Rabid Porcupine: Your guide to picking more NFL games correclty against the spread.

What is the Over / Under (NFL)?

The over / under is a simple bet in the NFL. All you need to do is add up the final score and if this number is greater than the line in the paper then the game went over. If this number is less than the line in the paper then the game went under.

For example: Let’s suppose the New Orleans Saints are playing the Atlanta Falcons and the bookies determined that the over / under for this NFL game is 47 points. The Saint’s offense is red hot so you think that both of these teams combined can score more than 47 points so you bet on the over. The Saints kick a field goal in overtime (overtime does count for over / under bets) to beat the Falcons 26-23. Well 26+23=49 points so this game went over and you won your bet.

What if we add up the points and the total equals the line. Let’s pretend that the outcome of our game above was Saints 24, Falcons 23. If we total these two scores we get 47 points which is exactly the point spread the bookies have for this over / under. In this situation the bet is a tie and everybody gets their money back.

Is it better to bet the over or the under in the NFL?

Let’s take a quick look at the over/under (NFL) in 2008. There were 4 games that pushed last year on the over / under, so out of 263 total games the over was good 130 times or 49.4% and the under was good 133 times or 50.6%. So basically betting on the over / under is a coin toss. There is no human bias one way or the other.

Graph of over under for the NFL
The number across the bottom is the number of games played.
The number to the left is a percentage of times the over covered in 2008.

As the graph shows there was a brief time when betting the over was hitting more than 55% of the time but as the season continued on the percentage dropped back to near 50%.

So what does this tell us for 2009? There is no statistical advantage to betting the over / under what so ever.

How about certain teams? Do some teams go over / under in the NFL more than other?

Yes! Last year was very fascinating and there were three teams in particular that you would have made a nice profit on if you bet the over / under.

First there was the Washington Redskins that won 13 games and lost 3 versus the under in 2008.

Second there was the Arizona Cardinals that was 9-1 versus the over at home in 2008.

Third was the Baltimore Ravens that was 7-1 versus the under at home in 2008.

Where can I get this information for this year?

At www.RabidPorcupine.com we calculate over / under stats for every team in the NFL every week. Not only do we have over / under stats but we also have the records for each NFL team versus the spread at home and on the road and much more.