The Favorites Pick ’Em Contest: NFL Week 12 Tiebreaker Strategy
Photo by Rey Del Rio/Getty Images. Pictured: Justin Fields.
With the launch of The Favorites' NFL pick 'em contest, which is free to play, we decided on tiebreaker props to settle the winners of the $3,000 in weekly prizes.
"Razortheguru" took first place in the Week 11 contest, coming within four yards of the correct rushing total (286) with an entry of 282. While the winner didn't take the Eagles spread along with it, the result of the total rushing yards prop correlated nicely with Philadelphia covering, as predicted. It's become increasingly clear that correctly nailing the correlation between the tiebreaker guess and the outcome of the game is a big edge in this contest.
Now, we're on to NFL Week 12 with Bears vs. Vikings on Monday Night Football.
Important note: You can sign up for this contest at any point during the season.
Week 12 Tiebreaker: Total Rushing Yards — Bears vs. Vikings (-3.5)
We're repeating the rushing yards tiebreaker question for Monday Night Football, which features an NFC North showdown between the Bears and Vikings. As with last week, we'll use Sean Koerner's projections to establish a baseline, then take a look at how either team covering their side of the point spread would correlate with the final result.
Koerner has the Bears' three-man backfield projected for 81 rushing yards, the wide receivers projected for three yards and quarterback Justin Fields projected for 49 yards. All together, that gives a total of 133 rushing yards on the Chicago side.
Minnesota also has a quarterback who contributes with his legs. Joshua Dobbs is projected for 31 rushing yards, with another 84 coming from the running backs and just two from the receivers, for a grand total of 117 for the Vikings.
Put those together and we have a fairly conservative rushing yards projection of 250 — a solid median guess, but let's see if we can correlate it with our Monday Night Football pick.
My Recommendation: Around 280
This game is a bit harder to correlate to the spread pick. Both defenses rank top 12 in rushing DVOA, and top five in yards allowed per rush. Neither team is expected to roll on the ground even if playing from ahead, as the efficiency should be fairly low throughout.
However, the Bears have a considerably better rushing offense, largely thanks to the yardage picked up by Fields. They have one of the lowest Pass Rate Over Expectation marks in the NFL, but again, that's largely a function of Fields scrambling on plays that were originally called as passes.
Rather than trying to correlate this based on what happens after either team gets out in front, we can approach this the other way. That is, by asking how we think either team finds success and gets a lead in the first place.
I expect the Bears to establish their ground game — either through designed runs or Fields scrambles — in order to keep the game close. Fields ran for over 100 yards by himself last week, with Bears running backs chipping in another 80 in a game they led most of the way. That came against an even tougher Lions rushing defense.
Therefore, if the Bears are to win this game or cover the narrow spread, they're likely to exceed their 133-yard rushing projection by a fair amount. On the other side, if the Vikings cover the spread it's probable that most of their success is through the air while limiting Fields and the running backs.
Therefore, I'd make a selection in the upper 200s if picking Chicago to cover the spread, but around 200 if selecting the Minnesota side. If not picking this game, I'd still skew a bit on the high side of projections, as that's my lean on which direction will be less popular overall.
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