By Ian Wharton
Preseason NFL football gets a surprising amount of betting action. In fact, many sports books report there’s more money wagered on the Hall of Fame Game (the first preseason game) than on the rest of that day’s events combined, which includes a summer Sunday of baseball, tennis, golf, and summer league basketball.
NFL teams play four preseason games during an excruciating mini-season in August and early September. Teams typically will play twice at home and twice on the road, but there are occasional promotional games in non-NFL cities.
What makes preseason NFL football so underwhelming as a fan is the uncanny valley: It resembles a real NFL game in every way, from the announcing voices to the stadiums to the uniforms, but something is just disturbingly out of whack. The new normal is to keep veteran players quarantined. Stars often play no more than a series in the first few games and not at all in the last preseason game.
Thankfully, we have gambling to keep us cool in the dog days of summer. Preseason football doesn’t have to be a choice between the lesser of boring and who cares. In a meaningless game, populated mostly by spare players running a playbook straight out of last year’s Pro Bowl, at least you have the ability to make it interesting through a wager.
Preseason lines and limits
The fact that sharps make bets on the preseason should tell you that it’s worth pursuing. In fact, sharp action often outweighs the public on individual games, and that means you’ll see bigger odds moves, and when it happens, you can derive more meaning from it because it’s less likely to be fueled by the tourists and occasional squares.
If you are a high-dollar bettor, you’ll notice that preseason betting limits are much lower than regular season limits. Some bookmakers limit bettors to 20 percent or even 10 percent of a maximum bet they might take in the regular season. Bookmakers are constantly trying to balance opportunities for increasing handle against the risk of getting beaten, and they have extra risk in high-variance games. Bookmakers want contests between two teams that put winning above nearly everything else. Because preseason games are meaningless, team and coaching motivation can be hard to pin down, which means outcomes are harder to model. Preseason carries an elevated risk of a single piece of information about the game might confer a big gambling advantage (like a coaching staff’s plans for playing their 1st string quarterback), and there’s nothing oddsmakers hate worse than losing the information battle with gamblers.
You can get a sense for how efficient the market is by measuring the average distance between closing lines and winning game margins. This is sometimes called the spread margin. The lower the spread margin, the closer the game margin was to the spread. In recent seasons, the preseason NFL number has actually shown itself to be tighter (9.2) than the spread margin for regular season games (9.5).
So are preseason games as hard to beat as regular season games? The tighter spread margin difference between regular and preseason could be attributed to swings in points scored. (If an oddsmaker sets a game at a pick’em, you’d see a lower spread margin if the game ended 42–0 rather than 44–0, but it would be hard to say that the former score represents a materially better spread on the game). And the golden rule of bookmakers is that they lower their betting limits when they feel vulnerable. That makes me think the preseason is worth looking into if you’re a bettor.
Why Bet Underdogs?
If you simply took the underdog in every game, you’d be up money in the NFL preseason. That’s going back to 1995, which is as far as the Odds Shark database goes.
Underdogs are 844-727-51 (53.7 percent) against the spread since then, which is well above the break-even mark in sports betting of 52.4 percent. Dogs also went 56 percent over the last five preseasons combined (126-99-8). Just about any way you break it up, taking the points has been a consistent moneymaker in betting the preseason.
It makes sense. Better teams like the Kansas City Chiefs typically have their rosters put together going into the preseason schedule and have little motivation for winning these exhibition contests. It leaves oddsmakers in a tricky spot, though, because their talent levels dictate them as favorites as opposed to a team like the Detroit Lions.
Focus On The News, Not The Numbers
Normally I’d say look at the data first and the NFL Betting News last when you’re handicapping just about any sport. With NFL preseason games, it’s the exact opposite.
With NFL preseason predictions, we’re looking for how much playing time starters like Tom Brady or Aaron Rodgers will get in a game, what the motivations are and how teams and players are performing in practice. Those are all items you learn about by reading and watching news.
So clean off your reading specs and get ready to comb through the team beat reports. This is the stuff that matters during the pretend season.
Follow The Money
I give more weight to preseason line moves than I do to regular-season ones. The NFL preseason week is a time where professional bettors shine because they regularly have access to information the general public doesn’t.
That’s why the limits on these exhibition games are low – often only $500 per game – but these are still moneymaking opportunities for bettors in the know as they take advantage of bad lines. This doesn’t happen as often during the regular season and though the limits might be higher, the lines are also much sharper.
Why Bet On Coaches?
Certain coaches take winning in the preseason more seriously than others. It’s not a bad strategy to just bet on or bet against certain teams throughout August.
John Harbaugh’s Baltimore Ravens are one of those teams. Harbaugh doesn’t like to lose whether it’s horseshoes or fantasy football. The Ravens had runs of 12-0 straight up and 10-2 against the spread and are 18-2 against the spread over the past five years.
The Seahawks and Pete Carroll are 11-8 SU and ATS over the past five preseasons, and 7-6 ATS in their last 13 at home.
Mike Tomlin and the Steelers are also 11-8 against the spread over the past five preseasons (with one Push). They’re often far more concerned about offensive line position battles and staying healthy in August with intentions on winning the AFC North or at least securing a wild card, than they are about winning the Hall of Fame Game or any other preseason games.
