What If I Disagree With Your Recommended Pick?
You may disagree with some of our pick recommendations. Just know that we make them for a reason, without bias, and you are also free to choose the games you want.
A common sentiment we see in emails or forum comments is something along the lines of:
How can you pick [Team X] this week? I don’t think they stand a chance because…
The rationale then mentioned could be any number of things (but usually one of these):
- A key player (QB, RB, WR) is injured or questionable
- A key player has played very poorly in recent games
- Team X was terrible in their last game/recent games
- Team X is coming off a big win and due for a “letdown”
- Team X is on the road in a hostile place to play
- Team X always chokes in big games
- It’s a rematch and Team X lost the first matchup
- The opponent of Team X wants revenge for a past loss
- It’s a division game
- The weather’s going to be bad
- It’s a primetime game
Our response to these expressions of disbelief is almost always the same. We respect your opinion, but we’re going to defer to objective numbers that have demonstrated real predictive value over a large sample size of games.
Are our models and the betting markets always right? Absolutely not. And for a variety of reasons, the “true” win odds for a team may not always be extremely close to what the betting markets are implying.
However, over the long term, predictions from good math models and the betting markets are almost certainly going to be more accurate than a human’s largely intuition-based guesses — especially when that intuition is based on widely-known facts.
Everybody Has An Opinion, And That’s OK
Sports are fun because everyone has their own opinions on teams, matchups, coaches, etc. We respect that. At the end of the day, we’re not forcing anyone to make any specific pick(s) —- those decisions are yours alone.
Our value in this process is to show you what recommendations surface when powerful objective data about teams is evaluated by sophisticated algorithms designed to maximize your edge in survivor pools.
There is no subjectivity baked into the numbers and recommendations you see in this product. It’s giving you the objective viewpoint, and you can choose whether or not you want to adjust it based on your own hunches.
Be Mindful Of Your Biases
Still, there’s a good reason why we do things our way, and some of the rationale we hear from customers for picking or avoiding a particular team does concern us.
When it comes to individual game predictions, if you disagree in a big way with the data shown in this product, what you’re effectively saying is that Team X is much less likely to win than betting lines currently imply.
(Our TR model predictions do sometimes differ from betting market predictions, but since they use the betting market expectations as an input, they are usually not too far off.)
Is it possible that you somehow a have better grasp on a matchup than the collective wisdom of the global NFL betting markets? Sure, that’s a possibility.
However, it’s a tough case to make, especially if you don’t possess any true “inside” information that tens of thousands of individual bettors and large professional betting syndicates don’t have, and assuming your methods for analyzing publicly available information aren’t more sophisticated than theirs.
Two other aspects to think about:
First, a lot of times what seems like important information (e.g. “it’s a division game, it’s going to be tougher”) is really just false narrative. For example, check out our article about picking division rivals and why there’s no evidence that division game picks are any riskier than non-division game picks once betting lines are taken into account.
Second, angles like “but the starting QB is out!” are based on information in the public domain, so their implications are already being factored into decisions being made by sports bettors with real money on the line. If the starting QB wasn’t out, the betting lines for the game would almost certainly be different.
The Result Of One Game Doesn’t Prove Anything
Finally, could Team X lose this week, meaning you were “right” and the betting markets/our models were “wrong”? Absolutely.
Many teams that end up as our recommended survivor picks have win odds in the 65% to 85% range. For teams in the middle of that range, we’re explicitly projecting that there is about a 1-in-4 chance that they lose. That’s a very realistic chance. A little bit of bad luck is often all it takes.
Furthermore, a team that we rate as a top survivor pick for your pool doesn’t necessarily mean that we think it’s a very “safe” team to pick. It means that the balance of its relative safety this week, its popularity as a pick in your pool, and the future value of saving that team to use later is the best overall mix this week for your specific pool.
Consequently, picking that team will give you the best chance to win your pool — even if it doesn’t give you the highest possible chance of surviving this particular week.
You Have The Power
With all that said, we know it can also just be more fun to make your own calls. They’re your survivor entries after all!
However, if you do happen to pound-the-table disagree with the betting market’s predictions on a particular game, we can recommend many sports books in Nevada that would be delighted to take your action.