NFL Betting Guide For Preseason Sucess !

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NFL Betting Guide


Games televised by the National Football League are the most-watched sporting events in North America – live in team stadiums and on television screens and streaming Internet connections. In 2012, the last time such an audit was made, average attendance at live games was 67,604. That’s enough to make NFL contests the most-watched live sport in the entire world.
If you’re an NFL fan, or if you have even a slight familiarity with the game, you already know almost everything that’s required of a football bettor. The information below is designed to help you transition from an NFL fan into a sports bettor.


Here’s a guide to the simplest bets used by NFL bettors:
NFL Football Betting Strategy Guides
Understanding NFL Pointspreads
The Easiest Way To Win Preseason Bets
The Impact of Weather on NFL Betting


Preseason Handicapping Basics Part 1: Don’t Listen To The ‘Squares’
Preseason Handicapping Basics Part 2: NFL Preseason Coaching Strategy
Preseason Handicapping Basics Part 3: Significance of the Pointspread
Preseason Handicapping Basics Part 4: Quarterback Rotations
Preseason Handicapping Basics Part 5: Injury Related Situations
Preseason Handicapping Basics Part 6: Week By Week
Preseason Handicapping Basics Part 7: Situations
Preseason Handicapping Basics Part 8: Home Field Advantage In NFL Preseason
Preseason Handicapping Basics Part 9: Preseason Totals Betting
Preseason Handicapping Basics Part 10: Information Sources
Preseason Handicapping Basics Part 11: Preseason ‘Revenge’ Strategies
Preseason Handicapping Basics Part 12: Correlation To Regular Season Results


The Point Spread
The point spread is the most commonly-used odds format in all of sports betting. Using a point spread, your sportsbook gathers bets on both sides of a contest, handicapping the favorite in order to attract bets on the underdog.
Here’s an example of an NFL point spread:
Dallas @
Washington -3.5
The (-3.5) symbol next to the Redskins means they are favored by the book to win, and a bet on Washington will only pay off if they win by four points or more. A wager on the Cowboys will pay off if they beat Chicago outright or lose by three points or fewer.


The Moneyline
Bets on the moneyline ask the bettor to pick which team will win outright, regardless of points scored.
Here’s an example of an NFL moneyline using the same example as above:
Dallas +110
Washington -130
The number next to each team’s name tells us a couple of things – the plus or minus symbol tells us which is the favorite, in this case Washington. The number next to that symbol gives information about the financial side of the wager, though it’s different for the underdog and the favorite.
In our example Washington is the favorite, so bettors earn a payout of $1 for every $1.30 wagered. A successful bet on Dallas will pay out $1.10 for every $1 wagered. The forty cent difference between these two bets represents the incentive the book uses to make underdog bets attractive.
I like the moneyline and so do a lot of sports bettors – it just hasn’t caught on as much in NFL betting as point spreads and parlays.
When you do find a moneyline wager available, you might be in luck if you lock in your wager early. The difference between the two numbers in any line (the $0.40 from our above example) can swing wildly due to changes in popular opinion. This has to do with the smaller number of total bets made on the moneyline.
If you have a strong feeling about a team’s chanced and want to wager on the moneyline, get your bet n early before action on that heavy favorite increases. Obviously the opposite is true for underdogs – locking in a wager at the last minute, when you can get the best price from the book, is the best way to go. Why buy Dallas at +110 on a Tuesday when you can get them for +140 on Saturday morning?


Game Totals
Also called over/unders, game totals are wagers on the total number of points scored by both teams in an NFL game.
Bettors that think the point total will be more than the number established by the book bet “over;” those who think the total will be less bet the “under.” Here’s an example of what a totals line looks like for our above made-up game example:
Dallas/Washington – O/U 31
In this example, a bet of “over” pays off if the two teams combine for 32 points or more; while an “under” bet wins if the teams score 30 points or fewer.


NFL Betting Basics


I’ve put together three tips to help you out with some basic NFL betting strategy:
Tip #1: Home vs. away statistics are a valuable tool.
The impact of home field advantage (and away team blues) has a huge impact In the NFL. Because seasons are short and home turf makes such a difference, it’s important to research both teams’ performance on the road and at home. This one statistic is a powerful tool in quickly handicapping any pro football game.


Tip #2: Become familiar with league injury reports.
Like in Major League Baseball, football teams are given a lot of leeway in terms of how they operate their injury lists. It’s possible for teams to hide major injuries until the last minute – it’s also possible for coaches to fake or exaggerate injuries, all in an attempt to confuse the opposing coach. The NFL injury report system moves quickly – you need to keep up to make an accurate pick.


Tip #3: Watch for (and Take Advantage of) Line Movement
Lines move over the course of a week – the reasons are legion. Watching how lines change is what can elevate you from an amateur bettor to a serious NFL punter. Changes in a line can affect your overall strategy and can even tell you where the smart money is played. Line movement strategy is a bit advanced for newcomers; but you can start to step your game up to the next level now by taking note of line changes.
So why wager on the National Football League? For beginners, the sport offers a lot of research time between contests, compared to a sport like baseball or basketball. For experienced bettors, NFL wagering offers a huge pool of bets and action on all sides of the market to take advantage of.
Put another way – bets on the NFL are a good fit for people of all experience levels. These are easy-to-understand wagers, and research involves simple stats available at the push of a button. Because American pro football is so popular, the wagers are widely available at brick and mortar and online sportsbooks. To people who enjoy betting on the NFL, it’s the perfect sport, with something for everyone.

 

[CNOTES]

NFL FOOTBALL BETTING—THE EASIEST WAY TO WIN PRESEASON BETS


There’s a strange disconnect about what the mainstream sports media and general public think they know about sports betting and the reality of it. Nowhere is this better illustrated than the prevailing public opinion on betting NFL Preseason games. You’ll frequently hear mainstream sports media types chortle at the idea of wagering on ‘games that don’t matter’, suggesting it’s a sign of degenerate behavior. Several months later you’ll hear the same ‘talking heads’ reporting on Super Bowl betting with an almost comical degree of seriousness.


The general public, mainstream sports media and a surprising number of actual sports bettors simply don’t understand what ‘sharps’ are trying to do. It’s amazing, but this misconception is pervasive throughout US sports betting. It’s not about ‘picking winners’ whether it’s the Super Bowl or the preseason Hall of Fame game. The primary job of a successful sports bettor is to find value. If he does so and bets accordingly, the wins and profits fall into place. On the other hand, if a bettor isn’t cognizant of the prices he’s laying and line value he’s getting he can pick all kinds of winners and still lose money.


It’s obvious that the general public and mainstream sports media is oblivious to the reality of sports betting. What I’ve always found surprising is how many experienced (though not necessarily ‘sharp’) bettors lose sight of the ‘meta’ when it comes to NFL preseason action. The most frequent critique of betting preseason football is that it’s hard to evaluate statistically (true) and that the games are ‘too chaotic (also true). Both of these realities of NFL exhibition games are true but neither negates a handicapper’s ability to find line value.


