There are also several teams who are performing below expectations including Cleveland, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, San Diego, Dallas, Minnesota and Seattle. We closely will analyze the team that has by far exceeded expectations more than any other team in the league. We have created a special edition this week featuring the surprising Tennessee Titans. Please refer to our article posted “Tennessee Titans… Are they for real?”

Unlockedsports.com posted a losing record in week 7, going 2-5 in its second losing week of the entire season. Week 7 was our second consecutive losing week. At this point we are slumping, but also having our share of bad luck. Therefore we will only be posting 5 picks this week. Once we begin to get back on the winning side we will post more weekly picks. Usually we post 11-14 picks per week. We will closely analyze the result of each of our 5 losses.

Indianapolis -1 @ Green Bay: After completely dominating the Ravens in a 31-3 victory showed encouraging sign when the Indianapolis Colts vs Houston Texans, the Colts were demolished by the Packers in week 7 by a score of 34-14. We made this pick under the assumption that the Colts were back in their dominant form after defeating the Ravens. We definitely underestimated Green Bay’s defense. The Packers are currently tied with the Titans with a turnover differential of +6. Green Bay is allowing 22.7 points per game but they are putting up a lot of points on offense to make up for this. The Packers also have a strong passing defense as they rank 9th in the league. The Colts depend heavily on their passing game to move the ball since they are dead last in rushing yards. Like many people, we completely overlooked this key facet of the matchup.
New York Jets -3 @ Oakland: Whenever a team nets 418 yards in a game and only manages to score 13 points, you start wondering how on Earth did that team score so little. Well the Jets turned the ball over 3 times; meanwhile the Raiders didn’t turn it over at all. Prior to this game, Brett Favre had fantastic stats against Oakland. In 4 starts, and he threw for 1188 yards and 11 touchdowns against Oakland. So logically he should have throw at least 2 touchdowns. Instead he threw no touchdowns and 2 picks. Then the game goes to overtime and Janikowski wins it with a 57 yard field goal. We were unlucky with this one. Oakland did not deserve the win.

Detroit @ Houston -9.5: This pick admittedly was fairly risky. We knew Houston was going to win but betting on a team who only won one game out of five to defeat any team by at least 2 scores is a gamble. The Texans and Lions had one thing in common; both teams only covered the spread once the entire season. The reality was we knew the Texans were going to put up points because they were averaging 28 points per game. We knew that Houston was one of the league’s worst defensive teams but we didn’t really think that it would matter since Detroit was one of the league’s worst offensive teams. Additionally, they were without Kitna and Roy Williams. We probably should have stayed away from this one and the lesson we have learned from this loss is that we should stay away from weak teams who are favoured by big point spreads. After all, the underdog is 1-8 ATS in double digit spread situations this season. The outcome of this game would have been quite different if it were a strong team like the Giants, Pittsburgh or Tennessee favoured by this type of margin against a weak opponent like Detroit.

Seattle Seahawks @ Tampa Bay Buccaneers -10.5: Tampa was covering the spread from halfway through the second quarter until the final 2 minutes of the game. Tampa dominated the Seahawks, maintaining possession 69.5% of the game and accumulating 226 yards more than Seattle. The Bucs were up 20-3 until the Seahawks scored a completely meaningless touchdown with less than 2 minutes to play in the fourth quarter. That touchdown ended up costing us big because we lost a game we should have undoubtedly won by half a point. This one was a bad beat.

Denver Broncos +3 @ New England Patriots: This was by far one of the dumbest picks we’ve made this season. Not that betting on New England would have been ingenious, but we should have stayed away from this one. There were some significant doubts about Denver’s recent poor offensive performances. Prior to this game, Denver was averaging only 17.33 points per game in its last 3 games. However, the Broncos were playing better defensively. We knew that Denver was without Stokley and Scheffler. We figured that the Broncos were the better team and should have covered. We were wrong. We will make sure that we don’t make these kinds of mistakes in the future.

Related posts:

1. NFL 2008 Season: Week 4 Recap
2. NFL 2008 Season: Week 1 Recap
3. NFL 2008 Season: Week 8 Recap
4. NFL 2008 Season: Week 5 Recap
5. NFL 2008 Season: Week 2 Recap