The Best Football Betting Strategy for Amateur Gamblers

Football is king when it comes to American sports betting and is responsible for bringing new gamblers into the market each year. While no single game in all of sports inspires a bigger handle than the Super Bowl, money flies around fast and furiously throughout the entire NFL and college season. While most people understand the basics of football betting, there are lots of ways you can make smart bets to increase your personal entertainment. So let’s dive into the best football betting strategies while explaining all the different markets your sportsbook offers.

The Basic Football Bets

You’re probably familiar with the basic bets, but let’s review them just for good measure. We’ll start with game bets and then spend a little time on player props and season totals.

Against the Spread (ATS)

Against the spread betting is by far the most popular form of football betting, just as it is for several sports (baseball, hockey, and soccer are exceptions because there is far less scoring involved, so money lines are more popular). Betting against the spread, of course, involves picking a favorite to win by more than a certain number of points or picking an underdog to keep the game closer than that same number of points (or to win outright).

But due to it’s popularity, the lines you see for football are as sharp as any market in the entire betting industry, especially for NFL games where there are no more than 16 games per week. With so much money being wagered, sportsbooks and their oddsmakers are experts on everyone and everything. Think that tweet you just saw about a key player injury gives you an edge? Nope, that information has already been priced into the spread, along with nearly every other factor that could move the line up or down. Lines move all the time, as a function of oddsmaker intelligence and sharp bettors looking for any weaknesses they see in opening markets. All this action, and the attention oddsmakers give to football, makes finding value extremely difficult and time consuming.

We aren’t saying you can’t find good bets on the spread, but it requires a lot of work, a good deal of knowledge, and a little luck. We’ll share some smart betting strategies later in the blog, but one tip we’ll offer right now is to pay attention to the hold percentage (aka, juice, or vig). You may see a spread that looks off to you, but the books will often hedge by increasing their hold and reducing the amount you can win.

Moneyline

Money line betting is the simplest way to bet on a football game—and the most basic form of betting in general. Betting a team on the money line is simply picking that team to win the game straight up. With ties being a rarity in football (and only possible in the NFL), money line bets aren’t pushed very often, so there is usually a tidy win or lose resolution when the game clock expires. There are some nuances to understand when betting moneyline vs spread, like the aforementioned hold percentage, but the money line is a fun and easy bet for anyone who is just starting their sports gambling journey.

Game Totals

One of the other most common football betting markets are game totals, commonly referred to as the over/under. When betting the game total, you are wagering on the total number of combined points scored by the two teams - either over the total or under it. For example, a 27-24 final score would cash an “over” bet if the total was set at 50.5, while a 27-21 final would cash an “under” bet as only 48 total points were scored. It’s a very simple wager, but it does offer some opportunities for smart gamblers who know how to bet strategically.

For instance, injuries and weather forecasts are important factors to consider before making a bet on game totals. While the sportsbooks will quickly adjust spread and moneyline odds whenever a key injury occurs, game totals can be slower to adjust. You can often find value on an under play if one team (or both) is missing a stud offensive lineman or a top receiver. Value can be found on an over play if an elite pass-rusher and/or a shutdown cornerback is sidelined.

Weather, of course, only needs to be taken into account when a home team is playing in an outdoor stadium. With only 32 teams in the NFL, it shouldn’t be too hard to memorize which teams play outdoors and which ones play either inside or under a retractable roof. If necessary, such information is readily available when you are researching a game. It goes without saying that wet, rainy, and windy conditions with an outdoor stadium would be conducive to an under play. Avoid over bets like the plague in such situations.

Parlays

A parlay bet is simply the combination of two or more individual bets (of any type, in any sport) into one single bet. In order to win a parlay, all “legs” of that bet must be winners to get paid out. Parlays might be a lot of fun, but they aren’t the best football betting strategy for most gamblers. Despite what you might see on social media, your $10, 7 leg, +9566 package is extremely unlikely to hit…but that’s also why it pays out so handsomely.

