This article is part of our NFL Picks series.
How quickly the year goes by. The NFL season hits the home stretch and it is Quarter 4 in Circa Million V. The Week 14 picks are in.
For the first time, two of the top five picks are from the same game. Lets take a look.
Bengals PK vs 
Colts, 1825 picks, 1224 diff: Lovefest for Bengals QB Jake Browning? Maybe. More likely the crowd saw the line edge as Cincy moved up to a short favorite by the Saturday afternoon deadline and now sit as high as -2.5. Those numbers are not particularly key, but the sentiment matters. Minshew Magic has traveled well this season as Indy has a sparkling 5-1 record ATS on the road. 
Lions -3 at 
Bears 1273 picks, Bears +3 vs Lions 1233 picks: Yes, both sides made the top 5! The top 4 actually. The Lions had a line edge at times as this game has bounced between -3 and -3.5. On the flip side, "sharp money" has gravitated to Da Bears, The handle is 45% on the Bears as of this writing vs just 25% of the actual bets as per the Splits on VSiN, a decent size discrepancy showing the bigger players are on Chicago. Then there is the Circa Friday Football Invitational where 9 of the 14 remaining players, all gambling pros, went with the Bears vs none on the Lions. It is not apples to oranges…or deep dish to whatever it is Detroit calls pizza….as the Friday players have the Bears at 3.5. We had the Lions on our card really just for the line edge, but then took it off when the spread moved back to -3
49ers -11 vs 
Seahawks 1234 picks, 632 diff: The Eagles and Cowboys are probably the 2nd and 3rd best teams this season and the Niners have smoked them by a combined score of 82-29. They thoroughly dominated these same Seahawks on Thanksgiving. Scratch that though, it may not be these same Seahawks as QB Geno Smith is iffy to start. The spread has risen to 13.5, so yet more line value. The music argument between these two cities is close. Grateful Dead, Journey and Green Day vs Jimi Hendrix, Nirvana and Pearl Jam. Tough one. Their football teams? Not so much. We faded the Niners last week in Philly. Big mistake! We will ride them in this one.
Eagles +3.5 at 
Cowboys, 1203 picks, 262 net: Kind of surprised by this one. The half point "hook" looks like the draw here. As a Giants fan I always just love it (not)when these teams play well, which is pretty much every season. An Eagles win almost certainly wraps up the NFC East and eliminates the losing QB from the super tight MVP race (Brock Purdy is likely going nowhere). We avoided picking here.. It feels like the Cowboys are having a moment here and the on-fire Dak-CeeDee connection could really light up the Eagles hideous pass defense. Yet this Cowboy group has yet to win that BIG game. Should be a fun one.
Along with the Niners, we have Broncos +2.5, Packers -6.5, Bills +1.5 and Rams +7.5 on our card as we hope to get rolling to start off Q4.
Week 13 Review
The recent hot run in Circa Millions hit an end in Week 13, alongside serious carnage for the remaining Circa Survivor players. The poll as a whole coin-flipped to a 49.99% week, putting the season mark at a below-vig level 51.81% despite the advantage of picking against stale lines.
The top 5 consensus choices went just 2-3 and overall the consensus side hit on just 5 of the 13 games. The five week win streak for cumulative picks on the consensus sides ended as well with just a 43.81% showing.
We got blasted with our Week 13 Niners fade but won 3 of our other 4 to jump to 35-29-1 on the season and 13-7 in the now concluded Q3. But hey, we picked up at least a game on most of the leader leaders heading into Week 13! Unfortunately (for us) we need to make up 10 games in five weeks as we sit in a tie for 1521st place out of 5270. I feel ok about our score so far but it also highlights how in a contest of this size with some serious pros involved, you really need to spike it often.
Speaking of the leaders, the top 10 (plus ties) had a poor Week 13 along with the masses.
CastleRocker-3 maintains the overall lead at 45-18-2 and 46 points, with Steve Fezzik (FEZZIC-2) and the surging SAINTS31-1 a half point back. A total of 15 players have at least 44 points.
