Originally Posted by
danmam
As everyone betting the NFL this year has noticed, scoring has skyrocketed. To me this seemed, before the season started, like something that was obviously going to occur, particularly for teams with A) excellent QBs known for their ability to read and dissect defenses, and B) schematic and personnel continuity on offense. Particularly in pass coverage, it's difficult enough for defenses with many reps to communicate properly and execute their assignments, let alone try to trick the QB and hide their coverage scheme pre-snap. Meanwhile these savvy vet QBs, running a scheme they know already with personnel they already have rapport with who also know the scheme, are facing essentially preseason-level vanilla defensive schemes. I was extremely bullish on the offenses of GB, PIT, KC, NO, ATL, DET, ARI, HOU, BAL, DAL, SEA, PHI, MIN, TEN, LAR, CLE and others for this very reason, but skeptical of any team undergoing a QB change or significant pass-catching personnel overhaul (CHI, CAR, NE, CIN, LAC, IND, TB, LV, DEN, etc.), coaching/offensive scheme change (some of the listed teams like CAR & CIN, plus WAS & others), and to a lesser extent, teams with schematic and personnel continuity but less talented QBs (NYJ, JAC, NYG, BUF (was lower on Josh Allen than I should've been), etc.). Some teams fall into multiple buckets, some I forgot to mention, but off the top of my head that was my thinking.
Obviously I was right in some cases (as a GB fan, I take particular pride in predicting their offensive mastery thus far, though their inflated totals and have them as just 3-3 vs the over), and even with NO's offensive decline, they're 6-0 on hitting the over, and LV, TEN, CLE, MIN, SEA, PIT, PHI, DAL, HOU, & ATL all are 4-3 or better on hitting the over (as are BUF, TB, CIN, & JAC) -- of course many of these teams are hitting the over due to putrid defense as much as great offense, but if you've been betting NFL totals this year you know the over has been hitting at a rate that the sportsbooks may just now be catching up to: 56.3% Week 1, 68.8% Week 2, 56.3% Week 3, and finally 50% Week 4 and Week 5, and then 28.6% Week 6 as the books finally got ahead of the bettors. (Weeks 1-3 combined for 60.4% over hit rate; it was a rather profitable start to the season for me lol).
OK now the main point. I know there's been discussion about how the key numbers for NFL totals (classically 37, 41, 44, 51, 43, as the top 5 in order of occurrence) may need adjustment, even prior to this year, due to the higher prevalence of 2-pt conversions, along with higher rates of scoring too. But this season seems almost to throw those numbers to the wayside entirely purely due to the increased scoring rate. Is it wiser this season to use NCAAF key numbers for totals, perhaps, when betting NFL totals? (55, 51, 45, 59, 48 being the top 5). To me the answer seems to be, to use a combination of the two (for high totals, use the NCAAF numbers, for lower totals the NFL ones); is there any reason one might think of why this logic isn't sound? Or, in other words, a NCAAF/NFL difference I'm not accounting for in simply using the higher-scoring NCAAF total key numbers as key NFL total numbers for NFL games with high totals? [I know this is an answerable question by looking at this year's data and seeing the most common NFL totals, but I don't like using small sample sizes; additionally I think the defenses will improve as the season goes on and totals will decrease back closer to their "norm" of previous years; though still likely higher than any prior year still]