AI Picks for the NFL: Week 8

In case you missed it, it’s worth noting that the NFL Swarm decided to follow up on last week’s six team parlay with an even more impressive display of forecasting. The Week 7 NFL Swarm went 11-3 in forecasting winners, and each and every one of its five highest confidence predictions won. That sort of predictive prowess allowed one member of the Swarm to land a five-team parlay that paid over 4 to 1. And, just for good measure, the only ATS prediction that was made with High Confidence also hit, capping off an excellent week for the AI.

Now the NFL Swarm is back with its forecast for Week 8. As you’ll notice, the AI has once again deemed five games as its Best Picks of the week, including the Patriots, Chiefs, Rams, Bears and Steelers.

Looking more closely at the matchup between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Cleveland Browns reveals a little bit of what makes the NFL so challenging to forecast. On the one hand, it’s almost always wise to pick against the Cleveland Browns, who failed to win a single game in 2017 and were regarded as perhaps the worst team in NFL history. The Achilles of the Browns’ organization has long been its lack of a true answer at quarterback, but rookie Baker Mayfield has already lead the 2018 team to infinitely more wins than last year (2). Still, the Browns are winless on the road, and traveling to hostile Pittsburgh, who sit atop the AFC North. So, the NFL Swarm is understandably riding with the Steelers with High Confidence.

With all that said, there might not be as much separating the two teams as one might thing. For one thing, while the Browns may be hopeless on the road, the Steelers have only won once at home, a surprisingly inept output for a team playing in front of the most intimidating and passionate fan bases in all of football. And while the Steelers might lead the AFC North, their record is a rather pedestrian 3-2-1, while a a scheduling quirk means that the Bengals and Ravens, who have both won 4-3 games, are actually behind the Steelers in the division. So, when the NFL Swarm is asked to register a forecast for the eight point spread in that contest, things get a lot more difficult. High Confidence in a Steelers’ victory becomes a less confident prediction that they will also cover the spread of a more than a touchdown.

In Week 7, the NFL Swarm deemed just one ATS pick worthy of its Highest Confidence, but that pick delivered in spades when the Chiefs blew out the Bengals by 35 points. It should come as no surprise then to see that the AI system is once again riding Patrick Mahomes and Co. as ten point favorites over the Denver Broncos, although the size of that spread is noteworthy. The other Best Pick ATS is those same Bengals, who seem to be very fortunate in finding themselves matched up against the 3-3 Buccaneers. The full set of ATS predictions are available in the chart below.

Unanimous AI invites you to participate in this weekly series of NFL predictions. You can join the growing community of football fans by following the link below. Unanimous is hosting weekly contests and Swarms to make forecasts for the upcoming matchups, and will be awarding prizes to the highest performers each week. 

 

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