Week 5 Football Pick’em Contest Strategy & Advice (2025)

We walk through NFL Week 5, pinpointing value selections and the upsets worth considering in NFL pick’em contests and spread pools.

by Spencer Limbach - Oct 3, 2025

We’re back with a fresh strategy for Week 5. 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:

• 10/5: Sunday Rooting Rundown
• 10/3: CFB Public Fades in Spread Pools
• 10/2: Rams Become Big Favorite on Thursday with 49ers Injuries
• 10/1: Browns to Start Rookie QB Dillon Gabriel
• 9/30: Week 5 Early Value Picks
• 9/30: Week 4 Results
• FYI: Notes About Picks We Highlight
• FYI: About Our Pick’em Pool Advice

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Sunday 10/5

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

We also have another early morning game, this one in London, as the Minnesota Vikings stay overseas and now play the Cleveland Browns. We are heavily on Minnesota in season-long game winner, while Cleveland is the most common choice in both weekly game winner pools, and spread pools.

Here are the rest.

Game Winner

In season-long, you mostly have favorites. We do have three games with very low spreads. You are mostly getting Houston against Baltimore, and Carolina versus Miami. The NY Jets and Dallas Cowboys are close to an even split in our season long game winners.

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

• Carolina (99%)
• New York Jets (98%)
• Washington (78%)
• Cleveland (62%)

It’s a week with some larger favorites, and then several close matchups. Our weekly strategy this week largely revolves around playing the values in those toss-up games, and maybe adding an upset or two among the teams that are an underdog of around a field goal.

 Spread Pools

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

• Seattle (99.8%)
• New York Jets (99.7%)
• Tennessee (99.6%)
• New Orleans (99.5%)
• Jacksonville (96.9%)

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 Jets (99.9%)
• Tennessee (99.7%)
• New Orleans (99.6%)
• Jacksonville (99.5%)
• Seattle (99.4%)
• Denver (99.4%)
• Las Vegas (98.8%)
• New England (98.9%)
• Washington (96.9%)
• Houston (96.8%)
• Carolina (96.0%)

We see the same top teams from season-long show up at the top, but then others also rise based on opponent popularity.

 

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Friday, Oct 3

CFB Update: Public Fades in Spread Pools

As things stand on the college football front, we don’t currently have any clear value favorites in game winner pools. The closest spot comes Friday night with New Mexico at San Jose State. We give New Mexico a 45.6% chance to win, while the public is only backing them at a 20% clip.

Spread Pools

In spread pools, however, there are several decision points where the public is heavily leaning one way:

• Houston +12.5 vs. Texas Tech (70% of public on Texas Tech ATS)

• Purdue +9.5 vs. Illinois (70% of public on Illinois ATS)

• North Carolina +14 vs. Clemson (70% of public on Clemson ATS)

• Maryland +6.5 vs. Washington (68.2% of public on Washington ATS)

You don’t have to fade the public on all of these, but it’s important to know where those spots exist. You can see them all in the Data Grid, along with recommendations tailored to your pool format and current standings inside Pool Picks Setup.

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Wednesday, Oct 2

Rams Become Big Thursday Night Favorite

The Los Angeles Rams will face the San Francisco 49ers tonight on Thursday Night Football. The win odds have shot up throughout the week.

The game opened with a 3.5-point spread but has moved up all week. With the short week, San Francisco will be without quarterback Brock Purdy, who played last Sunday but will now miss again, along with both starting wide receivers, Jajuan Jennings and Ricky Pearsall. Add in that TE George Kittle is on IR, and WR Brandon Aiyuk has yet to return from last season’s knee injury, and the receiving group is decimated for this one.