A more frequent refrain is one that sports bettors share with the general public: “Why should you bet on games that ‘don’t count’?” The public’s ignorance is unfortunate but excusable. Anyone that thinks they’re a ‘serious’ sports bettor should know better. One problem is that to say they ‘don’t count’ is a very myopic definition of what is going on. They might not count in the standings, but to a third string safety who is riding a fine line between playing in the NFL and working at Home Depot they most definitely matter. There are plenty of other components of NFL preseason games that definitely matter and can be used for handicapping. It takes work to find and evaluate these narratives but they are there.


The bigger reason that some handicappers disdain preseason football is the same reason that many in the general public do—they don’t find it ‘entertaining’. This can be a very dangerous tendency for a sports bettor. Once again, the trick is finding line value. You can do that in a sport you hate, that you don’t like to watch and in games that ‘don’t matter’. The sooner a sports bettor gets past the ‘picking winners’ fallacy and starts to understand that it’s all about value the sooner he’ll start to build his bankroll.

FINDING VALUE IN PRESEASON NFL FOOTBALL
So how do you find value in preseason NFL football? It never hurts to be a contrarian in sports betting and that also applies here. In fact, in my opinion you can hurt yourself and your contrarian tendencies by putting too much effort into breaking down games. Once you start doing that you start considering the regular season success (or lack thereof) of the teams involved. That’s a slippery slope to a lot of ‘bad beats’ and a lot of money out of your pocket. The recreational bettors can’t separate what a team is capable of in the regular season from the realities of preseason. That fundamental mistake has the ‘squares’ beat before the opening kick off.


That brings us to my ‘quick and dirty’ way to successfully bet NFL preseason games. It’s a short cut to thinking like a contrarian, eliminating the bias of a team’s past performance and almost always getting line value. All you have to do is look at a game as if it were a regular season game, consider how you’d bet it—and then do the exact opposite. If Jacksonville is a +3 road dog at New England in the regular season the logical position would be to play the Patriots. If they meet in the regular season, you take the Jaguars plus the points.


By now you should be connecting the dots on why this works but another important reason is that the majority of bettors handicap and bet preseason NFL like it’s the regular season, at least to some extent. For that reason, the bookmakers have to ‘shade’ the lines to reflect this public perception. So by using this ‘Opposite Strategy’ you more often than not end up playing the contrarian side and get line value. You’re also eliminating the impact of a team’s regular season performance detrimentally impacting your objective perception by acknowledging it and countering it. Think of it as ‘Sports Betting Judo’.


This might seem too easy. And to be sure, best case scenario would combine this contrarian attitude with some more traditional handicapping components. But we promised easy and unless you’re willing to put in the work you can do much worse than using this tactic to put yourself against the public, the ‘shading’ of the betting line and your own inherent biases about which teams are good and which teams are bad.

 

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THE BASICS OF HANDICAPPING PRESEASON FOOTBALL


PART 1: DON’T LISTEN TO THE ‘SQUARES’


In our previous article we examined preseason football betting in general and suggested a ‘quick and easy’ way to successfully bet NFL exhibition games. Now we’re going to start at the beginning and teach you how to do it right. NFL preseason betting might not be the ‘license to print money’ that it once was but it is still a good opportunity to find line value while at the same time preparing yourself for the long regular season ahead.
We’ll start with a few important rules that will provide a foundation for handicapping and betting preseason football like a pro and devote a separate article to each. Look for additional articles expanding on many of these concepts down the road:

DON’T LISTEN TO THE ‘SQUARES’
The heading above needs a bit of clarification. There are times when it is wise to listen to the ‘squares’, or ‘public’ recreational bettors. You can do a lot worse than being a ‘contrarian’ and going against the prevailing public opinion. This is particularly true in the NFL due to it’s huge popularity and longstanding relationship with betting and pointspreads (thanks, Jimmy ‘The Greek’). For that reason it’s often a wise idea to listen to ‘squares’ and follow the media outlets where they get their information (ESPN, FoxSports, USA TODAY among others).


Listening to ‘squares’ has some value because you can take that information and do the diametric opposite. What you definitely shouldn’t do is accept anything they say about sports betting theory or practice as having any validity whatsoever. There is a complete disconnect between the ‘public’ perception of sports betting and successful handicappers and the reality. Simply put, the average ‘Joe Six Pack’ is as qualified to discuss serious sports betting concepts as I am to walk into the Boeing factory in Seattle and start rebuilding jet engines.


Specific to the topic at hand, never listen to anything they say about preseason NFL football and particularly betting NFL exhibition action. You’ll hear the same refrain numerous times throughout the preseason—usually from local TV station newscasters or low level members of NFL broadcast teams. Someone will mention the pointspread on a particular game then the two meatheads will discourse at length about the stupidity of betting on ‘games that don’t count’ before dismissing anyone that does wager on NFL exhibition play as a ‘degenerate’. They’ll chortle about it, have a good laugh and then start talking about high school girls’ softball or something of similar irrelevance.


THINK LIKE A ‘WISE GUY’
They’re right about one thing—the ‘average guy’ aka the ‘square’ has little interest in betting on preseason games primarily because he’s had his thinking clouded by the know-nothings in the mainstream sports media. You know who does like to bet on NFL preseason action? Guys that live in big houses on golf courses in Las Vegas. ‘Sharp’ sports bettors love preseason football because it’s not only a great opportunity to be a ‘contrarian’ and find value but also because the key to winning NFL exhibition bets is information. And professional sports bettors know how to find, process and assimilate data better than anyone. The ‘public’ doesn’t even know the right criteria to use in order to evaluate these preseason matchups, let alone where to find the actionable information.


As a footnote to this, whenever you hear mainstream sports types or other media outlets that attract ‘public’ recreational bettors make fun of betting on a particular sport or proposition it usually warrants further investigation and research. Case in point—many of the ‘wacky’ Super Bowl proposition bets. The ‘square’ zeitgeist likes to goof on this type of bet because they don’t understand that sports betting is about finding value, not ‘picking winners’. It isn’t a coincidence that many of the ‘sharpest sharps’ ignore the component of the Super Bowl that the general public is fixated on—the side and total—to instead focus on proposition bets. The Lingerie Football League is another—in fact, we’ll talk about Lingerie Football betting very soon since it illustrates an essential point. So keep your eyes and ears open—any time that people outside of the fraternity of serious sports bettors start to ‘goof’ on the notion of wagering on a specific event that’s your cue to dig around a bit and see what you come up with.


There’s an important ‘macro’ reason to not listen to the ‘squares’. If you’re going to become a successful sports bettor you need to learn to trust your opinion and analysis. ‘Squares’ simply can’t do this—they might start out with one opinion on the game and after listening to their buddies, the catch phrase spewing meatheads on ‘SportsCenter’ and the banal chatter on NFL pregame shows they start to experience cognitive dissonance. They’ll often reach the point where they let themselves get ‘talked in’ to betting on the diametric opposite of their original position.


You won’t always be right. But if you don’t start to gain confidence in your ability to interpret and analyze a variety of metrics to make a decision on a bet you’re going to have a hard time of it. If you let yourself get ‘talked out’ of your position on a game by a 3 minute feature on ‘SportsCenter’ you might as well throw your money in the street. The way I’ve always viewed it—I know that I’ve put in the time and effort to come to a deliberate and logical decision. There’s no way of knowing the analysis behind what you hear on TV sports shows, if there is any. When you start to understand that your view on a game can be different—and better—than the mainstream media and general public you’re on your way.

