If you're like many gamblers, you probably give a slight bump to a team coming off its bye week. After all, they had an extra week to rest and get healthy, and the coaching staff had an extra week to prepare for its next opponent. There's no way any of that can be a bad thing, right?

Well, it turns out our assumptions of post-bye week teams need to be re-examined. Warren Sharp shared his research into post-bye teams on a recent episode of The Lefkoe Show podcast, and what he had to say was pretty stunning.

The main takeaway: Even though teams cover at slightly better than 50% coming off a bye, you want to be looking to play teams when they're on the road following a bye and fading teams at home after a bye.

I've dug into the data and broken it down year by year, also including information on the totals to see if there's anything else we can pick up from this trend. All data from Pro-Football-Reference.

Home teams after a bye

YearCoverNCPush
OverUnderPush
2011 5 7

4 8
2012 6 8

6 8
2013 6 9

10 5
2014 4 9

7 6
2015 5 6 1
4 7 1
2016 13 6 2
12 9
2017 3 11 2
8 8
2018 2 7 1
9 1
2019* 3 2

3 2
Total 47 65 6
63 54 1

*2019 totals are through Week 7

Starting with the new CBA in 2011, if you were to blindly bet against a team playing at home coming off a bye, you would win just over 58% of the time. Aside from 2016, where the NFL let 21 teams have a home game out of their bye, fading those post-bye home teams has been profitable every year, and wildly so in both 2017 and 2018 (18-5-3 total).

One team qualifies for this trend in Week 8: the Steelers, who are massive favorites at home against the Dolphins on Monday night. I looked into home teams playing on Monday night after a bye but didn't have much of a sample size at only nine games (4-5 ATS, including San Francisco covering earlier this year).

If you play the Over in games where the team coming off the bye is at home, you'd cover 53.8 percent of the time, but note that the trend was tracking dead even until a massive outlier in 2018, when the Over went 9-1.

Away teams after a bye

YearCoverNCPush
OverUnderPush
2011 10 9 1
6 14
2012 12 6

7 10 1
2013 9 8

8 9
2014 9 10

10 9
2015 13 7

10 9 1
2016 6 5

4 7
2017 12 4

8 8
2018 14 7 1
12 10
2019* 1 2

1 2
Total 86 58 2
66 78 2

*2019 totals are through Week 7  

Away teams after the bye are covering at a remarkable 59.7% clip, and that includes a ridiculous 26-11-1 run in 2017 and 2018. In all, there's only been one losing season while playing this trend, and that was just a 9-10 mark in 2014.

Teams that qualify for this spot in Week 8 include the Panthers as 5.5-point 'dogs at San Francisco, the Buccaneers as 2.5-point 'dogs at Tennessee and the Browns as 13-point (and climbing) 'dogs at New England. Before you go ahead and jump on the Browns, also note that New England is 8-2 ATS this decade after playing on Monday, including 5-1 ATS at home.

With the Under cashing 54.2% of the time in these spots, it's tempting to trust that angle for away teams after a bye as well. But most of the damage there came in the earlier years of this window; from 2014 on, we're looking at 50/50 no matter which side you play.

Will Brinson, Pete Prisco and R.J. White broke down all the angles and picks you need to know for every game on Friday's Pick Six Podcast. Give it a listen below, and be sure to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform:

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My picks

Over at SportsLine, I've hit 64% of the time in my last 25 ATS picks, and I'll be posting plenty of picks for Week 8 over the next few days. Join now and use promo code WHITE for $1 on your first month and you can get mine and every SportsLine expert's picks throughout the year, as well as my SuperContest picks each Saturday.

Big line moves (lookaheads)

Packers -4.5 at Chiefs (was KC -3.5)
Bengals vs. Rams -13 (was LAR -9.5)
Dolphins at Steelers -14.5 (was PIT -16.5)
Redskins at Vikings -16 (was MIN -14)
Browns at Patriots -13 (was NE -11)
Cardinals at Saints -9.5 (was NO -7.5)

Lookaheads are lines that are posted for matchups before the previous week's games. Analyzing the biggest movers is beneficial for smart bettors, who have a chance to examine those moves to determine whether there's value in playing against a potential overreaction.

The biggest move of the week is obviously due to the Patrick Mahomes injury, which the market appears to have valued at eight points. That seems a little light for the best quarterback in the game, but Andy Reid is also one of the few coaches you would expect to still have some success when forced to use a backup quarterback (it's not like the Chiefs fell apart last week after the Mahomes injury).

The other huge move comes in the London game, as the Rams righted the ship with a blowout of the Falcons and get a similarly poor opponent this week. Favorites of more than 10 points in London are 3-0 against the spread, for what it's worth.

