1) Over / Under LINE RANGES
From Victor King / King Creole Sports
Welcome
back boys! When last we spoke, KING CREOLE was off a 4**** Best Bet
WINNER on the NEW ORLEANS SAINTS plus the points in the 2010 Super Bowl.
Now it’s time to get back to work! You’ll notice that just like in last
season’s issue #1 of the Playbook football newsletter, the anchor for our 2010 Pre-Season
preview is the OU line range chart listed on thie bottom of this page. What I’ve done
is to break down all NFL pre-season Over / Under results based on each
different closing OU
line in the last ten seasons (the actual line at kick off). Some of the
results are not too revealing. But there’s a handful of OU line ranges
that have resulted in pretty predictable final scores. NFL Over / Under
lines in exhibition games have been as low as 30 points… and as high as
46 points in the last nine seasons. And our chart breaks down into the
following four categories: Total (or overall) OU results…. Home FAVORITE
OU results… Home UNDERDOG OU results… and the ‘Most Recent Trend’ (or
MRT) in each particular OU line. Please remember that these results are
not ATS results. They are Over / Under results with OVERS always listed
first and UNDERS always listed second. Our very first NFL pre-season
Over/Under rule is:
Pre-season home UNDERDOGS will usually result in an “UNDER”-whelming outcome!
Since
the 2001 season, NFL ‘X’ games in which the home team is an UNDERDOG
(or ‘pick em) have gone a very impressive 32-67-3 O/U overall.
Regardless of the OU line, these pre-season home dogs have gone Under
68% of the time! The most profitable Under results have been in the very
first week of Exhibition play…. Or the very last week. Here’s your
breakdown of that overall figure based on each week of the Pre-Season: GAME ONE Home Dogs (or pick em) have gone 6-17
O/U (74% Under). GAME TWO Home Dogs (or pick em) have gone 7-14-2 O/U
(67%). GAME THREE Home Dogs (or pick em) have gone 14-19 O/U (58%). GAME
FOUR Home Dogs (or pick em) have gone 4-12-1 O/U (75%). And GAME FIVE
Home Dogs (or pick em) have gone 1-5 O/U (83%). So the most consistent
Under results have occurred in Games One, Four, and Five (11-34-1 O/U /
76%).
Another
aspect of NFL Exhibition home underdogs is trying to understand the
following question: What is the reason or motivation for the odds makers
to make a team a road favorite or home underdog in the first place? One
Explanation would have to be that a team is priced as a home underdog
in Exhibition play if they are playing off a loss in the previous week…
or multiple losses in a row. So with that in mind, here’s another query I
ran in the Playbook Pre-Season database in regards to home underdogs:
10-25-2
O/U for all Game 2 > home dogs playing off a SU loss (71%)…. 2-9 O/U
for all Game 3 > home dogs playing off 2 or more losses in a row
(82%)…. And 0-3 O/U for all Game 4 > home dogs playing off 3 or more
losses in a row (100%). From this query, our conclusion is that UNDER
results are more predictable and consistent with each consecutive
Pre-Season loss.
The
bottom ‘line’ (pun intended) is to NEVER play a pre-season game to go
“OVER” when the home team is an underdog or the line is ‘pick em.
Play a pre-season game “OVER the TOTAL” when the OU line is 34.5 to 36 points!
The
way that we have broken down our pre-season chart is by each different
individual Over / Under line. The nice thing is that we can lump a few
different lines together to come up with a solid ‘line range’ result.
And that’s the case here. In our ‘what have you done for me LATELY’
query, we note that the most recent patterns for these OU lines have
gone 34-14-1 in the last three seasons. That’s all NFL Exhibition home
favorites of -1.5 > points with an OU line in the range of 34.5 to 36
points. Here’s the breakdown by individual OU Line: 7-1 O/U for 34.5…
9-6-1 O/U for 35.0… 9-2 O/U for 35.5… and 9-5 O/U for 36. Add ‘em all together and you get 71% for the Over in the last three seasons.
A higher-than-normal OU LINE is usually justified by an “OVER” result!
In
this query, we’ll take a look at some of the higher OU lines in an NFL
pre-season game. The MRT tells us not to ‘fall for the hype’….. but
there IS an exception if the OU line is REALLY high. We’ll focus our
attention on the OU line range of 41.5 or more points. In a regular
season game, an OU line of 41.5 points is just about average these days.
However, in NFL Exhibition play, the average OU line is somewhere in
the 34 to 35 point range. So a line of 41.5 or more is just about a full
touchdown higher than the ‘norm’. A line that high is what the lines
makers would consider to be a Pre-Season ‘shootout’… equivalent to a
regular season game with an OU line of 49 or more points. So let’s run
the query for NFL ‘X” games with an OU line of 41.5 or higher points. In
the last five seasons, these games have hit at a surprising OVER
percentage of 72% (13-5 O/U overall). The average OU lines in these
games has been 42.5 points. And the actual scoring average in these 18
games has been 48.4 points. That’s an OVER ‘cushion’ of +5.9 PPG. And on
a final note, if the home team is favored by less than (<) 6 points
in these ‘expected shootouts’, the results improve to an impressive 13-2
O/U. Last season, these games averaged a whopping 54.8 PPG!
