NFL Spread and O/U Picks: Hunter's Wildcard Weekend Best Bets

Jan 09, 2025

Brian Fluharty-Imagn Images

Week 18 ends on a downswing again. A poor Sam Darnold Monday Night game put us 2-3 on the week for -4.39 units. After a poor start to the year, we clawed our way back to almost even again before my worst week of all time over Thanksgiving week. That, unfortunately, was only the beginning of a downward trajectory for my bets. We ended the regular season with a final total of 52 wins, 64 losses, and 2 pushes for a 44.83% win percentage and a loss of 37.93 units. Awful.

Let’s start with the lone bright spot. Unders went 15-11 for +8.37 units. Overs went 18-18 going for -1.97 units worth of juice. Sides were an absolute trainwreck all year long, though. They went 19-35-2 for -44.32 units. Horrendous. Everyone was better off flipping a coin than betting on any side I made a write-up for. Oddly enough, sides were also where a majority of the closing line value came from this season, with +1.6% CLV. Every bet I tracked was, at minimum, the 3rd worst line I could find from major books, and in some cases, I tracked the worst possible line available at the time. I was also betting later in the week than typical. Some of that is due to the time it takes to complete write-ups, and some of that is just due to unavailability on Sunday/Monday.

That said, everyone paying for a subscription deserved much better. I apologize to all of you for a losing NFL season. I’ve had people DM me with questions throughout the season, including some people who wanted help with pick-ems each week, and hopefully, I provided value there. I finally received some hate via Twitter that's not worth responding to ever, but I understand the frustrations. I also lost a good amount of my own bankroll this year, and yeah, it sucks. As for how I approach making numbers, I’d have to re-evaluate some of the box scores this offseason to see what went wrong and why in a large number of games. There are games that stick out that lost that felt bad at the time (Broncos vs. Bengals Week 17) where I was on the wrong side, but there were also a ton of games that lost that likely had no business losing (Jacksonville vs. Eagles in Week 9 and Jacksonville vs. Minnesota Week 10).