American Football Betting

One of the most popular sports to bet on is American football, and placing bets on NFL games can be considered an art or science depending on how you want to approach it. If you just want some extra action to make watching the game more exciting, then small wagers on your favourite team will be more than enough to do that, and you’ll definitely get your money’s worth in the process. However, if you want to try to get an advantage and be profitable with your wagers, then you have plenty of opportunities to do that as well.

Best American Football Betting Sites

We have several online sportsbooks that we have analyzed and reviewed here, and they all have a good reputation in this business. Take a look at our American football betting casinos and see what kind of bets and promotions they have available, and choose the one that matches up the most closely to what you are looking for in your experience.

The Components of American Football Betting

Bets on American football are almost always with a spread format. If the spread is 5.5 points, then the favourite has to win by more than 5.5 points for a bet on the favourite to win. If the favourite doesn’t win by more than 5.5 points, then a bet on the underdog wins. This creates a situation where evaluating bets in this game is all about figuring out how many points you think the favourite will win by on average.

If you think they’ll usually win by more points than the spread, then you’ll have a profitable bet on the favourite. However, if you think that they won’t, then you’ll have a profitable bet on the underdog. Because the sportsbooks aren’t worried about each bet being profitable for the house with spread betting, you’ll have more opportunities to find profitable wagers.

People use different types of models to try to figure out how many points the favourite will win by on average. Generally speaking, these models have to consider both the offensive and defensive attributes of each team in the game. Along these lines, you usually can’t find profitable bets until around the middle of the season because you need data to analyze from the first few weeks of games. There are several systems which consider these items. Still, the basic idea of comparing the offensive output to defensive ability to stop output is always the same.

Using Team Averages for Better Results

Let’s say that we want to analyze the odds of New York playing against Chicago in a fictional NFL game during a fictional NFL season. Let’s suppose that New York has averaged 19 points per game, and Chicago has averaged 25 points per game. You could assert that Chicago should win by about six points on average in a very simplistic way. This isn’t a bad starting point for understanding how this analysis works, but there are many factors that it does not consider.

For example, what if New York had been up against perfect competition while Chicago had been up against some of the league’s weaker teams? If this is the case, then the point spread will probably be smaller than six points, and New York could actually end up being the favourite even though they haven’t scored nearly as much as Chicago.

We can see that we need to consider more factors here, so we have to look at the competition each of these teams has faced. Their defensive capabilities are a good starting point for building a stronger analysis of American football betting games.

Considering the Defense

Start by making a list of the games that New York and Chicago have played so far this year, including all of the teams they have faced. Now look at the teams on each list, and figure out how many points they have allowed per game this season. The fewer the points they have allowed, the stronger their defensive showing. This will allow you to get an overall average value for the teams’ defensive abilities that both Chicago and New York have faced.

For example, we said that New York had averaged 19 points per game. However, if they are up against teams that have averaged giving up just 16 points per game, then New York is up by three points on average against that defensive level. Along similar lines, suppose that Chicago’s opposition has given up an average of 26 points per game. Since they have only scored 25 points per game, they are a point behind the average.

On this analysis level, we could say that New York scores three points higher than average while Chicago scores one point lower than average. If you look at American football betting on this particular level, then you could make a strong argument that New York will win by an average of four points. This is a far cry from the most basic analysis that suggested Chicago would usually win by six. It shows how important it is to get more detailed when looking at league averages since they can be very misleading.

Serious Analysis or Recreational Fun

No matter if you’re a super-serious individual who is looking to do a lot of analysis to get an advantage, or if you’re just a regular person who wants to put a bet on a game to make it more exciting to watch, you need to choose a good American football betting casino so that you can rest with peace of mind in knowing that your money and personal information will be protected.