It’s time to stop YouTubing “NFL big hits” and start watching preseason football the way it was intended: by deep-diving into NFL training camp practice reports and placing wagers on games whose outcomes will largely be determined by players who won’t be on the field in September. If you can’t enjoy something as chaotic as a Sean Clifford throw to Bo Melton late on an August Friday night, you either aren’t a real football fan or, more likely, just don’t have a big enough bet on the over.
Welcome to The Ringer’s Guide to Successfully Betting the Preseason.
Do: Bet the Baltimore Ravens and Underdogs
There’s perpetual value in betting on John Harbaugh’s Ravens in the preseason. Baltimore is 43-12 straight up and 38-16-1 against the spread in the preseason in the first 15 years of the Harbaugh era. The betting markets seem to have adjusted to Baltimore’s consistent preseason success, as the Ravens are among the biggest favorites, at -4.5 against the Eagles, in Week 1 of the preseason, but I remain steadfast in my commitment to the bit. My faith is in Harbaugh and his backup quarterbacks, Tyler Huntley and Josh Johnson, to continue the Ravens’ August reign.
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Another safe-ish trend is to back the underdogs. Home-field advantage matters little in the preseason, and there is so much variance in terms of coaching motivations and who will actually suit up, so projecting a true underdog is nearly impossible. According to VSiN analytics, preseason underdogs in the +1 to +3 range are 149-102 against the spread.
Do: Actually Watch the Games
Only bet on the NFL preseason because you love football. Watching Jets QB Zach Wilson hit Malik Taylor for a 57-yard gain that set up a go-ahead field goal in the Hall of Fame game brought a tear to my eye (and helped cash my Jets first-quarter moneyline bet), and watching Browns kicker Cade York shank a 49-yarder and receiver Anthony Schwartz fumble was a thrill that I’ve been missing since February. Winning $7 from my first NFL bet of the season was fine; screaming “Jamien Sherwood, Auburn” at the TV when the Jets linebacker stripped the ball away from Schwartz was like an intravenous espresso shot.
Now it’s your turn. The first full weekend of preseason games is loaded with ways for you to chase that dopamine hit. Tune in to watch Tyrod Taylor and the Giants torch the Lions’ backup secondary in the first half Friday night, then cure your Saturday-morning hangover by taking the Colts moneyline against the Bills and their 32-year-old backup QB, Matt Barkley. If you’ll be betting, you better be watching.
Do: Live Bet
This can be the most fun (and lucrative) way to bet on these meaningless games. Take the Hall of Fame game, for example. The Jets defense gave up long touchdown drives, led by Browns QBs Kellen Mond and [checks notes] Dorian Thompson-Robinson, and though Cleveland still trailed by two in the third quarter, I was feeling pretty good about the Browns’ bottom-of-the-depth-chart QBs outplaying their Jets counterparts for the remainder of the game, so I took the Browns moneyline, and it hit.
Waiting to bet the second halves of games until you’ve seen the backups play even just a few series can guide you toward high-value live bets and keep the dopamine levels up through the fourth quarter.
Do: Doomscroll Twitter (X?!) and Be Constantly Online
My ritual before I place any NFL preseason bet is to blitz internet search engines, from Google to Bing, with team and player names to find every piece of content that beat reporters who go to the team practices have put out in recent days. Then I read every article (and not just the headlines), listen to every podcast, watch every video, and follow and scroll through those beat writers’ Twitter accounts. Access journalism is the foundation of any informed (and subsequently successful) bettor in the preseason.
Look for any hints of who will play in these preseason games and what the workload looks like for starters—especially for quarterbacks. Committing to scouring the depths of the internet for playtime answers up until kickoff is paramount for any preseason bet.
Additionally, sites like Action Network quickly show the price differences for all of the various bets available for any preseason game. There’s more variance in spreads and totals from book to book for preseason games. For example, one book listed the total for Thursday’s Texans-Patriots game at 39.5, and another had it at 37.5. If you’re backing the over, you’ll want to bet the lowest total you can find.
Do: Find the Magic Totals Number
Speaking of totals, don’t make any preseason totals bet without thinking about the number 37. According to VSiN analytics, since 2010, 58.4 percent of preseason game totals less than 37 have gone over, while 56.9 percent of those 37 or higher have gone under. Only three of the Week 1 preseason games that FanDuel has lines for have totals more than two points higher or lower than 37: Steelers at Buccaneers (39.5), Giants at Lions (34.5), and Chargers at Rams (33.5). Bottom line: Chase value in outlier totals that stray well above or below that magic number of 37.
Don’t: Bet Full Games
This is a very bad idea for two reasons:
1. Unless you break the rules and tune out at halftime, betting full games means you’re watching full games. I love football as much as anyone; however, staying up after hours to watch Josh Johnson hand the ball off to Justice Hill is a scene out of Saw X.
2. Betting full games before kickoff assumes you know what the hell will happen in the fourth quarter, and I am here to promise you that you don’t. Turning on notifications for NFL Twitter aggregators—you know, the accounts that add fire and rocket emojis to every average training camp highlight video—won’t prepare you for the variance disaster class that occurs in the final 15 minutes of just about every preseason game. You don’t know who will be playing for either team (just assume it’s the worst 20 or so guys on each roster). You don’t know whether either coaching staff is trying to win the game (they probably aren’t) or whether they’re simply practicing their four-minute offense or are eager to set up their untested kicker for a long field goal. It’s an abyss of randomness. It’s like betting on a dice roll, except the dice don’t have numbers on each face and instead have names like Jake Luton and Ian Book.
Don’t: Make Casual Big Bets
Sharps often bet big in the preseason. Why? The same reason wager limits are lower in the preseason than in the regular season: Lines are significantly more inefficient because of the lack of credible information about who is playing. That means there’s a lot of value to be had if you have a vetted model or if you’re spending tens of hours during the week mining the internet and private sources for pertinent information.
“In preseason, you’re probably looking at 80 to 90 percent sharp money,” former Westgate SuperBook oddsmaker Ed Salmons told the Las Vegas Review-Journal ahead of the 2022 NFL preseason. “They bet on any line difference, and preseason lines can move seven points. That’s why the limits are what they are.
“The public really shies away from the preseason.”
But that doesn’t mean you have to shy away from the preseason completely; just don’t bet above your means as a casual gambler. Sprinkle a half unit on Chase Garbers to win it for the Raiders as a +155 underdog. Trade your cup-of-coffee money for the 30-minute thrill ride that is a first-half under for Chargers-Rams. Absolutely stay away from the $2,200 max bets on something like the chance for Saints rookie QB Jake Haener to beat the Chiefs, only to have someone named Shane Buechele (trust me, he’s a Chiefs QB, I looked it up) ruin your night and put you out two grand by throwing a fourth-quarter go-ahead touchdown pass to Ty Fryfogle (believe it or not, this is also the name of a real NFL player!).
Don’t: Place Fourth-Quarter Bets
Binge garbage reality TV with your partner. Call your parents. Go to bed. Do anything but sweat out a fourth-quarter over that hangs on whether Jake Browning and Mac Hippenhammer will get into field goal range while you wade through pop-up porn ads on an illegal, Reddit-sourced streaming site after midnight ET. Betting makes these games more fun, but fourth-quarter bets are for suckers, and you’re not a sucker.