 

[CNOTES]

NFL Preseason Handicapping Basics


Part 2: NFL Preseason Coaching Strategy


We began an in depth introduction to NFL preseason handicapping and betting in our previous article. For some reason, the general public—aka ‘squares’ consider NFL preseason betting the exclusive province of degenerates and action junkies. Nothing could be further from the truth. While the public ‘recreational’ bettors have little interest in wagering on NFL exhibition play it attracts a lot of attention from professional and ‘sharp’ bettors.


One of the primary reasons that the general public considers NFL preseason games to not be worth betting is the often heard refrain that “no one cares who wins”. On a macro level, that might be true. When you bet on a regular season game both teams are theoretically out there trying to win which provides a baseline of motivation. The team that exerts more effort and executes more effectively typically wins the game.
If you’ve been paying attention to the sports betting theory articles on this website you might already see what the problem is. The fundamental challenge of serious sports betting isn’t to ‘pick winners’–rather, the goal is to find line value. Finding line value is a methodical, analytical process. If you do it right, the wins and losses take care of themselves and you make money. ‘Picking winners’ is the goal of a clairvoyant, not a sports handicapper.


There’s an old saying that ‘a little bit of information is a dangerous thing’. That’s definitely true in sports betting. ‘Squares’ always want to believe that there’s some secret that makes what is an arduous process easy. It’s the same mentality that attracts people to late night infomercials about ‘no money down’ real estate and spam emails promising that they’ll ‘lose weight overnight’. And clearly this is the mentality that boiler room touts exploit with their ‘locks of the century’ and ‘games of the year’. Even when they stumble upon a piece of information that has some validity the recreational player has a tendency to misuse or over rely on it as we are about to see.


NFL PRESEASON COACHING STRATEGY:
During the regular season there’s typically a confluence of factors that have to be considered when handicapping a NFL game—everything from a team’s previous game to injuries to the weather. Coaching strategies play a part, of course, but are just one of many factors that have to be evaluated to successfully find value in NFL football. Preseason is a different matter and the coach sets the entire agenda. In fact, this is why the public perceives that ‘no one tries to win’–often the coach is too concerned about getting his team up to speed on new formations or evaluating talent to worry about the scoreboard.


The influence that ‘coaching philosophies’ have on NFL preseason games isn’t a new concept. It’s been around for awhile to the point that it’s often ‘baked into the line’. Even recreational players are aware of it though they take a far too simplistic approach to coaching philosophy and strategy. Often they’ll get a ‘Football Annual’ that reprints the pointspread record of each NFL coach in the preseason. He’ll conclude that coaches with a winning record against the spread ‘take preseason seriously’ while coaches with losing ATS records ‘don’t care about preseason’. This concept actually is more familiar to experts on sports betting in Canada–it’s a concept that is also effective in handicapping the Canadian Football League (CFL).


While the ‘square’ that uses this oversimplification will occasionally get the ‘right result for the wrong reason’ what he’s doing is determining if the ground is wet as a predictive component of forecasting the weather. The ‘sharp’ sports bettor takes a more holistic approach and tries to get as much information on a coach’s priorities for a specific game. Most coaches also have their own ‘process’ for preparing a football team for the season long before they reach the NFL. Some coaches have been given a reputation as ‘always wanting to win’ preseason games because they place emphasis on them for evaluating personnel and getting a benchmark of where the team is at in terms of their preparation. The coaches that have a reputation for ‘not wanting to win’ might not have that attitude per se but use other criteria to determine the status of personnel and team preparation.


In each situation the players are well aware of how the coach qualitatively assesses their performance and the performance of the team and their focus and effort usually reflects this. Players who know that their role on the team—and in some cases their spot in the NFL—depends on their in-game performance take it a lot more seriously than those who know it doesn’t factor in to the coaches’ evaluation.


Another mistake that recreational players make is to assume that a coach has a specific ‘philosophical belief’ relative to preseason that he carries throughout his coaching career. This may be true to an extent but more often than not the specifics of how a coach views preseason games is situational. If a coach is taking over a basket case of a team where he needs to immediately instill a work ethic and environment of professionalism he’ll approach preseason games differently than if he were coaching a Super Bowl contender with strong locker room leadership and a tradition of winning.
Finally, it’s essential not to ignore the factors external to coaching. Coaching might be the single most significant component of your handicap but certainly not the only one. Performance in previous games, injuries, weather and the usual areas of concern for handicappers during the regular season play a part in the preseason albeit a smaller one.

 

[CNOTES]

NFL PRESEASON HANDICAPPING BASICS


PART 3: SIGNIFICANCE OF THE POINTSPREAD


We continue our discussion of NFL Preseason handicapping by looking at the pointspread and the importance—or lack their of—it has on betting these exhibition games. On balance, the one thing that the average sports bettor could do to improve his results is to spend some time learning to understand the pointspread. When you understand intuitively what the pointspread means, what it does and how it is made it makes you understand better how to handicap and bet. More than anything else, it is the foundation of becoming a ‘sharp’ sports bettor.

UNDERSTANDING THE POINTSPREAD


In general terms the pointspread is intended to do one thing and one thing only: attract two way action in hopes that at kickoff the bookmaker will have the same amount of liability on one side that he does on the other. He has a few tricks and tactics at his disposal to help him in doing this, but that’s a different topic for a different time. In actuality, the bookmaker isn’t ‘handicapping the game’ to hang a number, rather he’s handicapping the public’s perception of the game.


It’s the ‘handicapping’ component where the general public goes wrong in their perception of the pointspread. You’ll often hear non-bettors and recreational players characterize the point spread as ‘predicting’ the outcome of a game. It does not do that in any way, shape or form. Bookmakers don’t pat themselves on the back when they get their ‘prediction’ right. In fact, a bookmaker’s worst nightmare is getting ‘middled’. When a game lands right on the number all bets are returned and no one makes any money.


Specific to the NFL pointspread, it’s significantly different in the preseason than in the regular season. The overwhelming majority of preseason NFL games fall right around 3. In other words, right around the standard home field advantage in the NFL. Every now and then a preseason pointspread will reflect the qualitative or situational advantage of one team or another. This is in marked contrast to regular season pointspreads which are likely the most meticulously calculated and financially significant numbers that a bookmaker makes. As the regular season approaches we’ll look in detail at how NFL regular season lines are made and moved.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE NFL PRESEASON POINTSPREAD


The National Football League has a reputation among both casual and more sophisticated sports bettors as being the toughest sport ‘to beat’ and the sport having the ‘sharpest numbers’. That’s very likely the case though perhaps not to the degree that many believe. Certainly, the NFL pointspread is of utmost importance during the regular season which is why so many players find it so tricky to bet. There’s much more parity in the NFL than many recreational bettors believe and blindly laying points—even with the best teams—is a quick way to burn through your bankroll.


