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.

Sign Up for our FREE PICKS Newsletter If you want to receive our newsletter with free picks and cutting edge research, just send an email address to TMW '09

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 2008 (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:

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 67-54 at home (55%), but 47-46 against the spread on the road against teams with a win, so overall it's a modest 114-100 (53%) in favor of the team without a win.

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 (43-19 for 69%)

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 (125-86 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 85-63 in week one games, but a stellar 40-22 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
24-25 (49%) with 1 win coming in
15-5 (75%) with 2+ wins coming in

So it's a tremendous 55-26 (68%) 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
122-149 (45%) with 0 wins coming in
88-115 (43%) with 1 win coming in
57-64 (47%) with 2+ wins coming in

Away Underdogs
146-110 (58%) with 0 wins coming in
105-115 (48%) with 1 win coming in
77-42 (65%) with 2+ wins coming in

...a similar pattern to home dogs with the 0 and 2+ win teams being very solid (223-152 for 59%).

Away Favorites
17-31 (36%) with 0 wins coming in
20-26 (43%) with 1 win coming in
14-22 (39%) 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 1 -- underdogs have a solid 100-71 overall mark (58%).

Week 2 -- underdogs with zero wins are 54-28 (66%)

Week 3 -- away favorites with 1 or 2 wins already are 12-6 against home teams with 1 win. Winless home dogs against away teams with at least one win are 7-2.

Week 4 -- two or more win away underdogs are 23-3 against one win home sides, while one plus win home teams are 18-4 as home dogs (10-1 if the home team has two or more wins coming in).

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 2009 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

Find out more:
What the press says about TwoMinuteWarning
Information on subscribing
Frequently Asked Questions