Two weeks of the National Football League means that 32 games have already been played. And if you only watched Week 2, you probably think almost all this year’s games have been shootouts.
I asked Circa Sports sportsbook manager and NFL savant Chris Bennett how many games he think went Over in the first two weeks.
“I’m going to guess 24,” Bennett told NBC Sports after a quick ponder.
He actually wasn’t too far off. Only 20 have gone over, but it definitely feels like a whole lot more. According to Rotoworld’s Edge Finder, a $100 bettor is already down over $900 if they bet on every Under so far.[[ad:athena]]
“The only reason [I guessed 24] is because I remember being in the office on Sunday and thinking, man, we’ve got some high scoring games in the 10 o’clocks,” Bennett said. “Jaguars-Titans was pretty crazy. Obviously Falcons-Cowboys, although there was supposed to be points in that one. Bills-Dolphins too. There was just a lot of scoring.”
11 of the 16 NFL games in Week 2 went over the point total and some of them flew way over. There were games with 58, 59, 63, 63, 65, 65 and 79 points scored.
So how will a sportsbook adjust in the early going?
“There’s really nothing we would do that we haven’t been doing forever,” Bennett explained. “You hang a number and maybe that first number you hang up isn’t a great number. Maybe it closes five points off. It’s really about making sure that you have reasonable limits and when you do take a bet, you’re making intelligent decisions with how you move the line.
“When it comes to NFL totals, it’s a pretty efficient market. But these totals will still run quite a few points from opening to close. Especially if it’s weather related. I tell everybody on our team you have to be aggressive with that stuff because you don’t know where it’s going to close. If you take a bet from somebody we respect, you’ve just got to make a strong move and know that we’re going to write bets at a bunch of different numbers. We want to get to a point that when the game kicks off, we didn’t just take an avalanche of money on one side and got nothing back on the other side. We don’t want anything lopsided or any disastrous middle situations.”
That’s very interesting stuff right there. It sounds like the general strategy isn’t going to waver, nor should it. Bookmakers are going to take bets and shouldn’t be scared to take bets. That’s why they all have trading teams and risk rooms.
Also, sportsbooks can’t just blindly shade totals up in reaction to one week of high scoring football. They would get picked apart when sharp players pound the inflated totals Under and natural regression prevails.
Eventually, this stuff will all even out. The 2019 NFL season finished with 134 Unders, 132 Overs and one push. That’s about as close to the middle as it gets for bookmakers.
Riding hot trends can definitely be beneficial for your bankroll in the short team. Be careful and tread lightly though, because all good things eventually come to an end. You just have to know when to take your surfboard and go home.