In the previous sections on NFL preseason betting we’ve spoken many times about how it can be ‘counterintuitive’ to what we do during the regular season. In fact, the easiest and quickest way to bet a preseason game is to think about how you’d bet it during the regular season—and then do the opposite. The ‘counterintuitive’ concept continues here—in diametrical opposition to the regular season the preseason NFL pointspread is almost meaningless. This is due not only to the nature of the games themselves but the way that bookmakers calculate the lines.


Statistically speaking, the pointspread comes into play in only 20% (approximately) of NFL preseason games. In fact, you can make a good case that you should just ignore the pointspread altogether and focus on picking the winner of the game. Based on that figure above, the pointspread won’t make any difference whatsoever in 4 out of every 5 NFL preseason games. This concept also fits well within some of the other realities of preseason NFL football. Given that so much of the handicapping involves what a coach’s ‘goals’ are for a particular week it’s easy to extrapolate that to help determine the winner. If one coach is focusing on execution and the other is just trying to keep his players healthy until the season opens, it’s very likely that the former team will have a better chance of winning than the latter.

 

[CNOTES]

NFL PRESEASON HANDICAPPING BASICS


PART 4: QUARTERBACK ROTATIONS


In our previous installment of this series we talked about the importance of learning as much as possible about what the pointspread represents, how it is made and how it moves. This is true not only for preseason and regular season NFL football but for sports bettors in general. We’ll now move on to handicapping individual NFL preseason games and discuss situations that you should be looking for. After that, we’ll turn our attention to where to find and evaluate this sort of information.
Preseason NFL football is unique among betting sports in that it’s the only one where I don’t use power ratings to set ‘my own line’. In the regular season this is the starting point and allows me to have ‘my own line’ on every game before pointspreads for the following week go up on Sunday (some sportsbooks post early lines for the following week’s games but that’s a different conversation for another time). From a handicapping standpoint, everything about preseason football is counterintuitive including the process itself.

WHAT TO LOOK FOR


This isn’t an exhaustive list but these are a few areas that can indicate a situation where teams might play well and/or focused (making it more likely they’ll win) or not play well and/or focused (making it more likely they’ll lose). One of the biggest changes in the past couple of decades is that this information is available to anyone willing to look for it and no longer the exclusive province of ‘wise guys’. This has been a ‘good news/bad news’ situation for bettors—it makes it easier to handicap preseason NFL football but the trade off is that most of these situations get ‘baked into’ the pointspread. Most of the time, this isn’t a huge concern in preseason (read part 3 of this series if you want to know why). In fact, when I see a preseason line that looks ‘off’ it’s a sign that I should pay special attention to the game and find out what’s up. Sometimes you can unearth a salient handicapping factor that you previously weren’t aware of.


QUARTERBACK ROTATIONS


Many preseason NFL handicappers pay undue attention to the ‘first string’ and how long they’ll be kept in the game. Specifically, they’ll focus on the starting quarterback. This is not a good idea in most cases and particularly when the starting lineup is fairly well set. Even on losing teams, most coaches go into training camp knowing who’ll be in their starting lineup. There might be a few positions up for grabs but even when a coach says that ‘competition for starting jobs is wide open’ it really isn’t. For one thing, some players get paid a lot more than others. If a player is under contract that pays him more than the NFL’s average salary ($1.9 million per) there’s a strong incentive to play him. No team wants to pay a guy six figures to sit on the bench so unless a lower paid player is significantly better the guys getting paid the cheddar will be in the game.
The same is true with quarterbacks—most coaches have a good idea of who their starting quarterback will be even if he publicly says otherwise. In most cases, the top priority will be keeping the starting quarterback healthy going into the season. A veteran like Tom Brady will be ready to play when the games start to count even if he doesn’t get much preseason game action. Even if he’s a bit rusty when the season begins that’s better than him being on the sidelines with his arm in a sling. Brady should be acutely aware of this since it was a preseason injury to Drew Bledsoe that gave him his ‘big break’ to start in the NFL.


What sports betting experts prefer to focus on is the backup and third string quarterback. On balance, the teams that have the higher quality backup quarterbacks win preseason games. In some cases, there’s a competition for the starting job and obviously it benefits every quarterback to put up good numbers. A more common situation is competition for the backup jobs. That might be the strongest situation because the backups have incentive to not just play well but to ‘put up numbers’. Quarterbacks in this situation will also get a lot of game action with the first string offense making it all the more likely that he’ll play well.


In ‘backup competition’ situations the best scenario in my opinion is one where you’ve got a solid #2 QB on the depth chart but multiple candidates fighting for the #3 job. The backup quarterback going into the season will want to play well to further solidify his job. It’s not uncommon to see teams go with untested backups and cutting a more experienced #2 quarterback if he’s not clearly qualitatively superior. The players battling for third string have more at stake than just depth chart position—it could be ‘make or break’ for them playing in the NFL at all.


Even in situations where the quarterback depth chart is well established teams with better backup quarterbacks are still good plays. You’ll often see a capable backup play more aggressively during the preseason. Not only one of the few times all year that he’ll have to personally shine but from a team standpoint it might be the only live game action that a backup might get before an injury to a starter thrusts him into a position where he has to execute.


The reality of preseason NFL games is that the reserves will see significantly more playing time than the starters. For that reason, it’s always advantageous to ‘invest’ in the team with the better backup quarterback rotation. Regardless of the situational context, there’s plenty of ‘upsides’ to betting a team with competent backups and few, if any, downsides.

 

[CNOTES]

NFL PRESEASON HANDICAPPING BASICS


PART 5: INJURY SITUATIONS


We’ll continue our discussion of handicapping NFL preseason football by looking at the impact of injuries on exhibition games. NFL betting enthusiasts make a big deal over player injuries during the regular season and the live odds services offer a daily injury report as well as ‘breaking injury news’. While this is nominally of interest to ‘serious pro football bettors’ in my experience it seems that fantasy football players get more use out of it.


The reality is that during the regular season injuries are overrated and overvalued. You’ll find this point emphasized throughout our NFL betting guides. This is true not only in NFL football but throughout the major betting sports. In fact, the more significant the injury the greater the overreaction. It definitely hurts a team to lose their starting quarterback, for example, but invariably the compensation in the pointspread just isn’t commensurate with the ‘true value’ of the loss. As we’ve noted, you can do a lot worse than being a ‘contrarian’ when handicapping the NFL. One good way to do this during the regular season is to ‘bet against’ public opinion when dealing with a major injury. The more cataclysmic that fans and the mainstream sports media make the injury sound the better the line value you’re likely to find playing against their position.
As is the case in so many other areas, preseason football injuries are a different animal from regular season injuries. Since key players don’t get much time on the field anyway it would seem in theory that preseason injuries are of less relevance. That’s definitely not the case.


INJURY SITUATIONS


In the regular season, a key player injury is problematic to a team but doesn’t necessarily change what they’re trying to do in a game—they’re trying to win with or without the injured player. A team may adjust their tactical approach to better leverage the skill of a backup—for example, if the backup playing for an injured starting quarterback is more mobile a team may add a few more rushing plays. On balance, teams are able to adjust to missing a star player or even multiple players. For that reason, regular season injuries are often overrated among sports bettors.
Preseason injuries impact the game in a different way. In our previous discussion, we talked about how coaches have different ‘goals’ for preseason games and that they play different roles with different coaches within the context of their preparation process. Injuries can force a coach to make wholesale adjustments in what he’s doing to evaluate players and prepare the team for the season. It’s difficult to generalize exactly how this can happen but here are a few examples:


–a starting quarterback gets injured forcing a little used backup into the role. The coach uses the preseason games as a ‘crash course’ for the backup to get used to working with the first string offense.


