Our NFL Luck Rankings have proven to be a highly successful tool for betting NFL sides and totals.
In the three seasons since we introduced the Luck Rankings, games that met significant thresholds for sides or totals have gone 127-83-4 (60.5%) against closing lines, the hardest lines to beat!
This year, we introduced Version 3.0 of our Luck Rankings as a way to continue to improve the methodology, as well as to simplify the thresholds and give you even better luck metrics.
As part of that, we've introduced something called the "Luck Score." This single number will tell us whether a game has a significant luck factor.
If the Luck Score is 1.454 or higher, we'll consider that a luck-based side. In addition, associated with each Luck Score will be a letter grade and a Luck-Based Cover% (LBC%). Anything with a "D" and up is playable, with expected improved results as we go up the letter-grade scale (from D to A).
Unlucky teams meeting this 1.454 Luck Score and D-rated threshold or better are 146-102-7 against the closing spread over the past seven years. That equates to a 58.9% cover rate when pushes are removed over a sample size greater than 240 games.
In Week 3, the lone unlucky team in one of these games — the New York Jets — covered against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers by 4.5 points, improving Luck Sides to 3-3 ATS on the year, but with the unlucky team covering by an average of 3.7 points over the six games.
Luck Totals also kicked in this past week. Here's a refresher of the new Luck Total criteria:
For Luck Totals, the new criteria is as follows:
- Luck Overs: Luck Total of +1.5 or above
- Luck Unders: Luck Total of -1 or below
However, there are even stronger thresholds for Luck Totals, which we'll call "strong" Luck Overs or Unders:
- Strong Luck Overs: Luck Total of +2.0 or above
- Strong Luck Unders: Luck Total of -1.8 or below
In Week 3, there was one weak Luck Under which went 0-1 to the under, while the two strong Luck Unders went 1-1 to the under, and the strong Luck Over went 1-0 to the over.
Overall, that puts weak Luck Totals at 0-1 and strong Luck Totals at 2-1 on the season.
As a whole, all sides plus strong total bets are 5-4, while all bets including the weak totals are 5-5.
Based on our Week 4 NFL Luck Rankings, there are three sides and six totals that meet the criteria, although only one is a strong Luck Total. Let's dive in.
NFL Luck Rankings Week 4 Games
Week 4 Discussion
There are nine luck-based games, including three sides. Traditionally, luck-based sides have been the strongest in Week 4, going a whopping 15-2 ATS for anything graded D or better. Unlucky teams in these games that were favorites have gone 7-0 ATS, while underdogs are 8-2. Unlucky home teams are 4-1 ATS and unlucky away teams are 11-1 ATS.
That all sounds great until we realize this set of three luck sides is pretty gross. There's a backup QB on one luck side, in another game a backup QB is on the lucky side, and the final luck game features the largest spread of the young season so far.
Yuck.
