The weeks leading up to the start of the NFL season are always interesting, to say the least. You will find an absolute flood of prediction articles online, with every major (and minor) sports media platform setting out its previews for the season. Often, this will include detailed statistical analysis to provide over/under win totals for teams, and we have also increasingly seen the use of artificial intelligence. Yet, whether it’s through advanced algorithms or some guy’s gut feeling, it’s always intriguing to see where pundits expect teams to be.
And then the season starts, and all that analysis counts for nothing. Well, to an extent. Yet, if we can give you an example for the 2024 season, let’s look at the San Francisco 49ers, a team that was widely backed as second favorite in the Super Bowl odds with most sportsbooks and ranked as co-favorite with the Chiefs with a handful of betting platforms. As we know, the 49ers stunk the place out, never looking like the team that reached Super Bowl LVIII last season. You could go back and find numerous articles published in August and early September from experts telling us how good the Niners were going to be, and plenty of fans might have been influenced on their Super Bowl futures bet due to those predictions.
The 49ers were clearly showing signs of a slump.
So, what’s the point here? The 49ers aren’t the first betting favorite to slump during the regular season. Yet, it also raises the question of timing your future bets. It was arguably around Week 5, when the Niners slumped to defeat at home to the Cardinals, giving them a 2-3 record when most observers would have thought, “This team ain’t winning the Super Bowl.” The betting markets duly obliged by raising San Francisco’s odds. Yet, as a bettor, you would have been more informed about the team’s chances, and, crucially, you would also have the opportunity to switch it up to another team.
The last point about switching bets is perhaps the crucial one. The truth is that Super Bowl markets don’t tend to move dramatically in the first few weeks of the season, particularly at the top end of the betting field, so you still have a chance to get a similar price to what was available in preseason. There are exceptions, of course, but, for example, a team like the Chiefs would still be available around the same odds (in the region of +500) in October compared to where they were in August/September.
Good timing is crucial but not always easy.
However, it is not just as simple as saying, “Wait until October,” because there are no guarantees. A case in point is a team that broadly did the opposite of what the Niners did – the Detroit Lions. By late fall, everyone was talking about the Lions as the best team in the NFL, and with good reason. For our money, Week 6’s complete demolition of the Dallas Cowboys really moved the dial on the Lions’ Super Bowl odds. Regardless, you had a situation where a team’s odds started to drop dramatically due to its stellar performances. Of course, it’s a moot point now, as the Lions exited in the Divisional Round of the Playoffs. The point is that there are opportunities if you wait around, testing the water as such before placing your bet. If you had backed the Niners for the Super Bowl preseason, you would have been pretty sure the bet would be a bust by October. If you had waited, good value was still available for teams like the Chiefs, Bills, and Eagles. On the other hand, if you wait around too long, you might not get much value in the team you back. It’s an art rather than a science, and you probably need a bit of luck to get it right. But there is always value in patient sports betting.