Start of 2018-2019 Season!

Welcome back!  It is now the start of the season for my NFL spread model.  Since I use a 4 week rolling average of each team’s stats, I don’t boot this bad boy up until week 5.  I could have used last seasons stats, but I believe teams change too much in the offseason for those to be relevant.

With that said, there are a few updates this year:

  1. Game changing indicators
    1. The model now looks at which team is at home, if the two teams are in the same division, and if the team is a “crowd favorite”
  2. Normalized inputs are better than normal numbers
    1. The model is now a logarithmic model instead of linear model, since this will normalize the data for each individual input
  3. If one equation is good, 5 equations is 5x gooder!
    1. The model was just one equation. Input numbers into a big formula, it spits out a single ‘predicted score’
    2. New model had 5 equations and combines the outputs to make the pick

Will any of this help? Who knows?  But I am excited to find out.  Stay tuned!