How to Bet on NFL Totals

NFL totals betting, like anything else connected to football handicapping, doesn’t necessarily plug into any "formula," but instead is going to be a product of your own instinct and judgment, honed over a period of time.

You can go into mathematical formulas where you average each team’s offense against the opponent’s defense, but what you’re going to wind up with at the end of the day is something that is going to be in the neighborhood of the oddsmaker’s number.

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Your mission when you bet on football is to determine where you can achieve the edge on one side of that total or the other; same as when you bet on anything football, even college football spreads. Somewhere along the line, you are looking for certain factors to be a little more meaningful than those making the football line might think.

You’ll ask yourself certain questions.

For example, is there going to be a reason for one team running the ball a little more than usual? Passing it more? Styles make fights, we are often told, but styles make games too. One team’s strengths on defense would naturally force an offense to adjust its approach. Be on top of that.

Weather is a factor, but not something I necessarily rely on; line adjustments are invariably made because of weather, making it hard to be ahead of the curve. So it comes down to your own judgment as to what degree the weather is going to affect the amount of scoring you’ll see.

The weather for NFL games might become prohibitive, but if gets that way, it’s quite possible the total will be taken off the board. In any case, make sure you don’t overreact to a weather situation.

By the same token, don’t overreact when skill players are injured. A lot of passers can perform, given enough time to throw. Second-string running backs can bust through holes, if the holes are there. You’ve seen it countless times before.

The point is, there are some injury absences that may not influence the total, but where it gets rough is when the offensive line is the area that is affected.

Offensive line problems, like those experienced by Dallas in the opener, bring down the overall production of an offense, or in the case of Indianapolis against Houston, they greatly affect the amount of balance an offense operates with.

You make a judgment on how much the offense is affected, which has a very direct impact on what your totals play is going to be.

One place where trends come in handy in NFL football betting is when betting on totals. Some teams play differently at home than on the road, and this is often reflected in patterns that teams show.

Surface changes can matter a great deal, and this can be particularly telling when it comes to offenses that are more reliant on timing. For example, the offensive scheme Mike Martz runs probably depends more on timing than any other, and here will likely be a difference when switching from grass to artificial turf and vice versa, which is something we’ll probably find out about the Bears this season.

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