Small Road 'Dogs 2021

The regular NFL season came to an end on Sunday with a dramatic finale to the season which saved the sportsbooks several million dollars, possibly as much as a billion. For those who don't know, the Sunday Night game was Las Vegas Raiders v San Diego Chargers, two AFC West teams with both in with a shot at making the playoffs.

Going into Sunday, a win for the Jacksonville Jaguars over the Indianapolis Colts would have meant that a tie, a fairly rare occurrence in the NFL, would have seen both teams qualify. The Jaguars won easily earlier in the day and conspiracy theories sprang up including the idea that both teams would take a knee for 70 minutes, and the tie, typically around 60-1, was backed down to 14-1.

After the Chargers had come back from 15 points down in the fourth quarter, the game was indeed tied at the end of regulation, but a 47 yard field goal with a few seconds of overtime remaining broke a few hearts, including those of punters and Chargers fans, which incidentally used to include my wife but she's been distancing herself from them after their move from San Diego.

The question on most readers' minds is no doubt, how did the Small Road 'Dogs fare this season? Well, hopefully some of you were on the money train with these selections this season, as for the 14th time in the last 16 seasons, they again finished the season in profit. In fact, the 43-26 record this season was the best return since 2006, and the Divisional subset of selections was also a winner with an 18-8 record, the best since 2007. 

There were 69 selections with the average number of selections per season coming into 2021 being 71, so the extra round of matches was inconsequential. 

We actually missed a few winners by drawing the line at those 'Dogs getting 5.5 points because at the +6 level, all seven qualifiers won. With no losing seasons since 2010 at this line, it's probably time to update the parameters and include the +6 teams.

While there are relatively few playoff matches compared to regular season games, the Small 'Dog strategy continues to work reasonably well in these games with an overall 38-32-1 record since the expansion to 32 teams, but important to note that with the NFC having a 23-14-1 record in this time, the AFC record is a losing one.

With the FA Cup last weekend, no updates to the EPL Draw System, and I'm struggling to get motivated to look further into the NBA Totals right now. In part this is no doubt due to the passing of KillerSports and the results from gimmethedog being unreliable. 

The markets have been a little rocky in the early stages of the year, but overall I'm down just 0.24% which isn't great of course, but could have been a lot worse with the concerns about Omicron, inflation, and the great resignation.  

The biggest disappointment so far has been my company's discounted share purchase scheme which offers a 10% discount on the closing price every six months. While it was enjoyable at the time, December's strong finish to the year combined with a mild plunge in price in the first week of this year meant that the discounted purchase price (based on 31 Dec) wasn't much of a discount at all by the time the shares were purchased (6 Jan) and in my account. The price has recovered a little this week and I hold onto these for the long term anyway, so no real harm done.   

Tesla (+4.7% YTD) has scheduled its Q4 and 2021 earnings call for Wednesday, January 26 which should lead to some volatility, but again, I'm not in a hurry to offload these shares anytime soon.