NFL Week 3 Predictions

Monday Night Update: Bodog currently has the Cowboys as 3.5 point favorites at even odds; Luigi would say to take the ‘Skins.  The moneyline is -165 for Dallas and +145 for Washington; Luigi would say to narrowly take Dallas (versus just skipping the game).  And the over/under is set at 45; Luigi says to take the over.

It’s time for the weekly picks again.  As of Sunday morning when I got the numbers from Bodog, the Monday night game was blanked out.  I’ll try to update before Monday night if I remember.  Otherwise, on to the predictions.

Over/under: so far this is the thorn in the model’s side.  I’m not sure why it has such a rough time with predicting total points; maybe those guys in Vegas know what they’re doing?  Here are the predictions anyway:

Moneyline: The Lions are fairly strong road favorites according to the model.  Here’s hoping they keep it up.  In other interesting news, the model thinks Buffalo is a pretty good team.  We’ll see if they actually hang in with the Patriots.

Spread: A couple games are in the ‘stay away’ zone, like Cincy-SF and Chicago-GB.  Luigi thinks that Chargers-Chiefs will be even worse than Vegas does, and that’s a huge line.

Bill Simmons: The point I most agreed with in Bill’s picks mailbag is that the Monday Night Football line-up is pretty systematically devoid of big-name teams.  But at least Bill predicts an upset and I predict a close game.  That’s something, right?  In other news, Bill and Luigi only disagree on three games.  It’ll be a close week regardless of how the games turn out.