User’s Guide: Betting On The NFL Using Unabated

The NFL is the king of American sports and betting on the NFL is the king of the American sportsbook. But it’s also the biggest, baddest market out there. 

There’s a ton of liquidity, which means high limits. Which attracts the sharpest bettors. Which means markets get more efficient, more quickly. And those big, sharp bets mean even more liquidity, which attracts … etc. 

That doesn’t mean you can’t still beat it. But if you’re going to be betting on the NFL, you need to be on point in your strategy and tactics. 

Here’s everything we can do to help.

If you’re not familiar with the tools available at Unabated, start with our beginner’s guide or our advanced guide. If you’re a Props+ member you can go in depth with those tools, or explore what’s available to Premium members. And if you’d rather have a guided tour, sign up for a free one-on-one demo.

Tools and Resources

• Start, of course, with the NFL Odds Screen where you can see live, real-time spreads, totals and prices; view line histories; check alt lines, partial game lines and more. 
• If you’re concentrating on props, the NFL Prop Odds Screen lets you compare prop lines and use the in-line simulator to find plays with the biggest edge. 
• To get even more granular on projections and their stat distributions, or find information not available on the in-line sim, load up the standalone Prop Simulator.
• The Massey-Peabody Ratings, created by Cade Massey and Rufus Peabody, are available to Premium members. These are the sharpest publicly available power ratings around and are incredibly valuable to anyone using the Season Simulator or any other application where power ratings are useful.
• The Season Simulator is one of the most robust tools Unabated offers. Designed by Rufus Peabody, the Season Simulator can help you spot value in futures all season long. Or use it for other, more creative applications.
• DFS pick’em players at sites like Underdog Fantasy, PrizePicks and DraftKings Pick6 an use our DFS Entry Builder to find which combinations of players offer the best edge on the pick’em sites.
• The Teaser Calculator will help you find plus-EV combinations against current lines and prices at all of the books we support.
• For pools players, we have tools for pick’em contests and survivor contests. The former shows you where the edge is as contest lines widen from current lines. The latter will build you your optimal path based on your playstyle, contest rules, market and more.

NFL Betting Strategy

• Betting on the NFL is hard. It’s the most efficient market with the most liquidity. So why do it? And how can you get an edge? Captain Jack says it’s all about options.
• The work starts long before the season starts. Here’s how the Season Simulator works, and how you can keep using it all the way from the offseason through the end of the regular season.
• But if you’d rather skip the details and get your hands dirty, here’s the quick guide to using the Season Simulator
• If you’re going to wade into preseason NFL waters, make sure you’re deploying the right tactics. It’s not the same game as regular-season football.
• The information game always matters. Play it well with our list of NFL writers to follow on X. 
• One it comes time to get into the week-to-week grind, here’s how to approach every day of the week in your NFL process.
• Teasers can be an incredible source of profit. Learn the basics of teaser construction before you turn to the calculator.
• Volatility is a huge part of the equation both in futures and early in the season when there are more unknowns. But you can make volatility your friend.
• A couple of years ago we asked Matt Davidow, co-author of The Logic of Sports Betting and Interception: The Secrets of Modern Sports Betting to walk through his process using the Season Simulator. Among other things he liked 16-1 on the Rams six months before they won Super Bowl LVI. 
• Another area where the Season Simulator shines is in accounting for quarterback injuries. 
• When it gets to the postseason, there are adjustments you should consider for betting the NFL playoffs. 
• And you also should plan out when you’re betting each facet of the big game in the two-week window between conference championships and the Super Bowl. 
• Once the season is over, it’s time to review your process. Here’s how to conduct a postmortem on your year of betting the NFL.

Betting NFL Props

• The first thing you need to know before you bet NFL props is the difference between means and medians, and why that’s important to betting lines.
• If you’re going to wade into creating your own prop projections, John Paulsen of 4for4.com lays out a few basic pointers.
• If you prefer video tutorials on building out projections and Monte Carlo simulators, we’ve got a video series to help you there, too.
• Rufus Peabody is a prolific Super Bowl prop bettor. We took a peek behind the curtain into his process. You can extrapolate that to other games, too.
• One way he makes his numbers is by dividing the pie on the total number of plays he expects both teams to run in the game. Then you can work backwards from there.
• Some types of props are, for better or worse, solved. Learning what not to bet has its own value.
• You only get them once a year, but cross-sport props are always a fun time. And they’re beatable, too.

Football Contests

• If Spring Training is where hope springs eternal in baseball, then August is where it happens for NFL contest players. If you want to chase the big game in pick’em contests, here’s the strategy you need to know. 
• Survivor contests come with their own strategies. Learn how to use the Survivor Optimizer to help chart your course through treacherous waters.
• Better yet, see how one Unabated member did it when he made it to safety at the end of Circa Survivor in the 2023-24 season.