Game Flowbotics: Week 5 Picks Against the Spread

Oct 06, 2021

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Four weeks down, 14 to go in the regular season. Here in Week 5, we’re getting to the sweet spot where we can more easily identify the teams we understand best—teams with the knack for covering that we want to ride, as well as faulty teams we love to consistently fade. At the same time, the bookmakers setting the lines are also paying attention, so we can’t get complacent.

The nice thing about using the Game Flowbotics spreadsheet as my starting point for picking games against the spread is it doesn’t care about the bookmakers’ biases or my own. The sheet’s efficiency and pace stats from Football Outsiders aren’t perfect predictors (not even close after only four weeks), but at least they’re rooted in fact. If I can’t contextualize those numbers against other known information to pick more winners than losers, it’s on me to refine my process and improve my utilization of the data. I’m hoping last week’s turnaround is a step along that path in 2021, but it’s always a challenge to stay on top of player news and ahead of public perceptions in search of profitable plays.

Accountability

I went 6-3 with last week’s picks for a gain of 3.66 units. After a rough couple of weeks prior, my year-to-date record has bounced back to 19-19, but I’m still down 2.04 units overall. Regardless, I’m moving back in the right direction and hoping to keep it going in Week 5 and beyond.