Dealing With the Recency Factor in the NFL

One of the greatest tendencies of inexperienced sports bettors is to overreact to a football team's most recent game. This can be a very dangerous habit, especially when dealing with the very competitive NFL.

Grizzled veterans of wagering on pro football, as well as the brightest and fastest-learning of the newcomers, have learned not to overreact to one week's results. And the reasons for not reading too much into that most recent performance of a team are intellectually obvious (although not so easy to act upon in fact). The veterans know that, especially in the NFL, a team is rarely as good as it looks when it is winning easily, and rarely as bad as it looks when it is getting blown out.

Many easy wins occur when one team gets several key turnovers or long-gaining plays early in the game, forcing the other team to take lots of high-risk chances (most of which fail) in a usually vain attempt to catch up. Other distorted games can occur because of key injuries to one team (for example, when its top two QBs are knocked out of the contest), or when the clearly superior team in the game is extremely motivated to win against an overmatched opponent.

However, these examples are reasons why wise handicappers don't put too much stock in a team's most recent game. They know that a team that is the beneficiary of five or six turnovers and/or of a couple of return touchdowns one week is unlikely to get as many extra possessions or easy scores the next week. And they know that most teams that play "giveaway" one week are likely to be extra focused on avoiding mistakes in their next game.

Moreover, NFL coaches are far from stupid. In fact, most are very bright. And if an upcoming opponent has great success in one area in its previous game, those coaches are going to try their best to neutralize that success against their own team.

Behaviorally speaking, the players themselves tend to be affected by a big win or big loss. Players in the NFL pay a tremendous physical price in just about every game. If they play hard, see lots of breaks go their way, and enjoy an easy, satisfying win, many of them are likely to "party hearty." The same preparation, focus, and effort might not be there for their ensuing game. Most coaches will tell you it is much easier to get and keep their players' attention at practice if they made lots of mistakes and got their butts kicked the previous week. Awareness of this behavioral aspect alone is usually enough to keep sage handicappers from "unloading" on a team that looked unbeatable in its previous game.

The NFL, with its four weeks of exhibitions, 16 regular-season games, and monthlong playoffs, has a long season. There are going to be lots of ups and downs. No team – no matter how powerful – has ever gone through a season undefeated against the pointspread. This brings me to my next point: If a team wins big one week and is favored in its next game, you can be pretty sure that oddsmakers are going to set the opening line a tick or two higher than if that same team had lost. If its upcoming opponent lost big, they'll set it up another tick. Usually, by game time, the wagering public has moved the line even more.

That's why savvy handicappers of pro football never go overboard in evaluating a team on the basis of one near-perfect win or one ugly loss. The grizzled vets are always looking for extra value in their wagers: good, well-coached teams at relatively cheap pointspreads when favored, or getting a couple of extra points when underdogs. It's the "public" that overreacts and "bites" on the temptation, by laying extra points on a team after a big win and "passing" on good teams at bargain prices after a big loss.

One method used by many successful pro football handicappers is to largely ignore a team's most recent game, instead focusing on its previous two, three, or even four games as a group in order to get an indicator for the forthcoming week. A team that rushes for 210 yards in one game might drop to 65 in the next game. But if it has accumulated 700 yards rushing in the past four games, you know it's on the right track and you can largely ignore that 65-yard performance in your evaluation. The same goes for judging turnovers and defensive performances.

Here's one last proviso: During the last quarter of the season, the best of the best teams and the worst of the worst teams should probably be excluded from this analysis. By that late stage of the season, the best teams – with the title in mind – are likely to build on each good performance and rebound after any single poor performance. For example, last year the Patriots covered in their last five games of the regular season. At the other end of the spectrum, the injured, dissension-ridden Giants failed to cover in any of their last eight.

Chuck Sippl is the senior editor of The Gold Sheet, the first word in sports handicapping for 48 years. The amazingly compact Gold Sheet features analysis of every football and basketball game, exclusive insider reports, widely followed Power Ratings, and a Special Ticker of key injuries and team chemistry. If you haven't seen The Gold Sheet and would like to peruse a complimentary copy, call The Gold Sheet at (800) 798-GOLD (4653) and be sure to mention you read about it in Card Player. You can look up The Gold Sheet on the web at www.goldsheet.com.