NFL Handicapping Articles

NFL Handicapping: Closer Look at Top 5 ATS Teams from Last Season
by Trevor Whenham - 8/18/2014

The one thing you can be sure of is that things in the NFL are always changing. It would be easy to handicap this league if teams that were strong against the spread one year stayed that way the next year. That obviously isn’t the case.

NFL Preseason Betting: Handicapping the Third Exhibition Game
by Trevor Whenham - 8/18/2014

I hate the NFL Preseason. It is dull. Misleading. Endless. It is a tease before the real season begins, and it just doesn’t mean enough to justify the time and effort involved in it. They could shorten it to two games, and the only ones who would shed a tear are the owners who get to sell full-price tickets to half-value games.

NFL Handicapping: Best and Worst Backup Quarterbacks
by Trevor Whenham - 8/18/2014

As the saying goes, when things are going poorly in football there is no player more popular than the backup QB. Even when things are going well, the backup QB is a crucially important position. Few things can be more disruptive for a team than the loss of a starter. As a handicapper we always live in fear of losing a starter we have bet on. Those fears can be eased substantially, though, when the backup is viable and can be trusted to step in and perform at a reasonable level.

NFL Handicapping: Preseason Warning Signs Bettors Should Heed
by Trevor Whenham - 8/18/2014

August is far too soon to worry about teams in the NFL. We still don’t know what teams are going to look like, and even teams with fairly obvious rosters are far from full intensity. The best thing you can do now is to relax and wait patiently for real games to start. That is easier said than done, though. We are bombarded with news and speculation out of training camps, and we can’t easily block it all out.

Monday Night Football Free Pick Cleveland at Washington
by CarbonSports - 8/18/2014

It may only be a preseason game, but you know ESPN has to love getting a matchup like this. We will hear plenty about QB's Johnny Manziel and Robert Griffin III throughout the night, but right now only the latter will be starting come Week 1 in September. Manziel still has time to make his case for the #1 spot and needs a strong performance tonight to help his cause, but will it be enough to get him and his teammates their first victory of the year?

NFL Handicapping: Pleasant Surprises from Training Camp
by Trevor Whenham - 8/15/2014

When NFL training camps begin we typically have an idea of how we expect teams to perform and what we expect to see in the weeks before the real games begin. Quite often we are right — at least that is what we hope. Sometimes, though, there are teams, or at least aspects of a team, that perform much better in training camps and the preseason than they were expected to.

NFL Preseason Picks: Saturday Odds and Predictions
by CarbonSports - 8/15/2014

The Bengals defense was absolutely torched last week, giving up 41 points in a two-point loss to the Chiefs. To be fair it wasn't all the defense's fault as Cincinnati gave up two INT's for touchdowns and the special teams allowed an 80-yard punt return to cash 7 points as well. However, all the talk in camp this week has been about playing much better defensively and keeping opponents off the scoresheet. They'll get their chance to do that tonight against a Jets team that is looking to be a much improved squad this season.

NFL Preseason Picks: Sunday Odds and Predictions
by CarbonSports - 8/15/2014

KC managed to win a wild one in Week 1 last week (41-39) against a Bengals team that they'll likely be battling with for a wildcard spot this year. We've got a long way to go until then, but the Chiefs looked offensively adept in their first action of 2014. They'll need it this week against a Carolina team that's eyeing a return to the playoffs themselves.

NFL Handicapping: Don’t Believe the Hype on these Training Camp Stories
by Trevor Whenham - 8/15/2014

We are, as a society, NFL crazy. There is no limit to the amount of news and coverage we can happily consume about the league. That often causes problems, because the truth is that there just isn’t enough to say a lot of the time to satisfy our hunger.

NFL Futures Odds: Most Passing Yards Quarterback Predictions
by CarbonSports - 8/15/2014

The NFL has clearly become a passing league over the past decade and without a good QB chances are making the playoffs is nothing more than a pipe dream. The last three seasons have all seen the eventual winner of this award eclipse the 5,000 passing yards mark and chances are we will see the same thing happen this season.

