The “RUMP”: Betting five NFL upsets for Week 12
The Thursday-nighter provides the first of five valuable underdogs
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.
We did it!
Ok, settle down, getting a 3-of-5 RUMP win isn’t going to change our lives, or even more than our Sunday, but each week provides a different calculation of success in underdog betting.
Actually, let’s let Week 11’s answer-key take it from here.
The RUMP Week 11 answer-key:
Was there a path to RUMP victory last week?
Each week we reflect on who we should have taken, had we gotten the answers to the test beforehand.
Steelers (+140)
Colts (+175)
Bills (+215)Yeah, we got all the upsets there were out there to get!
Given the way the last month-plus has gone for underdog as a whole, that’s actually low-key impressive.
In fact, fellow Substacker
broke it down on X:
The “failure” this season wasn’t cashing more underdog bets in the last six weeks, it was not cashing bigger in the first five weeks, when there was far less certainty about each team’s level of play.
For those new to the concept, we’ve coined the acronym RUMP for “Round-robin Underdog Moneyline Parlay.” In exchange for your (assumed) promise to bet everything else advised from THE WINDOW in single wagers, we cook up a NFL lottery ticket here. For more information on how it works and what to expect, check out the breakdown from Week 1.
How it works
Take 1.1 units and split that into 11 bets - one 5-team moneyline parlay and the 10 permutations of 3-team moneyline parlays that those five teams create. At most sportsbooks, you can simply add those five teams to a betting ticket and select 3-leg parlay (10x) to register your 0.1 unit bets. Three winners should do better than even money. Four wins connect four separate parlays and net an exciting return. When all five win? Say it with me - we’re diving into a gold doubloon silo like a young Scrooge McDuck!
Who to play
As always, these are five underdogs we like against the spread. Based on a pet peeve - our underdogs performing so well they win outright, we use their moneylines to make up an extra bet, hoping the five ATS games will more than make up for losing the RUMP if three or more fall short of victory.
Browns (+160) over Steelers
(ATS bet: +3.5, Made as part of the Thursday Night Football preview)
We looked deeper into this game in the TNF preview, but it’s worth noting that, while the Steelers are 21-3 on Monday Night Football under Mike Tomlin, since 2019 - post-Ben Roethlisberger’s prime, when coaching has been more of a factor in any Pittsburgh success - the Steelers’ are 1-4 straight-up on Thursday nights.
Last year, the Steelers beat the Ravens but had a bye the next week. In 2022, they lost to Baltimore in Pittsburgh but grinded-out a win against the Panthers the next week. In 2021, they followed a Ravens’ rivalry win with a TNF loss at Minnesota, and in 2020, they lost at home to Washington on a short week after beating the Ravens.
Bears (+155) over Vikings
(ATS bet: Bears +3.5, -110 at Caesars/Pinnacle)
The Bears were lost on offense. Caleb Williams was taking blame, and a rebuilt offensive line was deemed a massive failure.
Then Chicago fired offensive coordinator Shane Waldron and all of a sudden Williams plays his best game of the season that didn’t involve the Panthers or Jaguars. Is that a coincidence?
For a rookie who’s among the top quarterbacks in the league when he gets the ball out of his hands quickly, and among the worst when he doesn’t, it seems like there’s a direct correlation to a different play-caller making life easier on Williams.
We’ve heard it suggested that Waldron wasn’t particularly good at being an offensive coordinator back when Jaxon Smith-Njigba had little good to say about their time in Seattle together. So, it’s possible the preseason excitement about the Bears - Williams and the addition of weapons around him - was all undercut by Waldron’s inability to put those pieces in the right place to succeed.
There was less buzz around the Vikings before the season, but early on, Sam Darnold was playing well, and the offense was scoring touchdowns. However, despite a schedule-run through the grim trio of AFC South teams the last three weeks, Minnesota’s gone from 5.7 yards per play to 5.2, including going touchdown-less against a Jaguars’ defense that the Lions couldn’t help from scoring on last week.
Speaking of not-a-coincidence, four games ago, the Vikings lost their star left tackle, Christian Darrisaw, for the season. Darnold doesn’t have the time he used to, and the running game has slowed to a crawl (3.6 yards per carry in their last three).
