Freedman: Why I’m Parlaying All the XFL Week 1 Overs & Unders

We are just a couple hours away from the XFL season kicking off, and I’ve made a radical decision.

I’m parlaying all the game totals for Week 1 — the overs AND the unders.

Here’s my thinking.

1. It’s Week 1 in a league yet to play a game. If there’s ever a week in which the lines would be way off, it’s this one. No one really knows anything.
2. If the lines are drastically off, they could be off in a highly-correlated way. There could be something inherent in the league or in the rules that drives all of these games in one direction.

And I can see reasonable cases for the over and the under.

Odds as of Saturday morning and via FanDuel, where Action Network users get a risk-free bet up to $500.

The Case for the Over in Week 1 of the XFL

The rules in this league are meant to facilitate scoring. The pace will be quick, the pass will predominate and starting field position should be advantageous. In theory, that should lead to lots of points.

And if you check out our Week 1 XFL fantasy football daily fantasy projections, you can see that I do think lots of points will be scored in this slate.

In general, I am bullish on the XFL.

The Case for the Under in Week 1 of the XFL

It’s a new league. The players could be rusty, and the quarterback play could be poor. And two starting quarterbacks are likely to be out (Josh Johnson of the Wildcats and Landry Jones of the Renegades).

Last year, the under hit in an overwhelming majority of the games for the first month of the Alliance of American Football.

We could see a similar situation here.

Parlaying the Overs & Unders for Week 1 of the XFL

Right now, if you make two bets — parlay the overs and parlay the unders — you can get around +1300 odds on both bets.

It’s almost never sharp to parlay, but this might be the rare instance in which there’s positive expected value to do so.

And that’s what I’m doing.

[Bet now at FanDuel. NJ, PA, IN and WV only.]