How To Bet On Football’s Key Numbers

Predicting the winners in the NFL on any given week is tough, especially with the parity in the league, not to mention the fact that the bookies often seem as though they hold a magic crystal ball. It really is astounding how close they come when putting together the lines and the point totals for all the games, and there are very seldom any match-ups that deliver numbers that seem easy to crack. While there are some games that end up in blowouts, the majority are a whole lot closer, which brings us to the discussion of key numbers when online betting football.

Here’s A Closer Look At How To Bet On Football’s Key Numbers

 

Key Numbers in the Point Spread

Prior to the start of this season, a total of 2,670 games had been played in the NFL, including postseason match-ups, since 2003, and the margin of victory in those games was pretty staggering on the side of two key numbers: 3 and 7. This would appear to make perfect sense when you consider that games are quite commonly decided by a single score, with teams trailing often going for 2-point conversions to get that margin back to either 3 or 7. The number of games that were decided by 3 points was 479, which comes out to over 18.5%. The next most common margin of victory was 7, with 294, or just shy of 11.5%, of the games being decided by that margin. You begin to see why bookies often set the line at 3.5 or 6.5-points, and why smart bettors will often lay a point in order to get on the right side of those key numbers.

Key Numbers in the Point Total

If you like to play the OVER/UNDER, you may have noticed that the bookies never list a total at less than 30 points in the NFL, and they very seldom go over 58. Roughly 16% of the games played in the same period that we mentioned earlier had a point total of less than 30, and a touch over 12% went over the 58-point mark. All the rest were split pretty evenly between those two marks, but the key numbers that most commonly hit were 30, 37, 41, 43, and 44. In Week 16 of this season alone, we had a total of 4 games land on those specific numbers, which accounted for 25% of the games played in that week. It is always a good idea to keep these key numbers in mind whenever you wager on football, but it’s important that you don’t rely on them completely. There are several different trends that come into play when trying to decide where your wagering money should go, but knowing these numbers could help you make smarter bets, even if that means laying a point or a half-point to swing things in your favor. That could well be the difference between you building your bankroll and the bookies adding even more money to their bottom line.