeks 2-8 of the 2016 season, Hilton fluctuated EVERY WEEK from 30+ pt games to