NFL Week 5 Market Report
Seeing is believing for the Vikings and Commanders
Matt Russell is the creator of THE WINDOW, and former lead betting analyst at theScore. If there’s a bad beat to be had, Matt will find it. You can find him @mrussauthentic on X.
Whether helmed by a rookie or a veteran with a decent resume (Derek Carr’s thrown for 40,000 yards!?!), NFL offenses are starting the find their groove through five weeks. It makes for better viewing, but it also complicates market opinion of teams like the Bears, Browns, Broncos, and Jets.
Veteran quarterbacks like Deshaun Watson (horrendous) and Aaron Rodgers (looking his age) make their teams seem like they should be better, but in reality, are potentially below average. Meanwhile, the growing pains for Caleb Williams and Bo Nix seem to be slowly alleviating.
It’s hard enough trying to know what to expect from teams with unproven quarterbacks or those that we have low expectations for, but it’s another challenge in trying to figure out what we’ll see on a week-to-week basis from stars of the past, present, or future.
For a breakdown of Week 5 and all the betting takeaways, check out the Tuesday episode of THE WINDOW: Sports betting podcastEstimated market ratings
Before the season, we explained the process of how the betting market takes the first odds offered from sportsbooks about a team’s quality - regular season win (RSW) totals - and translates that into a team rating.
Each game provides a subsequent data point that we receive from oddsmakers and bettors alike - the closing line (the last available point spread to bet before kickoff).
Taking the most recent game’s closing line into account, we adjust every team’s market rating to reflect where they were relative to the rest of the league before the previous week’s games.
These are not power rankings - a largely pointless exercise done for clicks - that simply list each team in a made-up order for readers to argue about.
They are ratings, which allow for the possibility that teams can be perceived to be equal - or have a large gap - amongst the other 31 teams in the NFL. To better understand the chart above, refer back to Week 1’s market rating column. You can argue about them, OR you can just bet against them.
For most of the Ravens-Bengals game, it looked like Baltimore’s boost to being the top-rated team in the NFL might have been premature. The Bengals’ defense failed to close out Lamar Jackson, and Cincinnati’s head coach crawled into the fetal position when the Bengals were gifted the ball on the outer reaches of field goal range. If you were fading the idea that the Ravens deserved this place atop the lead, you deserved better after backing a team whose quarterback had five touchdowns but wasn’t allowed to throw the ball in overtime.
Did the 49ers’ comfy win over the Patriots in Week 4 fool the market into thinking everything is fine in Santa Clara? With a 13-point lead in the second half, it didn’t seem like doom was impending, and yet… it was.
Be wary of the Chiefs being sold in the market. An injury to Rashee Rice sent their rating drift towards the low-end of their range, and sure enough, they had their most comprehensive performance of the season. We can officially renounce the Saints as anything more than “Meh” - which many teams would kill for.
The Vikings and Commanders have pushed through the high side of their previously assumed range, and they covered. Going into that discolored area and living to tell about it means they should be taken seriously. Next week, both NFC surprises will have their range legitimately extended.
On the one hand, having the Steelers’ defense with one play for the game from the 4-yard-line is a situation that should go your way better than 50% of the time, so it’s hard to complain about having the “wrong side.” However, you can see that Steelers -2.5 was the result of maintaining Pittsburgh as an above-average team, while dipping the Cowboys low as they’ve been in quite some time - likely due to Dallas missing defenders Micah Parsons and Demarcus Lawrence.
The Cardinals’ up and down performance week-to-week makes you wonder if their range should be the widest of any team. Meanwhile, the Jaguars had their best setup for success this season, and still couldn’t cover, so their rating might be exactly right.
Spoiler alert: The Browns - already at the low side of their range - are getting a hard downgrade ahead of their game with the Eagles. Cleveland’s the photo-negative example to the Commanders and Vikings, as they prove they’re worse than even the worst version of themselves.
The Dolphins won, but I’m not sure anyone deserved a notch in their win column after watching an unfortunate amount of their game in New England. They go on their bye week, but if Tua Tagovailoa comes back in Week 7, it will be interesting to see where Miami’s re-rated, as he might not be the saving grace Miami’s hoping for.
The Giants and Broncos show that they’re more capable than their rating. With three straight wins, Denver shouldn’t be considered near on-par as the Raiders, while the Giants shouldn’t be underdogs to anyone who isn’t an above-average team - something Seattle isn’t right now.
Week 5 betting results