NFL Handicapping: Teams Primed for ATS Improvement
by Trevor Whenham - 8/14/2014

NFL teams that are coming off a lousy season against the spread probably crushed the hearts and souls of bettors who backed them regularly. The good news for bettors, though, is that some of these teams that were so lousy to bet on last year will improve significantly — at least in terms of ATS performance — this year. If the public is fixated on their poor performance last year then there could be some value to be had this year until the public catches up.

NFL Handicapping for the Top 6 Quarterbacks from the Draft
by Trevor Whenham - 8/14/2014

When the smoke had cleared there were 16 quarterbacks selected in the 2014 NFL Draft. Some will never make a roster, and many will never start a game. The average casual fan very likely couldn’t name half of the players who were chosen. The ones who went higher in the draft, though, will attract plenty of attention from those casual bettors.

2014 NFC South Predictions with Odds and NFL Betting Picks
by Robert Ferringo - 8/13/2014

In one of the stranger streaks in all of football, the NFC South still has never had a back-to-back division champion. That is 11 straight years of complete and utter chaos, worst-to-first shenanigans, and general Southern unpredictability. Given that Carolina, last year’s where-the-hell-did-they-come-from winner, has undergone a sizeable roster turnover this offseason I think it is reasonable to expect the South’s streak to be extended.

NFL Futures Betting: NFC North Season Win Totals Predictions
by CarbonSports - 8/11/2014

Green Bay has owned the NFC North for the past few years and they are favored to finish atop this division once again in 2014. Chicago, Minnesota and Detroit will have something to say about that but it's only one of those three teams that I believe present the best bets when looking at the season win totals for this division.

NFL Futures Odds: NFC East Season Win Totals Picks
by CarbonSports - 8/11/2014

With the likes of RGIII, Eli Manning, Chip Kelly's explosive offense, and the Dallas Cowboys all in the NFC East together you know this division will see plenty of headlines from the major media outlets. The past few years the winner of this division hasn't been known until the final games of Week 17 have been played. With that kind of parity, this division will be another tight one as Philadelphia tries to be the first team of these four to repeat as division champs since 2004.

2014 NFC East Predictions with Odds and NFL Betting Picks
by Robert Ferringo - 8/4/2014

The NFC East has been a puddle of mediocrity over the last two seasons and has sent just one representative to the NFC Championship Game over the last five years. The East has experienced back-to-back worst-to-first finishes. They’ve had just two teams in the last three years win double-digit games, and it has been four years since a team has won more than 10 contests.

2014 NFC West Predictions with Odds and NFL Betting Picks
by Robert Ferringo - 8/4/2014

It was just four short seasons ago that the NFC West became the butt of national sports jokes by producing the first division winner with a 7-9 record in league history. That was rock bottom for what had been the worst division in the league for nearly a decade.

2014 NFC North Predictions with Odds and NFL Betting Picks
by Robert Ferringo - 8/4/2014

Change is in the air in the NFC North. One year after rookie coach Marc Trestman took over in Chicago, two more fresh headmasters join the fray. Jim Caldwell and Mike Zimmer have been brought in to inject life into sagging Detroit and Minnesota teams, respectively, in an attempt to dethrone the Green Bay Packers from atop the North standings.

2014 AFC West Predictions with Odds and NFL Betting Picks
by Robert Ferringo - 8/1/2014

Statistically speaking, the two best divisions in football last year were the AFC West and the NFC West. Teams from those two divisions accounted for five of the 12 postseason slots (and that doesn’t include a 10-win Arizona team), and the Super Bowl representative for each conference hailed from out west.

2014 AFC South Predictions with Odds and NFL Betting Picks
by Robert Ferringo - 8/1/2014

Much like the AFC East, the AFC South is ostensibly a one-horse race. With one franchise dominating this division for over a decade and three floundering organizations scrambling to catch up, the South is a pretty cut-and-dried example of how parity has not completely enveloped the NFL.