NFL Week 4 Picks: Teams on Upset Alert This Weekend

Week 4 lines are a result of plenty of overreaction. Here are a couple of upsets to look for your NFL picks on Sunday, October 3.

Indianapolis Colts vs. Miami Dolphins 

Sunday, October 03, 2021 - 01:00 PM EDT at Hard Rock Stadium

The Indianapolis Colts will travel to Miami as 1.5 point underdogs. The Dolphins won’t have Tua Tagovailoa but they'll have quarterback Jacoby Brissett who has plenty of starts under his belt for Indianapolis throughout his career.

The Colts have had a tough schedule to start the season and are now 0-3 with losses to Seattle, Los Angeles, and Tennessee. The schedule will start to get a little easier when they take on a 1-2 Miami Dolphins team with a backup quarterback under center.

https://youtu.be/7LEsmXbWFXk

Indianapolis has struggled protecting their quarterback, Carson Wentz, and has scored just 56 points in three games this season. The offense is averaging 342 yards per game and just 18.7 points per game. A usually reliable defense has also struggled, allowing 383.3 yards including 140.3 yards on the ground per game.

The defense has been missing tackles left and right and continues to struggle in coverage downfield. The Colts have allowed 80 points in three games this season and that’s just not going to win games.

Quarterback Carson Wentz #2 of the Indianapolis Colts. Andy Lyons/Getty Images/AFP.

Meanwhile, the Dolphins haven’t protected their quarterbacks in pass protection and that’s one reason Brissett is going to be starting in this game. To be fair, both offenses struggle holding off pass rushes but the only pass rush that has been effective this year has been the Dolphins.

The Dolphins defense is allowing 418 yards per game on the offensive end but did play a full overtime game last week, after losing to the Raiders 31-28. It was a much better performance in comparison to their game against Buffalo in the previous week, which was a 35-0 loss.

This is really an evenly matched game for the NFL odds, but the Colts just have more pieces. It is more of a gut thing than anything but with two evenly matched teams, I’ll take the underdog in the Colts, who I had projected better than the Dolphins before the season began.

NFL Pick: (visit our Sportsbook Review)

https://twitter.com/Colts/status/1442192605920600069?s=20

Baltimore Ravens vs. Denver Broncos

Sunday, October 03, 2021 - 04:25 PM EDT at Empower Field

I don’t want to take anything away from how well the Broncos have played in the first three weeks of the season. However, they’ve got wins over the Giants, Jaguars, and Jets. Most teams in the NFL would start the season 3-0 with that schedule.

There’s some overreaction here to Baltimore struggling against the Lions. In Week 1, it was obvious that the Lions were buying into the new coaching staff in Detroit and playing hard until the whistle. Either way, the Ravens beat the Chiefs a couple weeks ago and deserve credit for finding a way to beat the Lions, even on a bad day.

https://twitter.com/Ravens/status/1442462523350032386?s=20

All of the Broncos' numbers are better analytically but again, going off projections to start the season, the Broncos were below the Ravens. This is a bit of an overreaction to the Broncos winning three straight against the three worst teams in the NFL.

Give me the Ravens as slight underdogs. By the time you’re reading this, the Ravens might be favorites.

NFL Pick:

*The pick reflects the line at the moment the writer made the play, the odds at the beginning of this article show the live line movement. Since the lines might vary, don’t forget to refer back to our live odds.