Gambling on the NFL is big business, especially after a 2018 Supreme Court decision striking down a federal ban on sports betting. Recent estimates suggest that as many as 46.6 million people will place a bet on the NFL this year, representing nearly one out of every five Americans of legal gambling age. As a result, there's been an explosion in sports betting content, most of which promises to make you a more profitable bettor. Given that backdrop, it can be hard to know who to trust.

Fortunately, you can trust me when I promise that I'm not going to make you a more profitable sports bettor. And neither will any of those other columns. It's essentially impossible for any written column to do so for a number of reasons I'll detail over the year. (I'm not saying it's impossible to be profitable in the long-term by betting on the NFL, just that it's impossible to get there thanks to a weekly picks column.)

This column's animating philosophy is not to make betting more profitable but to make betting more entertaining. And maybe along the way, we can make it a bit less unprofitable in the process, discussing how to find bets where the house's edge is smaller, how to manage your bankroll, and how to dramatically increase your return on investment in any family or office pick pools (because Dave in HR and Sarah in accounting are much softer marks than Caesar's and MGM).

If that sounds interesting to you, feel free to join me as we discuss the weekly Odds and Ends.

Checking In On the Unders

In Week 7, I noted that unders had been hugely profitable so far this season and discussed structural reasons why unders tend to outperform overs (though usually not by enough to beat the vig). I also said I'd track the performance of the unders going forward to see if we could be profitable merely by mass-betting them every week. (My hypothesis was that unders would win somewhere from 50-52% of the time going forward.)

Unders finished 7-8-1 in Week 12, which with the vig resulted in just a hair over 10% in losses. Overall, unders have gone 47-37-3 since we started tracking; if you bet an equal amount on every game (and you saw all the same lines I saw, and all action was at -110), you would have turned a 6.6% profit. At $10 per bet, your total profit to date would be $57.27. If you had instead started with $160 and invested an equal percentage in every bet every week (rolling over your winnings or losses), you'd be up $58.30, or 36% of your starting bankroll.

Let's Talk About Narratives

For most people, betting on football is an act of storytelling. We craft a narrative to explain an outcome and then bet that outcome. I like to lampshade this by picking a preferred narrative every season as a lens through which I analyze the matchups.

Last year, I tracked "revenge games", positing that a given team might be more likely to win because their fourth receiver was facing his third team who he played for five seasons ago. This year, I've been picking Super Bowl* Rematch(es)* of the Week (patent pending), hypothesizing that the outcomes of games from 40 years ago provide extra motivation to players who weren't even born at the time.

These are bad narratives. (Some more obviously bad than others; plenty of bettors genuinely believe in and bet based on revenge narratives, though I don't think anyone else out there is making picks informed by the fact that Earl Morrall once threw three interceptions on 17 attempts against the Jets in 1969.)

There's nothing wrong with this; our purely narrative-driven picks last year went 17-16. So far this year, they're 10-10-1. You're not losing money by betting on games based on half-century-old storylines. (At least, no more money than you'd likely be losing betting on games based on any other factors.) The flip side of the fact that there are no good narratives to inform your betting habits is that there are no bad narratives to inform your betting habits, either.

The problem is that while I'm honest with you and will tell you that all narratives are basically 50/50 bets, others aren't quite as above the board. If you read a lot of gambling columns, you'll hear about things like line movement or reverse line movement ("when the line moves in the direction of one team, bet the other"). You'll hear that all of the "sharp money" (the so-called profitable bettors) are on one side of a bet, and you should get on that side, too. You'll hear about Team X's record against the spread in its last eight primetime games, or Team Y's record against the spread when the temperature is below 40 degrees, or Team Z's record against the spread against teams coming off of games on Thursday Night.

These are all narratives, and they're all bunk. None of them are any more likely to return a profit than our unique almost-patented formula of picking games based on who was good when your grandparents were kids.

(For starters, the idea that the majority of the sharp money is ever on one side of a contest is just objectively wrong. The majority of the sharp money is sitting in reserve at all times, waiting to punish the sportsbooks if they ever publish a bad line. If the books move a good line because they're getting a lot of "square money" on one side, the result wouldn't be a perfectly offsetting amount of "sharp money" on the other side to balance their risk; it would be a flood of "sharp money" coming in trying to make an easier buck. The lines are always good because the consequence of bad lines is untenable.)

Now, to be clear, I'm not saying that "square money" or "reverse line movement" or "performance in last five road games with temperatures below 43 degrees at kickoff" are bad narratives to bet on. The narratives the other guys are pushing are no better or worse than the narratives I'm pushing. If you want to bet against Team Y in cold weather or Team X in primetime, go for it. It's a 50/50 shot. If you want to bet in favor of them to be contrarian, go for that, too. It's still a 50/50 shot. The fact that these narratives are uncorrelated with reality means they won't help you, but they won't hurt you, either. For most of us, betting is just the act of searching for whichever story we find most compelling.

Carl Sagan once wrote, "For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring." Personally, I don't mind a bit of satisfying delusion (I operate this entire column under the premise that I'm being rather clever here), but I figure since it's your money at risk, you should probably know the truth.

Lines I'm Seeing

Super Bowl* Rematch of the Week

Our SB*RotW picks got off to a rough start this season, opening 5-10-1, but they've been on a heater with three perfect weeks in a row to even up the record. That comes at the perfect time as we enter what everyone is calling the Rematchiest Week of the Season.

