NFL Week 2 Picks - Upset Picks, Survivor, Futures, and More
This week, our merry band of Betting Life experts—Matthew Freedman, Matt LaMarca, and Geoff Ulrich—show some love for Seattle, hold their noses for a bet on the Giants, get us excited about the Jaguars in survivor pools … and so much more.
Pull up a chair, pour yourself a drink, and saddle up to our expert roundtable.
Our Favorite NFL Week 2 Pick
- What is your favorite bet you’ve made this week (the one that makes you want to go back and put more on it)?
Matthew Freedman: Cowboys -6.5 vs. Saints. In our NFL betting model, I have this projected at -7.9, so I see great value in anything under a TD. The Cowboys are already in midseason form on both sides of the ball, and the Saints have several players who might be out or limited this week, most importantly No. 1 CB Marshon Lattimore (hamstring). Sure, the Saints won by 37 points last week, but this number didn’t adjust at all from the lookahead line as a result, which means that the market wasn’t impressed with the Saints in Week 1. And beating unimpressive teams by margin is what the Cowboys do under HC Mike McCarthy.
Matt LaMarca: Cowboys -6.5. Dak Prescott and the Cowboys have historically been bullies in this spot, going 19-9-1 as a home favorite of at least six points. They looked really impressive in Week 1, rolling up 33 points against last year’s No. 1 defense. Additionally, the Cowboys allow us to fade the Saints in Week 2, who are a prime overreaction candidate after demolishing the Panthers. Historically, teams coming off a win of at least 35 points are just 51-71-5 ATS the following week. I think it’s way more likely that the Panthers are awful than the Saints are actually good.
Geoff Ulrich: Seattle -3.0. I wrote about the Seahawks in the Betting Life Newsletter this week and placed a bet on them in our NFL bet tracker first thing Monday morning as one of my NFL free bets. Seattle’s defense looked fantastic against Denver, ranking fifth in Expected Points Added (EPA) per play while limiting Bo Nix to just 3.28 yards per attempt. RB Kenneth Walker III was able to break off four runs of 10+ yards against the Broncos and now faces what appears to be a “potentially” much weaker D-Line in New England–one that ranked just 27th in EPA per rush in Week 1. Ultimately, I just love the idea of selling high on the Patriots and buying low on Seattle, whose slow start in their win against Denver is keeping this line hovering between 3.0 to 3.5.
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Best NFL Upset Pick in Week 2
- Who is your favorite underdog in Week 1?
Freedman: Rams +105 at Cardinals. The Rams opened as favorites, and then the market moved against them with all the injuries they suffered in Week 1, especially along the OL. But the Cardinals’ defense was abysmal last year (No. 31 in defensive EPA), and was terrible last week (No. 31, defensive EPA). I doubt the Cardinals will be able to exploit the Rams’ OL, especially since HC Sean McVay has time to game plan around it. The Rams should be slight favorites.
Situationally, this is a spot where I want to back McVay, who, for his career, is 14-7-1 ATS in Weeks 1-3 of the season, 24-14-3 ATS off a loss, 17-11-2 ATS as a road underdog, and 12-2-1 ATS specifically against the Cardinals. And if I like the Rams as small underdogs on the spread, then I might as well bet them to win outright.
LaMarca: As gross as it feels, I can’t help but back the Giants. They were demolished by the Vikings in Week 1, but Minnesota might be better than expected. Sam Darnold looked comfortable in Kevin Connell’s offense, while the defense still has talent. The same cannot be said of the Commanders. They allowed 37 points and nearly 400 yards of offense to the Buccaneers in Week 1. It will be Jayden Daniels’ second start at the NFL level, and over the last 24 occurrences, rookie QBs have gone just 3-20-1 straight up in the first three weeks of the season. Asking Daniels not to just win but to cover as a favorite might be too much, too soon.
Ulrich: The Bengals do this every year. In 2022, Joe Burrow got picked off four times against Pittsburgh in an upset loss at home to start their season. In 2023, Cincinnati threw for just 82 yards in Week 1, in a dreadful 24-3 loss to the Browns. The Bengals had winning records by Week 9 in both of those seasons. Our NFL Game Model has these lines as pretty efficient, but Cincinnati has a solid record of outperforming in these spots, having posted a 52.4% win rate as an underdog since 2021, which is third-best in the league.
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A Quick Look At NFL Futures Picks Ahead of Week 2
- What did you see in Week 1 that made you immediately place a new futures bet you either hadn’t considered or needed to see some actual NFL action to make?
Freedman: Chargers to Win AFC West (+490, FanDuel). I already have a +4500 ticket on the Chargers to win a Super Bowl, because they’re one of the few teams to have a top-eight QB (Justin Herbert) and a top-eight HC (Jim Harbaugh). Plus, they still have some talent on defense (EDGEs Joey Bosa and Khalil Mack, SS Derwin James). But even when thinking about their odds to win the Super Bowl, I almost always thought about them as a wildcard team. Based on how they looked in Week 1—and given their long odds—it’s now worth taking a shot on the Chargers to win the AFC West, especially since they already locked in a win against a divisional opponent last week.
