Wednesday, 8 February 2012
While many NFL football proposition bets are pure sideshow-type bets made only for fun, i.e. the famous “coin toss” prop, other markets can actually provide some decent opportunities – if you’re willing to do a bit of research.
Elsewhere on JackpotFinder, we advised would-be punters on some strategy regarding the popular “Which team will score first?” proposition offerings; this piece will take a look at another typical NFL prop bets offered at most reputable online sportsbooks, the “Will the first score be a touchdown, field goal or safety?” proposition for NFL football betting.
The first obvious step before investing in this proposition bet would be to learn the basic ratios. Picking a recent NFL season at random and therefore looking at numbers for 2008, we find the frequency of each score to be the following.
Touchdown: 1,225 (57.9%)
Field goal: 870 (41.1%)
Safety: 21 (<1%)
So at face value, the odds offered on this prop in an average game would be somewhere around 11/6, 11/4 and 1,000/1 for touchdown, field goal and safety, respectively, if figuring straightforward probability plus the 10% juice most online sportsbooks charge. But even beyond considering the specific teams involved in a given game, the numbers need to be adjusted slightly to account for the fact that more field goals occur at the end of halves, particularly the first.
Most estimates put the frequency of field goals as the last score of the first half at 50%; we’ll also use this nice round number. At 2,116 scores in 256 regular-season games, that’s just about 8.25 scores per game, further breaking down into about 4.75 touchdowns and 3.5 field goals in the average NFL match (or, put another way, the average over/under would be 43.75.
However, with the adjusted statistics, the odds of the first score being a touchdown rises to over 73%, meaning that 3/2 would be a typical offering in this prop. Anything too derivative from this line (say by 15% or more) is worth a look, for something appears to be amiss. Note though that an extreme line in this prop may be simply due to porous defenses or weak offenses: In the 2008 season example cited above, the bottom quarter of teams managed a combined 200 touchdowns, 194 field goals and five safeties, or just 3.1 scores per team per game and a TD-to-FG ratio skewed by 10% or so. While knowing the basic odds are good, as ever, the specifics must be known to play the “Which team will score first?”
Remember, too, that the 50% probability of a field goal on the half’s last scoring possession is a valuable weapon in live in-game betting, should you be playing that.
