Game Flowbotics: Week 14 Picks Against the Spread

Dec 08, 2021

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Week 14 is here, and I’m back with more picks against the spread based on the Game Flowbotics spreadsheet, which gathers pace and efficiency data from Football Outsiders for each matchup on the slate. The universal struggle between offensive and defensive schemes in the NFL has swung toward tacklers, and we’re at the point in the season where cold weather and injury attrition are working together to suppress scoring across the league. It seems the sportsbooks have taken notice because the game totals in Week 14 are pretty low for the most part. Still, I find myself strategically leaning toward unders in the picks I’ve highlighted below. Before we get to those, however, let’s recap how last week went.

Accountability

Last week, I went 4-3 with my picks for a gain of 0.65 units. Year to date, my record is 54-46-1 (54.0%) and I’m up 5.4 units overall. Despite writing about how I was going to re-focus and eliminate sloppy mistakes, I still made a huge one in my picks for Week 13. Yes, I really did pick the over for Dolphins-Giants with Mike Glennon at quarterback for New York. Why would I do such a thing? Well, I didn’t actually know Glennon was going to be the starter when I wrote up the pick. Somehow, I had missed the news on Daniel Jones’s injury coming out of Week 12. It’s legitimately embarrassing to admit this because it’s such an egregious error. Hopefully, any of you who read that article had enough sense to realize I was out of my element and avoided that pick. For those of you who did tail me, just know I lost right alongside you. We shared the pain.

I’ll keep the takeaways from my other two losses brief. First, I had under 18.5 points for the Bears against the Cardinals. Turns out I should have bet Arizona to cover the eight-point spread instead, but the expectation for their defense to take care of business against Andy Dalton was sound, so I don’t mind taking that L so much. Second, I was wrong on the 49ers yet again and need to stop betting their games. It’s as simple as that.