LaMarca: Josh Allen Most Rushing Touchdowns (+1000; Caesars). I didn’t necessarily need to see Allen play in Week 1 to know he was going to have to do everything for them… I just didn’t really think about this market for him in the preseason. After scoring 15 rushing TDs last year, Allen punched in two in the first game of the year. He trailed only Raheem Mostert in this department last season, and he was neck-and-neck with Jalen Hurts (15) and Christian McCaffrey (14). Allen is already two up on all three of those guys at this point, so +1000 feels like a strong value. It’s a slightly sneaky way to get some exposure to a player I want to be bullish on.
Ulrich: Kenneth Walker III Most Rushing Yards +2200 (DraftKings). Walker had 20 rushes against Denver, in a game where the Seahawks were behind until well into the third quarter. Not only did he manage 103 rush yards, but he broke off four runs of 10+ yards, including a 23-yard TD run. It’s pretty clear that the Seahawks’ new coaching staff likes Walker and sees him as a superior talent to Zach Charbonnet (which he is), who managed just 12 yards on the ground in eight rushes in Week 1. At +2200 Walker’s nearly 4x the price of the favorite in this market, Saquon Barkley, which feels like far too big a gap given Seattle’s elite defense, Walker’s overall talent, and his encouraging usage to start the season.
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Week 2 NFL Survivor Pick
- The Bengals were the most-picked team in Week 1 survivor pools … and they lost. Assuming you’re still alive, who are you picking in Week 2? And is there any obvious team you’re avoiding?
Freedman: If all I did each week was pick the team going against the Panthers, I might get pretty far. The Panthers feel like the kind of team a squad led by Harbaugh wouldn’t lose to, and the Chargers (-6.5) might never be favored by this many points again this year. Although the Ravens (-10) are massive favorites, I probably wouldn’t use them this week. It feels as if they have a roughly 0% chance of losing, but they’re likely to have some similarly sized spreads later in the year, and I think they’ll offer more value down the road.
LaMarca: I was lucky enough to survive with the Seahawks last week, and my goal is typically to avoid the most popular team of the week. That will likely be the Ravens in Week 2, who are nearly 10-point favorites vs. the Raiders. Instead, I’m going with the Houston Texans vs. a Bears squad that was thoroughly unimpressive. They may have survived vs. the Titans, but they had less than 150 yards and scored two non-offensive touchdowns. They’re not going to be able to hang with teams like the Texans if they don’t markedly improve, and Houston was one of the first bets I put into the bet tracker for this week, where you can find our picks but also NFL player props.
Ulrich: The Jaguars are set as -3.5 favorites at home this week against a Browns team that just got blown out at home in their first game of the season. Despite that, with the Ravens, Cowboys, and Texans all set as 6.0+ favorites, Jacksonville will still be a very low-owned option in survivor pools, making them a solid contrarian choice in larger fields. There also just aren’t a ton of great times to use the Jaguars this year. The next obvious spot for them isn’t for six weeks, when they play the Patriots at home—and that may be a good spot to fade them, as everyone else in your pool will be saving them for that week.
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Finding The Best NFL Office Pool Picks for Week 2
- We have a weekly pick’em pool column, and we assign confidence scores to the games. Which game this week are you least confident in, in terms of picking a winner?
Freedman: Broncos-Steelers. I have the Steelers projected as -1.5 favorites … but this is their second road game in a row, and they’re traveling to Denver, where visiting teams often struggle at elevation early in the season. The Steelers didn’t even score a TD last week with their uninspiring run-heavy offense. I get why they’re favored — the Broncos looked bad last week — but this is absolutely the kind of game that HC Mike Tomlin loses right after winning a game he has no business winning. It’s hard to pick a winner, because I feel like both teams will probably deserve to lose.
LaMarca: There are a couple of good candidates this week, but I’m going to go with Rams-Cardinals. It’s a game with a low spread and a high total, so there should be plenty of scoring on both sides. I could see this being a game that comes right down to the wire, with whoever has the ball last ultimately picking up the win. I’d lean toward the Cardinals—who remain an undervalued offensive squad with Kyler Murray healthy—but this game looks like a true coin-flip.
Ulrich: Giants-Commanders. As the saying goes, when two bad teams get together, weird things can happen. I just made that last phrase up, but after watching the performances these two teams dropped in Week 1, I want no part in predicting a winner in their Week 2 matchup. The Commanders ranked dead last in EPA per play on defense in Week 1 and made Baker Mayfield (24-30, 289 yards, 4 TDs) look like an MVP candidate. Meanwhile, the Giants ranked 31st in EPA per play on offense, staying ahead of the dreadful Panthers in that category by just a few percentile points.
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