Week 5 has a handful of upset angles worth circling, and the board is giving bettors plenty to chew on after Peter Dewey hit on Atlanta over New Orleans in Week 4.
One of the sharper swings this week comes with Green Bay at home. The Packers are home dogs against a Bears team that may not have its starting quarterback, since Caleb Williams is dealing with a hamstring injury.
That matters, especially with Matt LaFleur facing what the piece frames as a Super Bowl-type game after a painful postseason collapse against Ben Johnson. The Bears talked plenty after that wild-card win, and Green Bay has enough incentive here to answer.
Jordan Love has taken his share of punishment behind a shaky offensive line, but the Bears are not known for their pass rush. The pick is Green Bay to break the losing streak.
Another upset call lands in Los Angeles, where the Chargers are being backed to finally get in the win column. The setup is ugly enough to qualify as a “make the pick and look away” play, but the logic is simple: Denver has not exactly looked like an AFC No. 1 seed through the first month, and it is 0-2 on the road this season without scoring more than 14 points away from Mile High Stadium. With the Chargers back home for the first time since Week 2, the bet is that they somehow get their first victory and quiet the doubters around Justin Herbert, Jim Harbaugh, and Mike McDaniels, at least for a week.
The Browns are the third underdog getting attention, and this one comes with a harder edge. Cleveland and Deshaun Watson are being backed on the road against the Jets, even though that sentence would have sounded strange not long ago.
The Browns are off to a 3-1 start and have been impressive enough to merit belief in this spot. New York just couldn’t slow down Tyson Bagent and the Bears in Week 4, giving up possession for nearly 43 minutes in a loss.
Since beating the Titans in Week 1, the Jets have dropped three straight, and the injury situation on offense is rough. Breece Hall, Omar Cooper Jr., Mason Taylor, and Adonai Mitchell all missed Week 4, and Geno Smith has not shown enough to carry a shaky supporting cast.
Cleveland also has the edge in defensive success rate, with New York sitting 29th, and Watson has looked more like his Houston version than the quarterback Cleveland has usually gotten. He is 14th in success rate among quarterbacks with at least 100 plays in 2026, and the Browns are being labeled a team worth watching in the AFC North if that level of play continues.
The last upset pick is the biggest one on paper: San Francisco over Seattle. The 49ers are described as the best team in the NFL through four weeks, leading the league in DVOA, Net Yards per Play, EPA per Play, and success rate.
Brock Purdy has been right there with them, too, ranking among the league’s best quarterbacks and leading several metrics, including adjusted EPA per play. The Seahawks are also viewed as one of the NFL’s best teams, which is why this is treated as a coin-flip type of matchup.
Even so, the pick is the underdog at +130 odds.
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Seattles backfield situation only adds to the concern, because the room behind the starter has been thinned by injuries and departures. For a rivalry game that often comes down to who can stay on schedule and keep the quarterback comfortable, those missing pieces matter, and they help explain why San Francisco sees a real path to controlling the matchup if its own offense executes cleanly. [Read more 🡒]