table{border-collapse:collapse;}td{padding:2px;}

The article below is a portion of our NFL Futures analysis which is exclusive to Winner’s Edge Members. Sign up for Winner’s Edge to get access to the full article and future updates.

My wife has a conference in Vegas and I decided to tag along to make a few Futures bets in the NFL and College Football. I don’t have the Vegas Casino lines in front of me so I’m going to rely on a set of online sportsbook lines to make picks.

TOO MUCH JUICE ON CONFERENCE AND SUPER BOWL WINNER BETS

The first thing I’m going to do is NOT bet on who will win the AFC or NFC. I translated the betting lines for each team into the % chance Vegas is giving each team to win the conference. If you add up the individual percentages you end up over 150 percent in each conference. If the Sportsbooks were offering fair odds the percentages would add up to maybe 115% or 120% at most. There is not a single good bet on the board when you consider these lines. The same thing goes on Super Bowl bets where the total % chance of all teams in the league is 163.1%.

MY DIVISION WINNER BETS

The Division Winner juice is acceptable. If you add up the % chance Vegas gives each team you get a shade over 120% which is reasonable. I took the percentages and adjusted them to add up to 100% (%Adj Column) and also took AccuScore’s % chance each team has of winning the division as of 8/1. Highlighted in yellow are 3 AFC teams with an Acc% that is actually higher than not only the %Adj, but also the overall %Chance with the vig.

One of the three picks I like is Baltimore. The Ravens are a little bit of a long-shot as Pittsburgh is favored to repeat by both Vegas odds-makers and AccuScore. However, with Derrick Mason un-retiring and Joe Flacco playing with one year of experience under his belt I agree with AccuScore simulations that Baltimore has around a 40% chance of winning the AFC North. The Baltimore bet is a long shot compared to the other 2 bets, but I like a 42% chance of making 180% ROI. If I were nearing retirement I would not risk my 401K on this, but a hundred bucks on my favorite team at nearly 2 to 1? I’ll take that.

AFC NORTH Open %Chance %Adj Acc% Pittsburgh 5/7 58.3% 48.1% 53% Baltimore 9/5 35.7% 29.4% 42% Cleveland 5/1 16.7% 13.7% 2% Cincinnati 9/1 10.0% 8.2% 3%

WIN TOTALS

The analysis below is highly tentative because I don’t know what the juice is on the over/under. A bet like St. Louis under 5.0 may look good based on the -1.2 difference between AccuScore’s simulation average win total and the betting line, but what if you have to pay -135 on the under vs +130 on the over?

I identified the teams where the AccuScore simulation average win total was at least 0.5 points less than the betting line and highlighted a few teams that I personally like. I like the Under on Houston because they are in such a competitive division (Colts, Titans, Jaguars are one season removed from being in the AFC Championship game) and to lose the under bet they would need to win 9+ games. In AccuScore simulations they are only winning over 50% in 7 of their 16 games.