The New England Patriots return from their bye week to face a rested Indianapolis Colts team looking for payback from last season’s playoff loss. Our Week 11 Sunday picks wrap up with this Best Bet from Lucas Oil Stadium as we look to extend our free picks win streak to six-straight weeks!
The Sunday Night Football schedule has provided some great betting opportunities and fantastic matchups this season but this one may take top honors. Home teams are 8-2 SU and 7-3 ATS on Sunday nighters this season with seven of the past eight going over the total. The average line for home teams has been -3.4 and the average points scored for these games is 56.2 so picking odds for this game was easy. Picking the winner could prove to be much more difficult.
WEEK 11 PICKS – SUNDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL
Home teams with big totals and tight lines have been a 69-percent ATS play for the past couple seasons and coming into this week they were 4-1 ATS. The Colts have a ‘yards per play’ (YPP) advantage in this matchup 6.1 to 5.4 and against another elite offense, that set the Colts up for a statistical profile that is 5-1 in Sports Database history. The only non-cover in this situation for small home faves was in a Week 2 game earlier this year and really, that’s too early in the season to be relying on these sorts of averages. The four games in this limited sample taking place Week 8 or later all finished with a straight-up MOV of 19-plus points (23 avg). Get the SDQL database system here!
The Pats were home for three-straight before this contest and then had a bye. This is a rare situation and the lines for previous road teams were all over the map but they all won SU/ATS and all three games stayed under by double-digits. The only thing is that the most recent was in 2001. New England finished the home stand with a good old fashioned thrashing of the Broncos and but there is evidence that a pre-bye game such as that gives a bit of false hope for the road side. When the home team is also off a bye the road squad is 0-13 SU, covering the spread just five times.
PICK SIXTY PREDICTION
Tom Brady has had two years in his career when he returned from the bye to play on the road and the line was tight: 2011 and 2013. He lost them both. We know the Pats can score points and Indy’s defense ranks 30th for ‘big plays allowed’ but the Pats are only 21st in that category and Andrew Luck has home field. Since Luck took over the team, Indy is 4-0 SU/ATS vs. teams on a win streak of three-plus games and we think he’s going to get this one done, too.
Take the Colts