Contestants in Circa Sports Million IV leaned heavily on games around the key number of 3 as selections were released late Saturday afternoon.
The Top Most-Selected Teams for NFL Week 8 are the Patriots -2.5 at the Jets, Titans -2.5 at the Texans, Raiders -1.5 at the Saints, Cardinals %plussign% 3.5 at the Vikings and Browns %plussign% 3.5 vs. the Bengals on Monday Night Football.
The first three are teams laying under a field goal with the last two being dogs getting the benefit of “the hook” at 3.5.
On VSiN’s “The Football Contest Show” (8-9 p.m. ET/5-6 p.m. PT each Saturday), the VSiN co-hosts Brady Kannon and Mike Pritchard along with regular Circa Sports guests Derek J. Stevens, Mike Palm and Jeffrey Benson expressed surprise that the Titans were among the top picks as the news broke earlier in the day that Tennessee starting QB Ryan Tannehill was out and Malik Willis will make his first career start.
During the course of Saturday, the line was adjusted from Titans -2.5 at Circa and most books to pick-’em. In fact, Circa went to Texans -1 at 3:56 p.m. PT. The deadline to submit Circa Sports Million selections is 4 p.m. PT.
But, as Benson mentioned on the VSiN show: “A lot of people put in their plays on Friday night or Saturday morning and this news came out late Saturday morning.”
Many of those might not have used the Titans if they had known Tannehill wasn’t going to play, though a fair number probably suspected as such as Tannehill didn’t practice on Wednesday or Friday and was a limited participant on Thursday while being widely reported to be questionable and/or a game-time decision.
While Benson said Tannehill is the better option over the rookie Willis, he also hinted that Tannehill is mostly a game-manager and hands off a lot to RB Derrick Henry, so the Titans might have been a popular play regardless.
The Circa Top 5 consensus is 19-15-1 (55.9%) overall after going 1-4 last week and 3-7 the past two weeks after starting the season 16-8-1 (66.7%) the first four weeks. Circa Sports Million drew 4,691 entries this season at $1,000 apiece.
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In Circa Survivor III, there are only 125 live entries remaining from the original field of 6,133 (also at $1,000 apiece) for a record $6.133 million prize pool for a Nevada football contest).
This week’s top play was on the Cowboys over the Bears with 61 (48.8% of the live entries) using them. The rest of the Top 5 was the Eagles (38) over the Steelers, the Falcons (12) over the Panthers, the Dolphins (4) over the Lions and the Seahawks (3) over the Giants.
In Survivor, contestants pick one NFL team a week to win straight-up (ties lose) and you can’t use a team more than once through the entire season.
Bob DeLuca, using the contest alias CRUSHEMSPORTS.COM, has all of his original six entries (the most allowed per person) alive heading into Week 8, though we’re aware there are other people or groups that have more combined entries through the use of partners, friends, family, etc.
DeLuca was a guest this week on VSiN’s “A Numbers Game” with Gill Alexander and talked about how he used the same team on all six entries through the first seven weeks, and that his original intention was to do it through the first 10 weeks. However, with the field whittled down so much, he said he might split them up.
On “The Football Show,” Stevens pointed out that DeLuca did just that as he used the Cowboys on three entries and the Dolphins on the other three.
