Here are the current NFL articles and how to tips
from Maddux Sports.
It’s hard enough to handicap an NFL team that has made a big turnaround in their performance from one season to the next. That’s a breeze, though, compared to trying to handicap whether a team that makes a big turnaround in the middle of the season is for real. I’m talking about the kind of teams that start the season losing several games and look terrible doing it, but then winning several in a row and looking like a whole different team. It happens pretty much every year with one or two teams. The trick for bettors is to determine whether the ...
Winning games in the NFL is hard. Winning a lot of games in a row is really hard. It often doesn’t take long - just three or four games at the start of the season each year - until there are just a very small handful of unbeaten teams remaining in the league. Until the last unbeaten team falls those few remaining unbeaten teams are a unique challenge for handicappers, and it gets tougher the longer they stay unbeaten. Here are four particular challenges of betting on games featuring unbeaten teams as the NFL season progresses: ...
There are teams in the NFL that the public loves more than the rest. They may have a lot of history, considerable success, or star players that draw the attention and capture the imagination of the public. Those are called public teams, and the public will blindly support them at pretty much any price. Those teams will draw high expectations every year, and they will be expected to do well. Often times they do get off to a strong start - the public likes them because they are good, after all - but sometimes the teams can’t live up to the almost ...
There are few things in the NFL that will get the betting public more fired up than a long winning streak. In virtually every case, though, the winning streak has to eventually end. When that happens bettors face a challenge - to determine what happens next. Some teams will rebound from a loss and head right into the next losing streak. Others will lose focus and intensity once they lose, and will follow up with another loss. If you can have a good sense of what a team is likely to do then you are well positioned to make a nice profit on their ...
Playing quarterback in the NFL is a dangerous profession. Other than Brett Favre it is all but certain that a QB is going to be hurt during his career, and chances are pretty good that he’ll miss a significant amount of time at some point. For bettors this can present some real challenges. The hardest situation to assess is a quarterback who starts the season, is hurt after a handful of games, misses a big chunk of games, but returns to start during the same season. Not only do you have to figure out how the team will respond when the quarterba ...
In the last week or two of the regular season in the NFL it is not at all uncommon to see playoff teams rest their starters. It can be very frustrating for fans and bettors, but for the teams it is often the logical approach. If the team can’t improve their playoff position in any significant way then it really doesn’t make sense to risk having a key player hurt in a meaningful game. It also gives those key players a chance to get some rest and to heal the bumps and bruises of the long season before the drain and strain of what the team hopes i ...
The stadium is barely empty after the Super Bowl by the time that the Super Bowl futures are posted for the next season. These ridiculously early numbers are entertaining and often informative. On very rare occasions they could even be worth betting a couple of bucks on. Most times, though, you really don’t want to invest in them at all. Here are six factors to consider when looking at Super Bowl futures soon after they are posted: ...
Sportsbooks love the first week of the NFL season. Bettors have been waiting for months and months for football action, and they have full bankrolls to play with. That doesn’t lead them to making the best decisions - and sportsbooks love it when bettors make bad decisions. Because bettors are so excited and so eager for some football action it is very easy to make mistakes. Here are four of the biggest mistakes bettors make in the first week of the season. By understanding them you can work to avoid them: ...
Sometimes good teams - teams expected to make it into the NFL playoffs - play truly awful opening games. Not only do they lose, but they lose badly, and they look really lousy doing it. When a team starts out that badly people can easily panic. If they had high hopes for the team then this performance can cause them to re-evaluate everything. Bettors who can avoid panicking and who can get an accurate sense of what is going on and why the poor performance actually happened could find some nice value betting on a good team in their next game - b ...
Every year around October or November in the NFL we start to see teams making quarterback changes. Sometimes they are forced to because of injuries. Sometimes they planned the change sooner or later because they drafted a young quarterback they were taking their time with. Sometimes they are forced into the move because their starter is underperforming and their season is slipping away from them. Regardless of why the change has been made a midseason quarterback change can cause headaches for bettors trying to figure out how the team will respo ...
By the middle of the summer most NFL bettors are impatient - desperate for some football action to satisfy the cravings. It can seem like it takes forever for the games to get here. You can drive yourself crazy with the waiting, or you can use the time to get ready for a great betting year. If you choose the second option (and you obviously should) then here are nine things you can do to make sure you have the best possible year betting on the NFL: ...
