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2024 NFL Win Total Betting Advice

by Robert Ferringo - 7/16/2024

NFL Win Total betting advice Miami Dolphins

“It's never as good as it looks and it's never as bad as it seems.”

Seems like some solid life advice there. And is apropos for NFL season win total betting.

The genius of the NFL’s communist structure is that it breeds annual optimism. Right now it’s the summer; players, coaches, fans and bettors are all mesmerized by the intoxicating aura of possibility. Everyone has a chance. Everyone thinks this year could be something special.

Of course, the wicked and merciless reality of fall and winter will set in soon enough. Those known horrors are lying in wait, an undercurrent just waiting to pull everyone and everything into the abyss.

In the meantime, let’s break down both sides of the NFL coin, looking at the teams on top of the league’s current hierarchal projections and those scraping the bottom of the barrel. Both groups enter training camp hoping to exceed their projections. So let’s take a look at how we can turn their misguided dreams into cash for us.

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The good is never as good as it looks.

About a half-dozen teams enter training camp with expectations of a Super Bowl run. Everyone dreams about it. But for teams like the Chiefs, 49ers and Bills, anything less than a trip to The Big Game will be considered a failure.

These teams aren’t hard to spot. A simple glance at the board of any Las Vegas sportsbook will show you that there are eight teams with season win totals of 10.5 or higher. This is the cream of the crop. The top tier. The Favorites.

This is also when I remind my dear readers that the Las Vegas season win totals aren’t predictions by the sportsbooks. They are simply a reflection of market. These are the eight teams the public thinks have the top squads. Whether or not the production matches their promise is another matter.

With that in mind, the typical sharp bettor would expect to find value betting against the top teams. It’s simple betting arithmetic: the sportsbooks know who the public likes, they jack up the numbers on them, so value opens up betting against the public and going the other way.

“Bet against the public.” That’s usually a winner, right?

That hasn’t been the reality, though. Over the last five years there have been 34 NFL teams with season win totals set at 10.0 or higher. They have combined to go 16-16-2 against the number. That includes a 3-5 mark last season, a 4-4 record in 2022 and 4-4-2 in 2021, the first three seasons of the current 17-game schedule.

A perfect example of getting burned going against the public is the Kansas City Chiefs. They have routinely been bound by one of the highest preseason win total numbers in the NFL over the past decade. Over the last four years they have entered the season as one of the Super Bowl favorites. Yet they have gone 9-1 against their Las Vegas season win total over the last 10 years and are 4-1 the last five times they have faced a line posted at 10.5 or higher.

It’s also never as bad as it seems.

There hasn’t been a clear trend of top teams being priced out by the sportsbooks. But how about the cellar dwellers?

Just as sharp bettors like to “sell high” on the overrated or overvalued top tier teams they also like to dumpster dive and find value on teams expected to be among the league’s worst.

Once again, the sportsbooks aren’t exactly creative with their preseason Las Vegas win totals. The teams that were the worst in the NFL last year are usually expected to be the worst again this season.

That’s hardly been the case over the last quarter century of NFL football, though. There have been constant and repeated stories of “worst-to-first” performances. Look no further than last year’s ‘surprise’ team, the Houston Texans. They were the league’s second-worst team in 2022 and entered summer of 2023 with a 5.5 Las Vegas season win total. They won 10 games, topped the AFC South, and are now among the league darlings heading into the 2024.

So what do we do with the teams at the bottom of the season win total totem pole?

Again, it’s a little counterintuitive.

Over the last five years there have been 38 teams with a preseason Las Vegas season win total posted at 6.5 or less. Those teams have gone just 14-23-1 (37.8 percent) against their season win totals. That includes those teams going 9-11 against the number the last three years (the first with 17 games).

That’s not a one-off period, either. From 2014-2018 the bottom feeders went 13-20-1 against their preseason marks. That means that over the past 10 years the teams projected to be the worst in the league have gone just 27-43-2 (38.6 percent) against their Las Vegas season win totals.

The expectation would be that “buying low” on bad teams – especially given the league’s history of quick turnarounds and worst-to-first runs – would be profitable for sharp bettors. It has actually been the opposite as people, including the sportsbooks, underestimate just how bad these feeble folks are.

So maybe it’s not always as bad as it seems.

Sometimes it is worse.

Robert Ferringo has been one of the best football handicappers in the country and for a full decade from 2010-2019 he banked over +$40,000 in football profit. Robert has produced five of eight winning seasons and 9 of 14 profitable years. Robert expects a MONSTER football season. Robert is looking for another winning football year and wants more profit this fall. SIGN UP HERE TODAY AND TAKE ADVANTAGE OF OUR 3-FOR-1 FOOTBALL SPECIALS!

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