NFL Preseason Picks part II from TwoMinuteWarning.com NFL 2007

Preseason Picks, part II

Wagering on preseason games may be seen as risky by many, and indeed we generally counsel waiting for the real games to start. Maybe there's some value though in looking at how many wins a team has already earned in the preseason in the theory that winless teams try a little harder?

Also see NFL Preseason Picks, part I where we looked at whether prior year regular season records had any bearing on preseason results.

Preseason Picks research -- WIN comparisons

A common theory among handicappers when it comes to the NFL preseason is that while teams in general don't care much about the outcome of a game, teams without a win try harder than teams that have already secured one or more preseason victories. The question is, does the theory hold up when historical results are assessed? We'll try to answer that here...

We ran through the results of all preseason games from 1997 to 2007 (eg an eleven year span) where there was a home team (in several games each season you have a "neutral site" and we will regard these contests as different circumstances). All we used initially in our query is how many preseason wins a team has coming into the game. Obviously then the first preseason game a team plays it has zero wins, if it's victorious then next week it comes in with one win, etc.

Since the sample size is already small, we elected to cap a team's wins at "2+" for the purposes of this analysis:

Home Team Preseason Wins	Away Team Preseason Wins	Won (vs Spread)	Lost (vs Spread)	Home Win%
0	0	89	105	45 %
0	1	50	42	54 %
0	2	14	9	60 %
1	0	32	35	47 %
1	1	54	49	52 %
1	2	17	41	29 %
2	0	10	7	58 %
2	1	30	22	57 %
2	2	30	31	49 %

The preliminary conclusion to the question that started all this -- who is the better bet when a team with zero preseason wins plays a team which has already notched a W -- shows mixed results...the winless side is 64-51 at home (56%), but 42-42 against the spread on the road against teams with a win, so overall it's a modest 106-93 (53%).

So perhaps the "winless" team angle has some merits when it's the home side trying to get a little momentum going in front of the local fans. However, what does jump out from the above is one very interesting point:

Back an away team with two or more wins against a home team with exactly one win (41-17 for 71%)

This makes some sense if you take the position that the team with two wins already has shown a stronger than usual desire to win in the early going and the home team with the win may be comfortable taking a casual attitude to the game (since they do at least have a win) -- and may well be favored.

Now in previous years a case could be made for another 'angle' which was namely:

In a game of winless sides, lean to the underdog (114-80 for 59%), but this approach had rough years from 2003 to 2005 by the closing line. We should point out the difference between opening lines and closing lines is huge in preseason games, and so betting early in the week may be a key with this angle at least! It's also only 76-59 in week one games, but 38-21 thereafter in the preseason.

As far as general dog/favorite breakdowns go, here's some splits:

Home Underdogs
40-21 (65%) with 0 wins coming in
22-24 (47%) with 1 win coming in
15-4 (78%) with 2+ wins coming in

So it's a tremendous 55-25 (69%) with 0 or 2+ wins, but precisely one win home dog teams are losers against the spread...that old 'satisfied' feeling kicking in perhaps.

Home Favorites
113-145 (45%) with 0 wins coming in
81-101 (44%) with 1 win coming in
55-56 (49%) with 2+ wins coming in

Away Underdogs
130-100 (57%) with 0 wins coming in
95-109 (47%) with 1 win coming in
67-40 (63%) with 2+ wins coming in

...a similar pattern to home dogs with the 0 and 2+ win teams being very solid (197-140 for 58%).

Away Favorites
17-31 (36%) with 0 wins coming in
18-25 (42%) with 1 win coming in
14-21 (40%) with 2+ wins coming in

...look to bet against away favorites.

So, some more data for the 'old arsenal heading into the preseason, but the wise guy in the audience is already carping that looking strictly at wins without regard to the stage of the preseason is foolish...hold on pal -- we're getting to that!

Rather than fill up this article with countless tables though, we'll give some of the more interesting numbers in summary:

Week 2 -- underdogs with zero wins are 50-24 (68%)

Week 3 -- away favorites with 1 or 2 wins already are 11-5 against home teams with 1 win

Week 4 -- two or more win away underdogs are 23-3 against one win home sides, while two plus win home teams are 10-1 as home dogs.

So in conclusion for this rendition of TwoMinuteWarning.com's preseason research we recommend the following:

Play away teams with two or more wins against home teams with one win

In a match-up of winless teams, lean to the underdog, particularly in later weeks

In the final week of preseason, teams with two plus wins are very strong underdogs.

When the NFL 2008 preseason games begin we will roll out our free picks on the exhibition season action!

In case you missed part one of our preseason research, you may want to read about NFL Preseason Gap Comparisons

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