If a big favorite lost their previous game, the trend increases even more to 30-15-1 (66.7%) against the spread. *Never thought I’d use that word again after high school.īut wait, there’s more! Large favorites are almost always one of the league's top teams, and top teams rarely lose two games in a row. ![]() Conclusion: Past results over the past five years support our hypothesis of double-digit favorites covering at a higher rate! That’s a 57.5% win rate if you blindly bet these big spreads. Is this hypothesis* correct? After crunching the numbers, double digit favorites are an astounding 69-51-1 against the spread. This would make it reasonable to think that double-digit favorites cover more often with the surge of offense in the NFL. When a good team is playing a bad team, thus creating a large point spread, the good team is likely to score most if not all of these additional points. And remember, two teams play in each game, so scoring is actually up four points total per game. That’s a full two points for each team, which may not seem like much but is almost a 10% increase. Since 2012, the league average is 22.7 points per game according to Pro Football Reference. From 1989-2011 (remember, our ATS line history started in 1989), the league average score for each team was 20.7 points per game. But before I do, realize that this isn’t just an arbitrary search just to prove a point – scoring in the league has noticeably increased since the 2012 season. Let’s narrow our search more by just looking at the past five years. The trend is improving though, so bear with me. By flat betting one unit on every double-digit favorite since 2007, you would have won a whopping 3.10 units! Not exactly a desirable return on investment (0.09% ROI for my fellow nerds). By running the numbers on just the past ten years, the results improve and we get: 167-149-3 (52.8%). That’s almost 30 years of data, and things have changed quite a bit in both the NFL and sports betting. Knowing this, we should avoid these big favorites, right? For those rookies out there, we need at least a 52.38% win rate to break even with the customary -110 odds on spreads. Since the 1989 season (as far back as I can go), favorites of ten points or more are 418-430-16 against the spread which gives us a 49.3% win rate. After all, we’re always told to avoid the big favorites the public loves, right? Some may want to call these lines trap games (which don’t exist, I’ll dive into that in a future post), but what does history actually tell us? ![]() With this in mind, what do we do with these big favorites? There’s a common misconception among sports bettors that betting double digit favorites, especially in the NFL, is a losing proposition. This week, we’ve flipped the script and will likely finish with five games closing at double-digit favorites. Last week, we saw an incredibly tight card with 11 of 14 games closing with a three-point spread or less and none getting higher than eight points. We’re already in Week 6 of the NFL season believe it or not.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |