NFL betting is one of America’s favorite pastimes but before you placing your bets, it’s important to understand the process of decide who to bet on. When you’re handicapping a football game, you’re examining the two teams and coming to a conclusion as to who will win the game. One of the most important parts of that process is taking a closer look at the betting trends. As they do with many aspects of life, trends can help predict what will happen.
If you aren’t too familiar with betting trends and where to find them, read on below for our comprehensive guide on NFL betting trends.
Understanding NFL Odds
Before we dive into trends, let’s do a quick refresher on how to understand the NFL betting lines. When you’re betting on the games, the first thing that you’ll see is a line that looks something like the following:
New England Patriots -6.5
Buffalo Bills +6.5
When you see a line like this, the key aspect to point out is the sign in front of the number. What you’re looking at is a margin of victory and if it’s a minus sign, that team has to win by that margin. In this case, if you bet the Patriots -6.5, they have to win by seven or more points to cover the spread. If they win by six, five or less, you wouldn’t win that bet.
On the other hand, a plus sign means that you’re getting points. So if you’re betting the Bills in this case, you are actually getting six points on your side. They can lose by six, five, four, three, two or one, or win the game and you would win your bet. That’s a brief rundown of how the point spread works.
Where To Find NFL Betting Trends
Most of the mainstream media outlets now offer really good trends for NFL games. For example, you can read previews at ESPN, Sports Illustrated and USA Today and find good news and nuggets for the matchups. For more detailed trends, it’s good to know where to find the numbers yourself.
Both ESPN and NFL.com offer great resources for stats where you can pick a category and see how certain teams perform. For example: home and away trends, how a team’s rush defense has performed, points scored per game and much more. All of these types of stats and trends start to give you a better perspective of the teams and how they play in certain scenarios.
A couple of other useful sites are TeamRankings.com and Pro Football Focus.
Best Trends To Follow
When you start to dive into the world of stats and trends, you’ll see that there’s a number that supports every single side and outcome. Some trends are more relevant than others, though, so here are three that are particularly useful to keep an eye on.
Head-To-Head
When you’re looking at trends, keep an eye on how teams perform in head-to-head situations. In the NFL, teams inside their division will face each other twice a year. When you see a bigger picture of how they’ve played in the last five or six matchups, you can get an idea of how they play against each other. You might see that one team constantly has the upper hand or that the games are low or high scoring. Take note of those as history has a tendency of repeating itself.
One note to keep in mind is make sure that the coaches and the systems haven’t changed. For example, if the Green Bay Packers just hired a new head coach who plans to change the team drastically, then all of last year’s stats and trends might not be so relevant anymore.
Home-Away
One of the best trends to pay attention to is how an NFL team performs at home versus on the road. There are so many different stadiums in the NFL and each venue presents different challenges. That’s why if you’re the home team and you get to play there eight times – along with the having the crowd on your side – that gives you an edge.
Some stadiums are indoors, so that means weather won’t be a factor. Some stadiums are outdoors and their teams will have to handle rain and snow in the winter months. Imagine an indoor team traveling for a playoff game outdoors in January. Clearly, the home team will have an edge while the road team will not be comfortable with the weather.
Keep an eye on how teams perform at home, indoors, on the road, in windy conditions and in snow. Trends like that can be predictive of what will happen in the future.
Specific Matchups
One of the best NFL trends to monitor is how the teams will matchup. For example: let’s say one team has a really strong running game and their opponent has a weak run defense. That figures to be a problem for the team who can’t stop the run. What about a team with a bad passing game going up against a defense with a strong secondary and a defensive line that leads the league in sacks? These are the types of matchups and trends that can really be telling of who will win the game.
When you’re browsing ESPN or NFL.com, check out the statistics to see how teams rank passing the ball, running the ball and how the defenses fare. That will give you a good idea of what to expect in the upcoming game.
Trend Of The Week: Preseason Week 3
One of the keys to betting the preseason is taking a look at the coaching records. Preseason games are exhibition games, so some head coaches will tell their teams to try so that they can be productive, while other coaches will tell their teams to take it easy so that they don’t get injured. As a result, it’s important to note these trends when betting on the preseason action.
For Week 3 of the preseason, there are some clear-cut trends that should help you win some bets. Mike Zimmer’s Minnesota Vikings are 15-4 in preseason games under him and they’ve never lost in Week 3 (4-0). Another coach to trust in Week 3 is Sean Payton as his New Orleans Saints are 9-3 in the third week of action. Pete Carroll and his Seahawks are 6-2 and John Harbaugh and his Baltimore Ravens are 7-3 in Week 3.
As for coaches to avoid, you’re probably best to bet against the Cincinnati Bengals as they are 4-11 in Week 3 of the preseason under Marvin Lewis.
