The Trends Through Six Weeks: A 13.5-Point Dog Won Outright, Three Home Dogs Cashed, and We Lost a Parlay by Half a Yard

Six weeks of the 2026 season are banked, and the market's September delusions are now a matter of record. We graded all 14 Week 6 games against the closing numbers using the final scores, stacked them on the five-week ledger, and once again grade our own homework from last week's column.

The receipts on last week's angles

Honest scorecard. We called the Rams' minus 12.5, the biggest spread of the season, 'posted by a team that just lost at home': Arizona won the game outright, 18-16, the largest-spread upset of the year. We flagged Green Bay at minus 1.5 hosting Dallas as one of the two short numbers worth a second look: the Packers won by 10. The other short number, Buffalo minus 5.5 in Vegas, won the game but not the number, 33-30. So the leans went 2-for-3 straight up and the skepticism-of-big-favorites thesis had its best week of the season. Kansas City and San Francisco both won without covering, which is its own small lesson about laying 7.5 with teams that win on defense and clock.

Our league lost by half a yard, and we are framing the receipt

Full disclosure, as always. Our Week 6 pick was a two-leg parlay at +165: Bills moneyline against the Raiders, and James Cook UNDER 94.5 rushing yards in the same game. Buffalo won 33-30, so leg one cashed. James Cook carried 22 times for exactly 95 yards. Not 94. Ninety-five. The under died on what the box score says was his final carry of a 4.3-a-pop afternoon, the app graded it off the official stats, and the week settled as a loss by the width of a chain link. The lesson is the same one from the Amon-Ra week, sharpened: a prop turns your whole week into one number you cannot influence, and a half-yard miss pays the same as a blowout. We are 3-3 with the pot at $1,178.71, and the league has, separately, voted Thursday games off the ballot so votes stop closing before half the league gets to the phone.

Six weeks of dogs, and now they bite at home too

Underdogs went 9-5 against the spread in Week 6 with SIX outright winners: Denver over Seattle, Houston over Jacksonville in London, Cleveland over Baltimore, Tennessee's first win at Indianapolis, Arizona's heist in Los Angeles, and Green Bay over Dallas. Note the new flavor: three of them, Denver, Cleveland, and Green Bay, were HOME dogs, the position this column has spent a month calling the market's blind spot from the other side. The running ledger since Week 2 now reads: dogs 46-28-3 against the spread, 32 outright winners in five weeks. The only favorites who covered were Chicago, New Orleans, Carolina, Pittsburgh, and Kansas City, and three of those were laying less than a field goal.

Totals: still a coin flip, still honest

Week 6 split 7-7, and the season ledger sits at 47 overs, 44 unders, and a push. Every totals trend this season has lasted exactly one week, and this column will keep saying so until the sample does something interesting. Matchup and weather first, last Sunday's results never.

The Week 7 board is thin and strange

Byes take Buffalo, Jacksonville, the Chargers, and Washington. What is left includes three numbers that deserve staring at. Cincinnati opened minus 1.5 AT Baltimore, the first time the Ravens have been home dogs all season, and the whole line is a bet on Lamar Jackson's Wednesday practice report. Houston is laying 10.5 at home against the Giants one week after the market's last double-digit spread got beaten outright; a 2-4 team laying ten and a half should make everyone's palms itch. And Seattle opened minus 2.5 hosting 5-0 Kansas City, the second time this season the market has priced an unbeaten team as an underdog, both times with Seattle laying the points. The first time, San Francisco walked out of that same building with a 32-29 win and a 5-0 record. Detroit minus 3 hosting Green Bay at a 53.5 total is the week's best watch; Dallas minus 4.5 at Hurts-less Philadelphia closes it Monday.

What survives contact with Week 7

The same ledger, louder: underdogs with a pulse deserve real votes, big favorites keep paying for their reputations, and home field has been worth roughly nothing since September. The new entry from Week 6 is about props, and it is personal: when your league votes between a spread and a prop, remember that one of them can lose by half a yard while your team wins the game. The injury column has the two lines hostage to practice reports; wait for Friday before the league locks anything in.

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