The two-point swings see three big favorites inflate even more after convincing wins, but what about Dolphins-Steelers? Is the market trusting Miami after a rare cover last week in Buffalo? Or is it mainly a case of not trusting the Mason Rudolph-led Steelers to cover a big number? I'd say it's almost certainly more of the latter than the former.

So which teams should you back in Week 7 of the 2019 NFL season? And which Super Bowl contender goes down hard? Visit SportsLine now to see which teams win and cover every single game, all from the model that has returned almost $7,000 on its top-rated picks.

Where DVOA disagrees with line

Eagles at Bills -1.5
Packers -4.5 at Chiefs
Buccaneers at Titans -2.5
Panthers at 49ers -5.5
Broncos at Colts -6

Part of my research each week is calculating the DVOA (or DAVE, which is partially reflective of preseason projections) as tracked by Football Outsiders and seeing where the metric has a significant disagreement with the market. Now that defensive adjustments have been included following Week 4, I'll include that analysis here.

DVOA does not like the Bills at all, with the 5-1 team checking in at No. 21 in the overall efficiency metric after having trouble putting away the Dolphins in Week 7. That means that even going up against a disappointing Eagles team, Buffalo is being overvalued by around two points, per DAVE, which would have the Eagles as three-point favorites on a neutral field.

The Chiefs' DAVE rating without Mahomes would put them at No. 21, a below average team but not terrible. As such, there's a little bit of value with Kansas City at home this week, where DAVE would make them 2.5-point underdogs.

The current line has the Bucs and Titans as basically even teams, but DAVE pegs the Bucs as 1.5 points better. Coupled with the away teams off a bye trend from our lede, Tampa Bay looks like a strong play this week.

DAVE is extremely high on the 49ers after their early season success and believes the market is selling them 1.5 points short against a solid Panthers team that is still getting dinged for having Kyle Allen at quarterback. If you believe they should get credit for their rest-of-season number rather than the lower number with their backup QB, the 1.5-point edge basically evaporates.

The Football Outsiders' data continues to undersell the Colts, slotting them in at 19th in both DVOA and DAVE. That's why the Colts are inflated by 1.5 points, per DAVE.

Fading the public

Dolphins +14.5 at Steelers

If 80% of the action or more is on one side of a line, you want to be thinking about taking the other side, a practice commonly known as fading the public. If the consensus thinks it has a game figured out, that should be flashing warning signs for you. All betting trends data is from Sports Insights as of Tuesday night.

The Dolphins -- the Dolphins! -- are the biggest public play in the early stages of the week, garnering 81% of the bets. Whatever the number is to get the public to lay points with Mason Rudolph, we haven't got there yet.

A few games are close to hitting the 80% mark as well. The Rams have inflated to -13 as people look to get their money on a team that found its groove last week against one of the worst teams in the league in the Bengals. The Packers are drawing 75% of the bets in Kansas City in the early-going as the public looks to fade the Chiefs without Patrick Mahomes. The Saints are also above 70%, while the Seahawks could also join the heavily-bet slate once more is known about the Falcons' QB situation.

Underdog parlay of the week

Bucs +130 at Titans
Panthers +200 at 49ers
Chiefs +190 vs. Packers

We're swinging for the fences again after coming so close last week, putting a +1900 three-team parlay together. The Bucs and Panthers represent playing our away teams off a bye trend and hoping both can win outright. The Chiefs are playing the value with the home team after a huge swing and hoping Andy Reid can figure something out. I'll also note that five of the Packers' last six games were at home, so their value is likely slightly inflated by the market anyway due to racking up wins playing an advantageous schedule. Feel free to take whichever side you like the least out and go for a still nice payout of anywhere between +550 and +800.

We came close to having our second cash of the year in this space, with our +1200 three-teamer coming one yard short of pulling it off when Melvin Gordon fumbled at the goal line. We did nail the Cardinals and Saints upsets.

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Teaser of the week

Bucs +8.5 at Titans
Colts PK vs. Broncos

We're rolling with the Bucs again here and following our data that says they make for a nice play off the bye on the road, especially when DVOA thinks they're clearly the better team in the matchup. We're able to push them up through three and seven, making them our best teasing team this week. For the other leg, we're taking a Colts team that's looking better and better to get a win at home against a Broncos team that has started to turn the page on 2019 by trading away one of their best receivers.

The teaser of the week is just 3-4 this year after a 12-5 run in 2018, but we were able to cash last week after teasing the Texans up to 7.5 and seeing them lose by seven. The Patriots came through without needing a sweat.