How to Start Choosing the Right NFL Team

The National Football League (NFL) is considered the top professional sport to bet money on in the United States. The expertise to place profitable NFL picks is a skill set that football fans deeply desire.

Having the ability to not only relax on a Sunday afternoon with friends and family, watching touchdowns get exchanged between favorite teams but to also multiply your spending cash for that week makes those games all the more exciting—because you have something riding on it.

NFL betting has gained quite a bit of its popularity because the annual seasons are shorter compared to MLB baseball, NBA basketball, and NHL hockey.

For starters, with the limited regular-season schedule, each NFL competition holds that much more weight. There are only 17 games for NFL players to engage in the regular season.

Players are instantly beincetivized to win each game because every single loss becomes that much more of a detriment towards a team’s probability of making it to the playoffs, or even the Super Bowl for that matter.

Any week of football games offers betters the opportunity to make 32 wagers after you consider the point spreads (that are in the three- to the six-point range) and over and under bets that you can strategize with.

Assuming that you already understand how the game of football is played and you have a healthy understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of any team you are betting on or better against, it is time to take the next steps forward to start winning with the right NFL picks.

Teams Rarely Go Undefeated

Maybe your favorite team is already off to an incredible start this season and has miraculously racked up seven victories straight, without a single loss to tarnish their record this year.

But before you start assuming that their success is on autopilot, keep in mind that the likelihood of an NFL football team remaining flawless is incredibly rare.

Even If the undefeated team looks like they can’t lose, you need to start sizing up the teams that they are coming up against and figure out which squad may be most likely to knock them down and take a win away from them.

They could easily take a fall to a tough team with something to prove after losing a few games. What if the winning team took them for granted?

Injury Reports

Football is the definition of a team game. Therefore, any minute small alterations can throw off the whole collective effort. If there are members of the roster that were recently injured, you need to take them into consideration when betting on this team.

Also, make sure you are aware of players that have missed out on practice during the week and what role they will play on their team come game day.

If the team injury reports are coming across a little too vague, seek deeper details by checking the Twitter accounts of those that cover the teams you are betting on.

Don’t Just Depend on Trends

Following the trends in the NFL, game betting isn’t a horrible idea. But just because a team had a wickedly high-scoring game the previous week doesn’t mean that their offense is unbeatable this week.

Study up on how the points were scored. Were they truly earned by the offense, or did the defense just fall about on most occasions that a touchdown was made?

The most clever NFL game bettors will compare and contrast both teams, how they interacted with their teammates and how they were interrupted by their competitors. To understand the total context of the game.

Early Point Spreading

Early point spreads tend to be less intense when wagers are placed on Sunday night or even Monday morning a week before the game is set to be played.

But as the date gets closer and closer to game day, the odds tighten. This leads to changes in the spread, which can be as much as a point or two.

This then leads to betting bookies gaining clarity on just how big the spread should be, which gives them the advantage.

Let’s not forget that point spreads can be artificially adjusted to push bets in the direction of the team that is being under-bet. In these instances, you may want to back away from this action.

It is very common for injuries to players to disrupt just how attractive an NFL pick may look on the gambling front this week.

Pay Attention to Defense

People tend to get so caught up in who is doing the most scoring that they lose track of the fact that a strong defense can win games as well.

To-notch defenses can create serious drama for even dynamic offensive players’ efforts.

The same can occur if the opposite takes place and a riveting offense zooms past the defense and has their way with the endzone that week, creating magic on the scoreboard.

Monitor the Lines During the Week

Monitoring the betting lines during the course of the week is a huge part of making the most of your chances when placing wagers. Some online books could offer favorable NFL odds. But the odds could change as the week progresses.

Sure, the most popular teams like the New England Patriots, Dallas Cowboys, and the Pittsburgh Steelers have a loyal fanbase and have diehard supporters that place bets on them out of love, making these teams look heavily favored more than the statistics say they should be.

If you are betting against these public teams, make sure that you wait for the emotional bettors to push line movement in your favor.

Conclusion

The strategies we have been talking about are a well-rounded basis for waging your bets this football season, but they only will be as good as the amount of time and research that you commit to making them worthwhile to you.