NFL Preseason Home Underdogs Deciphered
This article is a companion article to NFL Home Underdogs and takes a closer look at the trend behind the recent success of preseason home underdogs, as well as looks a bit more closely and the 52-31-3 record and breaks it down a bit more.Just as we had a bit of an explanation about preseason football and what it means to the organizations in last article, a bit of background is required here, as well. But this time we'll look at what preseason games mean to the coaching staffs.
Coaches and Preseason Games
While different coaches have different philosophies on the importance of preseason games, most of them follow a standard pattern relating to starters. The starting units will seldom play more than a quarter in the first game, if that, as sometimes a series or two will be all that the starting units are on the field.In week two, starting units will usually play a full quarter and then possibly into the second quarter before the substitutions come in. The third game is typically most reflective of the true talent levels on the teams, as starters will often play the first half.
The fourth week is often like the first, as starters will usually play a series or two before being pulled to cut down the potential for an injury.
Week Three Variations
The key week here for bettors is the third week, as the starters play the most number of minutes. Naturally, when this happens the team with the better talent has the greatest opportunity for taking advantage of that.The result is that our home underdogs have performed far worse than they have in any of the other three preseason weeks, going 19-15 against the spread. The combined spread record of the other three weeks is 33-16-3.
It's interesting to note the higher number of home underdogs that occur in the third week, as well. Of the 86 home underdogs in the past eight years, 34 of them have been in the third week, which is nearly 40 percent.
So if we exclude home underdogs in the third week, we can see the winning percentage increase to close to 67 percent.
Another interesting aspect of having home underdogs is the high percentage of these games that go under the total. In the 86 games, the over/under record is 32-52-2, so nearly 62 percent of these games go under the total. That fact is basically just for your knowledge, as we'll look more closely at preseason totals in the next few weeks.
Interconference Games
Another interesting aspect of the preseason home underdogs is that these teams have tended to perform better when playing a team outside of their conference.AFC home underdogs are 10-4 when playing another AFC team and are 14-10-2 when playing a team from the NFC. NFC teams are 7-4 playing the NFC and 21-13-1 playing the AFC.
So teams are 17-8 (68%) when home underdogs within their conference and 35-23-3 (60.3%) when playing outside of their conference.
We'll continue to look at the preseason in more detail over the next few weeks as we seek out decent wagering opportunities.
