Week 4 Football Pick’em Contest Strategy & Advice (2025)

We walk through NFL Week 4, pinpointing value selections and the upsets worth considering in NFL pick’em contests and spread pools.

by Spencer Limbach - Sep 29, 2025

We’re back with a fresh strategy for Week 4. This column pairs with our Football Pick’em Picks product, which blends public pick-popularity data with advanced modeling to surface the smartest plays for your pool.

Each week, we’ll cover practical tactics for both NFL and college pick’em, and explain the “why” behind key recommendations—especially when the numbers point to a contrarian side.

This article will be updated throughout the week with new insights and late-breaking notes. Here’s what’s included so far:

• 9/29: MNF Doubleheader
• 9/28: Sunday Rooting Rundown
• 9/26: Duke a Big Value Fave; Alabama a Value Dog Against Georgia
• 9/25: Seattle the Popular Pick Tonight on TNF
• 9/24: Line Movement in ATL-WAS
• 9/24: Dart Starting for NYG
• 9/23: Week 4 Early Value Picks
• 9/23: Week 3 Results
• FYI: Notes About Picks We Highlight
• FYI: About Our Pick’em Pool Advice

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Sunday 9/28

Monday Night Football Doubleheader

With two games on Monday Night Football, it’s a good time to reassess strategy for both weekly and season-long pools.

The public is leaning heavily in certain spots, which opens up potential value plays if you’re looking to gain ground:

• Jets as a potential value play in game winner and spread pools. One option is the Jets, who we project at 43.6% win odds, while only 23% of the public is backing them outright. That’s also reflected against the spread, where just 37% are on the Jets +2.5. If you’re behind and need a differentiator, this could be a calculated way to make up ground.
• Public flocking to Denver -7.5. On the other side, in the Denver vs. Cincinnati matchup, about 75% of the public is riding the Broncos at -7.5. That leaves the Bengals +7.5 as a potential leverage play if you want to fade the crowd and take a contrarian angle.

Ultimately, how you play these games depends on how aggressively you want to play your position, but both present opportunities to gain an edge.

Sunday 9/28

Sunday Rooting Rundown

Our pick recommendations can be for different teams for different types of pools. What we recommend in a season-long can differ from what we recommend in a weekly contest, and spread pools can be a different beast. Even in spread pools, you may have a different pick recommendation than our general numbers, because of the specific numbers available in your pool.

This Week 4 rooting guide offers a general overview of our pick recommendations, and individual results may vary.

We also have an early morning game in Dublin, in that one, we are heavily on the Minnesota Vikings in both game winner and spread pools.

Here are the rest.

Game Winner

In season-long, you mostly have favorites. Right now, our models are aligned on all the smaller favorites being properly above 50% for this week.

In weekly contest prize pools, you will see the following dogs and close games featured more heavily:

• New York Jets (75%)
• Kansas City (74%)
• Jacksonville (52%)

With some unpopular toss-up situations where we are getting the slight favorite at high value, like Atlanta, who was the underdog early in the week but has moved to the favorite role against Washington, and Las Vegas against Chicago, we do not have to take as many upset chances this week. There are also a lot of larger favorites, so the strategy comes down to locking in the bigger favorites based on risk and attacking the value plays here.

 Spread Pools

Here are our top picks in season-long ATS pools, Max Profit picks by percentage, all at over 95% recommended:

• New York Giants (99.7%)
• Minnesota (98.6%)
• Cleveland (97.9%)
• Tampa Bay (95.4%)

We see fewer teams this week at high concentration than in past weeks, perhaps a function of some contest line variation. Our models also do not have as many strong stands this week.

And here are all those over 95% in weekly formats, where popularity influences more (those that did not appear on the season-long list are bolded):

• New York Giants (99.5%)
• Jacksonville (99.4%)
• Cleveland (99.3%)
• Atlanta (99.2%)
• Cincinnati (98.4%)
• Indianapolis (98.2%)
• Kansas City (96.8%)
• New York Jets (95.8%)
• Dallas (95.6%)

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Friday 9/26

Duke is a Big Value Favorite; Alabama a Value Dog Against Georgia

We’ll turn to college football for some value picks as we head to the weekend, ahead of a pretty big Saturday of action as conference play starts to pick up.

Duke (-5) is a strong value favorite at Syracuse. But over 80% of public picks are coming in on the Orangemen in game winner pools, coming off their upset of Clemson.

We get the big Alabama vs. Georgia showdown, and Georgia is a three-point favorite. We have Alabama with 45% win odds, and they are the higher-rated team in our predictive power ratings, even though it is at Georgia. The public has Georgia on their mind, though, taking the Dawgs 87% of the time.

We have four other notable value favorites this week:

• Kansas State (-6.5) vs. UCF: 68% win odds, 36% popularity
• Arizona State (-3) vs. TCU: 59% win odds, 35% popularity
• Ole Miss (-1.5) vs. LSU: 53% win odds, 34% popularity
• Penn State (-3.5) vs. Oregon: 64% win odds, 50% popularity

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Thursday 9/25

Seattle is the Popular Pick Tonight on TNF

Seattle is traveling to Arizona to start Week 4 on Thursday Night Football. Seattle has seen their win odds increase slightly, as they have now ticked up to a 2-point road favorite. In pick’em pools, that may be offset somewhat by their high popularity, where about 70% of the public is going with Seattle in both spread and game winner pools.

You will probably see Seattle in season-long pools but could be getting Arizona in weekly upset picks for game winner, as well as in spread pools.

Right now, we are seeing a pretty significant split depending on whether you are playing for a weekly prize pool or not, with Arizona’s low popularity giving them the edge in that format.

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Wednesday 9/24

Line Movement in Falcons-Commanders

We have some line movement in the Washington vs. Atlanta game. On Tuesday, the line was Commanders -1.5, but several sportsbooks have since changed it to Falcons -1.5 as of Wednesday afternoon.

Most notably, Commanders QB Jayden Daniels was limited in practice on Wednesday, and he’s still questionable to play. WR Terry McLaurin also did not practice, and his status will be determined on Friday.

There’s a chance the line isn’t done moving, especially since we don’t have concrete news. Either way, this sets up the Falcons as a value play in game winner and spread pools at -1.5, as the public is only taking them at a 25% rate in both.