NFLbets: NFL betting, odds, point spreads, tips

The relationship between NFL football and betting is about to come full circle and beyond. With US Supreme Court decisions on a pair of cases in 2018 came the right for individual state governments to decide on the legality of intrastate sports betting. NFL betting, the most popular sport on which to wager in the U.S., is naturally at the forefront of reformation to gambling law in America. By the end of the 20s, we can certainly expect that any states in which betting is legalized will have made it so.

As with any sport, friendly wagering probably took place among the crowds watching the very first football game. Yet the connection of betting to NFL football has been very nudge-nudge wink-wink since the explosion in popularity of televised NFL games beginning with he AFL-NFL merger in 1970. In those days, pre-game shows and leadup analysis was based firmly in the point spreads and odds – point spreads and odds created by illegal and ostensibly frowned-upon bookmakers.

With the expulsion of Jimmy “The Greek” Snyder from network TV, the explicit reference to gambling left mainstream TV and the NFL played down even the subtlest references to odds. But there was still cable TV – not to mention office pools, rotisserie leagues which later evolved into daily fantasy football and Super Bowl betting games aplenty. And when internet gaming came along, the rolling back of puritan attitudes toward an activity which, let’s face it, a majority of fans participate became inexorable.

About us, in brief

NFLbets is devoted to and run in the revived spirit of socially acceptable, fun and fascinating NFL betting. The NFLbets editorial team and staff are first and foremost NFL betting enthusiasts ourselves; thus do we take this approach to our website. Our attitude to our readers is that there’s money enough to go around. To the ends of enjoying more thrill of victory than agony of defeat, we hope to provide information of use in entertaining fashion.

NFL news and opinions

That begins with NFL news and opinionating; let’s define the “news” a bit further. Since NFLbets is all about how the game relates to betting, only news stories which involve some relevance to the game’s outcome and/or proposition bets. We’ve all seen the effect of losing a starting left tackle, free safety or “skill player” to injury or suspension – getting to that information quickly usually proves crucial to greater wins. 

As for opinions, of course we got ’em. Has anyone failed to notice the unholy amalgamation of politics, business, sports, advertising and entertainment that all of pop culture in the United States has become. Opinions are rifer than ever, replicating virally via the internet. The best one can hope for is that the opinion you read is backed by knowledgeability. NFLbets is.

Weekly best bets and picks

The staple of any NFL betting-centric enterprise is weekly picks and best bets. To be completely honest, office pools which require one to bet on every game on the weekly slate is preposterous. Who would ever bet every single game of 16 played on opening week? The proper NFL bettor chooses a reasonable amount of games and/or prop bets – likesay, one to three – per weekend to cover and exploits those more obviously lucrative picks. “Best bets of the week” are always the bread-and-butter of the professional prognosticator, and we stake our reputation on our best betting predictions. 

NFLbets will of course take a shot on these pages in our weekly picks. Despite the general folly of attempting to win even more than 59% when betting every single match, filing out such forms for fun – not money, unless you’ve got it to burn – can e instructive, as it does draw the attention to the entire league week to week and can instruct as to why certain teams win or lose. Truth is, though, the more games you pick, the worse you’ll do nearly 100% of the time.

Against-The-Spread (ATS) NFL standings

You know what drives NFLbets crazy? The inexplicable reluctance of any outlet online to tack and display the NFL standings Against-The-Spread (ATS) on a weekly basis. Well, allow NFLbets to toot our own horn a bit, because we’re proud of our ATS NFL standings board – we’ve got nothing to hide and wish you success in your bets via use of this free tool. 

To use the ATS standings board effectively, a few strategies may be kept in mind; these are delineated on the same NFLbets page on which the ’board appears. However, we would point out two tips which may be used from very early on in the season:

•  Home teams fare slightly better ATS than straight up (SU), and home-team underdogs in some seasons in the 21st century have beaten the spread at over a 70% clip.
•  Since the 32-team league format was introduced, between 10 and 16 games per year result in a push at the sportsbook – I know, right? It seems like way more. ATS standings are therefore most useful in determining games with a pointspreak including a ½-point.

•  Naturally, the ATS standings board becomes handier as the season progresses and the sample size of games played concomitantly increases. The best bets can be found at the ends of the standings board, and the outliers should be apparent from week 6 or 7. Typically, slightly more than half of teams end up with a record between 7-9 and 9-7 ATS; also typical is the trend for these teams to hover around the .500 mark ATS from start to finish. Rarely does a team mange more than 11 or five than five wins ATS – even the 0-16 Cleveland Browns of 2017 went 6-9-1 ATS.

The Super Bowl

Ah, the Super Bowl – or, as NFLbets likes to think of it, American National Gambling Day. It is said that more individual bets are made on the Super Bowl than on all NFL games through the season combines. It is said that some sportsbooks turn a majority of their annual profit on the NFL’s final game. Whatever they say, we know this: Super Bowl betting is huge and adds a whole new dimension to enjoying NFL action.

