This article is part of our NFL Picks series.
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It is Week 10 in the NFL and Week 1 in Quarter 3 of the Circa Sports Million.
Those of us who sit at .500 have a tough road ahead to get to that $1 million prize, but everyone is 0-0 in the third quarter and that $150,000 prize is in reach with only twenty picks to go. Show Me the Money!
The top five picks this week are as follows.
49ers -3 at 
Jaguars, 1708 picks, 782 net -- The Jags come in off a bye and five straight wins. The Niners also enter off a bye, but three straight losses. Deebo Samuel and Trent Williams return, and Chase Young joins an already excellent defensive line. Though we did not bite on this one, I completely get the case for the Niners exploding into the second half. 
Steelers -3 over 
Packers, 1646 picks, 1075 net -- You generally want to take the Steelers as dogs and fade them as favorites since they somehow turn every game into a one possession slogfest. On the flipside, Kenny Pickett tends to underwhelm then engineer a clutch drive at the end. Speaking of underwhelming….the 2023 Packers. They did look better last week and a win here gets the Pack right back into the slow motion race for the 3rd NFC Wild Card. We joined the crowd and will ride the Steelers here. Long live Primanti Bros.
Lions -3 at 
Chargers, 1515 picks, 561 net -- Jared Goff returns to the stadium he briefly called home, albeit for a different team. The Lions are relatively healthy and look solid in every which way. DVOA ranks them 5th in offensive DVOA, 8th on Defense and 4th overall. The Chargers just managed to beat the Jets by 21 despite putting up very little offense. 
Cowboys -16.5 over 
Giants, 1399 picks, 1120 net -- The biggest spread of 2023 gets the biggest net differential of the week. There is actually line value on the Cowboys as they sit at -17 and -17.5. The total of 38.5 suggests the Giants will score 11 points. Wain, no one believes in the home-cooking infused Tommy DeVito? I get the huge spread obviously, the Giants looked awful even when healthier. I just can't get there on gaming how garbage time plays out
Saints -2.5 at 
Vikings, 440 net -- Joshua Dobbs learned the Vikings offense on the fly last week and somehow won, but not like he's a rocket scientist. Oh wait. Fun and impressive story. This game has line value around the key-est of key numbers, and that attracted us to put it on our Circa card. Plus the Saints have quietly picked it up on offense in recent weeks, about 110 percent due to Taysom Hill.
In addition to the Steelers and Saints, we will roll with Arthur Smith's mustache and the Falcons -2 at the Cardinals, the Colts -2 over the Patriots in Frankfurt and the Bucs -1 over the Titans.
Week 9 Review
The "Pros" continued their comeback in Week 9. The pool as a whole hit on a season high 55.3 percent, pushing the overall mark up to a still mediocre 51.3 percent.
Consensus picks went just 7-7, but the Bengals and Browns were the top 2 and in fact two of the four most popular picks all season, and they both hit. Thus adding up the picks on each consensus choice hit at 57.2 percent and bumped the overall season mark of this metric to 52.93 percent.
Perpetual reminder here that contest lines frozen on Thursday do not equal the real life lines we can bet on and the Browns -7.5 in the contest jumped to Browns -13 by Sunday. Of course the Browns still covered easily. The Bengals were actually the more popular pick.
So who do contestants like this season? I divided the consensus picks into home favorites and dogs and road favorites and dogs. It turns out the players here like chalk in general and home chalk in particular.
