Week 2 Betting Picks

A low-scoring Week 1 gave us lots to learn

With the dust settled from Week 1, there was much to reflect upon with how each team looks this season. Last week was branded by a shockingly overwhelming use of Cover 2 High packages and other Fangio defensive sets to counteract McVay/Shanahan style offenses. This proved incredibly effective, with 16 out of 32 teams running less than 59 plays (what Seattle averaged last year, coming last in the NFL).

The effectiveness of this scheme — centered around playing 2 deep safeties to keep the ball in front of them — is in preventing the big play. But in exchange, these defenses come with lighter boxes and softer coverage against short/intermediate routes. New playcallers in New Orleans, Seattle and Atlanta use variations of Shanahan’s zone-heavy blocking scheme, which in response has evidently seen the popularity of these more conservative defensive schemes increase significantly in 2024.

Vegas has noted this trend too, with Week 2 over/under’s this year experiencing the highest post-Week 1 variation since 2010 per The Action Network. There is no doubt offenses will be changing their systems in response (perhaps an inflexion point in the effectiveness of zone-blocking schemes?) but the question is how much will they need/want to? It’s an interesting game theory exercise as defenses could also be relying on offenses to overcompensate from last week’s league-wide phenomenon.

My picks this week are mostly “arbitrage” opportunities I see between how much Vegas thinks this will affect specific systems across the league, and how much each system has the willingness and ability to actually be able to modify its scheme. With this context, here are my picks for this week:

Week 2 Picks