Chalk Sunday, 4th Quarter Win Percentage & Monday Night Football Preview

Scott Seidenberg and Mackenzie Rivers recap a chalky Sunday in the NFL where Favorites went 12-1 Straight Up. Plus who have been the 4th quarter kings this season and a preview of Bills at Vikings on Monday Night Football.

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FAVORITES DOMINATE

Favorites went 12-1 SU yesterday, 13-1 going back to Thursday with the Jaguars. If the Bills win tonight, it will match the best SU week for Favorites since 2021

2025 Week 8: 11-2

2024 Week 15: 14-1

2023 Week 9: 12-2

2022 Week 13: 13-1

2021 Week 14: 12-2

By the way, last week the Favs went 11-3. Chalky 2 Weeks....

🐻 BEARS 27, BUCCANEERS 24 — ON A WALK-OFF

Scott's one-sentence review: "It was the most drunk, stupidest, annoying game you will ever see."

📋 Grading the card

The game in two sentences

Chicago was up 14-0 in the blink of an eye. Then Caleb Williams threw four interceptions, Luther Burden fumbled before the two-minute warning to set up Tampa's tying touchdown and two-point conversion, and Cairo Santos walked it off.

⭐ Mac: "If you got drunk and knocked out for a couple of hours and only saw the first three possessions and the last one, you would not know what happened in this game at all. Eleven first downs, they set up first-and-goal, up 14-3. The rest of the game: five turnovers, four first downs. They completely forgot what they were doing."

Mac's diagnosis: "Caleb Williams, with the tweets he was receiving after they were first-and-goal up 14-3, might have been a little high on his own supply. He was definitely feeling himself."

But he won't call the result a fluke: "I'd love to see the turnover EPA difference in this game, because I actually don't think it would be that crazy. The Bears had five turnovers, but the Bucs had a couple of costly ones, including one that went to the house and almost ended the game. Tampa came in as the number one defense, so maybe they staunched it up a little. But the Bears were a five-point better team. I think the line was right."

⭐ AND THE STAT THAT MATTERS MOST

⭐ "The NFC North at 20-3 would be the best mark of all time in non-division games. All four teams are probably going to make the playoffs — much to the chagrin of the Rams and the Seahawks, who might be on the outside looking in."

Chicago is 7-2. Tampa is 3-6 and still alive in their division.

🧀 JORDAN LOVE IS SCOTT'S MVP

Packers 45, Patriots 27. Love threw for 372 yards and three touchdowns. Green Bay is 6-3; New England falls to 5-4. He leads the league in passing, and Micah Parsons is on his way back.

⭐ Mac's case, which is better than the raw numbers

He's a QBR guy and he led with the inconvenient part: "Brock Purdy is always number one or number two and he never gets credit. However — the way Jordan Love is doing it…"

⭐ "Jordan Love has had no running game the entire season. Maybe the worst running back tandem in the league. And that's Matt LaFleur's offense. So what does he do? He throws out his offense and he throws fifteen yards downfield per pass in this game. Just absurd. Nobody does that. That's literally like maybe John Elway in the eighties — just throw three touchdowns and two picks and see what happens. But he's not throwing picks. He's throwing forty-yard bombs like every other play."

His resolution, and it's probably right: "It could come down to record. If the Bengals win a very tough AFC North, maybe it's Burrow. If the Packers win the NFC North, maybe it's Love."

🐅 THE BENGALS MIGHT HAVE THE BEST OFFENSE IN FOOTBALL

Bengals 34, Falcons 17, in Madrid. Burrow went 24-of-29 for 271 yards and three touchdowns.

⭐ That's four straight 30-point games for Cincinnati.

The broadcast compared this offense to Kurt Warner's Greatest Show on Turf. Scott: "I don't know if I'd go that far — but between Burrow being healthy, Ja'Marr Chase and Tee Higgins, it's pretty dynamic."

Mac: "Chase had 140-something yards in the first half. I thought Chase was their player — and Tee Higgins is second in the league in receiving yards entering the day. They have a running game now too. A couple of early losses threw us off the scent, but the Bengals seem to have the best offense in the league."

📋 AROUND THE LEAGUE

Cowboys 27, Colts 23 — Dallas is 4-5

The Colts have reportedly decided they are NOT trading Daniel Jones — and the Giants confirmed they recently pulled their trade offer for Jonathan Taylor.

