What We Learned - NFL WK 01

Has there ever been a week one that WASN'T exciting? I don't think so. Having said that, I'm not here to re-hash all of the week one highlights, injuries, and "Joe Public " drama. What I wanna do is to make a few observations that may or may not help your handicapping. Take it if you need it...leave it if you don't.

The first week of the NFL can be hard to cap when trying to choose sides so the first thing we want to do is to look at the totals of the week. There are some solid rules of thumb that seem to somehow always work. The 16 games played in week one split right down the middle 8-8 (O/U). Let's look at this very simple angle that says: In any given week, go OVER the highest total on the board and go UNDER the lowest total on the board. This angle was 2-0 in week one as the Tennessee/Pittsburgh game was the lowest total of the week at 35 (Result: TEN 10 PIT 13); and the Detroit/New Orleans game was the highest total of the week at 50 (Result: DET 27 NO 45).

The second angle is one of my favorites because it capitalizes on the overzealousness of Joe Public who's been thirsting for action all summer long. Joe always believes that his brand new, revamped squad is going to absolutely "crush" their week one foe which tends to drive up the posted total. With that in mind, our second angle says: Take the UNDER in any week one game where the posted total is more than 44 points. There were 6 games that fit this description. The result was a whopping 5-1 (UNDER). The one game that went OVER was the Detroit/New Orleans game that was covered in the previous angle above. Following these two angles would have gotten you a 6-1 record at worst! Keep up with us this season as we dig out more of these nuggets.