At any time in the NFL there are just a small handful of quarterbacks who are megastars - guys who are consistently excellent and who attract a whole lot of attention from the betting public every time they hit the field. These are the four to six players in the league at any given time that are bigger than their teams, and are really the face of the league. It’s not hard to figure out who these players are, and if you aren’t sure if a guy qualifies then he doesn’t. These guys might seem like they are immortal, but from time to time their morta ...
There is nothing that can drive a sports bettor crazy faster than a wildly inconsistent offense. One week they come out an pile up a pile of yards and score points almost at will. Next time out they seem to have forgotten everything the knew about football, and they are totally useless. After that inconsistency happens for a while all you can really do is guess what is going to happen because it doesn’t seem like there is any order or predictability to things. Inconsistent offenses might drive you crazy - or force you to start drinking before k ...
As a general rule I hate everything about the NFL preseason. You never know who is going to play, how long they will play, how hard they will try, or how much of their playbook they will use. Betting on it can be a very frustrating experience. From time to time, though - perhaps a few times each week - you find a good spot in which the value is too good to resist. Here are seven factors to consider that can help you spot those spots worth betting on: ...
The NFL season is long, and for bettors it can be grueling. By the time the Super Bowl is over most bettors are ready for a break. They’ll forget about football for a while and look elsewhere - catching up on all the basketball they have ignored, betting on some hockey, or getting ready for baseball perhaps. While that only makes sense, smart bettors will do one thing before they move on - they’ll take stock of how they performed during the last NFL season, and what they can do better going forward. It doesn’t have to take very long, and it is ...
During every NFL season we see several starting quarterbacks get hurt and miss games. Sometimes those players only miss a game or two, but it isn’t at all uncommon for a starter to go down and miss the rest of the season - especially in the second half of the season. When that happens handicappers face a big challenge - they want to make sure that they are giving the injury enough credit, but they don’t want to overreact and make bad bets as a result. Here are six questions you can ask to help determine what kind of impact a lost starter will h ...
It wasn’t that long ago that NFL season win totals were a relatively rare thing to see and bet on. They have become more and more popular with every passing year, though - both to the betting public and to astute bettors looking for long term value. As a result, some sportsbooks have taken to posting totals for the first time right after the Super Bowl has been played. They often are posted for long, and the limits aren’t particularly high, but they are available to be bet on. They may not be the best investment in the world - in fact they almo ...
It can be very hard to judge how effectively a new coach is going to be able to get his team on track and playing like they are capable of - especially if the guy has never been a head coach before. Some guys are able to look like veterans right out of the gate, while other guys take a long time to get comfortable - and some new coaches never settle in and perform effectively. The scoreboard doesn’t tell us much about how a coach performed in their first game, and even stats can be misleading depending upon the opponent. To get a much more accu ...
Every year in the NFL there are several teams who, frustrated with their quarterbacking the year before, go a whole new way at quarterback. Whether they start a free agent, a young quarterback who has previously been warming their bench, or a rookie that they drafted they are starting over with a new face under center. Handicappers need to quickly be able to assess whether a quarterback has a good chance of looking strong out of the gate or whether they are likely to struggle early on. The more accurate you can be with that assessment the bigge ...
As the NFL season winds down every year there are always a few coaches that are all but certain to get fired once the season ends. The media knows it, the fans know it, and the players definitely know it. These lame duck coaches have presided over a season that was disappointing, and it has cost them their jobs. For handicappers these situations create a particular challenge. They can’t just assume that the team will quit on the coach because that isn’t always the case, but they can’t treat it like nothing has changed for the team, either. If y ...
Several times a year - especially later in the season - we’ll see a situation in which an NFL starting quarterback is unable to practice during the week but is still possible or probable to play in their game. That situation can be a major headache for bettors. It’s all but impossible to know for sure if the player will actually start, how effective he will be, and what will happen to the team if the player isn’t ready to perform at a high level or can’t finish the game. It adds a big degree of uncertainty to a game, and can make it even harder ...
There are few things more frustrating for football handicappers than an uncertain QB status. When a quarterback is hurt or banged up but could conceivably still play then you can never be sure what is going to happen. Teams are rarely open or honest about these situations, either, so you spend much of the week having to guess whether you should be preparing for the starter or the backup. For a lot of teams the gap between the starter and the backup is a wide one, and the public perception of that difference is even wider, so who is starting mak ...