–in an identical situation, many coaches will do the opposite—since the backup quarterback is assuming the role of the starting quarterback a coach will protect him like a starting quarterback and subject him to little live game action in order to keep him health.


–if a team has injuries along the offensive line a coach might keep the quarterback off the field altogether preferring to throw his backups ‘to the wolves’. Even good backups will struggle if they’re not getting protection.


–if a team has a number of injuries or if they are protecting players from injury some coaches will essentially ‘throw in the towel’ and just go through the motions in the quickest and least painful way possible to just get a game over with.
These are just a few examples that have occurred in NFL preseason play. It’s completely situational so its incumbent upon the handicapper to do the work to understand what an injury means within the current context of the team’s preparation. It’s not always obvious but injuries are more likely to result in a ‘chain reaction’ of responses by a coach. Pay attention and you can find some good handicapping edges this way.

 

[CNOTES]

NFL PRESEASON HANDICAPPING BASICS


PART 6: WEEK BY WEEK


Preseason NFL football has a certain form to it year after year as teams are roughly at the same point in their preparation process in each of the four weeks. Understanding what teams are looking for and/or trying to do during each week of the preseason is essential for handicapping success. As we’ve noted in previous sections of this discussion of NFL preseason betting much of what you want to do when betting exhibition games is ‘counterintuitive’ from what you’d do to handicap games during the regular season. During the regular season the general plan is the same from week to week: try to win games and try to avoid injuries. In preseason, each week has it’s own ‘theme’ that varies little from one team to another:
Note that all of the descriptions below are generalizations. Some teams develop more quickly than others, some teams do the opposite. On balance, however, this is what teams want to be doing from week to week during the preseason:

THE HALL OF FAME GAME
The Hall of Fame game is the traditional start to the NFL preseason. It takes place in Canton, Ohio, home of the Pro Football Hall of Fame. What’s significant about this game from a handicapping standpoint is that its scheduled the week before the rest of the preseason action begins. For example, in 2016 the Hall of Fame Game is on August 7 while Preseason Week 1 begins the following weekend.


This game is very important from a handicapping standpoint. This is not so much for the game itself which is the garden variety sloppy first week of preseason contest but for the reason mentioned above—the extra week. On balance, teams with a ‘game under their belt’ in preseason play have an advantage over opponents who are playing their first game. To some extent, this advantage carries throughout the preseason as the teams that played in the Hall of Fame Game are ‘a week ahead’ of the rest of the league.


Here’s another interesting fact about the Hall of Fame game—the teams involved (in 2016 it’s Indianapolis and Green Bay) don’t get a ‘bye week’ later in the preseason schedule. It would seem logical that this would be the case but instead these two teams get an ‘extra’ preseason game. Depending on how the coaching staff for each team takes advantage of this it can mean for a better prepared squad to begin the regular season.


WEEK ONE
Week One is usually dedicated to getting the team back in the right mindset for playing football and assessing where everyone is at in terms of conditioning and skill. New players begin their on field ‘evaluation’ in Week One and veterans see little, if any, playing time. In some cases, teams may be ‘breaking in’ new coaches and offensive/defensive coordinators. Depending on how quick a team assimilates a new tactical scheme this can be advantageous or disadvantageous from a handicapping standpoint. If a team is picking it up quickly they’ll be trying to gain fluency in it meaning they’ll give more playing time to starters in an effort to do so. If a team is having trouble getting it right obviously that’s a team you want to go against.

WEEK TWO
Week Two is more of an ‘evaluation week’ than any of the other preseason weeks. Coaches give a long, hard look to candidates to fill roster holes and give rookies—particularly undrafted rookies—their longest look of the preseason. This can make for some sloppy play and lack of cohesion. There is one exception, however, as sometimes new players vying for a roster spot ‘put on a show’ individually—quarterbacks throw a lot more, running backs accumulate yardage, etc. If a team has a well established backup rotation this is the week where they’ll get the most playing time and most teams let their backups ‘air it out’ during the preseason.

WEEK THREE
This is considered the ‘dress rehearsal’ week. Teams spend at least part of the game making sure that everything is copacetic to start the regular season. Starters will get the most playing time and to some degree it’s approached with a higher degree of seriousness than other weeks.
There are a couple of dangerous misconceptions for handicappers regarding these ‘dress rehearsal’ games. One is that this automatically means that the better teams will be a good play. That’s not the case. More often than not, the better teams have a lot less to work on than mediocre or bad teams. The Tennessee Titans, for example, will need more of a ‘dress rehearsal’ than will the New England Patriots. The Patriots (and other elite teams) have avoiding injuries as their primary goal even in ‘dress rehearsal’ week.
The other misconception is that a team’s ‘dress rehearsal’ will manifest itself in a more serious effort to win the game. More accurately, the focus will be on execution. This may or may not help a team win a game but seldom is winning the game itself a primary focus. It’s tough to generalize what teams will want to do during week three meaning that good information is essential.

WEEK FOUR
With very few exceptions, this is a week to avoid injuries. Starters see little, if any, game time and the focus is on getting these games over with and looking ahead to Week One of the regular season. In some cases, teams that are winless for the preseason may assert more of an effort to get a victory in order to go into the regular season on a positive note.

 

[CNOTES]

NFL PRESEASON HANDICAPPING BASICS


PART 7: SITUATIONS


In NFL regular season betting situations are a big deal including ‘letdown spots’, ‘lookahead spots’, ‘revenge spots’ and so on. While there aren’t as many strong situations in Preseason NFL football there are a few. As with everything else related to preseason football (or sports betting in general for that matter) you shouldn’t be playing these preseason NFL point spread bets blindly. They are, however, a good place to start your handicapping and could be worth a play if the rest of your analysis validates the premise of a specific situation.

HALL OF FAME TEAM VS. GAME ONE TEAM
This one is pretty simple—it’s a Week One game between one of the two teams that played in the preseason opening Hall of Fame game and a team playing their first preseason game. In most sports, teams that have actual game play ‘under their belt’ are typically good betting positions against opponents that don’t. Even teams that perform poorly in the Hall of Fame game are further along in their regular season preparation than the ‘Game One’ team. In fact, I’d prefer to bet on the team that lost the Hall of Fame game simply because they no doubt went back to camp and worked on the areas that caused their defeat.
Here’s one thing to pay attention to and look out for—if you ever hear a coach say that because of their Hall of Fame game win and/or appearance that they’ll ‘take it easy’ the next week he might be giving his team a de facto bye. If a coach looks to be approaching their Week One game in this manner the advantage of having a game under the belt is largely negated.


