NFL Week 4

[Kurn]

Taking a week off from picks against the spread, mainly to evaluate y own analysis criteria, seeing that I'm 2-4 so far.

That being said, I am in a suicide pool and you can't take a week off from that, so...

SUICIDE PICK - Atlanta

This leads to an interesting discussion. Lately I've been spending a lot of time at coldhardfootballfacts.com (CHFF) looking at their non-traditional stats.

Initially, I had the saints penciled in as a logical suicide pick this week, but then I looked at CHFF and saw two interesting things. First, Atlanta over SF is the week's biggest mismatch based on their line play indexes and DPR. That looked good considering I also think SF is going the wrong way emotionally and the Facons seem to be an even-keel team.

But it was the second thing I discovered that opened my eyes more. When comparing O-Line vs D-Line stats and DPR, CHFF stats make it look like Carolina has a slight edge over New Orleans.

Now there's an old saying that there are 3 kinds of untruths in the world: Lies, damned lies, and statistics.

Bottom line is that if the Panthers cover, I may be drinking the CHFF cool-aid for the foreseeable future. Just not going to start just yet.