Good Sunday values

This is a little late, but I'm posting it to show that there are some exceptionally good bets out there if you look.

1). Who will have more fantasy football points, Adrian Peterson (+1/2) or Brett Favre (-1/2)?

You could almost tell this is a trap for people trying to jump on the Peterson bandwagon. I have Adrian on my fantasy football team and although he scored 32.75 points in Week 9, that really was a rarity. Except for those two huge breakout games he's had, he's been good for the 7-12 point range. So the old man easily could put up good numbers.

Props have seemed to be good values -- I won on Ben Roethlisberger over Derek Anderson, Donovan McNabb over Jason Campbell and surprisingly lost with Jon Kitna over Kurt Warner. But 3-1 isn't a bad way to go.

2). Betting dogs. I know Miamidon has mentioned this before but this week is a good example of the potential value in betting dogs. With only the IND-SD tonight and SEA-SF games left, if you bet the underdog without knowing anything about the teams, you would have gone 7-5, up two bets, which is how you can consistently beat the juice and become a winning player.

Some games tended to lend themselves for betting the dogs more than others. Atlanta was a 4 point underdog to Carolina (at Carolina) but other than the home-field advantage I really didn't understand why. It wasn't even sure before gametime whether Testaverde would be the starting quarterback and Carolina's offense and defense have been hit or miss. Plus, with Atlanta's Jerious Norwood out, I felt like Warrick Dunn would be motivated to have a good game. Atlanta won 20-13.

Also because of two stagnant offenses playing each other, I picked the under (36 points).

There were two double-digit dogs this week, CLE at PIT (-10) and STL at NO (-10 1/2). The latter game was an example of watching how the money is moving. It started out last Sunday as NO -12 and moved steadily down to -10 1/2 at the start of the game. Which pointed out that lots of money was going on St. Louis.

Check out this passage from Michael Konik's excellent sportsbetting memoir "The Smart Money" (2006):

Within twenty-four hours, Algo Andy has an account up and running at WWTS -- as do two other members of the Hollywood Boys. Within forty-eight hours, I have the scores -- or at least what Baby says they ought to be if the NFL contests were played several million times. How strange to see the difference between teams expressed in hundredths of a point. Indianapolis, Baby says, is a 5.29 point favorite over Miami. The Bears shouldn't be getting 7 points from the Packers; they should be getting 7.14. This is because, according to Baby's simulations, Green Bay is supposed to score an average of 23.74 points and Chicago is supposed to score an average of 16.60. I notice that almost all the matchups are closer than one might reckon initially, that the (long-term) difference between NFL teams isn't as large as most people assume. Which means there's inherent value in the underdogs.