Fake Supercontest Picks

I bought three $20 entries into an offshore sportsbook online “supercontest” with $250K in prize money. It’s a far cry from the real $1,000 entry contest, but as I mentioned earlier, I never made it to Vegas this summer to sign up, and they won’t let you do it remotely.

But I’m still in the game, and I’ll post my picks here. If you missed my Thursday Night Observations post, you’ll learn that I switched from the Chiefs to the Lions when Travis Kelce was declared out in my home picking pool, but the move didn’t take, so I got stuck with the Chiefs, something I discovered only after the game. Enraged as I am, at least I didn’t use that game in my biggest contests.

I’ve decided I’ll mostly use the same teams in two of the pools, and if they do well I can diverge strategically later in the year. For the third, I’m going ugly — picking teams I think no one would want and that appeal to my contrarian instincts. There will overlap between the “ugly” entry and the “normal” ones as sometimes ugly is normal, and normal is ugly.

Here’s what I have for the contests — so far:

Normal 1 and 2 — I used the same five teams: Steelers, Bears, Browns, Giants and Patriots.

I took the Steelers as a contrarian play — the Niners seem like a much better team, and yet the line hasn’t budged even with Nick Bosa signing. The Bears have a quarterback we know can make plays, while the Packers have an unknown that’s missing his top receiver. And yet the Bears are only laying 1.5. Bears owner Aaron Rodgers is in New York now.

The Browns are equal to the Bengals if Deshaun Watson is himself, but they too are getting points at home. Plus, Joe Burrow’s been off all month.

The Giants are getting more than a field-goal at home to the Mike McCarthy-Dak Prescott Cowboys, despite the Giants winning a playoff game last year. It’s not like the Giants got worse over the offseason, either. Way too much respct for Dallas with this line.

Finally, I believe in the Super Bowl hangover — you play 21 games, end with disappointment and have to get geared up all over again. It’s easy to imagine the alleged mechanism if it’s indeed a thing. Laying four on the road against a good Pats defense seems steep.

For the ugly entry, I kept the Steelers and Giants, but added the Bucs (Baker Mayfield is just Jared Goff two years ago!), Colts (I don’t know why this line isn’t seven, so I’ll fade the obvious) and the Rams (what a disaster without Cooper Kupp.) The book isn’t giving money away.