Fred's Week #1 Results
Sunday and Monday night's slate delivered a rough welcome to the 2026 season for Fred's Teaser Picks -- after flashing some early promise. Detroit, the Jets, and Tampa Bay all covered in the early Sunday games. The Detroit game was a particularly fun nail-biter, as the Saints' 2-point conversion failed in overtime, allowing Detroit (at -0.5) to win by half a point!
But the tables turned as the day wore on: the late-afternoon Sunday games and the Monday nighter (betting on Miami, Green Bay, and Denver +6) all broke the wrong way, turning a hot 3-0 start into a 3-3 end to the weekend. As we know from Fred's Playbook, games with +6 point teasers must win at least 73% of the time to break even, so a 50% win rate means that each teaser grouping ended with a net loss for the weekend.
- The 3-team teasers went 1-5 for the weekend, resulting in a net loss of $160 if you bet $50 on each of the six bets.
- The 4-team teasers fared no better, going 0-6, for a loss of $300 (again assuming six bets of $50 each).
- The 6-team teaser lost its only play of the week, for a net loss of $50.
Of course, the results would have been slightly better if I had stayed with the Bills (who won by 5 points) since I initially identified them as a qualifying team on Saturday evening. But I pulled the Bills/Texans game off the table Sunday morning based on the line change from Bills +1 to Bills -1. Here's a table summarizing my Week #1 results:
| 3-Team | 4-Team | 6-Team | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starting Balance (9/12) | $1,000 | $4,541 | $2,100 |
| Bets Won | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| Bets Lost | 5 | 6 | 1 |
| Risked per Bet | $50 | $50 | $50 |
| Win per Bet | $90 | $150 | $350 |
| Total Won | $90 | $0 | $0 |
| Total Lost | ($250) | ($300) | ($50) |
| Net | ($160) | ($300) | ($50) |
| Ending Balance (9/15) | $840 | $4,241 | $2,050 |
Assumes six $50 wagers on 3-team teasers, six $50 wagers on 4-team teasers, and one $50 wager on a 6-team teaser, per Fred's Playbook staking plan.
This Week #1 stumble isn't a surprise -- it's common. As I mentioned before, the opening week of the NFL season is notoriously the hardest to handicap: lines are built on offseason projections and preseason noise rather than real game data. (I hope you took my advice to reduce the size of your bets in half for the first week of the season.)
Furthermore, Fred's approach means you may have about the same number of losing weekends as winning weekends, but you will win more money on the winning weekends than you lose on the losing weekends.
The real test of a teaser strategy was never going to be a single week -- it's the full 18-week arc of the season, and that's the lens we're keeping. One rough Sunday and Monday doesn't erase the math; it just means the math needs more games to play out.
We'll keep sizing bets the same way, keep grinding through the schedule, and keep reporting the results here every week -- good, bad, or ugly -- so you can watch the long-run track record take shape rather than judge it on one historically shaky opening weekend.