Pretty joyous/excruciating are those Super Bowls with a close outcome on the scoreboard. However, in only eight of the first 52 Super Bowls has the winner ATS differed from the winner SU. Note three further caveats, however: Two of the eight divergent outcomes were pushes; five occurred within a span of nine years in the late 1990s/early 2000s; and the win team to win ATS but lose the game was the Arizona Cardinals in Super Bowl XLIII.

The final results of all Super Bowls to date go as follows. Bowls is which the winner SU and ATS differed are in bold.

I    Green Bay Packers 21, Kansas City Chiefs 10
II    Green Bay 19½, Oakland Raiders 14
III    New York Jets 34, Baltimore Colts 7
IV    Kansas City 35, Minnesota Vikings 7
V    Baltimore Colts 13½, Dallas Cowboys 13
VI    Dallas 18, Miami Dolphins 3
VII    Miami 14, Washington 6
VIII    Miami 17½, Minnesota 7
IX    Pittsburgh Steelers 13, Minnesota 6
X    Dallas 17, Pittsburgh 14
XI    Oakland 28, Minnesota 14
XII    Dallas 21, Denver Broncos 10
XIII    Pittsburgh 31½, Dallas 31
XIV    Pittsburgh 20½, Los Angeles Rams 19
XV    Oakland 27, Philadelphia Eagles 7
XVI    San Francisco 49ers 25, Cincinnati Bengals 21
XVII    Washington 27, Miami 14
XVIII    Los Angeles Raiders 38, Washington 6
XIX    San Francisco 34½, Miami 16
XX    Chicago Bears 36, New England Patriots 10
XXI    New York Giants 29½, Denver 20
XXII    Washington 42, Denver 7
XXIII    Cincinnati 16, San Francisco 13
XXIV    San Francisco 43, Denver 10
XXV    New York Giants 20, Buffalo bills 12
XXVI    Washington 30, Buffalo 24
XXVII    Dallas 45½, Buffalo 17
XXVIII    Dallas 19½, Buffalo 13
XXIX    San Francisco 30½, San Diego Chargers 26
XXX    Pittsburgh 17, Dallas 13½
XXXI    Green Bay 21, New England 21
XXXII    Denver 31, Green Bay 13
XXXIII    Denver 26½, Atlanta Falcons 19
XXXIV    St. Louis Rams 16, Tennessee Titans 16
XXXV    Baltimore Ravens 31, New York Giants 7
XXXVI    New England 20, St. Louis 3
XXXVII    Tampa Bay Buccaneers 48, Oakland 17
XXXVIII    Carolina Panthers 29, New England 25
XXXIX    Philadelphia 21, New England 17
XL    Pittsburgh 17, Seattle Seahawks 10
XLI    Indianapolis Colts 22, Chicago 17
XLII    New York Giants 17, New England 2
XLIII    Arizona Cardinals 23, Pittsburgh 20
XLIV    New Orleans Saints 31, Indianapolis 12
XLV    Green Bay 28, Pittsburgh 25
XLVI    New York Giants 17, New England 14
XLVII    Baltimore Ravens 34, San Francisco 27
XLVIII    Seattle 43, Denver 6
XLIX    New England 28, Seattle 24
L    Denver 24, Carolina 17
LI    New England 31, Atlanta 28
LII    Philadelphia 41, New England 33

Is betting on NFL games legal?

No matter when you read this, if you’re in the United States or Canada, the answered is simply: It depends on where you live. No matter what year you’re living in, we can state a few things with certainty. Nearly immediately after the Supreme Court decisions of 2018, betting on NFL football and other sports was legalized in Delaware and New Jersey, as they joined Nevada in allowing sportsbook operations inside casinos.

A “phase two” of legalizing NFL betting in the US would include those which have previously stated an interest in allowing sportsbooks such as California, Connecticut and Florida; those with similar offerings already open to betting such as Florida; and states with high number of Native American-run casinos such as Oklahoma, New Mexico, Missouri and Pennsylvania. Meanwhile, a few states may never see legal sports gambling, due to either traditional mores or modern ethical stands. These include Georgia, Texas, Utah and Hawaii. Despite its more socially libertarian attitude, sports betting in Alaska may be held back by the complex requirements to change state law on the subject. 

The point here is that laws on NFL betting and other sports betting are made state by state in the US and province by province in Canada. NFL bets assures that any sportsbook you see promoted on this site has ben approved for players from your country. We also have pages detailing up-to-date information on sports betting law in each of the 50 American states.

Enjoy pro football betting the lucrative way with NFLbets.com! 

Some things just go together – like betting and NFL football. By outward appearance and by the letter of the law, a majority of high-powered NFL officials have taken great pains from the 1920s right into the 2020s to distance pro football from any gambling beyond that strictly legally defined. However, wagering has gone hand-in-hand with the NFL since Beattie Feathers was roaming the gridiron and the Cardinals were playing in Chicago.

In some respects, gambling is right at the heart of enjoying the NFL itself; as that great social commentator Homer Simpson once noted, “Gambling is something daddies do to make football more interesting.”