Week 3 Football Pick’em Contest Strategy & Advice (2024)

Last weeks underdogs have turned into this weeks favorites as Week 3 of the 2024 NFL season brings new top picks for your pick’em contests.

Last week’s underdogs have turned into this week’s favorites as Week 3 of the 2024 NFL season brings new top picks for your pick’em contests. After a wild week full of upsets, we are back with Week 3 pick’em strategy analysis to accompany our 2024 Football Pick’em Picks product. Through two weeks, we’ve already seen big upsets and surprising teams get off to a hot start.

This column explores strategies to maximize your edge in NFL and college football pick’em contests. We also provide some rationale behind picks potentially recommended by our premium product.

We plan to periodically update this post through Sunday of Week 3, so check back for updates. Here’s what’s available now:

• 9/18: Jordan Love practicing?
• 9/17: Week 3 Value Picks 
• 9/17: Week 2 Results
• FYI: Notes About Picks We Highlight
• FYI: About Our Pick’em Pool Advice

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Important Notes About Picks We Highlight

Keep in mind three things about picks we highlight in this article:

1. Optimal pick’em contest strategy balances risk and potential reward.
   Maximizing your odds of winning a pick’em pool generally requires exploiting the best opportunities to differentiate your picks from your opponents’ picks. Ideally, you want to fade the public while taking on minimal additional pick risk. For example, taking a betting market favorite and having it picked by less than 50% of your opponents is usually a great opportunity.
2. Not all of the picks we highlight are suitable for all pools.
   

   Don’t be surprised if our Football Pick’em Picks product doesn’t recommend some of the picks mentioned in this post for your specific pool—especially the upset picks. The best pick strategy for you depends on several factors, such as your pool’s size, rules, and prize structure (a concept covered in part by our article on season vs. weekly prize strategy).

3. Picks we highlight may no longer look compelling by game day.
   We analyze and write about picks using data (e.g., win odds and pick popularity) that is current when we publish each section of the article, but that data can change before kickoff. For example, a key player being ruled out or a shift in public sentiment about a team can erase the differentiation value that a pick initially offered.

We’ll provide periodic updates in this post if significant data changes occur for the picks we’ve mentioned, so check back often. However, there’s a much better way to stay on top of changing data trends throughout the week, which all sharp players need to do.

Our Football Pick’em Picks product automatically imports the latest win odds and pick popularity data multiple times per day. You can see the latest information in the Data Grid.

After you generate customized picks for your pool, you can also update those pick recommendations via the My Pool Picks screen. The updated picks will incorporate the most recent data we have.

About Our Pick’em Pool Advice

What sets our Football Pick’em Picks product apart from other sites is that its recommendations aren’t generic—they’re tailored specifically to your pool.

In any given week, the best picks for your football pool depend on a number of variables. Your pool’s size, rules, and prize structure all influence strategy, as do factors like your current place in the standings and how many weeks are left.

So many different scenarios exist that it’s impossible to provide pick advice that makes sense across the board. An underrated 6-point underdog could be a great pick in a large weekly prize pool and a terrible pick for a small season-long pool where you’re currently in the money.

Technology to the rescue

As far as we know, we’re the only site that has built algorithms to evaluate all these strategy factors and provide you with customized pick recommendations every week.

The result? Every year, an average of 74% of our subscribers win a prize (season-long or weekly) in a football pick’em contest.

If you want to see all the Week 1 picks we recommend for your football pick’em contest, use our Football Pick’em Picks product.

Why we write this column

At the same time, we know our subscribers like to understand the rationale behind picks our product may recommend, especially when those picks go against the grain. So, over the years, we’ve started to write more about the “why” behind our approach.

This column can also help educate our readers about pick’em pool strategy. We highlight tactics proven to result in more pick’em pool wins over the long term and point out common pitfalls to avoid.

We hope you enjoy reading, and we encourage you to check out more of our F0otball Pick’em strategy articles.

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Wednesday 9/18

Jordan Love Practicing?

We await any official word on Packers QB Jordan Love, but he is reportedly participating in practice today in some capacity. The possibility that Love could play this week has caused the line to start to move, as the Titans have moved from -3 to -2 today. Tennessee is still favored, though, while the Packers are the more popular side.

