Fantasy Football: 5 Historical Vegas Trends You Should Know for Week 4

Start Blair Walsh as a Heavy Favorite

In Week 2, I touted Blair Walsh in this article because the Seattle Seahawks were 14-point favorites. He responded by making two field goals and an extra point. That's not exactly what we had hoped for, but the numbers indicate we should ride with him again this weekend.

Our own Jim Sannes wrote a very useful article on how kickers performed based on measures such as Vegas spreads, implied totals, and favorites versus underdogs. Based on his findings, we need to target kickers on heavily-favored teams, with implied team total as the tiebreaker.

This week, the aforementioned Seattle Seahawks are favored by 13 points, making them the largest favorites on the board. It's rare to see a team favored by double-digit points coming off of a loss, but oddsmakers must really believe in the Seahawks bouncing back in this spot.

Seattle also has the fourth-highest implied total at 27.25 points. High implied totals are just a bonus when your team is favored by a few scores.

According to Sannes, kickers on teams favored by 10 or more points scored an average of 9.77 points per game between 2012 and 2014. And when kickers are on teams with an implied total of 27.00 to 29.75 points, they scored an average of 8.64 fantasy points.

Walsh has that top-kicker upside we aim for, and he is priced at just $4,800. That salary is ninth among kickers this weekend and should allow you to fit in higher-priced assets elsewhere.