Charting a Course for NFL Best Bets for Week 14 and Beyond
In today's Betting Life Newsletter, chart NFL teams' Week 14 projections, review expected points per play, look ahead to conference seeding, and more.
In today's Betting Life Newsletter:
Howdy-ho everyone! You may be wondering, hey John, what are you doing here on this lovely Taco Tuesday? Just a quick heads up on a slight programming change. First, a huge thanks as always for reading. I seriously appreciate you spending time here with us. Hope you’re all learning a little bit every day, having a great time, and making a few bucks while we’re at it.
Wednesday’s usual data-based newsletter moves here to Tuesdays before a quick break in the action. Then, I return with my patented one-two punch and your favorite game-day writeups on Thursday and Sunday. Let’s close out strong!
Total Recall: The beginning of each week marks square one to set our foundation for the NFL schedule ahead—and the best place to start that grind comes directly from the books themselves. Remember, the house can’t help but tip its hand by posting live team totals.
For whatever reason, these implied team totals can be unusually hard to wrangle. So, of course, in my never-ending quest to make this newsletter an irreplaceable part of your daily routine, I charted all of this week’s baseline (-110) totals to highlight outliers.
Allow us to do the dirty work so you won’t have to.
TT Takeaways: My main reaction comes off the top rope from a macro perspective. Notice how high the weekly average is getting? Granted, six teams finally get a bye but Washington and Baltimore are among them—easily two of the league’s most prolific scoring offenses. Without a single team implying fewer than 16 points, Week 14’s average total sits over 22. Smells fishy to me honestly. I understand we’re coming off a top-3 weekend in terms of all the nerdy offensive stuff: plays/game, yards/play, drive distance, success rate, and TD/drive rate. I love fireworks, too. The thing is week-over-week stats aren’t sticky. It took five different teams eclipsing 35 points, and the weather’s getting gross all over. So what I mean to say is, on the whole, I’m pumping the brakes on some massive leaguewide breakout.
I’m going to do a little more digging into the center of the board than usual. I bet you six to eight of these teams don’t get to 17—now it’s a just matter of figuring out which ones.
Total Recall, indeed.
A Happy Tuesday to all of you from everyone here at the Betting Life newsletter! Don’t be shy, contact me anytime on X @JohnLaghezza with questions, comments, or feedback. I love hearing back from you! We’re here to help!
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What else is in today’s newsletter?
- Tuesday Charts: Team Expected Points Added Per Play
- Look Into My Crystal Ball: One Seed, Two Seed, Green Seed, Blue Seed
The latest analysis and insights from our merry band of sports betting nerds:
🧨 What offense is ready to explode? Dwain’s Utilization Report lights the fuse ahead of Week 14.
💰A 19-leg College Football parlay? You bet it hit.
🤯 What’s the Chiefs’ record ATS? LaMarca has the Week 14 wager.
🏆 Is it possible that Josh Allen has caught—and passed—the competition for NFL MVP?
🤶 Grandma went holiday shopping after a few trips to the casino. What a haul.
Tuesday Charts🧠📊—Team Expected Points Added Per Play
Each week I’ll be presenting the league through the lens of a single image. While no one picture or stat can truly shoulder such a load, learning to take the temperature of each team’s offensive and defensive expected points added (EPA) will sharpen your game—this per-play metric that defines the value of each play by the effect it has on the offense's likelihood to score.
It provides an analytically dense, perspective-laden snapshot that is absolutely worth familiarizing yourself with.
NOTE: The cross is league average. Also, positive EPA is ideal on both sides of the ball—so in this specific case below, the closer to the upper-right corner, the better a team’s combined performance in both phases.
THE GOOD:
DET/PHI—It’s a definitive two-horse race for the top spot in the NFC. Check this stat out. Both the Lions and Eagles score higher in EPA than any other team in the conference ON BOTH SIDES OF THE BALL. Think about that. Over the last six weeks, there hasn’t been a single team with an outlier unit on even one side of the ball. If balance is the name of the game, expect to see these two square off two weeks before the Super Bowl.
