NFL Week 1 Betting Market Unusually Fond of Unders

NFL Week 1 Betting Market Unusually Fond of Unders article feature image
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Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports. Pictured: Jalen Ramsey

  • Historically, more than 85% of NFL games receive the majority of bets on the over.
  • In Week 1, 10 games are getting the majority on the under, which is about five times more than usual.
  • Seven of those 10 are receiving more than 60%, and four are getting more than 70%.

All odds and percentages as of Tuesday at 3:30 p.m. ET

While perusing over/unders and betting-market percentages earlier today, I noticed something odd. Generally speaking, most folks love points and understandably love taking overs.

There are 3,840 NFL regular-season games in our database. Here's how the betting market has looked:

  • Overs getting 70+%: 1350 times (35.2%)
  • Overs getting 60+%: 2596 times (67.6%)
  • Overs getting 51+%: 3289 times (85.7%)
  • Unders getting 51+%: 443 times (11.5%)
  • Unders getting 60+%: 128 times (3.3%)
  • Unders getting 70+%: 30 times (0.8%)

Overs get the majority of the bets nearly 86% of the time. So in a normal week, you'd expect to see two or three games in which the over does not have the majority of bets. Meanwhile, popular unders are a rare occasion, especially those getting 60%-70% or more of bets.

That's why I was pretty darned surprised to see this week's betting percentages, which are pretty mature considering how long they've been out.


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TEN games are currently receiving the majority of bets on the under and ZERO overs are getting more than 55%. Quite an oddity.

And we're not just talking a bunch of unders getting 52% of bets or something like that. There are seven unders getting more than 60% of bets, and four of them are exceeding 70%.

Mind-boggling to say the least.

This is especially interesting considering the plethora of high-scoring games this preseason due to the new helmet rule. For more on the impact that will have on over/unders, check out P.J. Walsh's breakdown with former NFL lineman Geoff Schwartz.

As he notes, unders have fared well in Week 1 historically, but not to such an extreme extent that result in crazy percentages such as this.

I do expect the percentages to drop a bit as we push toward Sunday, but we'll definitely end up with more public unders than expected.



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