This article is part of our NFL Picks series.
It's Week 7, but this slate of games is brought to you by the number "three." There are only 13 games on the board and five of them have spreads of exactly a field goal. It's tough to avoid rolling with the push-potential games, and below are the top five picks this week.
Chargers +5.5 at 
Chiefs - 1,738 picks, 913 net
Eagles -2.5 vs. 
Dolphins - 1,665 picks, 697 net
Rams -3 vs. 
Steelers - 1,659 picks, 899 net
Browns -3 at 
Colts - 1,658 picks, 1039 net
Buccaneers -2.5 at 
Falcons - 1,581 picks, 867 net
The Lions-Ravens game in the early window sets up as the biggest showdown in this year's pool, as 1,535 contestants went with Detroit and 1,358 are on Baltimore.
We sit at 16-13-1 and will ride with three of the top four picks above. That wasn't our plan, but more on that below. We will try to begin our ascent up the leaderboard with the following.
Bears +3 vs. Raiders - In the Tyson Bagent against Brian Hoyer quartback matchup the world surely craves, we will take the points at home and hope for the best.- Browns -3 at Colts - There are quarterback questions here too. Deshaun Watson should finally suit up for the Browns, Cleveland's defense is historically great and Gardner Minshew's Magic has translated to a terrible record acagainst the spread as a starter.
- Chargers +5.5 at Chiefs - I generally like to get points in divisional games, and this series has produced mostly close contests and four Chargers covers against the spread four times in the six Justin Herbert and Patrick Mahomes have matched up. A fifth game was a Chiefs cover in overtime as 5.5-point favorites. Hopefully that history does not repeat.
Packers -1.5 at Broncos - Road favorites coming off a bye are 88-55-2 against the spread dating back to 1999, and 31-13-1 out of conference, per Steve Makinen at VSiN.com. Jordan Love has not looked great, but Aaron Jones is on track to play and Denver's defense can cure what ails any offense.- Eagles -2.5 vs Dolphins - I'm pretty sure we pick one side of the Eagles game each week, and mostly Philadelphia. Miami's offense has torched all the poor-to-bad teams they have faced, but they struggled a bit against the Bills. I need to see some proof that they can shred a good defense. I also suspect the Eagles will drain the clock with their run game and keep Tua Tagovailoa and crew off the field.
I do like the Buccaneers -2.5, but it ended on our cutting room floor. Tampa Bay is well-equipped for the strategy everyone uses against Atlanta -- stop the run and make Desmond Ridder beat you. Ridder threw for over 300 yards each of the last two games, but it came with too many interceptions and penalties last week. We did not consider either the Steelers or Rams. Presumably no one believes that Steelers offensive coordinator Matt Canada spent the bye week in the lab concocting a way to score more than 17 points.
Week 6 Review
It was a rough slate for Circa Million players. The pool as a whole finished under 50 percent for the first time in 2023 and is now down to 51.2 percent on the year.
San Francisco -7.5 against Cleveland was the top pool pick for both the week and the season, as the betting spread rose to -9.5 and -10 at the time picks were due. They never sniffed a cover and thanks mainly to that, the net of picks on the consensus side in Week 6 checked in at a ghastly 43.55 percent.
The 49ers had limited value as far as betting ideas go, as actual backers needed to give at least -9.5. We picked them along with the masses, and in hindsight, we should have either passed or gambled on a Browns cover. In the context of a large contest where you need to really smash to cash. There is precious little value in just matching the crowd for all but the leaders. We entered the week 14-10-1, and at the end of season winners will need to hit something like 70-75 percent. Plus the spread moving from -7.5 to -9.5 did not go through particularly key numbers. Another way to look at it is you only get 90 picks all season, and joining a popular bandwagon effectively reduces that number.
Enough about my contest strategy, though. The primary goal here is to get some betting insight in a Wisdom of Crowds sort of way, and right now, the crowd is stuck in neutral.
Just a quick note on the Circa Survivor contest -- 60.3 percent of the 1,745 remaining contestants are on the Seahawks this week, the largest share on one team on a non-holiday card according to Director of Operations Jeffrey Benson. The short Thanksgiving/Black Friday and Christmas slates are their own week for contest purposes, so players have to hold teams like the Eagles, Chiefs and 49ers. Throw in six byes, lower spreads and few who can still pick the Bills and we have a major consensus in Week 7.
