Anyone who wagers on sports on a year-round basis is familiar with moneyline bets when it comes to sports such as Major League Baseball and the NHL, but there are incredible opportunities to take advantage of these type of bets every week of the NFL regular season as well.
Sportsbooks will quickly release the opening betting line for each week's NFL games. These are usually available as early as the Monday morning following the last round of Sunday games. Bettors will quickly gravitate towards these spreads to try and bet on some perceived 'bad lines'. You have to remember that these betting spreads are set to balance the money on either side of a particular matchup. Many bettors make the mistake of taking these spreads to be a literal determination of the actual margin of victory in a game, which is obviously the wrong way to look at things.When you begin to handicap each week's NFL games, your focus should be on breaking down a matchup to determine an actual winner. If, through the course of these efforts, you should stumble upon an underdog that you have a tremendous level of confidence to win that week's game straight-up, your immediate attention should turn to the moneyline for that contest. Betting on NFL moneylines all comes down to this one simple concept; finding underdogs that can win SU.
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The other side of that coin could be wagering on a favorite that you are extremely high on, but I still subscribe to the theory of "any given Sunday" any NFL team can beat another. The risk/reward factor in betting favorites on a NFL moneyline bet can get to be pretty steep especially when the betting spread for the game is seven points or greater. Close betting spreads will not trip a lopsided moneyline on the favorite, so your exposure will be limited. However, these type of games are much harder to predict given the close nature of the matchup.
That is why I like to focus all my energy and time trying to uncover where the SU upsets that happen every single week of the NFL regular season will pop-up on the slate. Looking back at the 2013 NFL regular season results, you would find that the underdog won 29.06 percent of the games SU. This percentage dropped to 26.4 percent for road underdogs, but it jumped-up to 34.1 percent for underdogs playing at home. Given these results, the sweet spot of NFL moneyline bets lies in finding these home dogs that are due to bite back this week.
Division matchups, which in turn, spawn some of the best rivalries in the NFL are a good place to start. Familarity between two opponents often time helps lead to better predictability, which is exact the edge that anyone who wagers on NFL games is looking for. Analyzing the recent betting trends in a head-to-head division showdown can be a great place to start when it comes to breaking down these types of matchups.
One of the things that you want to look for is a continued dominance by the home team SU over its division opponent regardless of what the closing spread was in the games. Given the level of parity in the NFL these days, often times the three point allowance for the home team can be grossly underrated, especially when they net effect is a team that is still an underdog at home. You also want to look for a team coming off a bad loss as a home underdog for its next contest. The NFL only plays 16 regular season games as opposed to 162 for MLB and 82 for the NHL, so that means that each loss as the season progresses can have a major impact on a team's chances to qualify for the postseason. NFL teams count heavily on winning their games at home as part of their plan to post a winning season overall.
Another thing to look for is a road favorite coming off few easy wins as "trap games" are very common occurrence in the NFL. This concept could also pertain to a road favorite that is facing a huge challenge the following week. Players will never admit this, but good teams have a tendency to look past the game at hand, when faced with a much tougher opponent the following week.