The regular season was a mixed bag for the NFL Luck Rankings.
- Unlucky teams in Luck Matchups that met one of our three criteria were 26-22 (54.2%) against the spread (ATS).
- Luck Totals, however, went just 22-23 (48.9%).
That means luck-based sides had their third profitable regular season out of four since I started the Luck Rankings in 2022. Totals, on the other hand, had their first unprofitable regular season in those same four years.
Thankfully, the Luck Rankings have also been effective betting sides and totals in the playoffs. Of course, you must always consider factors other than just the Luck Rankings, but they're a great place to start when handicapping playoff totals.
Luck Rankings Playoff Trends
Luck Sides
We don't have a huge sample of luck-based sides, but any side meeting our 1.454 Luck Score criteria has gone 7-4 (63.6%) ATS, which would fit the general larger trends of the Luck Rankings, which are 169-121-7 (58.3%) ATS since 2018.
Luck Totals
The main trend to worry about in the postseason is around Luck Totals.
Luck Totals have proven to be effective in betting on playoff totals. In seven years, since 2018 (87 games), there has been a moderately statistically significant correlation between the magnitude of the normalized Luck Total and the probability of the game going over or under its closing total.
In the image above, as an example, you see that based on those 87 games, the crosshairs show that a game with a normalized Luck Total (nLT) of -1.5 has historically had about a 60% chance of staying under the closing total. We can slide the reference lines to the left or right along the blue line. Sliding to the right means a higher probability of going over the closing total, which corresponds with a positive nLT. Sliding to the left correlates with a higher probability of staying under the closing totals.
Using that data, we can break down Luck Totals into the following bins over the last six years.
- Totals with a nLT > 0 are 19-12-1 (61.3%) to the over.
- Totals with a nLT < 0 are 34-21 (61.8%) to the under.
- That makes luck-based totals 53-33-1 (61.6%) overall in the playoffs.
One extra note, totals with a nLT < -0.75 are even stronger unders, going 20-8 (71.4%) to the under, which are the ones I'll really focus on for this piece.
These are predictive results since the Luck Totals stem from regular-season data (and any subsequent rounds of the playoffs) that are then used to "predict" whether the game will go over or under the closing total.
Wild Card Weekend Luck Rankings Games
For this year's Wild Card Weekend, three of the six games meet our season-long luck-based thresholds: one side and two totals.
