Vegas Wiseguy Report: NFL Strength of Schedule
By Teddy Covers
Sportsmemo.com
When looking at the entirety of the NFL futures market, Super Bowl odds and odds to win divisions or conferences only give bettors one choice – betting ON a particular team. Then that team has to beat out all of their competition to win the division/conference/Super Bowl for you to cash, offering the potential for big payday ‘longshot’ returns, but cashing a low percentage of the wagers that are made.
NFL Season Win totals, on the other hand, offer bettors the opportunity to bet AGAINST teams in relatively low juice situations. And with win totals, even when betting Overs, the team you are betting on doesn’t have to win anything big.
For example, the Buffalo Bills didn’t win their division last year; unable to get past mighty New England. They didn’t win the AFC or the Super Bowl. But they cashed every Over ticket that was bet on their season win total before December rolled around. Buffalo’s 9-7 campaign offered a ‘no sweat’ positive return-on-investment for a squad lined at 6.5 or 7 wins prior to the season.
In my opinion, NFL win totals remain among the most profitable set of wagers currently available in the betting markets. The books have little wiggle room when setting a number because of the short 16 game schedule. There’s very little impactful in-season trading, leaving injuries as the only primary ‘morphing’ catalyst. And you can handicap depth effectively over the summer months, identifying teams with potentially significant injury concerns at key positions.
My win total handicapping process begins with creating accurate strength of schedule (SOS) numbers for both last year and the upcoming season. The broader betting markets tend to focus on strength of schedule using flawed analysis. I’ll focus on those differences here.
The widely available information that helps set the markets start with last year’s results as their base point. But they don’t do it thoroughly. The conventional models simply add up the combined records of every opponent a team faced to come up with their final strength of schedule for 2014 and to create the SOS for the upcoming 2015 campaign.
Those standard models will tell you that the Texans, Steelers, Ravens, Cowboys, Vikings and Bucs played the six easiest schedules in the league last year, while the Raiders, Seahawks, Broncos, Cardinals, Patriots and 49ers played the six toughest slates.
That’s not my process. I’ll focus on last year’s SOS this week, and move to the 2015 SOS in Part 2 of this article next week. Creating numbers that are more accurate than the broader market for BOTH seasons are instrumental in what I’m trying to accomplish.
The aggregate numbers for last year’s strength of schedule -- the starting point for any analysis of the upcoming 2015 campaign -- can be extremely misleading. A team’s final win-loss record tells us nothing about how good they actually were at the time the game was played. There were some enormous in-season power rating shifts last year, just as there are every year. Look no further than a team like the Arizona Cardinals.
The markets view Arizona as a team that went 11-5 for the season, a strong winning campaign. Every team that faced them gets that 11-5 added to their cumulative SOS numbers for the season. But there was an enormous difference between the Arizona team that opened up 9-1 with a healthy Carson Palmer behind center, compared to that same Cardinals squad by Week 16 or 17, with Ryan Lindley trying to man the QB position after Palmer and second stringer Drew Stanton got hurt.
Arizona’s not alone in their significant ‘morph’ during the 2014 campaign. Look at Ron Rivera’s Panthers as another prime example. Carolina was riddled with injuries for two months, failing to win a single game throughout October and November. They came on like a freight train in December to win the NFC South. If you played Carolina in Week 15, you played a much tougher Panthers team than the one you would have faced in Week 8.
There are plenty of other examples from 2014. The Chargers were a good team early as they raced off to a 5-1 start. They were mediocre at best the rest of the way, closing out the season on a 4-6 skid. The Eagles were a whole lot better in September and October than they were when they slumped down the stretch in December. Pittsburgh and Minnesota got much better as the season progressed. New Orleans, Washington and Chicago got much worse, compared to where they were in September. Those differences, again, are not measured at all with the standard SOS models.
So here’s what I do. I go back to my 2014 spread sheet that details my power rating numbers on a weekly basis from last year. Then I go through the schedule, using my numbers for every squad on the week the game was played. Using that formula, you’ll get some significantly different results than the ones I listed above.
I also discount Week 17 results. Some teams had quit on their coach and their season, other teams were resting starters and other teams were playing their guts out to try to reach the postseason. Power rating models for the final week of the regular season are inherently flawed – that’s why we see enormous line moves that week every single year. The seven point move on the Patriots – Bills game in Week 17 last year is just one classic example.
So where does that leave us? The Raiders played the single toughest slate in the league last year according to my numbers, while Arizona and Denver also faced very tough schedules. But three teams that aren’t on many ‘toughest schedules from last year’ lists – the Falcons, Packers and Jets -- also faced abnormally tough slates. As a result, all of those teams should ‘grade out’ as better than their final records would indicate.
On the easy side, my numbers mesh with the standard numbers when it comes to the team that faced the single weakest slate of opponents in 2014; the Houston Texans. ‘Standard model’ teams like the Steelers, Vikings and Cowboys also faced weak slates according to my numbers. But Indianapolis, Baltimore, Tampa Bay and Cleveland all faced much ‘easier than average’ schedules; teams that should grade out as weaker than their final record would indicate.
Next week I’ll finish the thought process, writing about the next step -- identifying accurate strength of schedule numbers for the upcoming 2015 campaign.