NEW HEAD COACH IN FIRST HOME GAME
Some trends and ‘angles’ don’t make intuitive sense—like a baseball team being 1-10 on a Wednesday. Others make perfect sense and are just logical. This is one of those. In this situation we’re looking for a first year head coach in his first home game with his new team. No matter whether it’s regular season or preseason, a coach knows that he needs to keep the fan base happy. And there’s no better way to do this than winning games, even if the games won’t mean anything once the regular season begins. Coaches have a strong incentive to get their coaching career off ‘on the right foot’ by winning their first home game, even if it is a preseason game. This situation is even better if a team had a losing record a year ago or if the team lost their previous preseason contest. Linesmakers are well aware of this concept and it’s usually priced into the line but given the nature of preseason football play it’s usually still worth betting.


WINLESS AND UNDEFEATED TEAMS IN WEEK THREE
Week Three is considered the ‘dress rehearsal’ week when teams approach the game with a higher degree of seriousness than in the other weeks of the preseason. That’s a generalization of course, but one that is accurate more often than not.
Two great situations to look for are flip sides of the same coin. For teams that lost their first two preseason games this is really their last chance to ‘redeem’ themselves since Week Four usually involves just keeping everyone healthy. No team wants to go undefeated in the preseason (even though there’s very little causal relationship between good preseason performance and regular season performance) so betting on 0-2 teams in Week 3 can be a good position.
Alternately, you’ll also want to look for spots to bet against teams that are 2-0 heading into Week 3. These teams are usually happy with their performance and the undefeated record is an indication that everything is going well in training camp. It’s not uncommon for teams in this situation to ‘take their foot off the gas’ or to protect starters from injury with the regular season on deck.


0-3 TEAMS IN WEEK FOUR PRESEASON ACTION
Another ‘no team wants to finish the preseason winless’ play. What’s interesting about this situation is that it is much more effective for teams that expect to lose during the preseason than for winning teams. Good teams are better able to put the preseason in proper context. They’re more likely to not care about their preseason record and look ahead to Week 1 of the regular season. Teams with losing records are typically much more concerned about a winless preseason. This is especially true if they’ve got a new coaching regime in their first year.

 

[CNOTES]

NFL PRESEASON HANDICAPPING BASICS


PART 8: HOME FIELD ADVANTAGE IN NFL PRESEASON


The conventional wisdom, at least among the mainstream sports media and ‘recreational’ bettors is that home venue advantage is a big deal no matter the sport or situation. Some even go so far as to try to factor the team’s home and away games into their preseason futures bets. The problem is that home field advantage varies widely and in general isn’t as big of a deal as the public thinks. Not only does every sport have varying degrees of home venue significance within sports the value of playing at home varies widely from one situation to another.
In fact, understanding the nuances of home venue advantage can be a very effective way to find line value. In most cases, bookmakers use a standard home field advantage when setting a line. This is especially true in the NFL where the ‘standard’ home field advantage is 3 or 3.5 points. In the NFL preseason, the home field advantage is often the only factor in the line differing the two teams in a game. Once preseason comes around look at the betting lines particularly in the first couple of weeks. Most will be -3 or -3′.


The significance of home field advantage in preseason linesmaking is counterintuitive given the nature of the betting demographic that wagers on NFL exhibition games. On balance, the majority of the action on NFL preseason games comes from professional bettors aka ‘sharp’ players. There might be more recreational players in action during the preseason than a decade ago but that hasn’t changed the demographic makeup. Recreational players ‘get excited’ about preseason NFL rolling around but that doesn’t equate into betting action.
So why does the linesmaker emphasize home field advantage in preseason lines when most of the players betting into them have a more nuanced understanding of its true significance? Good question, but if you talk to sportsbook managers and linesmakers about the process of making preseason NFL lines they’ll tell you exactly the same thing. Not that you should always take what bookmakers say at face value, but in this case it’s easy to validate their position simply by looking at the betting lines.


HOME FIELD ADVANTAGE IN PRESEASON NFL BETTING
Generally speaking, home field advantage plays little part in my regular season NFL handicapping—at least not intrinsically. There are some factors related to home field that are worth considering such as playing surface (turf or grass), wind patterns and travel. If home field advantage is of less significance than widely perceived during the regular season it’s of even less significance in the preseason.
To explain why this is the case refer back to some of the earlier sections in our discussion of preseason football. The single most important handicapping factor in preseason NFL football is each coach’s ‘goals’ or priorities for individual games. There’s little to suggest that this is influenced by the venue in most cases (we’ll talk about the exceptions momentarily). There’s also little statistical validation for the belief that a coach is more likely to want to ‘win for the home fans’. Most good coaches understand that their fanbase won’t care about what happens in August once the regular season begins.


In other words, while home field might not be completely irrelevant in the NFL preseason its very close to it. No NFL coach is going to alter the process of preparing his team to be competitive in the regular season to pander to the home fans. He’s not going to risk injury to key players—or even reserves—to get a meaningless win that will be forgotten once the regular season kicks off. Although you won’t hear them say so publicly lest they get into trouble with the NFL league office overlords there’s quite a few coaches that view the preseason games as a ‘distraction’ from the real task at hand—evaluating personnel, making sure their fluent with offensive and defensive tactics and getting them mentally and physically ready to play football.
There are a couple of situations that are tangentially related to home field advantage that are worth looking at a little more closely:

NEW HEAD COACH IN HIS FIRST HOME GAME
This is historically a very good situation to play on the home team. Every coach wants to get off to a good relationship with his team’s fanbase and winning his first preseason game is an effective way to do so. It’s a case where the fans won’t remember the win in a month but they might remember a loss. Since new coaches frequently end up with teams that won’t win many regular season games that adds even more value to getting the victory in his first game at the helm. This concept is ‘baked into the line’ now but it’s still good enough to be worth looking at.

HISTORICALLY SIGNIFICANT GAMES
These don’t come around often and depending on the team/coach involved they might not even be a factor. That being said, there are games of ‘historic significance’ that will sometimes have meaning attached even in the preseason. There’s one coming up in the 2016 preseason when the Rams play their first home game in Los Angeles in over twenty years. The August 13 game will be against the Dallas Cowboys and broadcast nationally on ESPN. Will this matter to Rams’ head coach Jeff Fisher? Maybe—the team purged a number of assistant coaches at the end of last season and another disappointing campaign could mean Fisher is on his way out the door. Having the fans behind you means more job security for a head coach and winning a game like this doesn’t hurt.

 

[CNOTES]

NFL PRESEASON HANDICAPPING BASICS


PART 9: PRESEASON TOTALS BETTING


Many recreational bettors avoid NFL preseason totals (otherwise known as over/under bets) thinking that there’s just too much randomness and unpredictability involved. They’re not necessarily wrong in this regard but that doesn’t necessarily make NFL preseason totals ‘unbettable’. At the right price, anything is ‘bettable’ and NFL preseason totals are no different from any number of other wagering propositions. Like side bets in preseason NFL play the sharp handicapper will approach NFL totals bets differently than he would in the regular season. That being said, there are two factors that make me think that NFL preseason totals will be a very profitable focus for a contrarian bettor.


FACTOR #1—PERCEPTION VS. REALITY
NFL preseason totals are, on balance, significantly lower than they would be during the regular season. The casual fan would say that this is for good reason—many NFL preseason games are tedious affairs where neither team really tries to win and sloppy play by both offenses results in the game being played between the 20 yard lines. This is especially true in Week #1 when new players are trying to learn the system and veterans are trying to get back in playing shape. It’s understandable that NFL totals would trend lower than regular season totals.


