Betting The NFL: Are You Placing The Right Wagers?

The popularity of betting the NFL is undeniable. But are you getting your money down in the best possible situation each week? I’m going to give you five types of bets you should look for each week to profit more when betting the NFL. 

Hi I’m Jack from Unabated. I’ve been a professional gambler for over 20 years and I still get amped up for NFL season. It’s, by far, the most popular sport to bet on in the U.S.. What makes it so great are all the varied different ways you can bet on the NFL. However, that also creates a lot of ways for you to make some very bad bets each weekend of the NFL season.

I want to clue you in on some good situations and good bet types you should look for when betting the NFL in hopes that you’ll avoid some of those bad bets. Let’s start our countdown with a good bet you can find early in the week.

5.) Overreactions 

At No. 5 we have Overreactions. When teams only play once a week, it gives people a lot of time to analyze and react to each week’s game. It seems a lot of that time is often spent overreacting to the previous game.

Early in the season, that’s even more so. It can be worth your time to listen to all those hot takes from talking heads each Sunday night and Monday morning. And then bet the opposite.

Look for situations where the overreaction has moved the line too far. These are professional teams made up of the best football players in the world. That level of parity means that most of the time a team is not as bad as they appeared last week, nor are they as great as they seemed either. 

Find where sentiment has pushed a line through a key number. Key numbers, if you’re not familiar with the concept, are margins of victory more likely to occur. In the NFL they are the 3, the 6, and the 7. That will often be the resistance point for a line moving on overreaction.

Toward the middle or end of the week you are less likely to find value on overreactions about teams. The sharp bettors have hammered the market more toward efficiency. That’s why overreactions are an early week play.

Instead, later in the week you may want to look into overreactions on player props. I’ve got a lot to say about player props, so we’re going to make that our No. 4 bet you should be making.

4.) Straight Player Props

Anyone who has watched our previous videos knows that at Unabated we’re big proponents of your ability to beat player props. We let you import player projections and then simulate out gameplay to find value in player prop markets.

Sportsbooks are more tolerant of NFL player props than they are of other sports. Even better, there are more prop bets in the NFL than any other sport. The surface area for you to attack is immense.

Sportsbooks know that U.S. bettors love betting props, but not all props are easy to beat. Sportsbooks like to push the Same Game Parlay bet to get you to make some bad bets.

We’ve talked about it before, but it bears repeating. Same Game Parlays offer wagers that seem too good to be true. Correlated events that can be parlayed together. But the average bettor doesn’t know how to factor that correlation. Nor does the bettor know when they may be setting up a parlay that is inversely correlated to itself. The sportsbook preys on that and protects themselves by significantly shorting the payout on these parlays.

You’re simply not getting the payout you deserve when you bet Same Game Parlays. You’re also going to lose a lot more frequently than you win. And for many bettors that can be demoralizing and encourage the urge to chase losses by making bigger and bigger parlays. 

What I recommend is focusing on straight player props. Resist the urge to roll them into a parlay. Furthermore, focus on player props as player injury news comes out Thursday through Sunday each week. A lot of the movement that comes on player prop lines is driven by injury information. If one player is going to have less usage due to injury then another player is likely to absorb that workload.

Also, look to factor in the overreaction angle as well. Prop lines are less efficient than game lines. You’re going to find they move a lot more drastically driven by both square and sharp bets. If you put time and effort into player props, you can get the edge on them.

One more key point on props, sportsbooks deal a median line, your projection is likely to be a mean projection. You need to be able to convert a mean to a median using simulation.

When you find a player prop you like, you should definitely shop around and find the best price. That leads us to No. 3 on our list.  Line Shopping. 

3.) Line Shopping

It’s not necessarily a bet you should be making, it’s a betting habit you need to get into when betting the NFL. Too often people bet based on convenience. They wager with the sportsbook they currently have money in and rarely look past one or two sportsbooks. 

