Things You Should Know About NFL Betting

[ 13.08.16 ]

NFL sports betting features three basic bet types. Most bookmakers offer outcome bets, while draw bets are quite rare. Handicap bets and total bets are also popular among sports betting fans worldwide. Wide popularity of outcome bets is not surprising at all: bettors find them the easiest to use.

Handicap NFL betting is mostly popular in North America. Like in any other sport, NFL teams have different levels of professionalism. Analyzing all factors affecting competing teams, bookmakers set handicaps to even the odds for the two teams.

Let’s use a fictitious example to break down how handicap betting is working. Suppose, the will be a game between the ‘Indianapolis Colts’ and the ‘New York Giants’. The home team has a -6 handicap and 1.909 odds. The guest team has +6 handicap and 2.020 odds. If the ‘Indianapolis Colts’ win 7 points and more, your ‘Indianapolis’ bet wins. If the ‘Giants’ win or lose no more than 5 points, your ‘Giants’ bet wins.

Total NFL betting must be familiar to you as well. Total score usually varies from 40 to 60, although there may be exceptions. Sum up the points scored by two teams and find out whether you won or lost.

Developing an effective NFL betting strategy

Now when you know more about basic NFL bets, you can take a close look at other bet types. To place a handicap bet, you must take into account a number of parameters and factors. Professional and seasoned NFL bettors calculate odds and then determine the edge of each team. Then bettors compare their values with bookmakers’ values to detect discrepancies. Any discrepancy is your opportunity to make profits.

For beginning NFL bettors, we’ll tell what parameters and statistics to focus when betting on NFL events.

Difference in yards

You probably understand that during the game one team’s attack is opposed by other team’s defense, and vice versa. This reveals a simple yet clever way to determine how strong and professional a team is: consider how many yards (on the average) the team has for one combination and how many yards its rival has.

A team with the best ratio of won and missed yards will have the higher winning chances. This is not the only method to predict the winner, though. But it allows to predict the performance of a certain team.

Home team edge

NFL is a closed league. A teams cnnot be eliminated or proceed to a higher level. If you analyze and estimate the statistics over a couple of years, you’ll see that the fact whether the team is playing at home or away is of crucial importance in NFL betting. This is a possible method to calculate the edge of a home team: subtract the away team’s points from the home teams’ points and divide the result by the number of games.

Analyzing statistics over the last 20 years shows that for any team this value is about 3. When calculating a handicap, a bookie incorporates these three points into a betting line.

Key figures in NFL betting

To place successful handicap bets in NFL betting, you need to know a couple of important things. This knowledge will help you avoid betting on unfavorable handicaps offered by a bookmaker. Remember that the key figures in NFL betting are 3 and 7. Since 1920, 11.8% of all games ended with a 3-point lead, and 7.4% of all games ended with a 7-point lead. These are the two most common handicaps in the NFL betting history. It’s worth to remind that a team gets 7 points for a touchdown and high conversion (61).