Statistics Beats the NFL Point Spread

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Chicago @ Green Bay Week 5
2007-10-06 02:17:00
The point spread is saying that on a neutral field, these two teams are even handed. The Bears have a strong reputation across the country, not forgetting they went to the Super Bowl last week. They have had many problems this year as everyone know including injuries in their defense and of course the QB position. Seems like the line is not weighing this enough or assuming Green Bay is over achieving. I do not believe in the "hot hand" so you would think I do not think Green Bay is a good bet. But the Bears problems are not going to go away this week. Just look at the two teams spread history, it seems as though everyone is very hopeful on the Bears and down on the Packers. 90% of my forum friends would also agree, what is the line doing at -3? Green Bay -3. NFL point spread week 5 GB @ CHI Want to see these two teams point spread history?NFL Point Spread Week 5 GB @ CHI
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Any special requests for NFL Week 5?
2007-10-03 14:58:00
Dear readers, As you have noticed, I post visual statistics you can use when making judgements on a bet on the NFL spread. Unfortunately, I do not have enough time to do all games so I am randomly picking games to analyze. In the future, don't know again if I will be able to run forecasting models this week, I will select games that the forecasting model sees as an opportunity. Now, I pick games I hear many people talking about in the forums. If you have a special interest on a game, I encourage you to leave a comment on any blog posting on which NFL game you want to see the historical graphs. I also encourage you to bookmark the page or the RSS feed so you are alerted of when I put new NFL games stat postings. This is a great advantage since work sometimes does not allow me to post as soon as I want to. I will be posting some games tonight. Good luck in NFL week 5! Jaime
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Green Bay @ Minnesota NFL Week 4
2007-09-28 19:55:00
Packers are favorite by 3 points, Favre is playing well but has reputation to choke on the dome. Analysts have shown that the dome factor is not playing a role here. Let's look at the previous history of the spread when these two teams meet each other. NFL Week 4 Green Bay @ Minnesota The vegas line (green bar) flips back and forth probably due to home team advantage making these two teams pretty much even. One interesting aspect is that when Minnesota is favorite, Green Bay covers the spread and vice-versa. For example, in their last matchup December 21 of 2006, Green Bay was favorite by about 3 points but Minnesota slightly covered the spread. The prior game to that, Minnesota was favorite by about 3 points and Green Bay covered the spread by more than 10 points. Is there a home field advantage? Let's look at how they covered the spread with respect to who was playing at home.NFL Week 4 Matchup Green Bay vs Minnesota This graph shows for example that in 2006, the two teams fa...

NY Jets vs. Buffalo NFL Week 4
2007-09-28 18:10:00
This will be my last week of exploratory analysis of the historical NFL data and then the combination of exploratory analysis and statistical modeling will begin. As for NFL week 4, lets look at the Jets visiting the Bills starting with the history of these two teams facing each other. null There are two interesting pieces of information from this graph. First, by looking at the green bars, one notices that these two teams have been considered almost even in the past few years since the favorite switches around and the spread never goes beyond 5 points for any team. Second, the last time the two teams faced each other, last December 10th, the spread had the Jets favorite by about 4 points but Buffalo was about 22 points above the spread (which means they won by about 25). Besides this big anomaly, the games have historically been relatively close to the spread. I also looked at who covered the spread when they were at home and there does not seem to be an advantage to any team whe...
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NFL Game Results vs. Spread Up to Week 3
2007-09-26 01:38:00
What is the winning record for each team after week 3 against the spread. We have 7 teams that have covered the spread in all 3 games and 6 teams (including my beloved Bears) that have failed to cover the spread in all 3 games. I have read in a journal article that the team itself is not a good predictor of covering the spread, meaning that the Vegas line is not bias for any team. A better predictor is the team's offensive and defensive ranking at the time. I will explore this in a future blog. For now here is a table that I will keep updating to the blog as the weeks pass by. NFL Game Results vs. Spread NFL Winning Percentage vs. Spread
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Buffalo @ New England NFL Spread: -16.5
2007-09-21 06:38:00
The NFL Spread or vegas line has New England (NE) a 16.5 point favorite!? No question the Patriots will win, but will they be able to beat the struggling Bills by 2 touchdowns and a field goal? Is the line over-reacting to resent outcomes? New England has been THE favorite in the past 7 games between these two teams dating back to December of 2003. Notice from the figure below that the vegas line has not been more than ten (a big jump to 17!). To explain the figure below in more detail, take the last game between these two teams in 10/22/06. The green bar shows that the Vegas line was about 5 points for New England (since it is above the horizontal axis, I will be posting this in terms of the home team which in this case is NE). The red bar indicates that NE finished about 16 points above the spread. The actual outcome for that game was 28-6, the spread was 5.5, so the red bar is 28-6-5.5=17.5, this game was in Buffalo . The game prior to that (at New England) was a different story...
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When the NFL Spread is more than 6
2007-09-16 16:56:00
As I continue my exploratory data analysis on the NFL Spread data, I discover one important trend when the Vegas line is more than 6 points. In this post, I look at the percentage of times the home (visiting) team beat the spread when the home (visiting) team was the underdog by more than 6 points. Home team is the underdog by more than 6 points First, the most interesting one, the home team is an underdog by more than 6 points. The graph below is easy to read. Take last year (2006), the home team won or lost by less than 6 points 67% of the times when the home team was the underdog by more than 6 points. Notice that throughout the seasons, Vegas seems to be over/under-correcting their estimates. In the early 90s, they were underestimating the visiting team. Then by early 2000s, we see an increasing trend of the home team been underestimated. An over-correction is seen in 2004 and 2005 with the home team been beaten by more than 6 points 43% and 35% respectively. Home Team Underd...
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Vegas' Accuracy of Predicting the Point Spread
2007-09-08 18:09:00
How good is Vega s in predicting the point spread? Or better yet, is Vegas getting any better at predicting the point spread? In this post I am studying the difference between Vegas' prediction of the point spread and the actual outcome. That is, Difference = Point Spread Outcome - Vegas Line The Point Spread Outcome is computed as Visiting Team Score - Home Team Score since my Vegas Line is referenced in the following way: negative if the home team is favorite and positive if the visiting team is favorite. So, if the difference is HIGHLY POSITIVE it implies that the VISITING team was underrated by the Vegas Line. If the difference is HIGHLY NEGATIVE then the HOME team was underrated. For example, take last year's Super Bowl (Chicago as the 'home team'). The Vegas Line was 6.5 (favoring Indianapolis since it is positive). The actual score was 29-17, hence the actual point spread was 12 and the difference 12-6.5 = 5.5. One can say that the Vegas Line underestimated the visiting t...
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Welcome to the 2007 NFL Season
2007-09-06 04:44:00
Dear Readers - I am extremely excited and looking forward for this year's NFL season. This year I got my hands on NFL spread statistics dating back to 1992, which gives me added hope that my statistical models will be more accurate and valid. This data will allow me to post tables and graphs of trends across years. For example, the % of home teams that have beat the spread (is it increasing. decreasing or staying relatively flat). A table of how close has Vegas been predicting the point spread, are they getting better? How betting for the underdog when point spread is higher than 6 has done throughout the years. I welcome more suggestions. After last year's successes and failures with different methods/formulas of predicting a winner, we will be able to continually keep track of our successful candidates and dump the failures to leave room for new formulas and algorithms. You probably won't see predictions for the first couple of weeks to feed models some of this year's data an...
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NFL Wagering Statistics for the 2007 Season
2007-01-12 20:01:00
Dear readers - Thank you for visiting my blog in the 2006 season. It has been really fun posting different NFL football metrics that measure the trends, strengths and opportunities in NFL gambling. We have decided to concentrate our efforts to improve our site for next year. We want to make the site more visual and easier to read, clearly show trends happening in the NFL Vegas spread gambling, and for users to be able to drill-down to detail on the stats that drive gambling success. The site will feature weekly graphs, tables, and breif comments on each game. The new NFL wagering stat site will monitor NFL spread specific stats and show weekly and yearly trends. The site's main objective will be to provide relevant and usable point spread statistics that readers can use to guide their wagering strategies. Before the 2007 season starts, we will start posting graphs and stats to test our data collection and reporting capabilities so that they are at their top level starting 2007....
