Have you ever watched an NFL game and wanted to predict the outcome? Maybe you want to know if your team has a good chance at beating the spread or if they’re going to win by more than a touchdown. Maybe you just want to see if their defense can slow down the other team’s offense. Regardless of your motivations, reading NFL odds and predicting football games isn’t rocket science—you don’t have to be an expert! With this guide, you can learn how to read NFL odds and make predictions with ease and confidence.
What are NFL betting lines?
When someone says NFL betting lines, they are talking about how much one has to wager on a particular game in order to win $100. For example, if you bet $120 on a team, you would need them to win by more than 8 points in order for you to win $100. The spread is the point difference between two teams when they play each other. For example, if one team is favoured at -7, that means that team needs to win by 8 or more points in order for the bettor to win their bet, while the underdog would only need 1 point in order for the bettor’s wager on them to be successful.
Point Spread
A point spread is a list of numbers that determines how many points you need in order to bet on one team. These numbers are often two, three, or four. The higher the number, the more points you’ll need in order to win your bet. For example, if a team has +4 on their line that means they have 4 more points than their opponent. The lower this number is (a negative number), then it means that you’ll need less points than your opponent in order to win your bet.
Money line
Money line refers to a bet where there is no point spread, only an over/under number of points. The team being wagered on is not favoured over the other but has more expected points. If they win, they would need to beat their opponents by more than the given number of points in order to cover the spread.
Over/Under
The odds are what you have to bet on in order to win. For example, if you think that a team will score more than 10 points, then you would need to place an over bet. The number 10 is called your point spread. This means that if a team scores 11 points or more, they’ll cover the point spread. The maximum amount of points that can be scored in a game is 100, so if a team scored 101 points or more, they will also cover the point spread.
Conclusion
Regardless of your experience with betting, it’s important to understand how odds work. This will help you make better decisions about what bets are worth making, when to bet on a team, and when not to bet. The more you practice reading NFL lines, the easier it will become. You may even find yourself feeling confident enough in your knowledge that you start placing bets of your own!