2) PRE-SEASON Week-by-Week OU TEAM TENDENCIES
Week One
Atlanta 5-0 O/U… Chicago 5-0 O/U… Carolina 5-1 O/U.
New Orleans 0-4 O/U… Pittsburgh 0-4 O/U… Green Bay 1-8 O/U… Arizona 1-6 O/U… Cleveland 1-6 O/U… Buffalo 1-5 O/U… Baltimore 2-9 O/U.
Week Two
Green
Bay 4-0 O/U… Indianapolis 4-0 O/U… Seattle 4-0 O/U… Houston 6-1 O/U…
Carolina 5-1 O/U… San Francisco 4-1 O/U… Tampa Bay 4-1 O/U… Tennessee
4-1 O/U.
Kansas City 1-7 O/U… Atlanta 1-4 O/U… Pittsburgh 1-4 O/U.
Week Three
Chicago 7-1 O/U… Cincinnati 5-1 O/U… Philadelphia 5-1 O/U… Atlanta 7-2 O/U.
Oakland 1-8 O/U… Pittsburgh 1-6 O/U…… Miami 1-5 O/U… NY Jets 1-5 O/U.
Week Four
Green Bay 4-0 O/U… NY Jets 5-1 O/U… Seattle 5-1 O/U… Jacksonville 4-1 O/U… Tennessee 4-1 O/U… Washington 4-1 O/U.
Buffalo
1-10 O/U… Atlanta 1-6 O/U… Chicago 1-5 O/U… Cincinnati 1-5 O/U…
Cleveland 1-5 O/U… Detroit 1-5 O/U… New Orleans 1-5 O/U… Baltimore 1-4
O/U.
3) PRE-SEASON Series History OU PATTERNS
Arizona vs Chicago: 3-0 O/U (42.3 combined PPG)
Atlanta vs Jacksonville: 4-1 O/U (38.2)
Baltimore vs Washington: 1-4 O/U (24.4)
Buffalo vs Cincinnati: 3-1 O/U (46.7)
Buffalo vs Detroit: 1-5 O/U (28.3)
Carolina vs Pittsburgh: 1-4-1 O/U (30.4)
Chicago vs Cleveland: 1-6 O/U (30.1)
Cincinnati vs Indianapolis: 1-5 O/U (31.5)
Detroit vs Pittsburgh: 3-0 O/U (47.6)
Jacksonville vs Tampa Bay: 5-1 O/U (40.2)
Miami vs Tampa Bay: 1-5 O/U (29.8)
Minnesota vs Seattle: 4-0 O/U (43.0)
NY Giants vs New England: 3-1 O/U (49.8)
NY Giants vs NY Jets: 1-8 O/U (30.2)
NY Jets vs Philadelphia: 5-1 O/U (46.5)
Oakland vs Seattle: 3-1 O/U (40.3)
4) King’s PRE-SEASON Over / Under BEST BET
3*** OVER the TOTAL / Philadelphia Eagles @ CINCINNATI BENGALS / Friday, August 20th
This will be Cincinnati’s 3rd
game of the 2010 pre-season. But for the Eagles, it’s actually Game #2
(Cincy gets an extra game as they start the year with a Hall-of-Fame
date with the Dallas Cowboys). So with an added game under their belts,
this one is the ‘tune up’ for the Bengals. And it’s the first
situational System that I queried in our Playbook NFL database. 7-1 O/U
since 2001: All NFL ‘X’ Game 3 HOME teams (Cincy) versus an opponent
playing Game 2 (Philly). The Bengals are also off a home game vs the
Broncos. 4-0 O/U since 2000: NFL ‘X’ Game 3 teams playing in the 2nd
of BB home games…. If they also played in the Hall-of-Fame game
(Cincy). Speaking of previous opponents, we also note that NFL ‘X’ home
teams have gone 5-0 O/U in the last 3 years AFTER playing the Denver Broncos (Cincy). A look at this particular Day of the Week also points us in the right direction. 7-1 O/U last 3 years: All NFL ‘X’ Game 3 teams playing on a FRIDAY. On the Philadelphia side, this will be the first of back-to-back road games for the Eagles. 13-1 O/U since 2001: All NFL ‘X’ Game 2 teams playing in the FIRST of BB road games (Philly). The 2nd
pre-season game has always been an important one for Andy Reid of the
Eagles. For you ATS fans, we note that Philly has gone 9-1-1 ATS in Game
2 over the last 11 seasons. They have scored 20 or more points SIX
times in the last 7 years. And we note that PHILLY has gone a perfect 6-0 O/U
in Games 2 and 3 of the pre-season in the last 3 years. The clincher to
this Best Bet is the fact that the Bengals have gone a perfect 5-0 O/U as pre-season favorites against a NFC opponent in the last 4 years.
Every
week thru the Super Bowl, King Creole will keep you posted with
year-to-date OU results for all teams in the NFL. If you’re into
‘TOTALS’ wagering, there’s only ONE publication in the entire country
that is devoted entirely up to NFL Over / Unders. And that’s the
Playbook TOTALS TIPSHEET! Delivered to your email address EVERY Tuesday
afternoon throughout the course of the season. 17 issues are yours for
the full-season price of just $99.00. Call the Playbook offices (800-321-7777) to grab
your seat on King Creole’s 2010 ‘Totals Train’!