The week between the last preseason game and the first regular season game of the NFL season is an exciting but challenging time for bettors. There is an overwhelming sense of excitement and anticipation as the season nears, and it can seem like it takes forever for the first meaningful game in eight months to arrive. That last week seems endless, but it can be a very valuable time for bettors - the last chance to make sure that you are ready to give your best effort in the pursuit of profit. Here are seven things to consider during this week: ...
Sometimes a team gets off to a horrifyingly bad start to the NFL season. They may have been expected to be a playoff team - or at least a serious playoff contender - heading into the season, but they have looked like a high school team - a bad one - in their first few games of the season. For handicappers that presents a real challenge. Is the way they have played to start the season representative of what they are really capable of and what we can expect from them, or are they going to be able to rebound and play closer to expectations as the ...
In 2011 the San Francisco 49ers, in their first year under head coach Jim Harbaugh, were brilliant before Thanksgiving. They were 9-1 and had won eight games in a row. The rest of the NFC West was beyond terrible. Seattle was next best at just 4-6, and Arizona and St. Louis were worse. While the Niners hadn’t technically clinched their division and the playoff spot that comes with it before sitting down for turkey dinner they practically had, and the media and public were obviously extremely confident that they would - and sooner rather than la ...
The top two teams to qualify for the NFL playoffs in each conference don’t have to play in the wild card round. The question for handicappers, then, is whether that bye week is a good thing for them or not. Some teams benefit greatly from the rest. They are able to get healthy and to prepare for their opponent completely. They are able to maximize their benefit. Other teams just can’t seem to get going after the week off. They look rusty and lethargic and don’t play anywhere near the level that earned them the bye in the first place. Here are s ...
Thanksgiving may be the best day of the year. Just think about it a whole day built around eating and drinking too much then passing out on a couch to watch football. Plus, it’s a weekday that you don’t have to work on. Sure, you have to put up with your family, but the good far outweighs the bad in most cases. If you are watching the games anyway then you might as well bet on them. After all, every game is better if you have some action on it. Betting on the Thanksgiving games is largely similar to any other game, but there are some key ways i ...
For most bettors training camp just seems like something you have to patiently endure before the NFL season finally starts. For astute bettors, though, the training camp is a time to pick up all sorts of information and insights that can help you find a big edge early in the season. By paying attention to what is going on and how teams are operating you can get a good sense of how ready they will be when the games matter, and where they might be vulnerable. Here are seven questions to ask to help you get a sense of where the hidden opportunitie ...
Every year in the NFL there are a few rookie quarterbacks who are pressed into action at the start of the season, and a few more who have to play early on. If you have been a fan of the NFL for any time at all then you know that a rookie often doesn’t light the world on fire early in his career. Often, in fact, they are pretty terrible. Sometimes, though, a rookie can really figure things out quickly and can be surprisingly strong from the start. Being able to get a sense of what can reasonably be expected from a rookie starting quarterback is ...
There is no sport in North America that comes even remotely close in popularity to the NFL. Not even close. That means that there is far more relatively uninformed betting money bet on the NFL than in any other sport. The more public action there is on a game, the more concerned astute bettors need to be about the impact that action can have on how lines are set and how they move. Heavy public action on one side of a game can create tremendous value for bettors who like the team the public doesn’t, but can destroy any value if you are looking t ...
One of the great things about the NFL is that it always has the ability to surprise. Just when you think you have things totally figured out a result comes around that is precisely and totally the opposite of what you thought would happen. Of course, that’s also what can make it so tough to handicap at times. The most frustrating kind of unexpected performance is when a team that appears to be very good comes out and plays an impossibly bad game. That leads to all sorts of questions. Did they just have a really bad day, or are they not as good ...
It doesn’t necessarily happen every weekend in the NFL, but many times a year we’ll see a team get out to a big halftime lead of at least two touchdowns and then collapse and throw it away in the second half. It’s almost as if they feel they have done their job to get that lead and that there is no way they could possibly lose that lead. They seem to either be thinking about their next game or the upcoming day off, and not about the game they are only halfway through. ...