The Vikings gain over a yard per play less on the road than they do at home, so we may be looking at two offensive units that appear headed in opposite directions.
Patriots (+300) over Dolphins
(ATS bet: Patriots +7.5, FanDuel)
To say “this is where we get it all back” would be far too aggressive for the vibe we try to capture here on THE WINDOW, but this game is a convolution of two Week 11 games where the favorite was pretty fortunate to cover.
The Patriots ran 72 offensive plays, had 26 first downs, were good on third down and Drake Maye threw for 282 yards and continued to show exciting development against the Rams. However, Jerod Mayo seemed unfamiliar with the Rams’ duo of Cooper Kupp and Puka Nacua (combined 13 catches, 229 yards, 3 TD). The Patriots (+4.5) lost by six.
The Dolphins had no answer for the Raiders only legitimate offensive threat, as Brock Bowers had nine more catches (13) and 76 more yards (126) than any of his teammates. Like New England (who gave up a long Kupp touchdown on fourth down when they blitzed Matthew Stafford), a defensive breakdown cost the Raiders (+7.5) the cover, when Tua Tagovailoa (needing only to run out the clock on the final drive) found an impossibly wide open Jonnu Smith for a long touchdown.
In each case, the yardage was basically 50/50, but the favorite covered. As a result, the Patriots are being undervalued for how well they’ve played recently, and the Dolphins are overvalued after back-to-back wins.
Mayo should, at least, be more familiar with how the Dolphins’ operate - which still isn’t at full speed (5.4 YPP in their last three games), so getting over a touchdown in a game where the teams are more evenly matched than they’re perceived to be is a no-brainer. If Maye can fully eliminate the turnovers, New England might pull off the upset the Raiders couldn’t.
Giants (+210) over Buccaneers
(ATS bet: Giants +6, DraftKings)
I was all ready to hang the buy sign on the Buccaneers out of their bye week, so this is uncomfortable even before we get to sideline shots of Tommy DeVito’s agent.
However, the overall premise of what we do here is based on value, and the Giants’ estimated market rating has dropped from around 38/100 to a rock-bottom 20/100 as New York has announced the Daniel Jones era is over, and DeVito gets the first crack at the starting quarterback job for the remainder of the year.
Was Jones playing well enough to warrant this much of a loss of faith?
If he was, he wouldn’t be getting benched in the first place.
Can DeVito play well enough, with burgeoning offensive pieces like Malik Nabers and Tyrone Tracy around him for the Giants to win?
Honestly, as much as the “Tommy Cutlets” thing took hold of New York last year, DeVito’s statistical production didn’t scream success, but the Giants won three straight games anyway.
If we’ve learned anything this season, it’s that there’s a level of team that shouldn’t be favored by a significant amount, and even if the Buccaneers’ have shown an admirable toughness as an underdog, giving six points is too many. If DeVito - who threw just one interception after a pair in his NFL starting debut - can limit the turnovers that Jones couldn’t, maybe the Giants can muster just enough offense to win.
Titans (+310) over Texans
(ATS bet: Titans +8, Bet365)
The Titans are bad, but the Texans are underwhelming.
That doesn’t mean Tennessee will get just their third, and by far most impressive, win of the season, but Houston needs to show more on offense for them to be a good bet to pull away from a team that can play a little defense.
The Titans have allowed the fourth-fewest yards per pass attempt, and the third-fewest overall yards per play. At its best, CJ Stroud and the Texans’ offense thrives on connecting on the deep ball, but that’s been largely missing this season. Nico Collins returned on Monday, but Houston was still missing that juice. Instead, they were able to run the ball on Dallas, and outlasted the Cowboys in a game that was closer for longer than it needed to be.
Will Levis still hasn’t won a game this season, but the Titans’ offense is still willing to take shots down the field and occasionally create explosive plays. That gives them the proverbial punchers’ chance. Combine that with fewer of the catastrophic mistakes made by Levis early in the season that burned the Titans in competitive games, and you can envision a close game here. If Tennessee, the first team the Texans have played with a good run defense (4.1 yards per rush allowed) can be one of few teams to not get gashed by Joe Mixon, the Titans have a shot at a major upset.
How the odds look this week:
