At the beginning of each season is the importance of a remedial course on NFL key numbers. Many handicappers overdue the research and drill down too far on teams and transactions. But NFL key numbers go a long way to simplifying the law of gravity for pro football betting.
When paying attention to discourse in the betting community, you’ll often hear or see people discussing line moves. But, some line moves are more impactful than others. Key numbers matter the most, and sports bettors should be aware of them and what they mean. What are key numbers? Which markets do they influence? How should they affect the way you’re betting games? Here we will examine the importance and practical application of key numbers for success in the NFL betting markets.
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Just What are NFL Betting Key Numbers?
Shifting prices in the markets, for example, a pointspread between two teams moving from 3 to 3.5, represent changes in implied probabilities. Knowledgeable bettors take them seriously. All numbers have at least some impact. If a given game played out 1,000, 10,000, or 1,000,000 theoretical times, it would probably land on every reasonable number at some frequency.
But in the long run, a game will land on some numbers more often than others. An easy way to see that is to look at the margins of victory across some sample of NFL games. Teams win and lose by 3 and 7 more often than any other numbers. That makes 3 and 7 key numbers. They frequently determine the winning and losing sides of bets.
Even in 2015, the first year with the longer extra point, 3 and 7 decided more games than any other numbers – although 6 crept way up and wasn’t too far behind. Following to a lesser extent, 4, 6, and 10 follow as the next most common margins. Fourteen is in the conversation too, but since few spreads are near 14, it isn’t as actionable. In sum, these numbers accounted for more than 40% of decisive margins during the selected sample from this study.
What is the Most Effective Approach to Key Numbers
So, what should a handicapper do about these key numbers? The answer is to simply be vigilant and selective about the numbers into which you bet to have the best chance at turning over a profit. Have a number in mind, and if you can’t get that number, do not bother wagering on the game and wait for a more profitable opportunity.
The most commonly applicable examples, again, come in the NFL. Well aware of the value of key numbers, sportsbooks often hang lines on either side of or right on them.
A good example of how you might approach a key number is from the 2021 season opener between the Dallas Cowboys and Tampa Bay Buccaneers. At the onset, the oddsmakers had this game at Tampa Bay -7.5.
If a gambler liked Dallas, they should have bet them as soon as possible unless there were a legitimate reason to believe the line would lengthen. That’s because, assuming equal likelihood of a move toward either team, a move toward Dallas would be less advantageous than a move toward Tampa helped.
In other words, getting +7.5 versus +7 makes a large difference, whereas getting +8 instead of +7.5 doesn’t help all that much because games land on 8 infrequently. If gamblers liked Tampa Bay, the opposite was true. Waiting to see if the number got better would not do much harm.
Of course, if you did like the Bucs or a similar bet, the wrong side of a key number, you should immediately line shop. Make sure to check the line at every sportsbook where you can place a bet and see if any have -7 instead of -7.5.
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