3 Football Handicapping Techniques

As a result of being the most popular sport, betting on the NFL has become one of the biggest niches in all of sports wagering. What’s more, handicapping when NFL betting has drastically changed since 1970 as fans now can use three different techniques. These techniques seem rather basic from the point of view of Areana football info, however we will look at each one to help you completely understand how to use them.

1. Trend Based Handicapping – As the name suggests, this form of handicapping is based on the patterns of one particular team. Trends for a team can be based on how they fair in the betting line, how they perform under pressure and how they perform on different types of turf.  For the heavy duty handicappers, trends tend to be a make or break on their success. However, one should be cautious when trend handicapping because of the ever changing variables that are involved on and off the field.

2. Situational Handicapping – This differs from trend based handicapping in that we are looking at how an entire division or conference fares in a certain situation versus how a team individually fares. Situational handicapping is based on things such as home underdogs during the preseason and how different teams fare in each situation. For instance, situational handicapping looks at how the whole league fares in the same weather conditions while trend handicapping looks at one team having a greater record against another.

3. Statistical Handicapping – For the football handicapper who enjoys math, this type of studying is for you. In essence statistical handicapping deals with systems such as points for and against or the YPP system. The latter of the two is one that we like to use in which we calculate the amount of points per yard in order to determine the point spread of a given game.