This week, with just one game in the books, we’ll speculate wildly about the fates of more than a few teams and talk about who is on their way to the top and who has a steep climb ahead. We’ll also talk about what we expect in Week 2 and what unexpected things we should expect.

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Show Notes

Barrel Wagers & Whiskey

A barrel wager is a prediction in which we’re so confident we’d wager everything we own… but that if we get it wrong we’d be left wearing nothing but a barrel.
Whiskey: 2Bar Straight Bourbon whiskey (same as last week)… reminder it’s from 2Bar Distillery right here in smokey Seattle
Chris: Bucs to beat the Saints (cover as underdogs)
- I have way more faith in Tom Brady than I probably should after watching him rip my heart out for 20 years.
- At the end of the day, he had a pretty bad game, just 240 yards, 2 TDs and 2 INTs .
- Not sure if it’s just newness with his team, but it was a trap from the get go, and I won’t fall for that again.
Paul: Titans to cover the -3-point spread in Denver
We’re both off to a rough start at 0-1 out of the gate

Crowd Results

Highlights and lowlights:

Bagels – No bagels this week. The crowd got at least one category correct in every game. Nice start!
Trifectas – Cowboys at Rams
- Crowd Prediction: DAL 24, LAR 25 (Rams win and cover as an underdog, under 51.5)
- Actual Score: DAL 17, LAR 20

Weekly Crowd Summary

Overall Crowd score for the week: 49 points
11-5 straight-up
- Off to a nice start with a 68.75% winning percentage straight-up
6-9-1 ATS
- The crowd had a really tough time with the spread this week
- With a small crowd (only 8 total predictors), the average can be skewed pretty easily by one prediction.
- Also it’s week 1 of a season like we’ve never seen, so not too surprising that the crowd wisdom struggled.
- We’re starting off in a deep hole with only a 40% winning percentage ATS, but plenty of time to recover obviously
7-8-1 against the total
- The over-under went the way of Goldilocks in week 1 and starts off the crowd with a not bad, but not good 46.67% winning percentage (when accounting for the push)
8 total predictors

Detailed Crowd Records

Crowd Records so far:

Straight-up:
- Favorites: 10-5
- Underdogs: 1-0
Spread:
- Favorites: 1-2-1
- Thread-the-needle: 4-7
- Underdog: 1-0
Over-under:
- Over: 4-4
- Under: 3-4-1

Contest Results

Contest Results:
- NFL Pickwatch – it’s a little too early to start talking about seeding (won’t start doing this until maybe week 7-8 or so) but we’ll keep track of the crowd’s running record and see where that would land in Pickwatch’s overall leaderboards of both public users and experts
  - Straight-up overall record: 11-5 (68.75%)
  - ATS overall record: 6-9-1 (40%)
- MyBookie.ag Super Contest – 3-2 this week
  - Panthers +3 versus the Raiders – Loss
  - Seahawks -1 at the Falcons – Win
  - Jaguars +8 versus the Colts – Win
  - Cardinals +6.5 at the Niners – Win
  - Bucs +3.5 at the Saints – Loss
  - So far, we’re 3-2, which is better than the alternative.

Hot Take Counter

Expect the unexpected! Week 1 promised to be an “anyone’s best guess” kind of week, and it mostly was… there were some predictable outcomes for sure, but also some upsets that felt surprising to most… Let’s start with the mostly-expected results with the teams that seem well on their way to the top after a solid first week:

Who’s well on their way to the top
- Seahawks, Packers, Ravens, Chiefs, Saints
  - All had very impressive performances in their Week 1 wins.
  - They either turned in dominant wins at home or solid wins on the road.
Who has a steep climb ahead of them
- This is mostly about expectations; if you had high expectations for this season, did they take a big hit?
- Colts, Browns, Lions, Eagles, Niners
- They either lost to teams that were projected to be worse or performed very poorly overall.

Winner winner chicken dinner!

Here’s who came out on top on our Leaderboards in Week 1.

Prediction Score: Jordan and Chris tie with 59 total points
- Straight-up: 10 for Jordan, 11 for Chris
- ATS: 7 for Jordan, 9 for Chris
- O/U: 10 for Jordan, 8 for Chris
- Jordan hit 5 bull’s-eyes to Chris’ 3
Perfect Predictions (10-pointers):
- No perfect predictions this week
Stake Stacks of the Week:
- Jordan had the best week at the Stakes Table winning both the biggest stake stack and the best ROI
- Biggest Stack
  - Jordan – 12 net stakes on 40 stakes wagered, edging out Bryan Cole
- Best ROI
  - Jordan – Those 12 net stakes also returned a 30% return on investment

Wrap-up

Head over to stakehousesports.com to download the app and start predicting (or predict using our web app. Remember, you can win up to $50 a week in Amazon gift cards as well as a prestigious shout-out on this here program. Odds update daily, so make sure to check your predictions before gametime.

You can also follow us on Twitter using handle @houseofstakes, and on Facebook at facebook.com/stakehousesports. And you can always contact us at podcast@stakehousesports.com.