Welcome to the Upset Watch Monday Morning Roundup

Each week we take an opportunity on Monday to look back on the winners and losers across the NFL and Pickwatch over the weekend. We'll also take a look at tonight's matchup and give our pick for Monday Night Football.

Upset Watch Picks

Another winning week for us with 3 big underdog picks winning. We nailed the Titans (+175) Jets (+150) and Cardinals (+105) to win outright, and also had the Patriots to cover the +10 spread. That takes us to 9-3 in winners over the last two weeks, and a season profit of $973 based on a stake of $100 on each pick.

We also had two picks that didn't come up - the Jags to win, which at one stage looked very good, until it became clear that rain isn't Trevor Lawrence's friend, and the Broncos, who lost their starting RB, and had replacement Melvin Gordon fumble for what amounted to the game-winning return score. Still, I think both of those picks were solid.

One I'd definitely have added on Sunday was the Chiefs when they closed at +2. I was very big on Kansas City beating the Bucs, and I was shocked to see it had moved into upset territory when I checked today. I won't be claiming that one, but rest assured, anyone who reads Upset Watch would have zero doubt that the Chiefs were my pick.

At the end of this article, I've included tonight's pick for Monday Night Football between the Rams and 49ers. Could there be another upset to add to the list? If you're a Pro subscriber, then read on to find out. If not, try the code YEAR20 to get access with 20% off for life (or as long as you remain active as a subscriber!).

$10k Contest roundup

A new name is at the top of our weekly moneyline contest so far, with cashjames nailing a 14-1 week and +$942 in profit. Can he break the $1k mark for the week?

In the season long contest, Vegaslock holds station after an 8-7 week, and he still has a chance to turn a small profit with a correct pick tonight. Even if cashjames and bobbyandvandi were to win tonight, he is safe at the top of the season long leaderboard for at least another week.

In the ATS contest, trickydick is on +$982 and not going to be caught this week after going 13-2. That moves him into profit on the season, but he'll need a couple of good weeks to catch the current leader, beyondanonda, who has a season long profit of +$1.23k.

Finally, our points total leader for the week is rwieners, with +$601 profit, but he's just $4 ahead of MGNETWINNER, so there's a solid chance that changes tonight. pwuser10 continues to lead the season long contest, but Deshon_N9nes has 4 winning weeks to start the season, and is now in second ahead of some schmuck who keeps forgetting that people might want his TNF pick.

Pickwatch updates

Today we sneaked in a quick quality of life update to tidy up some small inconsistencies and missing pieces.

• As I signposted in last week's article, you can now see profit to two decimal places, which is pretty essential once users creep into the $1k+ range. In the past, it would round to the nearest $1k, it will now be easier to read.
  
  
• We also added the points total over under leaderboard, and we've defaulted all leaderboards to show the ranking by profit as the default, so essentially, when you click 'week' on any category, you'll get the weekly contest leader, rather than being sorted by wins, and having to change it.
  
  
• We've made the 'Profit' clearer by changing any/all p/L (profit/loss) terminology to just simple 'Profit'.
  
  
• We've fixed a background process that meant some NCAAF games didn't have Pro Picks. We're also looking at a fix for when small schools play big schools, which currently results in no pick as there is not enough data on the small school.
  
  
• We've updated our odds provider, so you'll now get consensus odds, and we'll be adding more odds comparison features in future!

Next update? The app will be getting some small user experience changes - changing the spacing between buttons, improving navigation, changing the colours for more clarity, and Upset Watch will be making it's way into the app too. We'll be tidying up the sorting on the app to allow you to sort by weekly score in a few places where you couldn't before, and on web, you'll be able to sort the experts by profit.

Beyond that, we are close to starting our next major projects, one of which is the transformation of Upset Watch from a blog post into it's own section, where you can navigate quickly to each game and see the order of potential upsets based on a star rating. Player Props are also on the horizon, and a new table format that shows you which props the most fans are picking, and which props have data trends in their favor.

