This article is part of our NFL Picks series.
The Week 2 picks for the Circa Million have been made.
Here are the most popular picks of the week. "Net" refers to the margin of picks in that game.
Chiefs -3 at 
Jaguars -- 1626 picks, 1072 net 
Giants -4.5 at 
Cardinals -- 1374 picks, 1013 net
Falcons -1 vs 
Packers -- 1315 picks, 528 net
Dolphins -2.5 at 
Patriots -- 1189 picks,, 311 net
Titans +3 vs 
Chargers -- 1124 picks, 351 net
There is a little line value in some of the top picks as of Saturday night, though nothing large. The Titans are the most noteworthy, as the market has them at +2.5, which is off the key number of three on the contest line. The Falcons are up a shade to -1.5 and the Chiefs are -3.5 at certain sportsbooks at -105, and -3 at -120 on others. Meanwhile, the Giants are down to -4.
By net margin, the top picks are the Chiefs, (1072), Giants (1013), Broncos -3.5 vs Commanders (599), Falcons (528) and Steelers +2.5 vs the Browns (430). The Broncos with the hook were a little surprising.There is no line value, but it is a nice bounceback spot. The Commanders have to travel and play at altitude, plus Jerry Jeudy returns, so it makes some sense.
Circa Sports Million V Picks
We are looking to add to our 4-1 start with the following picks:
- Falcons -1
Bears +2.5- Giants -4.5
Rams +7.5
Steelers +2.5
Week 1 Review and ... a New System?
In Week 1, Circa Million players got a cumulative 13,815 picks right and 12,370 wrong for a winning percentage of 52.76. That is solid, as it slightly nudges ahead to a profit after sportsbook vig if these were actual bets on each game at -110. Some contest lines were a shade better than actual lines, though no games were close enough to diverge.
The top five picks went 3-2 and the consensus choice in each game produced nine wins and six losses when we eliminate the Thursday game that was already played when the data came out. Using a weighted average of the picks -- 1,963 hypothetical units on the Browns, 1,944 on the Steelers, etc. -- they would have gone 9,818-67,67 for a very nice 59.2 percent success rate and a return on investment (ROI) of 13.0 percent assuming -110 on every wager. That sounds great, but when I went back and tested that methodology on 2022 results, it did rather poorly, with an overall ROI of -5.79 percent.
What did work best? Tailing the top five Circa Million picks of the week and weighing the wagering quantities on those five. I further tweaked it to use the top five games by consensus margin as opposed to just outright selections. I used a "unit" of 0.1 x consensus margin. By that I mean if a net of 1,500 contestants picked the game, we would risk a hypothetical $150 on it. I also used -110 as the price on all hypothetical bets. I did not adjust for any line moves. Here are the weekly results from 2022.
This system produced the following picks and results in Week 1:
The ROI was 7.74 percent, which was not as good as just rolling with all the games last week, but the results from 2022 suggest focusing on the top picks is the best way to use the Circa data.
The Week 2 Circa plays using the system"with these units are as follows:
- $107.20 on the Chiefs
- $101.30 on the Giants
- $59.90 on the Broncos
- $52.80 on the Falcons
- $43.00 on the Steelers
