🐕 How to Bet Short Dogs
In today's Betting Life Newsletter, we highlight how to bet short underdogs, midseason futures, and break down the TNF betting slate.
We’ve got a whole litter of pint-sized pups for Week 9.
In today’s Betting Life newsletter presented by props.cash:
- How to Bet Short Dogs: Moneyline and teasers…
- Midseason Futures: The same as preseason — but now we know MOAR!
- Tail or Fade: Are you betting on the boyz?
- World Series: Rangers WIN!
- TNF: It’s a game featuring two professional teams…
- It’s 11/2: Take it away, Matthew Freedman…
This week, we have more than a few underdogs getting less than a field goal (as of Wed. 11/1 at 10 p.m. ET).
- Titans: +2.5 at Steelers
- Dolphins: +1.5 vs. Chiefs (in Germany)
- Buccaneers: +2.5 at Texans
- Panthers: +2.5 vs. Colts
- Giants: +1.5 at Raiders
- Bills: +1.5 at Bengals
There are lots of different types of bets you can make if you like a team in any given week. Spread, moneyline, teaser, etc.
While we focus a lot on matchups and projections at Betting Life, I realize that we haven’t talked all that much about the mechanics of betting and when certain types of bets make the most sense.
So here are my general thoughts on how best to bet short underdogs.
🤑 Bet the Moneyline
With underdogs of less than a field goal, the general guideline is to bet them on the moneyline (ML) instead of against the spread (ATS) — because if a team is to cover anywhere from +0.5 to +2.5 points, it’s very likely to do so while winning the game outright.
Of course, you always need to be sure that the ML offers value relative to the spread for every bet you consider — and you can do that with the Unabated Lines Calculator — but, generally, that’s the guideline.
A look at the Action Network historical database shows that there’s truth to this approach. Since 2003, short ML underdogs have outperformed short ATS dogs.
- ML Underdogs (+0.5 to +2.5): 496-548-4 (1.3% ROI)
- ATS Underdogs (+0.5 to +2.5): 524-512-12 (0.7% ROI)
Takeaway: It has historically been more profitable to bet underdogs of +0.5 to +2.5 on the ML vs. ATS.
🔧 Leverage Teasers
While underdogs of +1.5 to +2.5 are great ML candidates, they’re also ideal for six-point teasers.
We cover teasers in the Week 7 Thursday issue and Week 8 Thursday edition of the Betting Life Newsletter, and Geoff Ulrich wrote a comprehensive breakdown of the benefits of betting teasers.
In case you’re unaware, a teaser is a type of parlay (and a parlay is a bet composed of smaller bets — or “legs” — that all need to hit for the overall position to cash).
With traditional two-team teasers, you get an extra six points on each leg, but in exchange, you need both bets to hit to win, and the payoff comes at worse odds (usually -120 at best).
While it’s annoying to drop from -110 to -120 and to need both legs to hit, there’s still value in turning a short ATS bet into a teaser leg — because we’re moving through the key numbers of +3 and +7.
Example: As I type this sentence, the Dolphins are +1.5 (-112), and the Bills are +2 (-108) at DraftKings. If I tease the Dolphins up to +7.5 and Bills up to +8 at -120 odds, I move through two key numbers, which provides me with an overall edge of +1.36% relative to the separate ATS bets (per the Unabated Teaser Calculator).
Takeaway: For underdogs of +1.5 to +2.5, six-point teasers provide an edge over ATS bets.
➡️ Week 9 Takeaways
In my Week 9 best bets article, I provide my spread projections for all the games and notes for most of the matchups.
I like a number of the short dogs this week and already have a two-team teaser with the Dolphins and Bills in our free Fantasy Life Bet Tracker.
Check out my article to see how I’m approaching the short dogs.
Freedman’s Best Bets for Week 9
What’s the best way to play midseason futures? Jason Scavone from Unabated breaks down how to approach the market…
Before the start of the season, maybe you looked at win totals. Maybe you saw the Chiefs over 11.5 and had complete confidence in Patrick Mahomes to keep bringing it. Maybe you saw the Jets under 9.5 and knew Aaron Rodgers was going to play for four minutes this season.
(Cardinal rule of betting futures: Always count on the Jets to go full Jets.)
Lots of people will stop right there. But if you look at DraftKings, you can still get the Chiefs at that same 11.5 — but now the over is -150. Is there value on the under at +125?
At FanDuel, the Jets' win total is down to 8.5 but -140 to the under. This three-game win streak helped. Do they keep it up? Does Rodgers pull a miracle to get back on the field? They’d need to go 5-5 down the stretch. Is +114 good enough to fire on the over?
There’s one big advantage to playing midseason futures. We know more now than we did in August.
🧠 Information Availability
It’s not just win totals that are offered through the regular season. It’s all kinds of futures. Super Bowl champion is the most obvious, but there are lines on conference champions, division champs, teams to make or miss the playoffs, and more
In the preseason, the Jets’ odds to win the Super Bowl were +1600 at DraftKings. After Rodgers suffered his injury, they plummeted to +6000, which is where they sit today.