Week 4 Winners and Losers

Winners

Geno Smith

Look, I'm going to admit that I thought that the plan for Seattle was to try and engineer a tanking season, adding more ammo to the many draft picks they acquired for Russell Wilson, but Geno Smith proved me and everyone else wrong.

Not only is Smith completing a bizarrely high percentage of his passes - a league-leading 77.3% on 132 pass attempts - but he is now tied with Aaron Rodgers and Tom Brady (among others) with 6 TD's, plus 1 rushing score, after having a 6 quarter stretch between weeks 1-3 where the Seahawks didn't score a TD of any kind.

Right now, whatever happens, Geno has shown enough that he's nailed on for Comeback Player of the Year, and anyone who had that prop, I salute you.

The Raiders Run Game

Las Vegas ran for 212 yards on Sunday, their highest total on the ground since 2016, also against the Broncos.

What amazes me is that the Raiders have taken 6 years to figure out that with a run game, their offense works, and without it, it doesn't. Their 30 best rushing performances in that time (all over 137 yards) have yielded a win record of 24-6, while their 30 worst (all under 71 yards) are 6-24. I said it last year, but I had hoped that Rich Bisaccia would finally go against Jon Gruden's bone-headed pass-first playcalling, but it didn't materialize and the Raiders ranked 26th in rush play %.

None of this is an accident. The Raiders and Derek Carr need something to take the pressure off him, and yet heading into this game, they ranked even worse than 2021, with just 29.1% of their playcalls being hand-offs, good for 31st in the NFL. Just because you add a Davante Adams-type talent to your offense, doesn't mean that you need to throw the ball on almost every play, especially with the league's worst offensive line. 

If they stick with Josh Jacobs as a focal point, the Raiders can still save their season.

Jared Goff

I'd be the first to say that Jared Goff has been a figure of fun to me for some time. Regular readers may recall that I have at various points compared his mobility to hand-crafted heavy-duty furniture, his demeanor to Kendall Roy from Succession, and his general quarterback play to that of a stand-in actor.

But Goff is having a mini-resurgence (if you can have a resurgence without having a... surge?), and leads the league with 11 TD passes, playing in the top-ranked offense in the NFL. Goff is there on merit, and the Detroit offense strikes a perfect balance between his passing style and the running power of Jamaal Williams and D'Andre Swift.

Most importantly? Goff has cut out the ball security problems that have dogged him through his career when he's in high-pressure situations. That's in no small part thanks to a great offensive line that has allowed only 5 sacks of him this year, but Goff has been quietly competent at a time when his career was legitimately on the line. The 2016 first overall pick is still only 27 - though he turns 28 next week - and the Lions could likely still be tempted to hitch their cart to Goff if he continues this play.

Losers

The Lions Defense

I've just spent a while talking about the good part of Detroit's offense, but the bad points of their defense are why they are 1-3. Very few teams manage to rank first in offense and last in defense and be successful. Even last year's Chiefs, that ranked 32nd in defense and 5th on offense by week 6, managed to turn a corner and ranked 1st in the NFL over the rest of the season with just 16.1ppg allowed.

That's the key here. There's no offense in the world able to overcome ineptitude of the level we saw against the Seahawks. Seattle put up 555 yards of offense and averaged 8.8 yards per play. They didn't give up a sack, and they didn't punt in the entire game. While the Lions offense means they are never out of games, it is not going to work if you need to come back from multiple scores every week.

The Seahawks scored on all but one of their drives - a missed field goal - and the Lions defense was practically waving Rashaad Penny through by the 4th quarter. It all added up to a mystifying situation where one of the league's worst offenses on paper managed to put up more points in this game than they had in their 3 previous games combined.