The NFL preseason is the time for bettors to look closely at teams to determine what they might be capable of when the season starts. What a team does in the preseason isn’t necessarily a good indicator of what will happen in the regular season, but careful observers can still pull a lot of clues together to get a picture of what is likely. Here are six questions to help you evaluate a running game during training camp: ...
ESPN hates the quarterback rating. They always have. After years of complaining and mocking the statistic every chance they got, they have finally decided to do something about it. Their solution is a bold one - they have created a whole new statistic. Their Total Quarterback Rating, which they have strangely abbreviated as the QBR, is designed to be a far more comprehensive and accurate assessment of what a quarterback is capable of and how they are actually performing. ...
Typically in the NFL there is a rough transition when a new coach joins a team. That new head man has so much to deal with - getting to know the players he has, addressing weaknesses, implementing new systems, changing the philosophy, hiring coordinators, and so on - that it almost always takes a while for the coach to make real progress. Once in a while, though, a coach will hit the ground running and his new team will be dynamic and explosive right out of the gate. Needless to say, being able to spot which coaches have the potential to start ...
Every year in the NFL there seems to be a couple of teams that make dramatic statistical gains in an area in which they really struggled. It could be, for example, that they were really terrible against the pass one year, yet after a couple of games in the new season they are right near the top of the league. Or perhaps a team that couldn’t run if their life depended on it one year is suddenly running like crazy early in the next season. Rapid improvements like that are certainly possible, and often times they endure throughout the whole season ...
It’s hard to know how good or how prepared an NFL team is going to be until the regular season starts. It’s really hard to judge from the preseason what is going to happen - sometimes good teams look great and other times they look lousy, while bad teams can dominate in August. Ultimately, preseason doesn’t count, so different teams approach it in different ways. While it is therefore a bad idea to read too much into what you see in the preseason there are some warning signs that a team could be heading towards a disappointing performance in th ...
Week 17 in the NFL can be a very tough week to bet. There are several different types of games that can be played, and each one is very different. The most exciting, and the easiest to decode from a motivation perspective, is when two teams are playing to determine their playoff fates. A win and your in game usually ensures both teams will go to any length to win. You can have a game in which one team is trying to win to make the playoffs while the other is eliminated from playoff contention or already in and resting starters. You can have a ga ...
NFL Betting is the most popular form of sports wagering in the United States. NFL gambling is in part popular because most of the games happen on one day. This gives the gambler an action filled day by being able to place and collect on all the bets within a span of 12 hours. NFL is also popular for gambling because of the fact of the two tiers of gambling on a Sunday. What I mean by the two tiers is that there are a chunk of early afternoon games followed by late afternoon games. This allows the gambler to either make back some of the money t ...
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How NFL Betting Works The NFL Draft is, as I write this, a month away. There is also a pesky lockout going on, so outside of annoying labor talk and posturing the league is very short on news to get excited about. I can't not think about the NFL right now - especially because free agent speculation and draft preparation would normally be consuming so much time right now. To pass the time, then, I am forced to think about things I normally wouldn't to fill the NFL void. One interesting thing I have been considering is the different types of first round draft picks a ...
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NFL Draft Pick Meanings A parlay or accumulator is a single bet that links together two or more individual wagers and is dependent on all of those wagers winning together. Many experienced bettors will joke and say the parlay is French for "loser". Many professional bettors will stay away from Parlays due to the fact that the odds of hitting parlays are substantially less than what should be paid for these very hard bets. Parlay bets are paid out at odds higher than the typical single game bet, but still below the "true" odds. For instance, a common 2-team parlay mig ...
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NFL Parlay Betting Suicide pools are the easiest form of popular sports betting to win. It's not that they are easy. It's just that most people don't approach them logically. More than any other form of football-related betting activity someone who approaches suicide pools intelligently can have a big edge. When you are setting out to win your next suicide pool here are six things to keep in mind. ...
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NFL Suicide Pools Advice When you really think about it the NFL Combine is a bizarre spectacle - hundreds of older men judge the manliness of half-dressed younger men while millions of other men watch on TV. Regardless, though, the Combine has turned into a very big deal - complete with 30 hours of TV broadcasts and endless media coverage. The importance of the NFL Combine is probably overblown, and it can be more of a distraction than a help for bettors in a lot of ways. There are some ways, though, that paying attention to what's going on in Indianapolis can pay div ...
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