To Bet, Or Not To Bet, On NFL Preseason Games?

The NFL Preseason is an entirely different beast than the NFL Regular season. Most times, teams are not game planning for one another. As such, “winning” the game is not always the desired outcome, no matter what coaches say in the lead up to it.

For coaches and players, the people who actually decide the outcomes, the motivation in the preseason is about roster evaluation first and foremost.

Yet, when the sportsbooks set the lines, they are telling prospective bettors who is favored to win and by how much they are favored to win by.

So, how then do we square those two competing ideologies? Well, to answer that, we have to know who is making money off of preseason games.

Who Is Betting?

In the NFL’s regular season, 80-90% of bettors are recreational. These are people who love football, love to throw some money on games to make them really interesting and fun. They can even be very serious about betting, but it’s a hobby, not a profession.

The other 10-20% of bettors during the regular season are “sharps”. These are people who examine every line at multiple sportsbooks looking for an edge to beat the books. Using statistical models and arbitrage calculators, these bettors are more on the professional side. You could even say that we at Football Behavior are sharps.

However, it is important to note that our projections are environmentally based and not broad statistics based, Likewise, our model is not based on what the different books are doing and looking for value. Its purely focused on the actual behavior of the teams on the field.

That said, in the preseason, that ratio is completely flipped. 70-80% of bettors in the NFL preseason are sharps. Given the volatility of game environments, the lines are forever moving. Rather than the books setting the lines based on matchups, they are set mostly based upon who is playing, which changes multiple times during the week.

Which team is resting starters? How long will starters play? As these decisions play out, mostly on social media, the lines will shift multiple times for multiple reasons. There is much more chaos for the books to contend with than during the regular season.

With how many sportsbooks there are, the odds of a mistake being made by one of them is much higher and the sharps are there ready to pounce.

So, What Should YOU Do?

Figure out what category of bettor you fall into. If you’re a sharp, than you already know today is like opening day in NFL for you. But, if you’re more of a recreational sports bettor, this may be a good time to exercise restraint.

Once you have figured who you are, the recommendation from us either way is to observe the preseason purely to pick up on behavioral tendencies when the starters are in. Observe the backups who stand out, so if they go in, you know what type of drop off to expect.

Simply, use the preseason as a learning tool for the regular season. Our model is built on the behaviors that occur in defined environments. There is nothing defined or consistent with preseason environments. If your a casual, recreational bettor, our recommendation would be to NOT place bets.

Instead, use what you learn over the next five weeks to prepare you for what promises to be an exciting 2023 NFL regular season. Which starters seemed to be ready for the regular season? which backups really stood out? Which team is best built to withstand injuries?

Lastly, remember the old adage: Once is an accident, twice is a coincidence, three times is enemy action. The great James Bond author Ian Fleming helps us understand the idea of when you know something is deliberate, when something is done with purpose. The idea of a pattern of behavior.

Same is true in behavior science. The more behavior we see, the better. The more evidence we have as to who someone really is.

The preseason tells us almost nothing about a team as a whole, and the first three weeks are quite unpredictable as teams figure themselves out.

Use The Pigeon Picks Risk Assessment

That is what we will be doing at Football Behavior. The next five weeks will give us valuable information to fuel the model.

The first three weeks of a season are the least predictable in terms of team behavior. Teams with new coaches or quarterbacks are getting a feel for the game day environment for the first time.

Don’t forget the advice from the previous section: “…three times is a pattern”. We won’t really know a team’s likely behavioral profile until around Week 4 or 5.

That is why our Risk Assessment tool can be very helpful in the early part of the season. Knowing which games will be most predictable will be an asset to bettors as they look to start the season on the positive side.

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