Week 2: Angles
The TwoMinuteWarning philsophy is really anti-angle in a lot of ways -- our goal is to create better, more accurate numbers that have excellent predictive value going forward rather than relying on historical trends that might well be just random aberrations. Unfortunately creating predictive ratings is very hard to do for the early weeks so we have to turn to more gimmicky approaches. Our advice is to wager lightly until teams have played three times.
0-1 versus 1-0 teams
With only one game played, teams are in two groups: 1-0 and 0-1 records. With these two groups you have four permutations for the potential matchups and here are how the records against the spread have been since 1992 (a twelve year sample):
Week Two Matchups
Home Team
Record |
Away Team
Record |
Home W-L
vs the Spread |
Home
Spread % |
| 0-1 |
0-1 |
13-31 |
30% |
| 0-1 |
1-0 |
26-27 |
49% |
| 1-0 |
0-1 |
26-24 |
52% |
| 1-0 |
1-0 |
21-20 |
51% |
The only thing to note in this table is that in a meeting of teams with 0-1 records the away team (presumably the dog in most cases) has covered at a high rate. This is similar to an angle we discovered in our Quantifying Motivation research from a few years back that showed in weeks 2 to 4 the away team has fared better in poor vs poor team matchups.
This week there are several 0-1 vs 0-1 pairings:
Baltimore at Tennessee...
St. Louis at Arizona...
Cleveland at Green Bay...
San Diego at Denver...
Of these there is a slight indication that home favorites laying more than a field goal are the worst percentage teams, so we'll look to the only large away underdog.
Favor: Cleveland +6.5
[As a disclaimer, the Angles best bet pick is now just 9-17 lifetime, although won with this particular angle last season]
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