Handicappers like to rely on familiar trends playing out over and over again, we'll take a look at some of the most
solid trends in NFL Football, you can take these to the bank...
A team playing back to back games on the road, if they won the first end of their back to back road games, bet on them
losing the second one, alternatively, if the team is a decent road team, has a .500 record on the road and overall, and they
lost the first of their back to back on the road, betting them to win the second game is a good bet, the first scenario is
the much better betting option, it's very rare to see a team win back to back road games, in fact it happens only around 10%
of the time that a team wins both ends of back to back road games, this is regular season games only, don't bet on this in
the playoffs.
Strangely enough, teams playing back to back games at home win both games 30% of the time, we can apply the same formula
to a team playing their 2nd straight home game coming off a win in the 1st home game, we bet against them.
The logic behind this is that we are getting huge odds in our favour by supporting this positive trend, in the first
scenario we will hit close to 90% of the time, in the 2nd scenario we will hit close to 70% of the time, and get good
value since we are betting the road team.
A lot of people focus on trends that are numerical, for example a team scoring x amount of points on the road in their
previous game will likely score x amount of points in the next game at home, etc.
I like to focus on the mental aspect of the game more, and when you see a certain trend hitting 70%+ of the time, you
know there is a mental element involved, if a team goes 6-2 at home on the year, but their only 2 losses happened
to come while they were playing back to back home games, then there is something negative about being in that situation, it's
a positive trend to take advantage of.
Teams coming off of a bye week win around 60% of the time, while teams playing their final game before a bye week win
around 40% of the time, the advantage there is similar to playin at home, the 60% edge.
You hear the commentators and analysts talk about a team being well rested coming off of a bye week, well here's a piece
of info to keep under your hat, in 2005, the top 4 AFC teams and the top 4 NFC teams went a combined 8-0 in games following
a bye week, what does that tell you, it tells me that these were teams that were looking forward to playing football, look
back to 2004, the two Super Bowl finalists won their game following a bye week, so did both finalists the year before that,
you see a pattern there, it's a positive sign