There’s only one problem with this—it isn’t really true. The part about NFL preseason totals being on balance lower than regular season totals is true. What’s incorrect is the perception that every NFL preseason game and particularly ‘early’ games (Week 1 and 2) all have baseball like final scores. Here’s an example—I pulled up the Week 1 results for the 2015 NFL preseason. 16 games on the board and the final scores translated to an ‘average score total’ of 39.5. The lowest total score was 21 points, the highest total score was 57 points. In Week 2 there were once again 16 games on the board and the final scores of these games factored out to 38.1 points per game. The scores ranged from a low of 21 to a high of 61.


Obviously, this is a very small sample of two weeks in the NFL preseason but there’s nothing to suggest that preseason NFL scores are across the board lower than regular season scores. One misconception that could contribute to the fallacy that NFL preseason scores are lower could be the ‘casual fan’s’ perception of the relative difficulty of offense and defense. There are plenty of people who have the opinion that NFL offenses rely on skill and finesse while defenses rely on size and strength. That’s just not the case—playing defense in the NFL is just as difficult and perhaps more so than playing offense.


This mis-characterization of preseason NFL totals isn’t limited to ‘squares’ and recreational players. When I first started handicapping the NFL I received advice to ‘look Under in preseason games’. After awhile I noticed that these preseason NFL ‘Unders’ didn’t have a particularly good success rate. Yet there were plenty of otherwise very sharp handicappers that kept writing them off as the result of ‘variance’ and going back to the window the following week to play more ‘Unders’.
Of course this is a generalization and there are plenty of handicappers that have evolved beyond the ‘all Unders all the time in preseason’ mindset. This does serve to illustrate how ‘conventional wisdoms’ in sports betting are dangerous to your bankroll and that not even ‘sharp’ bettors are immune.


FACTOR #2: IT’S NOT EASY TO SET A NFL PRESEASON TOTAL
At the outset of this article we mentioned that the best way to play preseason NFL totals is to take an approach that is ‘counterintuitive’ to the way you’d handicap a regular season total. One reason for this is that the things that work during the regular season—matchup history, weather, statistical data, etc.–doesn’t work in the NFL preseason. There’s no uniform ‘process’ to handicapping preseason NFL football meaning that not only do you have to be creative it’s the most effective way to approach exhibition games.


Here’s what many people forget—if it’s difficult for even ‘sharp’ handicappers and professional sports bettors to calculate ‘their’ line and score projections for a game guess who else it’s difficult for? That would be the guy on the other side of the window setting the lines at the sportsbook. They don’t have it any easier than you or any other bettor. They’re used to setting lines through a more or less systematic process and that just doesn’t work in the preseason. One of the really profound things I learned when I was first coming up in the sports betting game was that whenever the linesmaker struggles to set a price on the game that’s an excellent time to find good value opportunities.


We’ll revisit NFL preseason handicapping down the road. Since there are few uniform approaches to matchup analysis it’s helpful to have some actual betting lines and games to work with. One thing that is salient to handicapping NFL preseason totals is the same thing that has such a huge impact on handicapping NFL preseason sides—the ‘goals’ or ‘priorities’ for the coaches involved.

 

[CNOTES]

NFL PRESEASON HANDICAPPING BASICS


PART 10: INFORMATION SOURCES


We’ve talked extensively throughout this series about how the most significant handicapping factor in preseason NFL football is the priorities of the respective head coaches. Head coaches prepare their teams and evaluate talent in different ways and on a different timetable. Furthermore, the preseason games play a different part in the process for every coach. For some, it’s where players ‘show what they’re capable of’. For others, it’s an unavoidable distraction from the ‘real work’ of getting their football team ready to play on Sundays.


So where do you find the information you need? One way to do it is to look at the preseason records of NFL head coaches. You’ll find discernible trends that can reveal how coaches approach the NFL preseason. The problem with this is that what a coach did five years ago matters little today. More significantly, the coach’s priorities could change dramatically depending on where their team is at. This is even more true if a coach has taken over a different team. What might have been right to prepare his previous team could be the wrong process for his current team.


The best source for information is the coach himself. The next best source are educated observers close to the team who can convey what’s going on in training camp from week to week. Here’s how you get that information:

‘FROM THE HORSE’S MOUTH’ OR THE COACH HIMSELF
With the abundance of information sources available to everyone there’s no excuse for not being adequately prepared to handicap a game. You might interpret that information incorrectly but that’s going to happen. What shouldn’t happen is not having the information you need when you can find it from multiple sources and in mind numbing detail.


It wasn’t that long ago that all you’d get from NFL head coaches were ‘sound bites’ or canned answers to standard questions from awe struck reporters. That has changed—coaches now speak expansively about their team and plans in press conferences and other media availability. In the past, you’d get a brief TV clip or a radio sound bite of these events. Now, you can watch or listen to the entire thing from a variety of sources. The NFL has a dedicated TV network and satellite radio station. There are YouTube videos of press conferences. The specific sources for each team’s press conference may vary but they aren’t hard to find.


Some coaches are more forthcoming than others in press conferences but if you listen to them you can get good information. It may take a while to decipher some of the ‘coach speak’ but the longer they talk the more candid they are. Don’t think a coach is going to come out and say ‘we don’t care if we win or lose preseason games’. You’ll often have to come up with the correct interpretation on your own. This is an acquired skill but you definitely don’t have ‘lack of information’ as an excuse.

TEAM ‘BEAT WRITERS’
Team beat writers haven’t always been a good source of information and there’s still some that are basically shills for whatever the head coach wants to convey. Good beat writers are worth their weight in gold and can be extremely valuable sources of information. In the past, sports betting experts would spend a fortune on out of town newspapers to keep up with this information. Now you can follow them on Twitter, read their articles on newspaper websites and hear them as guests on podcasts.
Beat writers can report on previously unknown injuries, give a more accurate assessment of existing injuries, talk about the mood in the locker room and in practice and in many cases do the job of interpreting what the coach says and means for you. Their value is equally as significant during the regular season.


In addition to newspaper beat writers there’s no shortage of unofficial media sources that cover a specific team very closely. They might have a Twitter following or have their own blog or other web presence. Again, they vary widely in quality but a good, objective source of information and critical analysis about a team is extremely valuable.

 

[CNOTES]

NFL PRESEASON HANDICAPPING BASICS


PART 11: PRESEASON REVENGE STRATEGIES


Based on all that we’ve discussed concerning preseason NFL football betting it would appear unlikely that ‘revenge’ is a valid handicapping concept. It’s overvalued in regular season NFL and college games (along with all other betting sports for that matter) so there’s no way that you could do anything with it in the NFL Preseason right? Surprisingly enough, there are a few situations where ‘revenge’ (or something like it) can be a worthwhile handicapping component.


Recreational bettors have a very myopic concept of ‘revenge’. The general concept is that a team that loses to a specific opponent in a previous game will have greater ‘motivation’ to get ‘revenge’ for that loss. A variation on this theme is ‘home loss revenge’ where a team that loses at home will want to return the favor next time they play in the winning team’s venue. The reality is that it just doesn’t work that way, at least not to the degree that recreational players believe. Losing games is a part of sports and while no athlete enjoys it on balance it doesn’t create any specific animus toward the teams that beat them.


