NFL Win Total Bets to Make Before Week 10: Chargers, Ravens, Browns
Photo by Dustin Satloff/Getty Images. Pictured: Justin Herbert.
Our Action Network Luck Rankings are already used to bet spreads, totals, team totals and even exotic props like highest or lowest scoring team (or game) each week.
We can now put them to good use to bet season-long win totals as well. In combination with our Director of Predictive Analytics Sean Koerner's strength of schedule ratings, as well as some injury analysis, I'll dig in to find season-long win total values when they pop up.
Here's two to get us started.
NFL Season-Long Win Total Bets
The Los Angeles Chargers have faced the 13th-toughest schedule to date, but it gets even tougher with the seventh-most difficult remaining schedule, according to Koerner's strength of schedule calculations.
Sitting at 4-4, the Chargers have been a bit lucky — our Expected Score metric has them closer to a team that would win 42% of games against an average schedule. Thus, with nine remaining games and an above-average schedule difficulty, we project them at 3.5 remaining wins.
Certainly we can expect a bit of improvement as they get healthier, so the median outcome is probably eight or 8.5 wins, but that's still at least a full win below the current line.
The biggest threat to the under would be potentially facing a Kansas City Chiefs team that rests Patrick Mahomes in Week 18 — assuming K.C. has already clinched home-field advantage — but there's enough value to the under that it's worth taking.
The Baltimore Ravens (7-2) are No. 1 in both schedule-adjusted Expected Win% and overall DVOA. The Ravens need just five wins from their remaining eight games to hit the over.
Despite the most difficult schedule in the NFL remaining, the Ravens have been so strong that they should be expected to win five more games at the bare minimum — possibly six — which is where the media projection is based off for schedule-adjusted Expected Win%.
With that much room to the over, I'm fine backing the Ravens now even ahead of a difficult matchup against the Cleveland Browns.
Keep an Eye On…
The Browns have been one of the more unlucky teams, most notably suffering a bad beat in Week 2 to the Pittsburgh Steelers.
However, they showed what they are capable of with a 19-17 win over the San Francisco 49ers that should have been even bigger. Our Expected Score metric says Cleveland should have won by 7.3 points, making them a little unlucky that the score was as close as it was.
To date, the Browns have faced the 14th-most difficult schedule, which is also the same ranking for their remaining schedule. That means there's no downgrade thanks to more difficult opponents looming ahead.
Even with P.J. Walker under center for a few games, the Browns' schedule-adjusted Expected Win% sits at 75% against an average team. While that rate may be hard to maintain going forward, if Deshaun Watson can stay healthy and the Browns' luck rebounds, an 11-win season — let alone 10 — is well within reach based off how they've played from an Expected Score standpoint to date.
Once they get past this difficult road game against the Ravens, it'll be time to pounce on the Browns ahead of their home game against the Steelers.
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