Root for no touchdowns!
At the almost-quarter mark of the NFL season (moving to a 17-game schedule last year really messed up the nice, clean arithmetic) things are already weird. The Philadelphia Eagles are undefeated, the New York Giants and Miami Dolphins are 3-1, and the Jacksonville Jaguars look…decent? Tua Tagovailoa and Geno Smith are first and third in passer rating, while Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers have underwhelmed. Survivor pools, fantasy football, and betting have all been a bit unpredictable. So let’s have a little fun today and look at some of the more interesting happenings on the football betting front from over weekend.
According to ESPN’s David Purdum, one of the most unusually popular NFL bets was a prop bet on, of all players, Daniel Carlson, the kicker for the so far disappointing Las Vegas Raiders. Sportsbooks had his field goals made over/under at 1.5 in the matchup against the Denver Broncos. For some reason, Caesars and BetMGM both took about 500 bets on that specific, unexciting prop.
Well, there was a reason. Purdum reports that a New Jersey sports bettor, podcaster, and writer named Ducky specialized in odd player prop bets, and specifically enjoys finding good kicker bets. Saturday evening, posted his recommendation that people should be the over on Carlson and because his Bearded Bettors podcast and Duck Pond blog have a solid following, his listeners/readers jumped on it.
Ducky’s reasoning: the Raiders had attempted at least two field goals in each of the team’s first three games and the Broncos had the best red zone defense. And he was right. Carlson made four field goals, nailing the over.
Eric Fenstermaker, senior trading manager for Caesars Sportsbook, said that bettors are going with player props much more than they used to, so books spend a lot of time monitoring them. The Carlson prop, while popular, involved mostly small bets, so the books didn’t bother messing with the line.
Can’t win ’em all
The public did well this weekend, giving many sportsbooks their first losing NFL weekend of the season. The worst games for the books were the Raiders covering against the Broncos, the Dallas Cowboys covering against the Washington Commanders, and the Arizona Cardinals covering against the Carolina Panthers.
My Green Bay Packers moved to 3-1, but have been quite shaky to start the season. It took them to the very end of overtime to beat the New England Patriots and their third-string quarterback by a field goal. That one was good the sportsbooks, as the public did not think the Patriots would keep it close and cover the spread.
Along with that, the public went heavy on Aaron Rodgers to throw more than 1.5 touchdown passes. He did, throwing two and becoming just the fifth NFL quarterback to throw 500 touchdowns in his career. According to Purdum, PointsBet took just one wager on the Rodgers under.
One over I would have hammered if I lived in a state with legal sports betting was the Buffalo Bill’s Josh Allen and 1.5 passing touchdowns against the Baltimore Ravens. The Ravens’ defense has been terrible and Allen is really, really good, so I would have won that easily. Whoops, no I wouldn’t have. He only threw one TD. I’m really smart.