This isn’t to say that teams can’t improve tactically in the second meeting with a team that beat them in a previous matchup. In fact, this is a very effective handicapping strategy. Teams that lose a game—and especially in a rout—can go back, review film and figure out what went wrong. The winning team is often content with their performance and is vulnerable to this sort of tactical improvement from an opponent. This is especially true in situations where a team has lost twice previously in a season to an opponent—for example, a NFL team that plays a home and home series with a rival during the regular season and then catches them in the playoffs.


Another misconception is that any type of ‘bad blood’ between teams will manifest itself in a more intense, focused effort. This fallacy is most often observed in the more ‘physical’ sports like football and hockey. More often than not, whatever is ‘issue’ that caused a brawl, fight or ejection in the previous game is a non-issue. Part of this is just human nature in a long season. In some cases, the league office will call officials and/or coaches to give them the word that they better keep things on the up and up.
But enough about what doesn’t work (though we’ll return to a more in-depth discussion of regular season revenge in a future article). What does work in the preseason? Here’s a few situations that have been effective in the past:

‘WHIPPING BOY NO MORE’
One situation that has been effective historically in preseason NFL betting is to play ON teams that lost twice to their opponent in the previous season. While this might seem like an obvious case of ‘revenge’ it usually is more along the lines of the ‘tactical improvement’ we talked about above. A dominant team doesn’t care about a preseason game against a team they’ve handled easily in the past. The less successful team will focus more, even if it’s on a subconscious level. Sometimes a coach might prioritize such a game for a losing team if he thinks it might help bring about a ‘culture of winning’. At the very least, he might hope that a strong showing in an exhibition game will make the opponent less intimidating during the regular season. Whatever the reason behind it, this situation has been a very effective pointspread performer in the past decade.

ONE SIDED RIVALRY
A ‘one sided rivalry’ is when a game matters a lot to the less successful team but matters little, if at all, to the other team. You see this a lot in college sports. For example, when Coastal Carolina plays the University of South Carolina in college basketball it’s a huge deal to the smaller school but just another preseason game to the bigger school. In the NFL, the more frequently the teams are compared to one another the stronger the situation. In NFL preseason play, the most enduring of this type of play is the annual preseason game between the New York Jets and New York Giants. The Jets have long been perceived as the ‘poor cousin’ to the Giants which makes this game a bigger deal (at least among fans) than the garden variety NFL preseason game. That’s at least part of the reason why the Jets have historically been so strong in this game.

PLAYOFF ‘REMATCHES’
This is one of those situations that shouldn’t work but it does. In theory, you’d think that NFL teams would know that beating a team that eliminated them from the playoffs the previous year doesn’t matter in August. You’d think this, but for some reason the team that lost the playoff game is invariably a strong play. This is even stronger if the teams met in the NFC or AFC Championship or Super Bowl.

 

[CNOTES]

NFL PRESEASON HANDICAPPING BASICS


PART 12: CORRELATION TO REGULAR SEASON RESULTS


In this entry of our series on NFL Preseason Football Handicapping we’ll ask a question that I hear often—does anything that happens in the Preseason have any bearing whatsoever on the regular season? More specifically, is there a correlation between a team’s preseason record and their regular season record? Do teams that have a good record at the end of the regular season show that during the preseason? And what about the opposite? Do bad teams have bad preseasons?
On balance, the answer to all of these questions is ‘not really’. Year to year it varies but it’s hard to find any type of correlation between what a team does in the preseason and what they do in the regular season. In 2015, for whatever its worth, the Denver Broncos and Carolina Panthers were both 3-1 in the preseason. On the other hand, in 2014 the Indianapolis Colts went 0-4 in the preseason and finished the regular season 11-5. The New York Giants went a perfect 5-0 in the preseason and went 6-10 in the regular season.


WHY THERE IS NO REAL CORRELATION BETWEEN PRESEASON AND REGULAR SEASON
So why is there little to no correlation between what happens in the preseason and the regular season? There are several reasons but they all go back to what we’ve been talking about throughout this series. The goal in the regular season is to win games. Some games may be more important than others to a team but in general we can assume that every team would like to win whenever they take the field. This is debatable in some other sports but with the short NFL season every game is important and teams can’t really afford to ‘take the day off’.


This isn’t the case in the preseason as we’ve discussed throughout this series. The primary determinant of what happens in a preseason NFL game is the respective coaches’ priorities for the game. Even teams that perform well in the preseason seldom ‘go out to win’ every time. What happens is that teams that frequently win in the preseason have a different ‘process’ than the teams that don’t. Few, if any, coaches place much significance on the outcome of preseason games. What does happen, however, is that some coaches may use preseason game performance as an important evaluation tool. If players know that they’re ‘being graded’ on their performance they’ll exert more of an effort. If you have a team full of players focused on playing well and playing hard—even if it’s for ‘personal’ reasons—they’ll win games. This is especially true if they’re playing a team that doesn’t place any sort of priority on preseason games.


What this means is that by definition teams have completely different goals in the preseason than they do in the regular season. In the regular season, the goal is to win football games. If a team doesn’t win football games the fanbase will quickly complain that the players, coaches or front office staff aren’t doing their job. In the preseason, the goals of coaches vary widely. Additionally, a team may be pursuing several goals at the same time that may or may not work in conjunction with one another. For example, a team may be trying to install a new offensive scheme, evaluate players at several positions, get rookies acclimated to the NFL and to get everyone physically and mentally ready to play football on Sundays.


These rules apply to all teams but there are plenty of reasons why teams can underachieve in the preseason and excel in the regular season or vice versa. Some good teams simply don’t care about the preseason to varying degrees. The Indianapolis Colts have all but ‘tanked’ their preseason games for a long time dating back to the early days of the Peyton Manning era. That was the case under coaches Tony Dungy and Jim Caldwell and to some extent under Chuck Pagano. The coaches knew that Manning (and now Andrew Luck) would be ready to go when the regular season kicked off and that there was no reason to expose him or any other key personnel to injury. They weren’t necessarily trying to ‘lose games’ but that was the byproduct of their ‘process’.
The other extreme also has obvious explanations. Teams can overachieve in preseason for a number of reasons (including a schedule full of disinterested opponents) but have a losing record in the regular season due to among other things tough scheduling, injuries or even a self satisfied team that thinks because they win meaningless games in August they should automatically win meaningful games in November.


There are a few things that you might be able to pick up about individual players. In general, however, you should just close the book on preseason when it ends. The few nuggets of information that you might be able to extract from preseason data aren’t really worth the time and effort it’ll take to find them. There are many better ways to spend your time and energy getting ready for a successful NFL betting season.

 

[CNOTES]

To all readers i hope you found this article useful.....


Good Luck This Preseason......


Cnotes " AKA " The Stardust Bum

 

[SaintsFan1977]

To all readers i hope you found this article useful.....


Good Luck This Preseason......


Cnotes " AKA " The Stardust Bum

Great article thank you.