Week 1 NFL Pick'Em Plays Recap

This NFL season we are offering a Dub Club service for Pick'em plays on PrizePicks, Underdog, Pick6, and more. The product will be led by Jake Lotenberg and plays will come from himself, Connor Allen, Ryan Noonan, and the rest of the betting team at 4for4.

Plays will include official bets that we release on legal Sportsbooks, market outliers, early lines, and anything we deem as EV. We will primarily be focusing on player props (offensive and defensive). We have seen pick'em sites post openers days before Sportsbooks so we plan on hitting these hard when possible. Plays will be pushed out to our discord, email, and the Dub Club app through DubClub's technology.

A dub club subscription will also get you access to our pick’em discord channels, where you can run plays or questions by anyone on our team and interact with our 4for4 community. All of the plays we put out should be found on PrizePicks, Underdog, Vivid, Betr, Sleeper, Pick6, and pretty much any of the pick’em sites.

We plan to release at least four entries a week, and we’ll make an effort to have a play released for each slate (TNF, Sunday/SNF, and MNF). In Week 1, we were able to fire off 27 total plays (8 different entries). We also have 20 season-long props pending. In the pre-season, we fired a total of 58 plays for a record of 34-24 (58.62% win rate). This was good for a 20.86% ROI on 3-leg entries, 18.08% on 4-leg entries, and 38.44% on 5-leg entries.

Week 1 Recap

Week 1 Individual Leg Record: 18-9-1; Win Rate: 66.67%

Week 1 Entry Record: 2-6, +$800 (assumes betting $100 a play)

Wins

3 Leg Play released on 9/5 (Hill, Hardman, and Rice) +500

4 Leg Play released on 8/18 (Najee, Moss, Purdy, and Herbert) +900

We will be tracking in two different ways. First we will track our individual record on all props released. We will also track our entry record in the groups that we released the props in. We will refer to the individual legs as “plays,” and the overall groupings as “entries.” This week, we had 27 individual props released and 8 different release groups. Although it is up to each person to determine how much exposure and risk they want to take on, I recommend people not only take all the plays in one entry but mix and match as well. For example, when I release an entry with five legs, if possible, I suggest you use those individual legs to create different two-, three-, and four combo entries.

This is strictly a pick'em product, so we’ll be placing parlays with every entry. When placing these parlays on pick'em sites, it’s highly unlikely you will win more overall entries than you lose. I want everyone to understand that you should not expect to win more entries than you lose.

That said, I want you guys to understand how often we need to win to break even. Jack Miller from Establish the Run conducted research and wrote an article on the math behind all the pick’em games. In his article, he shares the entry and individual pick rate needed to break even at each pick level (2/3/4/5). The article does a really good job explaining pick’em payouts and optimal strategies. See below for a snippet of the article:



2 Leg entry win rate to break even: 33.33% — Individual Leg win rate to break even: 57.7%

3 Leg entry win rate to break even: 16.7% — Individual Leg win rate to break even: 55%

4 Leg entry win rate to break even: 10% — Individual Leg win rate to break even: 56.2%

5 Leg entry win rate to break even: 5% — Individual Leg win rate to break even: 54.9%

Every week I will share the chart below that will apply our weekly win rate to each pick level (2/3/4/5). For this exercise, we are going to use the standard Underdog payouts: 2 legs are +200, 3 legs are +500, 4 legs are +900, and 5 legs are +1900. For example, if you took every individual leg we released this week in pairs of two, your expected ROI% would be 33.35%. If you took all of the individual props in 3-leg parlays, your expected ROI would be 77.8%, on 4-leg parlays: 97.57%, and on 5-leg parlays: 163.44%. Obviously, this is unrealistic; it’s practically impossible to get all that money down and enter that many times, but we think it is reasonable to share.

I will also share another chart that applies our season-long win rate to each pick level so we can track our expected ROI based off of our season win rate.

Overall, I think the first week went really well. Here are a few plays with some brief recaps.

Mecole Hardman UNDER 16.5 / 9.5 Receiving Yards: Win

Based on his lack of usage in the preseason, it was apparent what Hardman's usage would be come season time. Hardman is the Chiefs' starting return man and will see little time at WR unless there are many injuries to their WR room. The signing of Juju was the cherry on top that Hardman was not going to play any more than a few snaps at WR; he ran 0 routes.

Rico Dowdle OVER 38.5 Rushing + Receiving Yards: Loss

Coming into Week 1, we assumed Dowdle would be the starting back based on HC McCarthy's comments during training camp and expected Dowdle to have more touches than Ezekiel Elliott; this assumption was incorrect; Dowdle was out-touched by Zeke 12-9. While Zeke did out-touch Dowdle, 9 touches is still enough to go over 38.5 here, but unfortunately, he was pretty inefficient and averaged 3.5 yards per touch.

Justice Hill OVER 1.5 Receptions: Win

HC John Harbaugh had raved about Justice all training camp, labeling him as a “starting back,” and said on numerous occasions that Justice would play “a lot” for them. In a trailing game script, Justice is going to be out there much more than Henry because of his pass-catching ability; the Ravens fell behind early, so we saw a heavy dose of Justice. Justice out-snapped Derrick Henry 43-37 and posted a receiving line of 6/52/0.

Will Levis OVER 216.5 Passing Yards: Loss

We got in on this line early at 216.5, and it closed at 231.5 or 232.5. I thought and still believe that the Titans will be a more pass-heavy team this season under new head coach Brian Callahan. This game was ugly. Rookie Caleb Williams didn't throw for over 100 yards, and Levis barely cleared 100. Levis didn't look good out there, and I think I underestimated what it takes to throw for over 216.5 pass yards in the NFL. Also, the Bears' defense looked pretty good. Dhop being banged up and barely playing didn’t help Levis's passing success, either.