With the regular season over, it's time to review 2025 and Upset Watch's huge season.
If you're not familiar with how Upset Watch works, every week I rank the slate in order of the teams most likely to cause an outright upset. Not beat the spread, but win. I then select 3 teams that I think make most sense to bet on or pick in your pool. I write full analysis of why I like the pick, and also for every other game.
Why? Because historically, around 1/3 of NFL games end in an upset. With better odds for underdogs, even a couple of underdog picks each week can make for a profitable betting week, and win you your pick'em pool over the course of a year!
This season has been a huge success. Let's dive into the numbers:
Stats
Number of Picks: 95
Number of wins: 47
Win percentage: 49.5%
Best Bets: 27-27 (50%)
Other Bets: 20-21 (48.8%)
Average Best Bet odds: +156
Average Other bet odds: +184
If you're interested, at odds of +156, you'd need to hit at least 39.5% of your bets to make any profit. To be at 50% is insanity. I am not saying that just to blow my own trumpet - we've never hit 50% over an entire season before, our highest was 48%!
As for the Other bets, those are picks that we have as an underdog, but they're higher risk, and usually not suitable for pools. Those also hit such a high level that they generated wild profit on an even smaller pool of bets. Our 41 bets were at an average of +184, which requires only a 35.3% hit rate to break even. Instead, we hit 48.8%. I don't need to tell you that this yielded huge profits over the season, as big winners just kept hitting.
Total Profit Breakdown: +$2739 (+139 units)
Last season was the first time in a decade of writing the column, that Upset Watch posted a loss over the season. I was sure that this was more to do with abnormalities in how the NFL season played out (a record low number of underdog wins, unevenly spread). As I told our Discord members at the end of last season: This is not a trend that can last in the NFL.
And it didn't. The profit has just kept coming in 2025 and our historical success was even greater than at any point in the last 5 years. We finished profitable in 13 of the final 14 weeks of the season, including a 10-week win streak to end it. Week 1 was our worst week, and we rarely had need to worry from midseason onwards.
Best Pick: Week 5: New England (+350) to beat Buffalo
Picking underdogs is tough, but when you see a good team, there's usually a lag before people start to believe they can compete with the very best teams in the NFL. In reality, the Patriots entered this year with a strong chance to de-throne the Bills in the AFC East, and this pick was the result of watching both teams in the early season, knowing the Patriots were going to be very competitive, even on the road.
Honorable mentions: Week 13, Chicago (+310) to beat Philadelphia and Cincinnati (+300) to beat Baltimore.
Best Week: Week 5: +50 units
In week 5 we went a perfect 5-0 on all underdog picks.
Our best bets were
Broncos (+185) to beat the Eagles ✅
Jaguars (+165) to beat the Chiefs ✅
Buccaneers (+165) to beat the Seahawks ✅
We also had two 'other' underdog picks
Patriots (+350) to beat the Bills ✅
Commanders (+143) to beat the Chargers ✅
All in all, a rare perfect week. Picking underdogs means understanding you're not going to win every pick, but if you can hit on over 40% of them,
Summary
It's been a great season so far, and as we head into the playoffs, the fun continues. I've been tipping winning touchdown scorers (Malik Willis and Riley Leonard, anyone? Watch that Discord!) and hit big on some underdog parlays. We also tip survivor winners (one of our Discord won on a week 18 Vikings pick!)
But the biggest takeaway was remembering why we do this. Betting favorites in the NFL is a recipe for disaster, and picking favorites in your pool is a great way to finish in the middle of the pack, and rue the 5-10 picks that change your season by getting them right when others fail.
This year, I'm focused on what we can do to build that community. Sharing our wins and losses sure feels like a better thing than keeping them to ourselves, so get involved with our community, and share your tales of success (and bad beats!).