4for4 Betting Recap: Week 13
Welcome to the 4for4 football betting recap. My name is Dan Rivera and I am in charge of tracking bets from Connor Allen, Ryan Noonan, Sam Hoppen, Greg Smith, Anthony Stalter, TJ Calkins and Dalton Kates. Each week, I track their bets and provide feedback after the Monday Night Football game ends. If you have not found it, I track them all here in this 4for4 Tracker. Make sure you switch to the right person and sport.
When you look at anyone in the 2021 NFL, you will see some yellow blocks. There are two points you need to know:
- You will see a weekly tracker; this just lets you look at anyone on any given week. This is what I like to call the micro tracker.
- The big yellow box has most of the plays broken down by position, prop type, totals, spreads, etc. The total units won or lost will differ from this deep dive version because certain plays didn’t fit into the deep dive. For example, Ryan Noonan bet the Patriots to make the playoffs. It doesn’t fit into any of the weekly bets during the NFL season.
Why do I do this? When tracking NFL bets, 99% of all bets anyone makes are working juice (meaning you have to lay more money down than you would win). This tracker is far superior compared to other trackers. Other trackers don’t have bets broken down by type, it is just simply a tracker. To me, that isn’t helpful. I want the data (picks) to tell a story so I can help whoever is making the picks win more. With the juice, you are better off avoiding losers than you are winning. My goal is to help anyone I track to avoid losers or have them attack successful areas. When you look at the deep dive table, be careful if one area looks good or bad. The sample size is key to that deep dive table and a small sample can get very skewed in one direction.
Ninety-nine percent of all plays tracked are to win 1 unit or 0.5 units. You will get maybe one, max two plays from any one bet to win more than 1 unit.
With that being said, let's look at Week 13—one of the most frustrating weeks we have had at 4for4 since tracking so many people this year.
Skewed Stats Alert: Connor, Ryan and Sam all hit a 37-1 bet in Week 8, skewing their props up for the year. The year-to-date records will include it. All three of them risked 0.25 units to win 9.25 units. The prop was Elijah Mitchell to lead the league in rushing yards for Sunday games only.
Ryan Noonan
Week 13: 9-8, 52.94%, -0.61 units
YTD: 126-112-1 52.72%, 16.42 units
Dan’s Analysis: Ryan just came up short this and was in profit territory before the Patriots-Bills game. I don’t have a big takeaway from his Week 13 picks besides he had a slightly down week, my big takeaway is from his futures picks (see end of article).
Ryan's best categories continue to be WR and TE props and team totals—60% or above in each of those categories. To my surprise, Ryan’s QB props are sitting at 6-10 this far. I didn’t think his QB props would be sitting this low but variance comes with gambling and Ryan (or any other gambler) doing well over so many categories isn’t realistic.
Connor Allen
Week 13: 9-6, 60%, 1.96 units
YTD: 120-94, 56.07%, 28.71 units
Dan’s Analysis: Profit is profit. It was a nice week for Connor as he continued his stellar November into December. This was about the time last year Connor caught fire and went on a tear in December. Connor is approaching his 35-unit mark he hit last year and we still have the rest of the season and playoffs, but his futures aren’t looking.
Connor continues to do well in QB and WR props. He is 21-16 (56.76%) for 7.62 units in QB props, while 50-28 (64.10%) for 20.82 units in WR props. My hunch was correct when I thought Connor would slowly bounce back in RB props after a dreadful September start, as he currently sits at 36-35 (50.70%). Even if you take out the Elijah Mitchell long-shot prop, Connor is getting close to break-even in units for RB props.
Sam Hoppen
Week 13: 0-4, 0%, -4.05 unit
YTD: 32-26, 55.17%, 13.23 units
Dan’s Analysis: This was Sam’s worse week since Week 3, when he went 1-6 for -5.20 units. I personally don’t have takeaways besides Sam just had a bad week that falls in line with bad runs handicappers have. Sam’s best category is still QBs despite losing his lone QB prop this week. Sam sits at 9-6 (60%) for QB props on the year.
Greg Smith
Week 13: 3-3, 50%, 0.15 units
YTD: 59-53, 52.68%, 4.49 units
Dan’s Analysis: Greg is working in some of the most efficient gambling markets out there. What I mean is that a half-point to a full point is the difference between having a winning weekend versus a losing weekend. With totals, you will see 1- or 2-point swings, but both of these markets are by far the hardest to win in the long term. For example, in Week 3, Greg had such bad beats on Raiders -3.5 and under 45.5. If the Raiders do their job and don’t allow the Dolphins to score in the end, he goes 4-4 instead of 2-6. That series had a net swing of 4.2 units that cost him 2.2 units.
