This article is part of our NFL Picks series.
The Week 1 picks are in for the Circa Sports Million!
Here are the most popular picks this week:
Browns +2.5 vs. 
Bengals - 1963 picks
Steelers +2.5 vs. Niners - 1944 picks
Jaguars -4.5 vs. 
Colts - 1355 picks
Falcons -3.5 vs. 
Panthers - 1161 picks
Commanders -7 vs. 
Cardinals - 1143 picks
5274 entrants -- including yours truly on a split ticket -- signed up for this year's edition of the Circa Sports Million. The contest guarantees $6 million in payouts, which means there is an overlay of $726,000. Show me the money!
Contestants pick five games each week based on the above spreads, which were released by Circa at roughly 1:00 PM Eastern time Thursday. 37 entrants did not make a selection in Week 1.
A key point in regards to analyzing whether to bet or fade any picks is that Contest Lines differ from the betting lines on the board. Contest Lines are static while actual lines move. Thus a popular pick for the contest may be simply due to the line moving before the selections come in. That barely happened this week, as no actual spreads moved more than a half point from the Contest Lines.
Tailing the most popular Circa picks via actual bets worked extremely well in 2022. It is a generally sharp crowd, though there is of course some contest gamesmanship involved, so translating these to wagers is not perfect. The top 25 on the year, which corresponded to about 29 percent of contestants picking that side in the given week, went 17-8 in the contest and 16-9 vs the closing number. Two games this week qualify for the "system."
- Browns +2.5 - 37.48 percent
- Steelers +2.5 - 37.12 percent
Both games sat at the same number as the pick deadline but dropped to +2 by Sunday morning. Cleveland and Pittsburgh are also both home underdogs, but very different sorts. In a piece I wrote recently about numbers to look at, home dogs in divisional games -- like the Browns -- have fared extremely well in Week 1 games, whereas home dogs in interconference games have fared poorly. I like the Browns, both as a pick here -- in fact we did pick them -- and as a bet, which I did make.
How about the other end? Low interest non-Thursday contest picks that were selected more than their opponent were a major fade in 2022. The bottom five this week are the following.
- Ravens -10 - 684 picks
- Chargers -3 - 740 picks
- Bucs +5.5 - 825 picks
- Jets +2 - 853 picks
- Cowboys -3 - 875 picks
The "play" is to pick the opponents here, though why that worked last year is not totally clear. Indifference? That is never the biggest driver of market action. As far as these games go, the Texans are down to +9.5 vs the Ravens, thus faders get a worse price. Ditto Bills backers, as they are now -2.5 vs the Jets heading into Monday Night Football. Dolphins +3, Vikings -5.5 and the Giants now getting 3.5 all look like better plays, at least based on current lines.
Some of these games might be overall unpopular in the Circa Sports Million simply because they landed on "key" numbers. Again, remember that this is a contest, not actual bets. Winners will need to get in the range of 70 percent correct to cash on the quarterly and season-long prizes, thus pushes are most likely not welcome. On the other hand, Commanders -7 was a popular pick, so this is not a hard and fast rule.
Circa Sports Million V Picks
Here are the picks we entered for Week 1.
- Browns +2.5
- Raiders +3.5
- Packers +1
- Eagles -4
- Colts +4.5
