Everybody bets the NFL. Yes, even your dentist.
But I’m sure your dentist doesn’t win money at NFL betting, and you might not either. Whether you’re a new bettor or a recreational bettor who wants to take this more seriously, there are many small things you can do to improve your return on investment (ROI).
I’m going to go through 10 things novice bettors should know before jumping into the NFL. I’m not going to get into specific matchups, situations, schemes, coaching, or any other on-field factors.
Rather, these are basic rules to follow in order to improve your NFL betting bottom line.
How to Bet on Football in 2022
If you’re totally new to betting, start with these 12 terms and tips, or watch this video.
There are a few key terms you should know:
- Point spread: This is a bet on the margin of victory. If you bet the Patriots as a -6.5 favorite over the Jets, New England needs to win by 7 points or more for you to cash your bet.
- Moneyline: You’re picking the winner of the game. The odds are adjusted for team ability; so in that same game, the Pats might be around -250, meaning you need to risk $2.50 for every $1 you want to win. The Jets might be +200, winning you $2 for every $1 risked.
- Total: A wager on the total number of points in the game. You’re not trying to guess it exactly, but instead bet whether it will go over or under a set amount of points.
- Props:'Short for proposition bets, props are any bet that doesn’t necessarily have an impact on the final score. Things like will Derrick Henry score a touchdown, Tom Brady over or under 295.5 passing yards, Cooper Kupp over or under 8.5 catches.
10 NFL Betting Tips
- Don’t Overreact
- Don’t Chase
- Avoid NFL Parlays
- Stop Buying Unnecessary Points
- Only Tease When it’s Wong
- Shop Around
- Respect the NFL Market
- Don’t Forget About Live Betting
- Specialize
- Track Your Bets
The NFL regular season only has 256 games and is the most widely covered and talked about sport in the country. Naturally, there will be an abundance of hot takes each and every week. You’ll see this after Week 1, and get some reactive point spreads in Week 2.
As a general rule of thumb, teams that dominate one week are usually not as good as they looked. And vice versa with teams that get blown out.
This is the NFL. Every team is uber-talented, and the gap between the best and worst teams isn’t as big as you think. This isn’t college football, where a school like Rutgers that’s completely devoid of talent never has any chance against Ohio State.
On a related note, final scores and basic stats can be very misleading. There are plenty of tools and sites out there that can help you filter out a lot of the noise and adjust for opponents. For example, a team may put up 400 yards a game, but take 80 plays to do it. That’s not nearly as effective as 400 yards in 50 plays.
We have our NFL power ratings which seek to do just that. You can also look at metrics such as DVOA on Football Outsiders in addition to the abundance of advanced metrics available on the Internet, from PFF to Sports Info Solutions.
Also, don’t overreact when it comes to your results. If you go 5-0 one week, that doesn’t mean you have it all figured out and should go overboard the following week. I mean you have 3% odds of going 5-0 by having your dog pick five games for you at random. Don’t get too high and stick to your process.
Similarly, don’t get too down after a bad week. Every bettor in the world has very bad days, weeks and months. You will also have days where you get supremely unlucky. It’s just going to happen. Don’t dwell. It’s easier said than done and a learned skill over time with experience.
And that leads me to the next tip.
If my little sister picked my NFL bets for me over the next 20 years by using a dart board, I would simply juice out. Without any knowledge, she’d expect to hit around 50% over a big enough sample size using her dart board. The market is pretty efficient, so every point spread on either side is about a 50/50 proposition.
I would lose money as a result of the vig but would end up losing a lot less than most bettors.
How is that possible if anybody can pick 50% over time? Well, a lot of it can be explained by'cognitive biases, bad bet sizing and greed. Behavioral finance 101.
Casual bettors especially get into trouble when they chase, which happens a lot in the NFL. It’s sometimes too tempting to avoid the Sunday Night Football game for most recreational gamblers. And after a very bad day, many give into the temptation to bet way over one’s head in order to get back to even or make up for that unlucky loss.
On the flip side, some also do this after a big winning day and let it all ride to double up on the Sunday or Monday night game. You’re likely only going to get yourself into trouble doing this, which is why you really should ideally bet what you want for the day before the day starts until you really know what you’re doing.
It’s also another reason why I recommend beginners to flat bet until they have experience, find out they have an edge over time and can quantify that edge in order to inform their bet sizing in a rational manner.
On a related note, don’t drink and bet.
A 12-1 parlay payout looks extremely enticing to casual bettors, but just know you’re giving the house an 18.75% edge if you assume all four games are coin flips. Compare that to just 4.75% for a regular coin flip wager at -110 odds.
Look, if you simply want to throw in a parlay as a pure entertainment lottery ticket, be my guest. But if you want to start taking NFL betting more serious, just stop. Learn from most of us who did nothing but bet exotics when we first started before learning better. I remember personally losing my shirt betting pleasers (reverse teasers) when I first started betting back in high school. Cringe.
Parlays can actually be effective tools for professional bettors to leverage up their edge in certain cases. However, they will almost always just erode the bottom line of less advanced bettors. Don’t get wooed by the massive payout moneyline parlay tickets that hit and get shared on social media. NFL is hard enough to beat without giving away that much edge.
If you want to play the lottery, you could just go buy a lottery ticket at the gas station.
Buying points on a point spread requires you to pay more money (and therefore increase your breakeven percentage for that bet) and weigh that against how often buying that point will help you.
Almost always, it’s not worth it.
Even if you have the option to buy a half point for just 10 cents, it’s only worth considering if you’re doing so onto or off of a key number that hits with a greater than 5% frequency.
Don’t even let it cross your mind for numbers that aren’t 3, 4, 6, 7, 10 or 14 — your key numbers.
For example, buying a favorite down from -9.5 to -9 on the point spread makes absolutely no mathematical sense on any planet. Well, maybe they play a version of football on another planet where field goals are worth triple. But if we’re talking American football, it’s a losing proposition.
Yes, you’ll inevitably lose a 9.5-point favorite that wins by nine at some point, but I promise buying points in that situation will hurt you more than it helps you over the long run. A nine-point margin of victory has happened less than 2% of the time in NFL history.
The six numbers I mentioned above are the most widely known key numbers, but only margins of 3 and 7 have consistently occurred at a greater than 5% frequency (the breakeven rate for paying 10 cents for a half point) over all significant time periods in NFL history.
That means you should pay 10 cents to either take a favorite down from 3 or 7 or an underdog to 3 or 7 or over either number. It’s closer to a breakeven proposition for the others but that could change over time with the new extra point rule.
For your reference, here are the margin of victory frequencies since that rule change since 2015 through the 2019-20 season: