We return to a full menu of nine games this weekend though a few of them look fairly unappetising, as conveyed by the all-game average expected margin this week, which has come in at 28.7 points per game. That's the highest single round average in the home and away season since Round 23 of 2016. 

Richmond and West Coast both did enough this weekend to hang onto their top rankings on MoSSBODS and MoSHBODS, while Melbourne's big win over Adelaide convinced MoSHBODS that it should, like MoSSBODS, lift the Dees into third.

ENS_Linear snagged another seven this week, matching Bookie Knows Best and retaining its one tip lead on the Head-to-Head Tipster Leaderboard. It's now on 63.5 from 89 (71%).

The bookmakers are reasonably confident we'll see an average total score above 170 points per game this week, with five of the eight games expected by them to produce a total above that figure. The MoS twins are far less confident and see only three or four games producing or exceeding 170 points, and have an average for the round a point or two below that.

This week's truncated footy fare is estimated to be more competitive than last week's but less competitive than the 2018 season-to-date.

Richmond's loss to West Coast cost them about 2 Scoring Shots of their lead on MoSSBODS, and 8 points of their lead on MoSHBODS this weekend, but left them still comfortably ranked number 1 on both Systems.

ENS_Linear pulled the correct rein in seven of the contest this week and now has the outright lead on the Head-to-Head Tipster Leaderboard by one tip over Bookie Knows Best.

For the third week in a row, both bookmakers are forecasting an average game total of below 170 points per game, so don't expect the lamentation of low-scoring games in the media to stop any time soon. What's more, six games are expected to finish with a total below that average, with the Sydney v Fremantle game expected to produce the lowest total of all at around 160 points, which equates to about 23 goals between the two teams across the four quarters assuming a 53% scoring shot conversion rate.

The upcoming weekend's football has more than a usual round's share of uninspiring matchups, with five of the contests expected to be won - according to the TAB bookmaker - by more than four goals, and two more contests by more than two-and-a-half goals.

Still a fair bit of movement on the MoSSBODS' and MoSHBODS' ladders this week, with Melbourne (up 3), West Coast (up 2), and Geelong (down 2) the biggest movers on MoSSBODS, and Geelong (up 3), GWS (down 2), and Adelaide (down 2) the biggest movers on MoSHBODS.

With the RSMP twins going the right way in the Hawthorn v Sydney game, we now have a four-way tie atop the Head-to-Head Tipsters Leaderboard involving these twins, BKB, and ENS_Linear. They're all now on 49.5 from 72 (69%).

This week I'm going to be as interested in Melbourne's weather as I've been since last I visited on holiday, as two of the games are scheduled for what is forecast to be a wet and rainy MCG.

You'd think after a decade I'd be far more immune to the slings and arrows of outrageous forecasting, but the truth is it still feels a lot easier to write blogs and discuss MoS models' opinions in weeks following a non-embarrassing set of results.

I've been hearing a lot of references recently - especially from US pundits - about people "not wanting to get over their skis" and, in that spirit, I'm cautious about overstating the Tigers' dominance at this point in the season. MoSSBODS and MoSHBODS, however, seem to be deeply dispassionately enamoured with them at the moment.

It was yet another good round for favourites, with eight of them winning again this week, taking Bookie Knows Best's season tally to 44.5 from 63 (71%), a tally matched only by ENS_Linear.

There are high levels of agreement this week across the four forecasters, with the range of totals across the quartet in the nine games no higher than 9.5 points in any of them. The two bookmakers are especially close in their opinions, perhaps partly because the TAB waited until today (Thursday) to reveal theirs, just 36 hours or so before the start of the round, and having had a couple of days to reflect on Centrebet's.

This week sees the largest bookmaker average expected margin of the season - an average that also exceeds that for every round of 2017.

A little less shuffling of the teams on the MoSSBODS and MoSHBODS ladders this week, but some large movements nonetheless.

Eight of nine favourites collected the points this week, and the MoS twins recorded mean absolute errors (MAEs) under 21.5 points per game - and still lost ground to every other Margin Predictor except C_Marg. Fair to say it was much easier to be close to right this week than it was to be disastrously wrong.

When the bookmakers go low, the MoS twins go lower ...