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NFL Week 16: Point Spread Prediction and Picks
2006-12-20 17:15:00
Week 16 features many interesting games that will be crucial for playoff contention and those that are not important for playoff spots may still be important for teams' momentum. I feel the point spread is overeacting in two specific games that I want to talk about. The first one being the Bears game. Bears @ Detroit +4 The Bears are only favorite to beat Detroit only by 4? Why is this? Have people lost hope on Chicago's defense because of a bad second half against Tampa Bay last week? Urlacher, Ugunleye, Hester and the gang will show up ready to demonstrate why they are the best defense in the league. Also, last year's playoff loss vs. Carolina was highly due to the fact that they had clinched a spot, loss the last game of the season against Minnessotta. This year is not going to happen, I hope. They should go out and play strong although they have already clinched home field advantage throughout the playoffs. Predict ion: The Bears by a LOT more than 4. The other game I like ...
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NFL Week 15: Point Spread Prediction and Picks
2006-12-14 04:13:00
Don't gamble on every game. Our NFL football wagering strategies pick the most likely wins against the NFL Vegas point spread! Favorite game: PIT @ CAR +0 Both of these teams although statistically not eliminated yet, most likely they will not make it. The Steelers have made somewhat of a late comeback recently. Their overall score is still keeping them at the same level with Carolina but I feel last year's champ got more than what they show for. Pittsburgh wins!2nd Favorite game: CLE @ BAL -11 A 2 TD difference seems a bit much for this game at the beginning. Considering that Baltimore is a Super Bowl contender, they are 10-3, and Cleveland's 4-9 record might not make them motivated to play hard. The computerized picks are also pointing at Baltimore. Baltimore by more than 11. Bears Game TB @ CHI -13 The Bears are 11-2 and Tampa Bay 3-10. TB is struggling's offense might be facing the mightiest defense of them all. This bet is again testing an inconsistent Bears offense. La...
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Disaster has struck many of the computer picks
2006-12-11 16:41:00
Miami's upset over a 3.5 favorite New England, Philadelphia's last minute win, and Buffalo's offense over the Jets droped the winning percentages for my computer automated NFL picks. Not to say, my personal picks too. Now the best one is at 60%, and two barely breaking even. The majority, a automated pick statistic which looks at the other 8 picks and selects the team with the most picks, is doing decently at 57%. This strategy seems like a good idea, but only when the other picks are beneficially correlated. Finding correlations between the computer picks seems like the obvious next step. The only computer pick strategy I have not talked about is OFF/VL and it shows a 100% 3 for 3 for the week and an overall winning percentage of 86% for the 2006 NFL season as of today. The only reason is because I have not found a real meaning for it. This statistic is basically a ratio between an index score for the offensive stats (as a offensive rating). I computed that ratio trying to fin...
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NFL Week 14: Point Spread Prediction and Picks
2006-12-10 02:05:00
Don't gamble on every game. Our NFL football wagering strategies pick the most likely wins against the NFL Vegas point spread! My dear readers, I am sorry it is Saturday night and my NFL picks have not been published yet. This is not only embarrassing, but frustrating. Our technology is in the midst of improvements. Better late than never. Here are the NFL week 14 statistical forecasts: Favorite game: PHI @ WAS +1.5 Philadelphia is very unstable right now, offensively and defensively. They are not playing at their home field. Washington's schedule has been a tough one this year putting them back in gamblers' eyes. On top of all this, Philadelphia is the favorite? I do not think so. Washington wins! 2nd Favorite game: NE @ MIA +3.5 I picked this one because my 62% Fat Freddy automated strategy picked it. It predicted a spread of +5.8 leaving a difference of 2.3 points. Although small, this difference shows a small bias between the teams performance and the scorebooks places...
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NFL Week 13 : Point Spread Prediction and Picks
2006-12-02 07:16:00
Don't gamble on every game. Our NFL football wagering strategies pick the most likely wins against the NFL Vegas point spread! One game late, but with so much snow and bad weather in many places around the country, I didn't think possible for anyone to play on Thursday. Did anybody, while you were watching MNF with Green bay in Seattle, say what's that? That is called snow. Yes, our first NFL snow game and many more to come. That's a big reason I love football so much. No matter what, we can always watch football this Sunday. This week I have been busy developing reporting templates for other cooler and interesting statistical facts about the point spread that I plan to post. A preview of our new aesthetics will come by sometime in the last few weeks. So stay tunes. NFL Picks Week 13 I still had time to run this week's NFL picks and strategies and look at the results. So once again, I briefly describe my two favorite games, the Bears game, Monday Night Football, and leave ...
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