NFL - Championship Round

The picks I've given out over the first two rounds of the playoffs have not performed great, with the 2-2 outing in last week's Divisional Round bringing us to 3-5 in total.

​With that said, I'm utilizing a new technique for the first time ever in this Championship Weekend.

I've been working on an extensive spreadsheet model in Excel to use multiple variables to predict outcomes of NFL games.  While my regular season performances over the last couple seasons are pretty erratic, the model has performed really well once we get to the postseason.

Last postseason, the records this model produced were 7-4 on the money line, 7-6 against the spread, and 10-3 for the point total.  And if you take out the Wildcard Round, it was 6-1 ATS from the Divisional Round and beyond.

I made some improvements to the model in the offseason, and it's off to a great start this postseason.  Through the first two rounds of this year's playoffs, it has correctly predicted 9 of the 10 winners, with records of 7-3 ATS and 8-2 on the point total.

This has given me confidence to post the picks the model has predicted for the two championship games rather than go with my judgment, which has been a bit shaky during these playoffs.  So, here are the four picks that my model has predicted for this weekend:

San Francisco 49ers +2.5 at Philadelphia Eagles and Under 46.0

Kansas City Chiefs +1.0 vs. Cincinnati Bengals and Over 46.5

While I'm confident in all the picks above (otherwise I wouldn't have posted them), I would like to state for the record that my personal opinion would be to take the Eagles to cover against the Niners.  But given the recent track records between my model and myself, I would side with San Francisco if I were you.

While I can't give out the features and formulas of my model, I'm hoping to continue to improve it enough this offseason to start using it to give out picks for full slates of games each week.  That's still a tentative plan and could be a longer scheme in the making than I'm thinking at the moment.  But that's the ultimate end goal to be able to maximize profits.  However, my intuition returned a better betting performance this NFL season (at least for the regular season), so I'll definitely begin next season with my own opinions before testing the model for a few weeks.

Anyway, I hope you can earn some money with the four picks above and get to enjoy two thrilling championship matchups this weekend.  There's an off week in between the conference championships and the Super Bowl, so check back in two weeks for my favorite plays for Super Bowl Sunday, which will be an extended version of the bets I've given out for the entirety of the season this far.

​Written by Nick Swatson