Arizona (+5.5) vs. Pittsburgh

We kick off the action with a rematch of one of the best (and most unexpected) championship games of all time. As everyone knows, the Cardinals were cursed because the man who bought the team in 1932 retroactively claimed a championship from 1925 that the previous owner disclaimed, though the curse didn't kick off until 1948 because that's just how curses work, I guess. Because of this curse, the Cardinals went 50 years without a playoff win before Jake "The Snake" Plummer beat the Cowboys in 1998. (Everyone knows snakes are immune to curses.)

Then they went another decade without a playoff win until Larry Fitzgerald decided he was going to cash in his last wish to become the best football player who ever lived for a month days. (He was so good from January 1st to February 1st of 2009 that I'm just assuming a genie had to be involved somehow. He averaged 7.5/137/2 over four playoff games, topping at least 100 yards and 1 touchdown in each outing.) And on the back of that Herculean performance, the Cardinals earned the right to face the most storied franchise in Super Bowl history.

The game itself was a back-and-forth affair with plenty of highlights, including the longest interception return touchdown in Super Bowl history (100 yards by James Harrison), a safety, and both teams trading go-ahead touchdowns in the final three minutes. One of those touchdowns went to Fitzgerald (of course), but while receivers can help a team go ahead, they're no help when it comes to staying ahead, and Pittsburgh ultimately prevailed.

It's unclear whether this playoff run ended the curse or if the curse is still active. Ask me in 50 years, and I'll tell you for sure. Curses only work in the playoffs, though, so in the regular season, I'll take Arizona and the 5.5 points.

Washington (+9.5) vs Miami

Washington and Miami have faced each other in two Super Bowls and both worked out tremendously for the Dolphins. The first came at the end of a 13-0 season as Miami became the only undefeated team in modern NFL history. In the second, Washington staged a 4th-quarter comeback to win 27-17. ("Wait, I thought you said both Super Bowls worked out well for the Dolphins?" Yes, the struggles of quarterback David Woodley in the championship convinced the team they needed help at quarterback and the loss gave them the pick they needed to catch Dan Marino when he fell in the subsequent draft.)

Since everything has gone the Dolphins' way in these matchups, I think the universe will try to balance the scales toward the Commanders. Maybe not enough for Washington to win outright (after all, they did get a Super Bowl out of the series), but at least enough to cover the 9.5-point spread.

Los Angeles Rams (-3.5) vs. Cleveland

Those of us who spend a good portion of our time arguing that Norm Van Brocklin was criminally underrated relative to Otto Graham have had this game circled on the calendar all season. When the Browns joined the NFL in 1950, they had few real rivals; mostly Bobby Layne's Detroit Lions and Van Brocklin's Los Angeles Rams. Cleveland beat Los Angeles on a game-winning field goal to take the first championship after the NFL/AAFC "merger". Los Angeles beat Cleveland the next year to take the second. The teams met one last time in 1955 where Cleveland took the rubber match (thanks in no small part to seven interceptions from the Rams, six from Van Brocklin).

Given that history, I think Los Angeles is due. Give me the Rams, and I'll lay the points.

Kansas City (-6) at Green Bay

One could argue that this game represents the quintessential Super Bowl rematch; Kansas City and Green Bay contested the very first Super Bowl ever played. (The problem, of course, is that the game wouldn't officially come to be called the Super Bowl until two years later; promotional materials at the time billed it as the First AFL-NFL Championship Game, though contemporaneous broadcasts had already started using the term.) Green Bay rolled over Kansas City, winning 35-10 and cementing the existing belief that the AFL wasn't ready to compete with the best of the NFL. (This belief would only last two seasons until the Jets and Chiefs shocked the world in Super Bowls III and IV.)

(One fun bit of trivia is that because both leagues' broadcast rights were owned by different networks, this was the only championship game ever simulcast live. It will only hold that distinction for a few more months; the upcoming Super Bowl will be broadcast on both CBS and Nickelodeon.)

Surely, everyone in Kansas City remembers the disrespect they were given when the leagues began to merge. I think the Chiefs are not only going to win, but they're going to want to run up the score to remind everyone that they can hang with anyone, even the Packers.

(An aside: between the time I created the chart for lines I was seeing and the time I wrote this section, the line moved to Kansas City -5.5. I'm sticking with the original -6 because that's the way betting columns work. I often say that the lines you see will be different than the lines I see. Sometimes, even the lines I see are different from the lines I see.)

PEX Pipe Lock of the Week

A loss last week brings the PPLotW's record to 5-3; the random number generator needs to shape up here or another name change might be in store. (I'm not too worried about it-- there are lots of different types of pipe.)

Atlanta (-2) at NY Jets

The random number generator wanted a piece of the game with the lowest total of the week. Two points might not seem like a lot to give, but when the game total is only 33.5, it's not trivial. Then again, against the 2023 Jets offense, a 2-point lead is fairly close to insurmountable. I'll let embattled Jets fan Chase Stuart play us out.

The Jets are the first team since the 2018 Bills to fail to score 14 points in 5 consecutive games.

— Football Perspective (@fbgchase) November 24, 2023

Teams in the last 25 NFL seasons to score only 10 offensive TDs through 11 games:

2023 Jets
2009 Raiders
2009 Browns
2006 Raiders
2000 Bengals

— Football Perspective (@fbgchase) November 24, 2023

Here's how many points each team has scored over their last 17 games.

The Jets have scored 44 fewer points than every other team in the NFL. pic.twitter.com/M1FZlYJCjM

— Football Perspective (@fbgchase) November 25, 2023

The Jets are currently averaging an anemic 4.34 net yards per pass attempt this season -- and that's before playing games in December and January!

That mark is the 2nd worst in franchise history, ahead of only the 1976 Jets who played in the dead ball era.

— Football Perspective (@fbgchase) November 26, 2023