And we know so much more now. The Jets are 4-3. We know they’re down their future Hall of Fame QB, but they haven’t completely crumbled. They have a good enough defense to keep them in games. They might be around a .500 team. There’s less uncertainty about the Jets now than before the season started or during the first quarter of opening night.
🔮 How to Play Midseason Futures
Now that there are fewer unknowns, the more accurately you can price out how a team can be expected to perform the rest of the way.
The first and most important step with these futures, as with any bet, is to line shop. The Jets are +6000 to win the Super Bowl at DraftKings, but they’re +8500 at FanDuel. If you’re betting $100 either way, you may as well win $8,500 instead of $6,000. (The implied probabilities of those prices aren’t that far apart: 1.6% vs. 1.2%. But it’s real dollars in your pocket if it hits.)
Next, you want to check out a team’s remaining schedule. Lookahead lines for the remaining games are widely available at several sites. The Jets, for example, are moneyline underdogs in only two of their remaining games — at Buffalo and on Monday night at home against the Chargers. You can start to convert those moneyline prices to implied probabilities and begin to work out how that translates to wins.
Or you could use a tool like the Unabated NFL Season Simulator to back up your play with data science. You can choose sets of team power ratings or upload your own. The simulator will play 10,000 seasons based on those numbers and give you projected win totals, fair Super Bowl, conference and division prices, and more. You can even view those odds against current futures prices, and it’ll display bets that offer a better price than your results highlighted in green on the screen.
No matter which method you use, half the book is already written this season. There’s a lot of value out there if you can use that to figure out the grand finale.
Check Out the Unabated NFL Season Simulator!
🏒 Devils (-122, FanDuel) at Wild
The Devils are an excellent moneyline target (play to -130) for Thursday. They come into this game 9th in xGF% (expected goals for percentage) and have the top-ranked power play in the league.
That’s awful news for the Wild, who have the league's worst penalty-kill (67.9%) and have seen Filip Gustavsson (4.32 GAA, .885 save %), regress at warp speed in 2023.
🤔 Can Will Levis Do It Again?
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⚾️ Rangers win World Series! Analytics played a part in the all-time turnaround.
😢 RIP Bobby Knight. The man was a visionary.
🧐 Bills No. 1 in the power rankings??? And they’re road underdogs this week…
🤮 The NFC North: Pretty, pretty, pretty bad.
🤝 Same-game parlays: Maybe not as stupid as many sharps make them seem.
📈 Pass rate over expectation: Two top teams on the rise…
🤝 If they score, you score. The best touchdown prop bets for TNF.
⬇️ Primetime unders: Wake up, bet the nighttime under, go about your day, win money.
📺 NFL midway discussion. Adam Chernoff. Matthew Davidow. Must watch.
🔪 A subtle banger of a “tweet” on Jimmy Garoppolo. Read the whole back-and-forth.
💰Looking for more Thursday Night Football bets? We’ve got you covered.
Week 8 kicks off TONIGHT with a SCINTILLATING matchup matchup between the Steelers and Titans. Matt LaMarca is here to break it all down from a betting angle…
🏈 Best Bet: Under 36.5 (-108, DraftKings)
I’m going to keep this one pretty simple. On one side, you have a quarterback making his second professional start. On the other, you have a banged-up quarterback playing for an offense that has been well below average to begin with.
That doesn’t sound like a good recipe for points.
This total is obviously pretty low, but low totals haven’t been a problem for bettors so far this season. Unders, in general, have crushed — they’ve gone 72-49-1 through the first eight weeks — and closing totals of 38.0 or lower have gone 6-1-1. Those games have gone under by an average of 5.19 points, so they’ve been winning pretty comfortably as well.
Mike Tomlin has also historically been the most profitable under coach in the past two decades. He’s gone 148-114-3 to the under, and he’s a ridiculous 45-26-2 since 2019-20. That includes a 6-1 mark so far this season.
Finally, primetime unders have smashed this season:
The under is getting a ton of early betting action — it’s received 98% of the dollars when it comes to the total (per the Action Network) — so this number could continue to decrease as we approach kickoff. Still, it’s my clear favorite bet in this matchup.
⬆️ Jaylen Warren Over 6.5 Carries (+105, BetMGM)
- Bet To: Over 6.5 carries (+100)
- Fantasy Life Projection: 7.2
Warren has essentially forced a full-on committee with former first-round pick Najee Harris. Harris still has a slight edge in snaps and carries, but Warren managed a season-high 36% carry share in last week’s loss to the Jaguars.
It’s easy to say that was due to the game script — the Steelers trailed the Jaguars for most of that contest — but it’s not like Warren saw a massive bump to his snap share. He played on just 52% of the team’s offensive plays, which is only a slight increase from his season average of 46%.
The more significant issue is that Harris simply hasn’t been effective at the NFL level. He’s averaging just 3.7 yards per attempt in 2023, and he’s never averaged more than 3.9 yards per attempt as a professional. Warren has been slightly more efficient in 2023 (3.9 YPC), and his mark for his career is significantly better (4.5 vs. 3.8).
Warren should continue to eat into Harris’ workload, and it wouldn’t be a massive shock if he eventually overtakes him in the pecking order. We have Warren projected for more than seven carries vs. the Titans, so getting over 6.5 at anything better than even money is a strong proposition.