The number of sportsbooks you have access to depends on where you live in the U.S. Some states have no regulated books, others have only one. Then there are states that a lot of options for the sports betting consumer. Whatever state you’re in, use all your available sports betting outs and then some.

People often ask me which sportsbook they should be betting at? My answer is always the same: ALL OF THEM. 

Shopping for the best price is a key component of being a winning sports bettor. It’s also the only thing I can guarantee will improve your bottom line. You’ll either win more, or lose less by line shopping. If you’ve exhausted your state’s regulated sportsbooks, look into some sweepstakes-based sportsbooks. 

2.) Betting the NFL at Halftime

Coming in at No. 2 on our list of bets you should be looking at are halftime bets.

As it sounds, these are bets made at halftime on the remainder of the game. In-game betting is extremely popular now. Sportsbooks are always looking to increase the volume of bets they take and in-game betting is a popular avenue.

In-game betting gives the bettor a chance to bet based on what they’ve seen if they are watching the game. They may pick up on something that they want to bet on. But in-game betting has a flaw in that often bettors are watching on an unknowing delay on their broadcast or stream of the game. The sportsbook has ultra low-latency game feeds, while you’re typically anywhere from 10 to 30 seconds behind real-time. Halftime is a better time to bet because there’s no fear of broadcast delay. 

Halftime is also a great opportunity to find value in abnormal game situations. Like situations where you recognize that the next score might call for a team going for a 2-point conversion, but the total on the game expects 7-point touchdowns. Or maybe there is some weather that will affect the second half of a game. 

One more tip about betting the NFL at halftime, there are now some books that offer in-game player prop betting at halftimes. Many savvy bettors can recognize that knowing how each team will be approaching the second half can lead to value in these bets. It offers some interesting possibilities.

1.) Wong Teasers

And now the number one bet you should try to work into your arsenal for betting the NFL. It’s affectionately known as the Wong Teaser. It’s been around for a while, and a lot of sportsbooks have found ways to combat it. However, there’s still enough value in a Wong Teaser to make it worth you looking into.

First, for those not aware, teasers are bets where you make a parlay and get extra points added to the spread for the teams you choose. Of course since it’s a parlay, all teams must win for you to get paid. The most common form of football teaser is a 6-point teaser. A team that is a -10 favorite becomes a -4 favorite for instance.

In his landmark book back in 2000, Stanford Wong noted that when a 6-point teaser moves through the key numbers of 3, 6, & 7, it has a positive expected value given the prices commonly offered by most sportsbooks. So favorites of -7.5 to -8.5 become -1.5 to -2.5. Underdogs of +1.5 to +2.5 become +7.5 to +8.5. Sharp bettors have feasted on teasers for most of the past 25 years based on Wong’s work.

However, eventually the sportsbooks started catching on and adjusting the prices for these teaser bets. You once could find 2-team teasers for even money. Then -110 was popular. These days you’ll find most sportsbooks unwilling to give you a line better than -130 on these 2-team bets. That’s not good enough. 

You’re going to want -120 or better when betting two-team 6-point teasers, but even better you should look at three- and four-team teasers instead. Some sportsbooks will offer you +160 on three-team teasers. That’s actually much better than a two-team teaser for -120. 

Of course, the more legs in your teasers, the more variance in your results. You’ll have to accept sometimes you’ll identify five Wong teaser teams in a week and make a bunch of three-team teasers with all the permutations, and then you win four out of the five games but don’t turn a profit. That’s the tough side of teasers, but they are valuable bets to make and the theory put forth by Stanford Wong nearly a quarter century ago is still viable. 

Just remember that price matters. Try to find the best payouts for your teasers. Here’s a chart to help you out on what is the worst price you should take for your teaser betting. Try to do even better than these 6-point teaser prices:

Two teams: -120
Three teams: +150
Four teams: +250
Five teams: +400
Six teams: +600

With these tips hopefully you have some new bet types to look for when betting the NFL. If you want to learn more, sign up for a one-on-one demo and get a free five-day trial of Unabated Premium.