Chiefs 35, Jets 12

Kenneth Walker: 18 carries, 102 yards, one rushing touchdown and two receiving touchdowns. Mahomes threw for 242 and both scores. The Jets did nothing on either side of the ball.

Texans 44, Chargers 22 — LA falls to 0-8 and 0-8 ATS

"This team is historic and pathetic. The one bright spot: they scored a touchdown for the first time since Week 5 — and then they scored two, late."

⭐ And the streak is longer than it looks: "They lost their playoff game, they lost Week 18, they lost Week 17 last year — and they didn't cover any of those games. Put it all together: eleven straight ATS losses."

49ers 38, Raiders 17

Brock Purdy was electric.

⭐ Seahawks 17, Cardinals 3 — ✅ one of our favorite bets of the week

Battle of the backups: Drew Lock vs. Gardner Minshew. The thesis held exactly.

Scott: "I never understood the line going from Seahawks −11 to −8.5, because the drop-off from Darnold to Drew Lock is not a significant drop-off."

Mac on the other side of it: "The upgrade is a question. I'm not sure Gardner Minshew is better than Jacoby Brissett. I know he was against the Cowboys, but he's a second- or third-string quarterback."

Rams 20, Commanders 13 — 🚩 but the Rams have a real problem

Myles Garrett is back and had an immediate impact. Mac's warning: "They're only projected to win 9.5 games by CBS's rankings, which would put them ninth — not even eighth. And Puka Nacua went down at the end of the game. He was seventy-five percent of their passing yards in this game without Davante Adams. He's the guy — and they might not have him next week. If they drop any of these games to Arizona, it's pretty much over."

🦅 GIANTS 19, EAGLES 11

Joe Milton started: 18-of-34, 169 yards, no touchdowns, no interceptions — and he was Philadelphia's leading rusher with nine carries for 64 yards.

Scott's callback: "I told you Joe Milton was going to start when the Eagles took on the Cowboys on Thanksgiving. I was a little early."

Mac, who passed on this in survivor and regrets it: "I was kicking myself for not using this pick with Dan. The Eagles just had no shot in this game. Seven sacks. They have completely quit on the season."

⭐ "My most frustrating part was at the end of the game. The guy with the strongest arm in combine history, throwing seventy-five yards in the air — doesn't throw a Hail Mary. Doesn't even get it up. So frustrating."

🌡️ THE DATABASE PULL: COLD-WEATHER TEAMS GOING SOMEWHERE WARM

Lions 19, Dolphins 9. Detroit is 6-2, Miami 1-7. Scott wanted Miami at +7 and didn't play it — and then went to check whether his own theory had any support.

The query: teams playing in games above 80 degrees whose previous game was below 50 degrees. All-time, back to the early 2000s:

Mac: "Under forty percent. 36% ATS over nineteen games — not a terribly small sample."

Scott's own caveat, which he raised himself: "I'm threading the needle with the temperature stuff. And it doesn't apply cleanly here — the Lions' previous game was indoors against the Vikings. It was 83 to 85 in Miami yesterday."

(Mac's rejoinder: "But they had to go outside. A little brisk up there.")

The mechanism he's pointing at: "Most of the time it's Miami or Jacksonville or Tampa. It changes your body, your mentality, your physiology."

Honest framing from Scott: "the crazy stat that means absolutely nothing" unless the temperature conditions actually line up. Which is the right way to hold a 19-game sample.

⭐⭐ THE BIG ONE: WHO HOLDS LEADS AND WHO DOESN'T

Scott pulled every team's late-game splits — the record when leading at the start of the fourth quarter, at the five-minute mark, at the two-minute warning, and the final result — then checked last season for patterns.

🥇 The largest gap in the league, by far: DENVER

⭐ They trailed entering the fourth quarter in six games and were tied in one. They have led entering the fourth quarter twice all season. They are 7-2.

Mac: "They have a differential of plus twelve — the same as the New York Giants. No team with a record of 6-3 or better is even close to that, outside of those two."

Broncos 26, Panthers 21 was the fifth come-from-behind win of the year. (Mac: "Does it again. He can't keep getting away with this." And credit where due — Bryce Young posted an 86 QBR and stood in against pressure.)

