Week 4 Football Pick’em Contest Strategy & Advice (2024)

Week 4 of the 2024 NFL season gives us another round of underdogs that can bite as value picks to consider.

The Colts and Jonathan Taylor will try to give the Steelers their first loss (Jeffrey Brown/Icon Sportswire)

The dogs have continued to bark loudly so far in 2024, and the biggest favorite has now lost in three straight weeks. After yet another week of big swings, we are back with Week 4 pick’em strategy analysis to accompany our 2024 Football Pick’em Picks product. 

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 4, so check back for updates. Here’s what’s available now:

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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 with less than 50% of your opponents picking it 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.

Thursday 9/26

Cowboys-Giants on TNF

The Cowboys and Giants face off to start Week 4 on Thursday Night Football. Dallas is a 5.5-point favorite with 68% win odds.

Because of the dynamics of this week, where there are a lot of smaller favorites, plenty having below 50% pick popularity, our logic is mostly sticking with the Cowboys, in weekly game winner as well as season-long.

In spread pools, you are more likely to see more of a split, with the Giants moving up as a spread pick in weekly prize pools due to popularity.

Wednesday 9/25

Seven Teams Where We Disagree With Public

This is kind of an unusual week. Often, the public and oddsmakers will agree on which team is more likely to win, and it’s just a matter of identify relative value propositions within those favorites.

In Week 4, there are a lot of disagreements, though. Add in that there are several games with small spreads, where our models favor the slight underdog outright, and there are seven total games where we have one team at >50% to win, and the public is picking the other side more than half the time.

We highlighted several of these in the value picks. While few of them are massive value plays, they are all slight value opportunities against the public. In season-long pools, it also means we are picking some very small dogs, and also getting a popularity discount. The games we favor the underdog to win are:

  • Indianapolis (+2): 51% to win, 25% popularity
  • Tennessee (+1): 51% to win, 47% popularity
  • Cleveland (+1): 52% to win, 38% popularity

We also have six total games with win odds of 55% or lower on the favorite, so small line moves could shift who we recommend this week. So check back closer to the pick deadline to see where the picks have shifted.

Tuesday 9/24

Week 4 Early Value Picks

Here are the early value picks we are seeing for Week 4.

Indianapolis Colts (vs. Pittsburgh Steelers)

Spread: +2
Win Odds: 50%
Pick Popularity: 26%

The Pittsburgh Steelers are off to a 3-0 start, as they go on the road to Indianapolis. The public is heavily on the Steelers here, but this is one of the smaller spreads of the week, and it has moved downward. The Steelers’ defense is ranked first overall, but they are only managing 17 points per game, and have a smaller margin of error in this one. There’s value in grabbing the slight home underdog here and countering the popularity for Pittsburgh.

Baltimore Ravens (vs. Buffalo Bills)

Spread: -2.5
Win Odds: 58%
Pick Popularity: 50%

Buffalo just won in impressive fashion, twice, in primetime games over the last two weeks. Now, they go on the road to Baltimore, who is coming off their first win. The public is evenly split on this AFC heavyweight showdown, which means some value on the favored Ravens.

Atlanta Falcons (vs. New Orleans Saints)

Spread: -1
Win Odds: 55%
Pick Popularity: 44%

We’ve got our next IKB (I Know Better) game with the public picking the Saints more, while Atlanta is the slight favorite. New Orleans came back to earth a bit last week, losing at home to the Eagles, in a game where they were significantly out-gained in yards (460 to 219). Atlanta is coming off a very tough 1-2 start, playing three close games against teams with a combined 6-0 record against the rest of the league.

With Atlanta getting a popularity discount here, stick with them at home for the best value.

Green Bay Packers (vs. Minnesota Vikings)

Spread: -2.5
Win Odds: 54%
Pick Popularity: 45%

Jordan Love is expected to return to action this week, and Green Bay managed to win both games in his absence. Minnesota, meanwhile, has been the biggest surprise of the season so far, winning three straight games, including a blowout win over Houston last week. With the Vikings’ hot start, the bandwagon is loading up, and a majority of pool players are taking the Vikings this week on the road in Lambeau Field.

This gives you yet another spot where you can pick the favorite, while also taking the less popular side.

Cleveland Browns (at Las Vegas Raiders)

Spread: +1
Win Odds: 52%
Pick Popularity: 41%

Our final value pick involves two teams that were upset last week, and now show down in a key game to see who can turn their season around. The spread on this one is within a point, and our models have a slight preference on the Browns. The public is on the Raiders more. This provides another opportunity to grab a little value on the less popular side in a close matchup.

Tuesday 9/24

Week 3 Results

NFL Week 3 again gave us big upsets. Five of the six biggest favorites lost outright. Overall, the underdogs went 8-8, but they were also only 8-8 against the spread. So, it was a mixed week where either the dogs won in big upsets or got beat handily.

Game Winner

In game-winner season-long pools, our picks averaged 8.2 wins compared to the public average of 7.7. For the year, season-long game-winner picks are about 1.5 wins ahead of the public average.

In weekly picks, the value picks again were a mixed bag. You might ask, “But shouldn’t the weekly picks do better with all these upsets?” That is a fair question, but the types of upsets have been key. Our value plays have typically been on unpopular smaller favorites, not the biggest upsets at longer odds that have been actually occurring. The weekly top option averaged 6.9 wins.

Spread Pools

For the second week in a row, we did outperform the public in spread pools with all the upsets. The public averaged 8.0 wins across all 16 games, a .500 record. Overall, our season-long spread picks averaged 9.1 wins, while the weekly picks in spread pools averaged 8.8 wins. We probably will not get the spread win rates like last week (which were about double the public expectation) but could have some depending on the pool.