Presumably, if Love is playing, this line will move even further, and we could see a massive shift, so make sure to check back as close to your pick deadline as possible to see where the numbers end up on this one.

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Tuesday 9/17

Week 3 Early Value Picks

Here are the early value picks we are seeing for Week 3.

Tennessee Titans (vs. Green Bay Packers)

Spread: -3
Win Odds: 65%
Pick Popularity: 37%

The 0-2 Titans are a field goal favorite at home against the Green Bay Packers, coming off a gritty win over Indianapolis last week without Jordan Love. The majority of pool participants so far think the Packers are the more likely winner here. We’ll point out that teams that start 0-2 straight up and against the spread since 2014 have covered 65% of the time in Week 3. Tennessee has also significantly underperformed, as they rank first in yards allowed but 23rd in points allowed, thanks to turnovers and non-defense-allowed touchdowns.

The Packers were very conservative and run-heavy last week to protect QB Malik Willis, and it worked out. They played with the lead all game, and the Colts made a lot of mistakes. But if the game plays out differently, and Green Bay cannot run for over 250 yards while rarely passing, the Titans have a good chance to cover this not only win the game, but also cover the spread.

Detroit Lions (at Arizona Cardinals)

Spread: -3
Win Odds: 59%
Pick Popularity: 61%

The Lions lost last week despite racking up 463 yards of offense and allowing only 216 yards. Teams that have finished with more than 200 yards more than their opponent have won 91% of the time since 2014. Detroit’s mistakes and missed plays led to a loss when they probably should have won.

Arizona is coming off an impressive win over the Rams, though the Rams are clearly hurting and not at full strength right now. The public is giving them a decent chance to win here. Compared to other favorites, the Lions are a solid favorite to play in pick’em pools to win this week and bounce back from a game they dominated but lost.

Philadelphia Eagles (at New Orleans Saints)

Spread: +2.5
Win Odds: 48%
Pick Popularity: 35%

The New Orleans Saints are rolling, leading the NFL in points scored and point differential after two weeks. They just dismantled Dallas 44-19. Philadelphia, meanwhile, is coming off a tough Monday Night loss to Atlanta. The public is warming to the Saints, so there’s a bit of upset value here on the Eagles.

Chicago Bears (at Indianapolis Colts)

Spread: +1
Win Odds: 49%
Pick Popularity: 43%

The Bears’ offense has not looked good so far. The Colts matched them with a pretty poor performance at Green Bay. These teams are pretty evenly matched, but the public is shading to the Colts’ side, creating a bit of value on the Bears in a toss-up swing game.

Carolina Panthers (at Las Vegas Raiders)

Spread: +5
Win Odds: 36%
Pick Popularity: 18%

The Raiders are coming off the biggest upset of the week and, in turn, have become a popular favorite against the Panthers. Carolina has looked awful through two games, managing only 13 points, dead last in the NFL. QB Bryce Young has been benched, and the team is turning to veteran QB Andy Dalton. The line has already dropped a bit after the announcement, and our models favor the underdog Panthers. So if you are in a larger weekly contest, playing on the upset here could be a good decision.

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Tuesday 9/17

Week 2 Results

NFL Week 2 was one for the big dogs. Underdogs overall went 8-7 (and Arizona was a pick’em). The six biggest underdogs went 4-2. With underdogs covering and winning outright, our spread picks performed better than the game-winner picks in Week 2.

Game Winner

In game-winner season-long pools, our picks averaged 6.7 wins compared to the public average of 7.5. For the year, season-long game winners are one win ahead of the public average.

In weekly picks, the value picks again mostly did not hit, except Arizona. The biggest value underdogs were Denver, the NY Giants, and Arizona as an unpopular pick’em. The weekly top option also averaged 6.8 wins.

Spread Pools

After a hot Week 1, the public dropped back in Week 2, averaging 7.0 wins across all 16 games. Overall, our season-long spread picks averaged 8.3 wins, just over .500, and gaining over a win back on the public average after falling behind in Week 1.

It was a better week in weekly spread pools, averaging 9.6 wins for a 60% cover week and beating the average public entry by 2.6 wins. That should result in a solidly above-average win rate in weekly ATS pools this week.