Estimated true odds of all six teams when you pick the six

if all teams are 90% to not make the playoffs its a good bet

actually based on the current "to make playoff" odds, assuming they're efficient or close

buffalo, cleveland, jacksonville, detroit, tampa, st louis

looks like it might be a good bet this year

What book has to make playoff odds?

5d had them up for a while

betus has them up but the juice is ridiculous

Bodog has lines. Assuming all the %s are independent (which they're not), I calculate the win%s for this bet to be:
5 teams 46.24%
6 teams 37.49%
7 teams 29.6%

Football Outsiders Projections - Odds to win 9 games or more

Buffalo - 8%
Cleveland - 8%
Detroit - 1%
Jacksonville - 21%
St. Louis - 14%
Tampa Bay - 36%

Odds of one of these teams winning 9 games: 63.5%. Of course, 9 wins doesnt always get you into the playoffs, and there's great questions about the probabilities listed here.

Replace Tampa with Oakland (6% by FO) and the odds are now 46.4% for one of those 6 to make 9 wins.

Based on FO: Carolina (25%), Chicago (60%), Jacksonville (21%), Kansas City (61%), St. Louis (14%), Tampa Bay (36%), Seattle (30%) are the teams that are most likely to wreck the party in their number crunching.

If you believe in these numbers, the ticket you want to play is: Detroit (1%), Oakland (6%), Cleveland (8%), Buffalo (8%), Houston (11%), San Francisco (13%).

If FO's numbers are right that ticket has atleast a 60.9% chance of cashing. But if you throw in the 7th team (St. Louis 14%), its cut to 52%. I've seen Kansas City on a large number of tickets.

Please tell me that San Fran (13%) is a typo...

they're projecting sf to finish last in the nfc west. 6 wins i think?

i don't think using fo's projections for betting is necessarily a great idea

Why not? I think they had a rough year last year but I think they beat o/u's by a healthy meassure the previous 3 years. I know their college guy/formula destroyed college football o/u's last year.. like 28-13-6 on all the teams they could find lines for.

They had an awful year last year on nfl o/us. -17 units if you bet to win 1 unit on favs and bet 1 unit on dog lines. This comparison was against lines in may, which are if anything softer.

Their 2008 record was +2.3 units vs nfl over unders.

These calculation are based on betting any difference between their lines and available lines. If we are going to throw out all the numbers that FO produced which differ from sportsbook lines by less than 0.5 wins year by year sample sizes are going to be pretty small.

I think they should wait til mid-late August to release their almanac/predictions. I'm looking through it now and there's lots of spring information in here that is no longer accurate and relevant. An injury to a guy like Elvis Dumervil is massive to Denver's chances. FO would do themselves alot of good by waiting until late as possible to put out their almanac. They would still get the sales and their predictions would be more accurate. There are two types of people who buy their book: 1. Those waiting on pins and needles for the release, having to have the first copy at their local store. 2. Those who snatch it up in mid-late August as their fantasy drafts are 2 days away. They will still buy it if its released August 25th.

That being said, I'm feeling the Chiefs. I think they are going to have a big year.

FO is comically stupid. The nuthuggers are just blinded by nuthugging love.

I was going to elaborate, but there isn't any point. Its just a bunch of nerd with a website pulling **** out of their ass. Whats worse is that they're quasi-touts (Didn't they release plays?) as opposed to Fangraphs which just explains betting in gummi-bear laced metaphors, but doesn't say "bet this, this and this". Regardless, no one with money believes FO season predictions, if they did... they wouldn't have that money for long.

I like the Browns, Bengals, Chiefs, Bills, Rams and Buccaneers here.

this is true

the guy at advancednflstats did a good breakdown showing how picking every team to go 8-8 does a better job than football outsiders. Basically, no info is better than the FO projections.

doesn't FO predict the cowboys will go 6-10 or something this year

FO is like 538. Everyone who's like "OMG I won so much mobnies using their stuff" is just a complete drooler or takes a really really weird view (perhaps also time wise as well, magically choosing when to jump on in) on how to position size using this "great" source of information

You gotta estimate true odds

not look at odds including crazy juice

I'm booking my friend's action on this bet. He chose:

Bills
Browns
Chiefs
Lions
Bucs
Rams


I hate to admit it but his list looks pretty good. What do you think?

advanced NFL stats' poking fun at football outsiders season win predictions

there is something seriously wrong with the way FO does projections

I gotta think raiders make playoffs more than Jags

Its not actually that great of a breakdown because it was a single year and so therefore does not look at whether it was a one year abberation. Here's FOs results versus vegas http://vegaswatch.net/2010/01/2009-n...ons-recap.html

Vegas Watch is a massive idiot.

i remember a couple of years ago some guy who would post his nfl picks and his reasoning for every argument was football outsiders. the market is stupid since FO says the spread should be -10 when its +3

wonder what happened to him