NFL Power Rankings Week 18
by Robert Ferringo - 1/4/2022

Welcome to Week 18. This is the first Week 18 in NFL history. It’s being dubbed and advertised as the “season finale”. That’s cute. But it is also telling. Because like most television shows, there are always some unexpected twists and turns in the final episode of the season. That is actually important to remember as we put a wrap on the season.

NFL Power Rankings Week 17
by Robert Ferringo - 12/28/2021

This is the first season in which the NFL will play 17 games. However, right now, with COVID absolutely ravaging the sports world (and the real world, for that matter), I think everyone in professional football – from players to coaches to owners to fans to bettors – just wants this season to end as quickly as possible.

NFL Power Rankings Week 16
by Robert Ferringo - 12/22/2021

Well, this is a mess. The next three weeks of the NFL regular season are going to be a debacle. COVID is wreaking havoc across the country (again). And if the last week is any indication, the NFL decision makers are ill-equipped to handle it.

NFL Power Rankings Week 15
by Robert Ferringo - 12/14/2021

Sometimes in life, being successful doesn’t mean seizing the moment or claiming victory because of your amazing talent. No, sometimes being successful is the direct result of simply not being a screw-up. Simply not making unforced errors and just not messing up is actually a pretty valuable skill in life. And in the NFL, that is the difference between cashing tickets and breaking bankrolls.

NFL Power Rankings Week 14
by Robert Ferringo - 12/8/2021

Bill Belichick is the greatest coach in the history of North American team sports. That’s not meant to be a “hot take” or anything. There might be someone out there that would make an argument against my statement. But that argument would be wrong.

NFL Power Rankings Week 13
by Robert Ferringo - 11/30/2021

I’m not sure when it happened, how it happened, or why it happened, but home field advantage no longer exists in NFL football. So far this season, NFL home teams are a putrid 89-90-1 straight up and 78-102 against the spread. That means that blindly betting on NFL road teams has produced a 57 percent winning mark so far this year.

NFL Power Rankings Week 12
by Robert Ferringo - 11/23/2021

I want to start this week’s Power Rankings with some house cleaning. This week all the handicappers at Doc’s Sports will be releasing their football picks on Wednesday to accommodate the Thanksgiving holiday. Like normal, that one release will include all college and NFL selections for the entire weekend.

NFL Power Rankings Week 11
by Robert Ferringo - 11/16/2021

Every NFL season is unique. The same can be said for the NFL betting season. Every year there is a betting trend that usually presents itself as kind of a through line or subplot to the pro football betting season. Sometimes home underdogs crush it. Some years it is NFC teams over AFC teams. Things like that crop up from time to time, the public gets ahold of it, and then everyone starts banging the books with the same picks each week.

NFL Power Rankings Week 10
by Robert Ferringo - 11/9/2021

One of the biggest themes of last week was the confirmation and verification of a gambling truism: always bet on teams that lose a star player. We see this all the time across all sports. When a team loses a star player to trade, injury, suspension, or some other malady, you always want to bet on those teams in their next game. It is counterintuitive. But it is effective.

NFL Power Rankings Week 9
by Robert Ferringo - 11/2/2021

I have long said that betting on NFL teams coming off a bye week is one of the most overused and overrated handicapping angles. The assumption is that with an extra week of time and preparation, teams coming off a bye week will be extra ready to play and therefore have a big advantage over their opponents.

NFL Power Rankings Week 8
by Robert Ferringo - 10/27/2021

There is no stopping progress. As I’ve gotten older, I expected to get more cynical. Instead, I think I’ve become more optimistic. That’s been due in part to seeing that history bends toward what is right and what should be. There are always fits and starts. But eventually things find their level and inch closer to What Should Be.

NFL Power Rankings Week 7
by Robert Ferringo - 10/19/2021

One of the biggest misconceptions of betting the NFL is that the spread is extremely important. It isn’t. I know that statement flies in the face of what you’ve read and heard your entire life: that “line value” is critical. In some sports it is. The NFL is not one of those sports.

NFL Power Rankings Week 6
by Robert Ferringo - 10/12/2021

I have a handicapping tip for you: Over the next four months, you should ignore NFL teams’ win-loss records. I know it’s hard. The records are usually right there next to the team’s name when odds are listed. But, mentally, you need to try to pay as little attention as you can to a team’s record.

NFL Power Rankings Week 5
by Robert Ferringo - 10/5/2021

Compared to the average NFL head coach, my football knowledge is probably about 10 percent of what they know. Seriously. When it comes to schemes and nomenclature and all of the minutia of an actual NFL game plan, I would be completely lost. Any average NFL fan knows probably half as much as I do, and they would be lost too, so this isn’t some big revelation.

NFL Power Rankings Week 4
by Robert Ferringo - 9/28/2021

The general held consensus in the NFL right now is that rookie quarterbacks should start. Teams should invest heavily in selecting quarterbacks with high-ranking first round picks. And then those quarterbacks should be thrown into the fire as soon as humanly possible. You hear this nonsense espoused regularly by media bobbleheads and average fans, and there is no doubt that “draft ‘em and start ‘em” is the prevailing theory in the league.

NFL Power Rankings Week 3
by Robert Ferringo - 9/21/2021

I’m going to keep this week’s intro short and sweet. I’m on a working vacation (they are all working vacations; I literally work 365 days a year) down in Florida. And as soon as I wrap this up, I’m headed about 100 yards down to the beach. The sea is balm for my soul and my need for getting blackout drunk in the sand at 10 a.m. on a weekday is a part of my nature that, for this seven days, I no longer have to repress.

NFL Power Rankings Week 2
by Robert Ferringo - 9/14/2021

One down. Seventeen to go. Week 1 of the NFL season is in the books. For me, it was one of the best opening weekends I’ve ever had, going 13-3 on Sunday with an array of big plays, totals and teasers all coming through with relative ease. In fact, if you include Saturday’s college football success, I had one of the best football weekends, +4,300 on Saturday and Sunday combined, in the 50-year history of this company.

NFL Power Rankings Week 1
by Robert Ferringo - 9/7/2021

Normal. New Normal. Old Normal. Everywhere you turn, someone is trying to explain what “normal” is supposed to be. Normal at work. Normal at home. Normal in public. It’s all about getting back to “normal”. I’m tired of hearing about normal. So, I suppose it’s a good thing that the NFL season is back upon us. Because nothing about professional football betting is normal. Blown leads and bad beats. Backdoor covers and stacks of dollar bills.

NFL Power Rankings Week 17
by Robert Ferringo - 12/29/2020

Greed is good. Since the coronavirus explosion in March, I have had an unshakeable reliance on the overall greed and sociopathology of NFL owners to see to it that there would be a full and completed NFL season. I don’t mean that as a pejorative, simply as a statement of fact. And, well, here we are. This week marks the completion of the NFL regular season. The playoffs are the icing on the cake. The fact that we’ve had four uninterrupted months of football is a silver lining in an otherwise horrific year. And the driving force behind that reality has been the overwhelming greed of those at the top of the professional football food chain. So good job.

NFL Power Rankings Week 16
by Robert Ferringo - 12/24/2020

There have been 41 games this season in which a team lost a game despite holding at least a 14-point lead. I want you to think about that for a second. We’ve played 15 weeks. And we’ve had 14 comebacks of two touchdowns or more. That is an average of three wild, can’t-believe-they-did-that comebacks every…single…week.