NFL Week 13 Best Bets – New Mexico

Weekly picks for the 2024 Circa Millions, Westgate SuperContest and DraftKings Pick ‘Em Pool

The NFL week 13 slate brings an interesting challenge with the 3 Thursday games and now a Friday game for the second season in a row. If an entrant wants to use a Thursday game in contest play, then they must be prepared to submit their entire card on Thursday. Normally I skip TNF football for this very reason, as I like to gather additional injury news from Thursday and Friday practice reports. These are good indicators if injured player will participate in the game on Sunday. However, with 4 games between Thursday and Friday, it makes it hard to find 5 games for Sunday and MNF.

The New Mexico model has flagged 2 of the 4 games played on Thursday and Friday as having lots of value. It also does not like much of the Sunday slate. To be fair, New Mexico has flagged 4 games on Sunday, but I would have to force the 5th pick for contest entries. So, I’ve decided to enter New Mexico early with the 2 games from Thursday and Friday. The original model still hasn’t made up its mind on which teams it wants to play, currently deciding between 9 games, so I’m going make 2 posts this week for the different models/contests.

New Mexico went 4-1 again last week, bringing its current 5-week run to 19-6. The only set back in the past 5-week stretch was the 2-3 result for week 10. With back-to-back 4-1 weeks that gave me a 10-5 result for the 3-week mini contest that is part of the SuperContest. It was a few games shy of finishing in the money, so hopefully New Mexico can continue to go 4-1 and skip out on the 2-3 in the next 3-week mini contest.

The head-to-head record remains 11-7 on the season with New Mexico in the lead. Both systems agreed on New England and Green Bay last week, with those results being split. That brings the aligned systems record to 4-3 on the season.

New Mexico

Since this post is all about the New Mexico model, I wanted to share a little bit more about how the model operates. You’ll read me using terms like good, poor or above average to describe teams. This is all about how the teams are clustered together. I believe it’s extremely difficult to calculate a precise value to represent the performance of a team, product, customer, whatever you’re trying to measure. I prefer to group like results into clusters, and assign all teams inside that cluster with the same value.

New Mexico operates like a bell curve, with the highest number of teams falling into the middle category or average. There are 3 clusters to each side of average, each smaller in size than the prior cluster. To the positive side you’ll have above average, good and great. To the negative side I use below average, bad and poor. I then assign a point value to each cluster of teams and use these values to create my own lines and comparing teams performance.

I’m happy to say that New Mexico has moved into the money in the DraftKings entry that has been running all season. It is currently tied for 216th place and the payout is less than the entry fee, which means I’m not far from being back out of the money. With that said, here is a look at the New Mexico contest records through week 12:

Contest Results	SuperContest 2nd half	DraftKings
Last week	4-1	4-1
Overall	10-5	36-24

New Mexico – Week 13 Picks

New Mexico has the Bears defense rated as top-8, and they do a good job of forcing turnovers. The offense does a good job of protecting ball, and this leads to a net positive in turnovers which always helps when trying to win a football game. Chicago’s offense has been below average on the season, but does look better the last 2 weeks after the change in offensive coordinator. On the other side, New Mexico has Detroit rated the number 1 team in the league, and the Lions have looked that way the last month. But he difference between great and average isn’t 10 points, and there is a lot of value in the line with the Bears this week.

The Raiders are not a good football team, and New Mexico has them rated at 31 of 32 teams. But Kansas City hasn’t been lighting up the scoreboard either, and despite the defense looking good, the stats tell another story. In total, New Mexico has Kansas City rated as above average, and while it does have Las Vegas rated as poor, the difference between above average and poor is not 12-13.5 points. Add in the division factor and how serious Las Vegas takes the rivalry, I expect this to be close.

Tennessee has the 2nd worst offense according to New Mexico, and they really struggle to protect the football. I know the Levis throws a great long ball and Ridley can certainly bring em in, but this isn’t a good football team. I was bullish on Tennessee at the start of the season, and could use a few more wins to cash a season win total ticket, but it’s not happening this week against Washington. New Mexico grades Washington as a good team, and Tennessee as a bad to poor team. The difference between those types of teams is at least a touchdown. Look for the Commanders to bounce back this week.

New Mexico loves this Ravens team grading them between good and great. It is all based on the strength of the offense which New Mexico has rated 3rd in the league. The Eagles have looked good the past few weeks, but still have room for improvement as New Mexico grades them out as above average. This difference is usually 3-4 points, especially at home. New Mexico will take the Ravens again for a 3rd straight week.

Finally in MNF, New Mexico has flagged Denver as the play against Cleveland. Yes, the Browns won on TNF against rival Pittsburgh, but New Mexico has the Browns rated the worst team in football. This is driven by the offense being rated the worst in the league. Yes, they’ve had lots of injuries to nearly every position, but these are still professionals and they should do better. Denver is rated as above average while Cleveland is rated poor. This difference should be at least a touchdown, so New Mexico will take the home team.

Here are the week 13 picks for New Mexico in SuperContest and DraftKings Contests:

Team	Super Contest line	DraftKings line
Chicago	+10	+10.5
Las Vegas	+12	+13.5
Washington	-5.5	-5.5
Baltimore	-3	-2.5
Denver	-5.5	-5.5

Good luck this week, and remember, never bet more than you can afford to lose. Gambling is for entertainment purposes only, and not to be seen as a viable source of income.