It’s finally that month of the year, and the NFL has officially announced its regular season schedule. As the day of the kickoff nears, both new and veteran bettors are in action to improve their chances of winning the NFL bets this season. However, if you’re unsure of how to enhance your strategy, here are six tips you can look into.
Trust the Numbers, Not Your Heart
If you’ve been an NFL fan, it’s natural to have your favorite teams and support them. However, when you’re betting on football games, it’s important to remember that you’re wagering with real money. Thus, it would help if you are serious and rational about how you place your bets.
One of the most popular rookie mistakes is when bettors start to bet with their emotions. The attachment to their favorite teams and their personal biases aren’t something some people can easily ignore.
When placing NFL bets, you must trust the numbers to improve your chances of winning. Get rid of your feelings and start analyzing the record and statistics. Trust what your data says and make sense of what you have. You don’t need a complicated mathematical strategy, but trusting the numbers and your common sense can bring you far.
Understand the Context of the Trend
When looking through the team’s stats and information, you should note the reason behind their trend. When you discover a pattern of their performances, it’s easy to get swayed off, especially after it has happened several times.
To explain simply, just because a team had a bad week (or weeks) doesn’t mean that everyone on the roster is doing badly or that their offense is getting chaotic. Instead, carefully study what could have possibly caused their lousy performance.
Take notice if any players may have fallen, or maybe they’re just playing against a powerful team. Nevertheless, always remember that a team’s performance can be affected by several factors, and to improve your chances of winning, looking into the context behind the numbers you’re dealing with will help you further understand and foresee their future games.
Always Check the Morning Injury Reports
One habit you should get started today is waiting for the daily news updates in the morning. Since football is a team game, a single player’s absence or an injury causes a significant blow to their performance. Reports regarding injuries are then broadcasted or published in the morning, and odds heavily shift during this time.
Moreover, reports can be vague, especially if it happened a few hours back. So, you should continue researching various online platforms to scavenge more updates. Also, ensure you have a list of players who have missed their team practice during the week, especially now that the kickoff is nearing. In doing so, you can reconsider your bets and arrange your strategies.
Additionally, you should take into account their overall health. This means that you should think about their past injuries and the number of games they missed in the past seasons. An injury doesn’t heal overnight, and it takes months, even years, for some. You might discover a trend in their health stats and use it to your advantage.
Visit Several Sportsbook for the Best Odds
If you’re just starting, the best way to start your NFL betting journey is to find the best sportsbook. A sportsbook is where you can wager your bets and earn your winnings. As such, you must find a sportsbook that offers the best odds.
For instance, one site presents +120 on a team, but a different site offers +123. You might think that the difference doesn’t matter, but this can add up over time, and you’ll be surprised to know that you missed your chance to increase your earnings.
Thus, it’s recommended for all bettors to take their time finding a sportsbook before signing up. While at it, ensure that the sportsbook site has a license to regulate a gambling site. You can find suggestions in online gambling communities and start from there.
Don’t Be Tempted With Value
In NFL betting, the teams are presented with positive or negative signs beside their odds. The odds determine the money you need to wager to win a particular amount.
For favorites, they’re presented with a negative sign, and the figure determines the amount of money you need to wager to earn $100. Meanwhile, underdogs are presented with positive signs, and their odds refer to the amount of money you can win if you bet $100.
If you study the odds, the figures in underdogs usually reach up to four digits. As tempting as it can be, you should first carefully consider why they’re underdogs in the first place. Try to think about the reason why their odds are the way they are. No matter how tempting their value can be, you must always be rational about placing your wagers.
Always Track Your Bets
Most importantly, it would help you more if you keep track of all your betting activities. Doing so will allow you to determine whether your betting strategy works and whether your research helped.
Although sports betting, in general, can be a game of chance, it doesn’t necessarily mean there’s nothing else you can do. Keeping track of your results will allow you to improve your following betting performance and have an edge over other bettors.
This process might take a while, but since you’re dealing with real money, you should take every chance to be really careful. Fortunately, there are available techniques that you can find online, but the best way to track is whatever suits you best.
Final Thoughts
At the end of this article, you probably already have an idea or two on how you can improve your NFL betting strategy. Since there’s still time before the regular season officially commences, you can take this chance to fix a few edges on your betting game. As such, you can hope for a better chance of winning your initial games. So, take notes from this article and improve your odds of winning.