2025 Week 1 NFL Contest Picks
Weekly picks for Circa Millions, Westgate SuperContest and DraftKings Pick ’em Pool
Professional football is back. We’ve been treated to 2 amazing games to start the season. Philadelphia held off a frisky Cowboys offense on Thursday, and the Chargers pulled the upset of Kansas City in Brazil on Friday. I’m sure the handle on both games was outrageous at most books with all the pent up demand for NFL action. Now we get a full slate of games on Sunday, and 1 on Monday night. It also means its contest season, and once again I’ll be posting my contest picks for the Circa Millions, Westgate Supercontest and DraftKings pools. This year I’m running the New Mexico model in all contests, but am also running the original model in a lower level DraftKings pool.
The 3 contests operate similarly, but have some slight variances in structure and prizes. Both Circa and Westgate offer mini-contests inside the season long contest. The Circa Millions contest also includes 4 quarterly contests that run weeks 1-4, 5-9, 10-13 and 14-18. Westgate SuperContest offers 3-week, 6-week and 9-week contests. DrafKings does not offer mini-contests, but they also don’t allow a push. All lines in the DraftKings contests contain the half point so you either win or lose. Circa and Westgate allow pushes. Finally, DraftKings allows a user to have a “bye” week and only goes through week 17, so only 80 picks instead of the 90 in Circa and Westgate.
New Mexico
New Mexico is a stats based model that uses key performance metrics to identify a teams true ability. Each stat category has it’s only ranking value system, which provides a higher level of accuracy than a standard weighted model. I ran New Mexico in a season long contest on DraftKings last season for testing and it went 48-32 in that contest for 60% accuracy rate. I also switched the SuperContest entry to the New Mexico model for the 2nd half of the season, hoping to win a 3-week mini-contest. I didn’t win any mini-contests, but the model did go 29-16 for a 64.4% prediction accuracy. I’m hoping for similar, if not better results this year.
| Contest Results | Circa Millions | DraftKings | SuperContest |
| Last Week: | |||
| Overall: |
New Mexico – week 1 picks
I have no proof for this next statement, I’ve never tracked this, but I believe if you don’t like the picks the model is producing, you will more likely win. Again no proof of this, but I feel in the past when I’ve really liked the models picks I did poor that week, but when I didn’t like the picks at all, I had at least a winning week of 3-2 but would usually go 4-1. I hope this is true, because I’m not a fan of 4 games the New Mexico model picked this week. I truly only like 1, San Francisco, so it will probably lose.
Cincinnati -5 at Cleveland: Cincinnati has been slow to start the season under head coach Taylor. Their has been lots of talk about correcting that this season, who knows how it will go. Cleveland isn’t projected to be much competition this season, but it’s still the NFL and these 2 teams are division rivals. I hate the fact that New Mexico flagged Cincinnati as a road favorite in this game. I can easily see QB Flacco getting a last minute touchdown against a heavily flawed Bengals defense that means nothing but gets inside the number.
Tampa Bay – 2 at Atlanta: Speaking of divisional road favorites. Tampa Bay’s offense was electric last season, but the defense struggled. I was a big fan of the Falcons last season, but the poor QB play by Cousins impacted the teams success. I expected more from Cousins last season, but he ended up benched in favor of rookie QB Penix Jr. A lot of times when I’m wrong on a team, it’s because I’m a season early, and I think Atlanta has the weapons on offense to compete with any team in the league. Hate that I’m going against them with a divisional opponent as a road favorite.
Denver -8.5 vs Tennessee: Is any team more hyped than the Broncos this season? Even I selected them as a Super Bowl contender in the preseason magazine. I hate laying large lines in the NFL, the league is simply too competitive to successfully lay over a touchdown and win money. Tennessee performed well last year, but had a problem with turnovers killing good drives. An improvement in QB play from #1 overall pick Ward will go a long way of making the Titans competitive. Plus, Ward is a gunslinger, and has a great chance of leading the Titans to a back door cover with such a large line.
San Francisco -2.5 at Seattle: The one pick I like despite it being another divisional road favorite. I’m not a fan of Seattle’s this season. Too many changes on offense, and I feel they downgraded at QB with Darnold over Smith. They want to replicate the style of play in Baltimore, but don’t quite have the offensive personnel to pull it off. San Francisco dealt with injuries last season, and had the Super Bowl loser curse to deal with. They are still dealing with some injuries from last season, but in CMC I trust. I think San Francisco is a Super Bowl contender and will happily bet them laying less than 3.
Minnesota -1.5 at Chicago: Wow, a 4th divisional road favorite, I really hate this card. While I’m not a fan of Chicago’s this season (next year will be much better for them), I’m also not a fan of the Vikings either. A lot of things went right for Minnesota last season, and it’s hard to replicate that performance year after year. I like that they moved on from Darnold, but wish they had a veteran to help QB McCarthy. Despite this being his second season as a pro, he missed all of last season due to injury, so this is technically his rookie season playing. I think McCarthy will eventually be a solid pro QB, especially in this Vikings system, but to expect him to lead a team to victory on the road against a divisional opponent with a solid defense might be too much to ask of a guy making his first career professional start.
Here are the week 1 picks for New Mexico in SuperContest, Circa Millions and DraftKings Contests:
| Team | Circa line | DraftKings line | SuperContest line |
| Cincinnati | -5 | -5.5 | -5 |
| Tampa Bay | -2 | -2.5 | -2 |
| Denver | -8.5 | -7.5 | -8.5 |
| San Francisco | -2.5 | -2.5 | -2.5 |
| Minnesota | -1.5 | -1.5 | -1.5 |
Original Model
The original model that I created was based on public perception. If a team was getting a lot of attention in the press and lots of bets at the window, I would simply play the other side. The first year I ran this model I used a very manual, hand written process, and went 70% ATS finishing 3rd in a DraftKings Pick’em Pool. The model has not performed as well the last few years. I blame myself. Not wanting to complete the manual hand written process each week, it was very time consuming, I created an automated version of the model that I relied on the last 2-years. However, one of the “requirements” I fed into the model is throwing things off, I’m just not sure which one. This year, I’m going back to the old fashioned hand written version in hopes of rediscovering the power of this model.
Here are the week 1 DraftKings picks:
| Team | DraftKings line |
| Jacksonville | -2.5 |
| San Francisco | -2.5 |
| Detroit | +1.5 |
| LA Rams | -2.5 |
| Baltimore | +1.5 |
