Underdog’s Fantasy Pick ‘Em is a fun way to test our predictive abilities against the market. The two keys to success are selecting the best players to target and leveraging correlations to improve our odds. You play Pick 'Em by simply choosing 'Higher' or 'Lower' on at least two player props. If you make the right selection, here's the payout structure:
- Two picks = 3X
- Three picks = 6X
- Four picks = 10X
- Five picks = 20X
In this weekly article, we will list our favorite plays of the week and the reasoning behind them.
Week 14 Review
Overall Picks (5-7 on the week, 97-85-1 on the season)
Overall Units (-3 last week, +12 Units on the season)
(1-2, -1 Unit) Seahawks-49ers 6X Christian McCaffrey (79.5) easily topped his yardage prop, with 145 rushing yards. Unfortunately, Deebo Samuel’s big game came mostly through the air. He did score a rushing touchdown, but came up well short of his 13.5-yard rushing prop. On the other side, DK Metcalf (60.5) had 52 yards in the first quarter, but was shut out after that.
(3-1, -1 Unit) Colts-Bengals 10X This one was close. We were an average Ja’Marr Chase (66.5) game away from a big 10X. Unfortunately, Chase had a season-low 29 receiving yards. Jake Browning (228.5) had 275 passing yards. My favorite prop of the week was Tee Higgins (36.5), who had 72 receiving yards. Gardner Minshew (3.5) had 5 rushing yards.
(1-4, -1 Unit) Lions-Bears 20X This one was rough. It was a mistake to back Jared Goff (240.5) on the road. He managed just 161 yards and did not look good. We swung for the fences with three Lions pass catchers, but only David Montgomery (5.5) topped his receiving yardage prop. Justin Fields (59.5) came up barely short, with 58 rushing yards.
Lessons learned: In hindsight, I still feel good about the Colts-Bengals logic. Just didn’t break our way with Chase. The Lions passing stack was a bad call. The recent defensive numbers from the Bears should have carried more weight in my process.
Week 15 Picks
As noted above, I feel like I missed on the Lions passing stack last week. I did not take enough into account how much more representative the Bears’ recent defensive numbers were compared to the season-long averages. This week, I want to put more focus on recent defensive metrics. I made a custom tool and wrote about it for Footballguys earlier this week.
Broncos-Lions 6X
Photos provided by Imagn Images
_(1000_x_500_px)_png)