A light week for Greg. Keep in mind Greg might be just above the break-even point, 52.38%, (assuming lines are mostly -110), but those losses include some that were only risked to win half units. Not much to take away from Greg this week besides he continues to do well betting against the spread with a year-to-date (YTD) record of 29-23 for 55.57%.
Dalton Kates
Week 13: 3.50 units
YTD: 11.53 units
Dan’s Analysis: Dalton is the Weekend Specialist at 4for4 and actually the one who tipped everyone off to the Elijah Mitchell most rushing yards Sunday only bet from Week 8. If you look at his name on the tracker, you will notice a lot of long shots, an area he has done well this year. If you didn’t read his Week 10 article, Dalton has hit some specials already but he wasn’t “technically” giving out 4for4 picks yet so you will be seeing me reiterate each week his tracked record versus actual record is going to be different in the tracker. Using his Week 10 article, Dalton started at 16.8 units just betting specials only.
What you don’t see from Dalton is a win-loss record. Since Dalton is working with a lot of long shots, a win-loss record is a bad way to measure him because so many long shots are losers and one winner completely changes a week and YTD record when looking at units. Lastly, Dalton is doing some regular weekly props along with long shots.
Dalton this week hit a nice +650 on Jonathan Taylor to lead NFL rushers Sunday only and hit Jonathan Taylor over 105.5 rush yards. Dalton got a nice scenario with Joe Burrow and Ja'Marr Chase having massive game script for them when the Bengals went down early versus the Chargers. The Bengals' offense got going, just with the wrong receiver.
Anthony Stalter
Week 13: 1-2, 33.33%, -1.20 units
YTD: 21-19, 52.50%, 1.16 units
TJ Calkins
Week 13: 3-0, 100%, 3.00 units
YTD: 14-20, 41.18%, -8.00 units
Dan’s Analysis: Both Anthony and TJ suffer from small sample sizes. I just wanted them in the article as the entire 4for4 crew for NFL is being tracked by me. The record will speak for both because deep-diving them wouldn't yield much analysis.
Futures Bets Update (Connor & Ryan)
Disclaimer: These bets aren’t graded yet because books require teams to complete the 18-game schedule and that is how I will be grading these. The winners and losers you see mentioned are how they would be graded if the season ended today. The downside to me saying how the bets would be graded after 13 weeks would be skewed negatively.
Ryan’s Futures
Dan’s Analysis: I have told myself that the Washington Football Team and Cleveland Browns to win their divisions are all but dead the last few weeks. Color me shocked these two plays aren’t dead yet. In fact, the Ravens losing to the Steelers and Washington continuing to win games is keeping these bets alive, but I personally think being down two games each is asking a lot to overcome. However, the Browns have one game against the Ravens left, while Washington has both games versus the Cowboys to play still, so we will see.
Another bet that looked good up until Week 13 was Bills over 11 wins—they currently sit 7-5 with games against the Buccaneers and Patriots remaining, and they very well could lose both games. In order for the Bills to go over 11 wins, they have no wiggle room left and can’t afford to lose to anyone else if this bet wants to cash.
Outside of those three bets, all of Ryan’s futures bets look good to me, in the sense I think they end up cashing or come close to cashing. In fact, one bet has already cashed—Matthew Stafford over 26 passing touchdowns.
Connor’s Futures
Dan’s Analysis: Connor is doing well in regular season props but isn’t looking so hot in his futures. As I write this, Connor has four losses already—a parlay involving Ryan Fitzpatrick over 3,900.5 pass yards, Austin Ekeler under six rushing touchdowns, Deebo Samuel under 850.5 receiving yards and Marquise Brown under 60.5 receptions.
Connor has some other props that aren’t dead yet but aren’t looking so good either. Jalen Hurts over 3,700.5 pass yards, Sam Darnold over 21 passing touchdowns and Mike Davis over 777.5 rushing yards are all plays I plan on marking losses.
On the flip side, Emmanuel Sanders over 600.5 receiving yards, Lions under five wins and Texans under four wins are all bets I plan on marking as wins.
As for the rest of the bets, I give them anywhere between 45-55% to win or lose after Week 13. If Connor is going to have winning futures picks overall, my guess is it comes down to if Patrick Mahomes and Kyle Pitts break all-time records of most passing yards (over 5,477.5 passing yards) and TE rookie receiving yards record (over 1,076.5). If these picks look within range by Week 15, I could see either player or team trying to help them break these records. Peyton Manning holds the record for most passing yards (5,477 set in 2013), while Mike Ditka set the TE rookie receiving yards record in 1961.