BUF—Credit to Sean McDermott and Buffalo, deserving of major recognition. The Bills are playing the best defense in the conference, trailing only Lamar Jackson’s Ravens. No shame there. Considering the variety of ways in which the Bills can win, I don’t see anyone getting in their way. That includes you, Mr. Patrick Mahomes.
THE BAD:
NYJ—The Jets stink so bad, I’d rather drink from a hospital mop bucket than wish their fandom on anyone. It pains me constantly and my children don’t deserve this misery. Of all the terrible teams this season, New York truly deserves a special brand of disdain. They’re healthy at quarterback plus suddenly, the defense can’t stop a snowball in a sauna. Imagine if I told you the Jets’ D would be worse than the Raiders or Panthers for an extended period. Abandon ship.
ATL—Perhaps the running theme between our bad teams of adding aged and injured QBs could serve as a lesson going forward. No one thought the Falcons’ defense would set the world ablaze but the offense with Kirk Cousins posting a negative EPA across six weeks? Yuck. Atlanta’s only avenue to the postseason goes through the division, where it’s tied at 6-6 with Tampa. I don’t know about you, but I’d much rather see the Bucs going to the dance.
THE UGLY:
NYG/LV—When backup quarterbacks take over already poorly constructed rosters, the results are predictably ugly. Outside of a single pass-catcher on each team in Malik Nabers and Brock Bowers, there’s no ticket price low enough to get me to watch this filth. Both squads sit at 2-10 in a veritable race to the bottom. Players play to win. But sometimes coaches harpoon records with questionable decision-making. Expect little to nothing or less from here on out.
WEEK 14 NFL PLAYER PROJECTIONS
Look Into My Crystal Ball🏈🔮—One Seed, Two Seed, Red Seed, Blue Seed
THE BETS: Eagles NFC No. 1 Seed (+190) / Bills AFC No. 1 Seed (+105)
This pair of conference futures feeds right off the EPA charts above. Let’s tackle them quickly one at a time.
PHI—If you understand that EPA chart above, it really speaks volumes. Chop up the spreadsheets however you’d like, Philadelphia’s been fantastic this season. The Eagles are leading the NFL in net-yard differential (the team stat I’d turn to if I had to choose only one) by a remarkable 26%! Wow. Despite being a game behind the Lions for the NFC’s No. 1 seed, the devil’s in the details—there’s a huge disparity in schedules going forward.
Lions face: vs. GB, vs. BUF, at CHI, at SF, vs. MIN
Eagles face: vs. CAR, vs. PIT, at WAS, vs. DAL, vs. NYG
Not even close if you ask me. Detroit's got two 10-win teams on the horizon, compared to the Eagles’ zero, with double the amount of road games. They also will not face each other this season, so for reference the next tiebreaker is conference record. DET also leads that category by a single game but will face tough defenses every week from here on out. In fact, only San Fran has allowed more than 20 points a game to the opposition.
I have this race much closer to even than the ~35% probabilistic implication of a (+190) price. Fly, Eagles, Fly!
BUF—This (+105) price just may be straight-up wrong. No one can stop fawning over the Chiefs. I get it. I just happen to think Buffalo’s the better, more well-rounded team. KC nearly lost to the Panthers and Raiders the last two weeks—a far cry from the Bills.
Chiefs face: vs LAC, at CLE, vs HOU, at PIT, at DEN
Bills face: at LAR, at DET, vs NE, vs NYJ, at NE
Once again, the schedules aren’t comparable. Sure, Kansas City currently holds a slim one-game conference lead on the Bills with five games to go—except four of those games are against playoff opponents. Meanwhile the Bills close out with a Patriots/Jets sandwich. Oh, they also won their head-to-head matchup and would earn the top seed in the event of a tie. Circle those wagons, people.
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