A 10-Year Sample with a 90% Winning Percentage
There’s a standard way of handicapping Regular Season Win Totals for an NFL team.
First, you factor in personnel changes on their roster and/or coaching staff and estimate whether they’ll be a stronger team this year or worse than the previous season.
Next, you look at each team on their upcoming schedule and try to judge whether it’ll be a win or a loss. Then you add up the wins and losses, match your number against the number the books set their total at, and see if you have a large enough differential to make a play on the Over or Under.
While battling insomnia (and losing) one night last week I started thinking about NFL Regular Season Wins, and came up with a different way to approach it this season.
What if I set aside the standard handicapping methods mentioned above and instead I tried to determine which team will come in last place in their division, and then looked at how the last place team in their division did in the 10 previous seasons?
Did they go Over or Under their projected total?
As a test case, I chose the NFC East.
Here’s what I found:
| Year | Last Place Team | Book’s # | Actual Wins | Over/Under |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | Dallas | 9½ | 4 | Under |
| 2016 | Philadelphia | 7½ | 7 | Under |
| 2017 | NY Giants | 9½ | 3 | Under |
| 2018 | NY Giants | 6½ | 5 | Under |
| 2019 | Washington | 6½ | 3 | Under |
| 2020 | Philadelphia | 9½ | 4 | Under |
| 2021 | NY Giants | 7½ | 4 | Under |
| 2022 | Washington | 7½ | 8 | Over |
| 2023 | Washington | 7½ | 4 | Under |
| 2024 | NY Giants | 6½ | 3 | Under |
Well, look at that.
In NINE of ten seasons the last place team in the NFC East finished Under the books number.
Seems like all you have to do is figure out who’s going to be the biggest loser, and you have a 90% chance of winning your bet on the Under.
Curious if this was an anomaly, I decided to look at the last-place teams in the other seven divisions last year.
| Team | Book’s # | Actual Wins | Over/Under |
|---|---|---|---|
| New England | 4½ | 4 | Under |
| Cleveland | 8½ | 3 | Under |
| Tennessee | 6½ | 3 | Under |
| Las Vegas | 6½ | 4 | Under |
| Chicago | 9½ | 5 | Under |
| New Orleans | 7½ | 5 | Under |
| San Francisco | 11½ | 6 | Under |
Isn’t that interesting?
EVERY last place team came in Under their Regular Season Wins total. That’s 100%!
Nothing in sports betting is ever as easy as it looks, but it does seem that if you can figure out who’s going to come in last place, you’ve got a good chance of cashing a ticket on their Season Wins Total to stay Under.
To test this theory, I went back and did one more year, 2023.
| Team | Book’s # | Actual Wins | Over/Under |
|---|---|---|---|
| New England | 7½ | 4 | Under |
| Cincinnati | 11½ | 9 | Under |
| Tennessee | 7½ | 6 | Under |
| LA Chargers | 9½ | 5 | Under |
| Washington | 6½ | 4 | Under |
| Chicago | 7½ | 7 | Under |
| Carolina | 7½ | 2 | Under |
| Arizona | 4½ | 4 | Under |
There it is again.
Eight cellar dwellers, eight Regular Season Wins Totals Under. 100%.
Like I said, nothing in sports betting is as easy as it may seem, but this method of handicapping is worth considering when you’re looking for a target for a Regular Season Wins bet.
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