In the long run the usual suspects may be the last teams standing in the playoffs, but in general there is a lot of parity in the NFL. Any upset can happen on any given day. Therefore it’s extremely difficult to cash a parlay with more than four teams or so. Even though the big parlays can have huge payouts, you generally want to limit your parlays to two, three, or four teams. Even in two-team parlays, value can be found if you understand how the American odds system works. If you really like two relatively decent-sized favorites to win straight up but not necessarily to cover the spread, the combination of the two could return an even-money profit.

For example, a two-team parlay with one -250 money line favorite and one -240 money line favorite pays out +100. Similarly, a three-team parlay with big -375, -385, and -395 favorites also pays out +100. There are some other kinds of parlays, too, which we will take a look at below.

Same Game Parlays

Same game parlays are a relatively new phenomenon in sports betting in which you combine different bets within a single game in the same parlay. The main benefit of same game parlays is that you can correlate all of the legs. For example, you could bet on the Raiders to win their game against the Broncos, Derek Carr to throw for more than a certain amount of yards, and Darren Waller to score a touchdown. Obviously all three of those legs are correlated, as Carr being productive would naturally lead to Waller having success and both of them doing well would help Las Vegas’ chances of winning. It’s worth noting that while correlated parlays are a smart betting strategy for football, they can sometimes be too smart. In other words, sportsbooks might not allow you to make a highly correlated parlay, such as packaging an underdog against the spread and also betting them on the money line.

However, you can aim for bigger payouts with plays that aren’t correlated. For example, in a Bucs vs. Packers game you could bet on the Bucs to cover the spread but in the same parlay you could also bet Green Bay’s top receiver to score a touchdown. That will offer a sizable payout because a Packer’s player score doesn’t correlate with a Tampa Bay victory. But if you are expecting a high-scoring game between those two powerhouse offenses, there really isn’t much of a risk in picking the Bucs to win even if your chosen receiver finds the endzone. Both of those things could easily happen together (and can be even more fun for people who like to bet and play fantasy football).

Less Common Football Bets

So we’ve covered the basic football bets, and you can have a lot of fun just sticking to them. But if you want to take your wagering a step further, consider some of these less common markets in your betting strategy.

Teasers

NFL teaser betting is a safer type of parlay that allows you to move a spread in a chosen direction or by a certain number of points. Let’s say you wanted to parlay a few teams in against the spread bets, and your sportsbook offers you the chance to manipulate the lines, or “tease” them, to be more attractive.

The most common teaser involves two teams and six points. In such a parlay you could bet on an underdog and tease the spread from +2 to +8 and the other leg could be a favorite teased from -9 to -3. As you can see, covering a +8 spread is much easier than covering a +2 spread, and covering a -3 spread is much easier than covering a -9 spread. Naturally the odds of a teaser are much shorter than a regular two-team parlay, but teasers can be a steadier, safer football betting strategy to increase your bankroll.

The best technique for teasing spreads is to move them through key numbers such as 3, 6, 7, and 10. Because of the way football scorings works, those are the most common margins of victory. If an underdog is getting five points, teasing the spread to 11 makes a lot of sense because a loss by six, seven, or 10 points is a very possible outcome. With just a single six-point tease, you just moved that spread through three key numbers. Similarly, you would do well to tease a favorite that is originally giving eight points. You could tease it down to -2, moving it through seven, six, and three. Now your team only has to win by a field goal to cover instead of by more than a touchdown.

Player Props

Football fans have been riding or dying on the success—or lack thereof—of individual players for decades. Fantasy football has been a huge market for as long as basically anyone can remember. But with the rise of player prop betting, you don’t necessarily have to play fantasy football if you want to have a stake in certain players. You can simply wager on the guys you want, week in and week out.

Not only is it fun, but it can also be lucrative. Sportsbooks are often incredibly sharp on their game lines and totals; as mentioned above, in the grand scheme of things there aren’t that many NFL games each week (college football, with its 130 teams and Tuesday night MACtion, is a different story) It isn’t hard for books to be sharp on 16 NFL games each week. but there are hundreds of props available on any given Sunday and therefore not all of the posted numbers are going to be accurate. That is when you can pounce on opportunities where you see value.

The most popular NFL player props in a single game are scoring a touchdown and the over/under on yardage totals, such as passing, rushing, or receiving. You can bet player props for most offensive skill set positions, but pay attention to this very important nuance: QB touchdown totals don’t always count passing TDs unless specified (usually only rushing TDs). I’ve personally learned this the hard way when combining player props into parlay packages and thinking I had a winner, only to find out later that the bet didn’t cash!

Yardage Totals

Here’s a great betting strategy for player prop bets: The top players in each NFL game will have an over/under yardage total posted at most sportsbooks. Opposing defense are the key research tool for this market. Everyone knows how many yards a quarterback, running back, or receiver generally averages and his quota will be set somewhere in the vicinity of that number. However, the defense on a particular day can have a massive impact on an offensive player’s performance. You probably don’t want to take the over on a running back’s yards if he is facing the top rushing defense in the league that is allowing fewer than three yards per carry. Weather needs to be taken into account here, as well. Under bets could be a good move for games at outdoor stadiums with bad weather forecasts, especially as fall gives way to winter.

Touchdown Scorers

An anytime touchdown scorer bet is—as it sounds—on a player to score a touchdown at any point in the game. Most games offer a 2+ touchdown market, as well, which comes with long odds for just about any player…outside of generational talents like Adrian Peterson or Derrick Henry!

A riskier but also potentially more lucrative market is the first touchdown scorer. Most games have bets available for both the first touchdown scorer for the game as a whole and the first touchdown scorer for each team. Obviously a fair amount of luck is involved when it comes to betting on which player finds the endzone before all the rest, but that’s why the payouts are generally large. Players who are often reliable touchdown scorers or consistent performers in general but have been struggling of late can be valuable bets in the first touchdown scorer market. One, their odds should be inflated if they have been struggling. Two, coaches may try to feature that kind of guy early in a game in hopes of getting him on track and building confidence with a quick TD.

The Best Football Betting Strategies

We’ve sprinkled some smart betting advice throughout this blog, but now we wanted to share our top 6 favorite football betting strategies. These aren’t guaranteed winners (in sports betting, there never are), but they can give you a decent chance of winning over the course of a season.

1) Don’t stick exclusively to ATS and ML plays. Betting on the game you feel best about in a certain week can be a good idea, but as mentioned above the books are amazingly sharp. More value can often be found in player props or with teasers.

2) Hammer home teams. Although it can vary from season to season, home teams generally win 60 percent of the time in the NFL. Home underdogs are often the best sides to play when it comes to ATS and ML betting.

3) Avoid divisional matchups like the plague. Heated rivalry games between teams that are extremely familiar with each other generally end up being more competitive than expected. Underdogs can be more valuable than usual in such situations, but for the most part you would do well to avoid division games unless you feel incredible about it.

4) Take note of any reverse line movement. RLM is when a line shifts in the direction of Team A even when more of the money is going toward Team B. That happens when the ‘books think money bet by squares (amateurs) is on Team B, while sharps (professionals)—of which there are fewer—are hammering Team A. Obviously it is usually best to go with the sharp side…as long as the line isn’t adjusted too much.

5) Weather, travel, schedule, etc. Things like injuries and weather were discussed above, and those are obvious factors to account for before placing a wager on one side or the other. Teams’ game schedules and travel schedules must also be noted. Playing a 1:00 pm game on the east coast may have a bigger impact on a west coast team than you might think. Meanwhile, teams coming off a bye week or playing on a long week (such as if they played on Thursday night the week before) could have a sizable advantage. Make sure you research these kinds of less obvious elements to NFL betting.

6) Fade the public, bet the under. In tip four we mentioned squares and sharps. One thing is true about squares (who are the general betting public): they love to gamble with their hearts, and not with their minds. And the heart wants touchdowns! While defense wins championships, it doesn’t make the average fan’s afternoon at Buffalo Wild Wings more exciting. If you see an over that looks a little high, especially for a marquee or prime time game, there’s a chance the public has bet that over market rather heavily, and your book as adjusted. This can be a nice time to bet the under, especially if the hold percentage is decent.

That’s it for our primer on the best football betting strategies. Hopefully you’ve learned a thing or two and can apply these lessons to make smarter sports bets! Did we leave out your favorite strategy? Tell us about it in the comments!