⭐ Scott: "Denver is the best comeback team in the NFL. We should not be surprised if, at the start of the fourth quarter, you just need to blindly bet the Denver Broncos."

🏆 The teams that get leads AND keep them

Mac's observation that ties it together: "Last year, the Bears WERE the Broncos. They did the fourth-quarter comeback thing." Scott confirmed it — Chicago led entering the fourth in eight games last year and won eleven.Three extra. This year they're getting the leads instead.

(Cincinnati's one exception: against Tennessee they didn't have the lead with two minutes left and came back to win anyway.)

📉 The teams that never get there

The Chargers detail is remarkable: they've led entering the fourth twice — but in zero of eight games have they held a lead at the five-minute mark or the two-minute warning. Both of those leads were gone before five minutes were left.

🔥 And the teams actively throwing games away

Biggest positive gap (start of Q4 → final result): Denver, then Minnesota, Buffalo, the Giants, Pittsburgh, San Francisco.

Biggest negative gap — the lead-blowers:

Mac: "All of those coaches could be gone. I think DeMeco Ryans deserves another chance — he took over a team expected to win four games and won a playoff game in each of his first three seasons. But the other coaches, and maybe Ryans too if you talk to some people, are on the hot seat to say the least."

⭐ WHY DENVER DOES IT: THE QUARTERBACK NUMBER

EPA per dropback in the fourth quarter this season:

Bo Nix in fourth quarters this year:

⭐ Mac: "That is insane. People want him benched. He's Mr. Clutch."

And the reason this isn't noise: it's a two-year pattern. Denver did this last season too. Scott: "It's not a surprise that they're doing this."

🏈 MONDAY NIGHT: BILLS AT VIKINGS — STRENGTH ON STRENGTH

Buffalo −3. Total 43.5. The number one scoring offense in the NFL against the number one scoring defense in the NFL.

📊 What happens when #1 offense meets #1 defense

Mac's framing: "It means more. Offense is more predictive. It's three-fifths of the NFL, really, if we're being honest."

Carson Wentz is the wild card

Mac: "I think that helps the Vikings, in this sense: not that Carson Wentz is that much better than Kyler Murray — but Wentz has a real opportunity here and nothing to lose. He wasn't expected to be a starter again in this league. If he plays one good game, he might not give that job up. So they might have a puncher's chance. But the Bills are just better. All the analytics that weight offense more, as historically you should, are going to say they're the better team."

And his stat for the Buffalo side:

⭐ "Josh Allen is 6-0 in his career straight up against Brian Flores' defenses. You can't blitz the Hulk. He'll just get mad at you."

Scott's Wentz research — the first two weeks of the season

Mac: "Throw that second game out offensively. It was a torrential downpour."

Scott's angle: "I wouldn't be surprised if it's a good game from Justin Jefferson — or maybe it's a Hockenson game."

⭐ THE SAME-GAME PARLAY

⭐ The construction note worth understanding: putting the Vikings' spread with a Josh Allen touchdown is NEGATIVELY correlated — the legs fight each other, which is exactly why the price jumps from +385 to +525, close to six-to-one. Meanwhile the Allen touchdown is HIGHLY correlated with the over, which is what keeps the number from going even higher.

Mac on the over: "Shuffling the deck with the Vikings offense — even if Kyler Murray were in there, they're not as bad as they've been. They're not the worst offense in the league, with the weapons they have. In a dome, with Josh Allen probably setting the pace, it's probably a catch-up game for the Vikings. I like the over."

⭐ Scott's best bet tonight

"If you can get the 3.5, I'd lean Minnesota. But I think I might settle on the over as the best bet. Josh Allen's not going to be stopped, and I think Carson Wentz makes this Vikings offense better. So maybe my best bet is just the over tonight."

📅 Coming Up

🏀 A NEW NBA CONTRIBUTOR — ANNOUNCEMENT THIS WEEK

You've been asking for it. We haven't had an official NBA guy in a while, and that changes this week. Starting Wednesday — our new NBA contributor will be writing a Wednesday NBA free play article on BettorDay.com and in the Bettor Day mobile app, with premium picks going out as well.

All the HQs are live. College Basketball HQ launches November 16 for Feast Week.

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