THE BIG PICTURE
Week-by-week lines help bettors calculate NFL season win totals
LAS VEGAS — NFL Over/Under season win totals are probably the most popular preseason prop bet for any sport in this country. Bettors love them because you can bet on a team to exceed expectations during the regular season without needing it to win the conference title or the championship (which is what you need with traditional futures). In addition, they give you the unique opportunity to bet against a team.
So how do you attack these? Let me guess: you look over your favorite team’s schedule and say, “That’s a win ... that’s a loss ... that’s a win ... that game’s a coin flip ... oh, here’s another coin flip so they’ll split those, so that’s three wins ... and so on.” Hey, I’ll admit it, we’ve all done it that way.
But I’ve found a better approach. The CG Technology
books here in Vegas have released their NFL Week 2-16 lines (Week 1 lines have been available for the past month). I go through each team’s schedule and convert the projected point spread to a money line and then to an estimated straight-up winning percentage. I add them all up to come up with my Money Line Estimate (MLE) and compare it to each team’s posted total. Granted, it’s just one oddsmaking company’s projections for the point spreads throughout the season, but it gives us an objective opinion instead of just going off the top of our head.
In addition, I also go through each team’s schedule for their W-L-T record, which is similar to the random exercise described above except we use the actual projected point spread to assign a “win” for each time a team is favored, a “loss” for each game as an underdog and a “tie” for each pick ’em.
Now, you’ll note that the CG Technology lines don’t include Week 17 because we/they don’t know which teams will be resting starters for the playoffs or playing out the string, etc. So for those I’m using pick ’em.
Let’s look at the Giants, for example. Their season win total is 6 (Over +110/ Under -130) at the William Hill books in New Jersey. When we add up the MLE, it comes to 6.5. The Giants’ W-L-T is 4-10-2, so that means they’re favored in four games, underdogs in 10 and pick ’em in two. If they win the games they’re favored and split the pick ’ems, that gets them to five wins and they’ll need to pull two upsets in those other 10 games (plus an extra upset for each game if they lose as chalk). So, yes, I really like the Giants Over 6 (+110). And for those with a DraftKings mobile account in Jersey, they were dealing the Giants at Over 5.5 (-121) as of Monday morning, which means a win instead of a push if the Giants land right on six wins.
The news isn’t as good for Jets fans. Their win total at William Hill is 7.5 (-110 both ways). The Jets’ MLE adds up to only 7.3. In addition, their W-L-T of 4-9-3 doesn’t give much confidence that they can get to the eight wins it would take to beat us as they’re only favored in four games and would need four more wins from those 12 games as underdogs or pick ’ em (and that’s assuming they don’t as chalk).
Around the league ... it seems everyone is on the Browns’ bandwagon, but beware about betting them Over 9 wins (-130) at William Hill or elsewhere. The Browns’ MLE only adds up to 8.5 while the W-L-T is 68-2, so they’re not even favored in half of their games. In my opinion, an 8-8 record is more likely than a 10-6 record that would be needed to go Over.
The other plays I like based on my MLE approach are: Buccaneers Under 6.5 (-130 at William Hill) as the Bucs have a 6.1 MLE with a 3-12-1 W-L-T, Jaguars Under 7.5 (+125) with 7.2 MLE and 3-9-4 W-L-T and Chiefs Over 10 (-120) with 10.7 MLE and 13-2-1 W-L-T.