American Football garners a tremendous amount of betting interest, not only over in the USA but across Europe as well. Just as with any sport you will have your favourites and you will have your dark horses and you will have your underdogs. It is a sport where you can dig down so deep in betting opportunities and markets that it can be a tricky thing to zone in on the right areas for you.
So how to bet American football intelligently may simply be a question of understanding the game a bit first. There is some logic to this that goes beyond stats. Of course, you can look at current standings in the AFC and if the top team is playing the bottom, then you immediately have a big idea of who is going to win that particular match up. But that, of course, creates a situation where there’s little value monetarily, or at least not without a big stake risk, in backing the favourite.
By knowing the game a bit, understanding the nuances of playing on the road, the power of a team’s set up in offence and defence, rivalries, star players and the like can really help you out in making intelligent betting decisions on the sport.
Show me the Moneyline
The money-what? The Moneyline will be an unfamiliar betting set up for a lot of European based punters who are more used to fractional and decimal odds. Most NFL markets for the match outright will be in Moneyline format. As an example of this, you may see the Philadelphia Eagles -600 at Dallas Cowboys +450. What this set up means is that you would have to bet 600 unit on the Eagles (the favourites) to win 100. The other option means that if you bet 100 units on the Cowboys you would win 450. You will also find Moneyline options for individual quarters and the halftime in NFL matches.
Points Spread
There are some sports that just lend themselves so well to handicap betting. While you’ll find it in everything from soccer to tennis, sports like rugby and American Football are actually more appealing. That is because the spread of points in a game are going to be bigger. That leads to more value variety. It is nothing much for an American Football match to end up 30-19 which is a much more dramatic scoreline than a 2-1 win for a soccer team.
Handicaps, or points spread if you like, are very appealing options. For example with a match between the San Francisco 49rs at Minnesota Vikings (the home team in NFL matches are listed second) may have an option of Vikings -7 in the Points Spread. What this means is that you can back them to win the match by a margin of more than seven points. If it’s exactly seven points their winning margin, that’s a ‘push’ and you lose.
Alternatively, you could back their opponents the 49s at +7 which means that you would back them to lose by no more than seven points in the match. So this is where Points Spread handicaps can be useful and often more valuable than straight single match outrights. If for example, the Vikings have their offence working well and have recently won by comfortable margins then you may not find too much of a stretch in moving them up to cover a -8 handicap for bigger value. Again this is part and parcel of how to bet on American Football intelligently. It’s not wise to just make calls like this off the top of your head.
Dig those Stats
Looking at these points spreads and how to bet American Football intelligently means one thing. Hitting those stats and hitting them hard. You can’t just pull out a random handicap margin out of thin air without backing it up. This is how the bookies can be beaten, by using your own assessments about how big a margin a team is likely to cover with their offensive power, or how close a weaker underdog may be able to keep in touch with a favourite and not lose by a huge margin.
Other key factors in all of this as well are team selections. In the 2017 NFL season Green Bay Packers star quarterback, Aaron Rodgers took a huge injury and guess what, the challenge of the Packers for fell away because of that. Injuries to key players like quarterbacks and receivers can be telling things ahead of a game and they, of course, can influence those margins.
Match outrights, points spread, 1st quarter winner, anytime touchdown scorer, total 1st half touchdowns, over/under points, the list of NFL betting markets goes on and on and that’s just for a given game. There are the Super Bowl championship winners, Conference Winners, Divisional winners, spreads the number of wins that a team will pick up over the course of the regular season. It’s a pretty involved betting sport.
Narrow It Down
How to bet American Football intelligently can be done by narrowing all of this down and focusing on one or two markets that take your fancy. THere’s no need to get pulled all over the place and into areas where you haven’t done as much research. Manage your bankroll onto areas where you have studied the stats so that you aren’t spreading yourself too thinly.
If you are dialled in on Over/Under points then stick with that and try and hone your prediction skills there. If it’s Parlays (accumulators) which are your thing or spread betting or just the straightforward money line, became a tactical beast at understanding them. Become as clued-in about the workings of them as you can and learn to hone your risk/reward efforts there instead of going for the big Hail Mary into the unknown.