Sure, the Lions invested in Aidan Hutchinson and Josh Paschal at DE in the first two rounds of this season's draft, and they also took S Kerby Joseph in the third round, but right now, there is nothing to suggest that the Aaron Glenn experiment is working. It's clear that the former standout DB is not ready to be a Defensive Coordinator, and the best way for Dan Campbell to help him is to get someone in with the experience to put this mess - that existed long before Glenn's tenure - right, or Campbell's job may end up on the line.

The Cleveland Browns

In Upset Watch this week I trailed the reality for the Browns that their matchup against the lackluster Falcons was a must-win game. Why? Because their next 7 games look pretty tough.

From week 5, they'll face the Chargers and Patriots at home - two premier defenses - before playing the Ravens, Bengals, Dolphins, Bills and Bucs. Only in week 13 do they face the Texans, but that will be followed by a trip to Cincinnati and then the Ravens coming to town.

Only in weeks 16-18 does life get easier, with the Saints, Commanders and Steelers making up their final 3 games.

Of course, the huge dynamic that is going to change when they face the Texans is that they'll have DeShaun Watson as QB, but there's no guarantee that this will yield immediate results. At 2-2, the Bengals may well find themselves at 2-9 or 3-8, and that will mean a different approach to the end of the season regardless of who they play.

The Browns needed a win against Atlanta, and there will be few better opportunities to notch a win in 2022 for them.

People who don't want young men to suffer serious brain injuries.

When I was 18 I suffered a major concussion as a result of some foolish behavior. When I was first diagnosed, I just laughed it off. Why? Because I had seen players suffer concussions in the NFL, and seen them come back into games and make game-winning plays.

But after a month of blurred vision, no balance, headaches and brain fog (some would say I still have that now...) I realized that concussions are not a badge of honor. They aren't a minor injury, they stay with you for months. The consequences of suffering a second one within 5 days of that injury would potentially be life changing, because a lot of those symptoms stay with repeat head injury sufferers for life.

Tua Tagovailoa is 24yr old man who happens to be the Quarterback of the Miami Dolphins. He is polite, he's well-spoken, he's talented, and he just got married. Via his foundation, Tua has raised money for the funeral expenses of 8 young girls who were killed in a Texas car crash, and is an all-round very good man.

On Thursday, he was taken to hospital after his second violent concussion in just 5 days, despite the many hurdles that in theory should have shut him down immediately after the first one. Not only was he allowed to play again within 5 days, he had even returned to the same game in which the original injury was suffered. How does that happen?

Football is an inherently violent sport, and players suffer major injuries regularly. Nobody wants to take the physical side out of the sport, but balancing player safety with the 'product' has never been the NFL's strong suit.

On the one hand, they protect QB's with terrible calls of roughing the passer for the slightest of touches in some cases, yet when Tua suffers a clear head injury after being pushed to the ground, he is allowed to return.

Watch that video and tell me that an independent qualified doctor should be recommending that he play a sport within an hour that could result in him being hit in the head again. It would be lunacy, and yet the will of the player - who will never admit pain or symptoms - and the tacit will of the team who would like him to come back into the game, override all common sense.

To make matters worse, the Dolphins doubled down on the 'back injury' they claimed he suffered, and allowed him to play Thursday - a short week of all things! - where he was slammed to the ground and will now miss extended time after a second brain injury in 5 days. The consequences of that decision for Tua are an unknown. For the NFL, they represent a crossing of the Rubicon, where head injuries will undoubtedly come back into focus after a complacency had set in over the last decade that these things couldn't happen any more.

Look, we all love football, and none of us want it to become flag football. I hate the bogus roughing calls as much as the next guy, but when it comes to letting players back into the game after head injuries, the NFL needs to get serious and take the decisions out of the teams and players' hands, and have multiple people on hand to validate the decisions made.

Rant over.

Monday Night Pick

It's a huge NFC West matchup tonight as the underwhelming Rams take on the 'interesting' 49ers in San Francisco. We've got a breakdown of both teams and their strengths and weaknesses below for Pro members. Is this an upset pick, or should you stick with the favorite? Read below to find out, and if you're not a Pro member, here are two ways you can join us: