NFL Season Betting More Complex Than Media Realizes

Players using estimates of NFL team strength provided by such luminary sports sites as ESPN and CBSSports may find their betting on future win totals is based on crude and inaccurate information. An article by ESPN’s sports gambling expert, Chad Millman, reveals that bookmakers are far more sophisticated in calculating football teams’ strength of schedule than public news sites.

Gamblers can easily be led astray when figuring out how many games a team is likely to win, if the difficulty of a team’s schedule is determined simply by the records of opponents from the previous year. Yet, this is the simplistic method used by ESPN and others, acting as if opponents will play exactly as they did a year ago.

Millman says professional bookmakers adjust the numbers reported by sports news sites by evaluating factors involved in last year’s results. Teams who played soft schedules last year are adjusted downward, while those whose opponents were tougher than average may get a bump beyong their straight win total. And teams benefiting from an inordinate turnover ratio are viewed as having some luck in the results, while those coughing it up frequently may be stronger than demonstrated.

Public expectations can often be linked to these factors, which are not accounted for in standard strength-of-schedule calculations. Such teams receiving early preseason hype as the Green Bay Packers and the New York Jets are potential sucker bets for those wanting to go over the win totals, says Millman.

Under the bookmaking system of review, the Philadelphia Eagles have the toughest schedule this year. ESPN had reported the Eagles’ list of opponents at ninth-hardest, a significant difference. Expect smart money plays on the Eagles to go under the win total, and look beyond commonly accepted wisdom to the basis from which it derives.