There’s probably not a sportsbook on Earth that was too disappointed by the National Football League’s decision to add another week to this year's regular-season schedule.
NFL football is, after all, extremely popular among bettors, especially in Canada and the United States. Another week of football means another week of heavy wagering and super-sized handle for bookmakers.
But more NFL also means more NFL-related stresses, such as the constant need by books to ensure point spreads are calculated as precisely as possible amid the steady drumbeat of injury reports and coaches’ comments that may suggest how much superstars play. Bettors are sitting shotgun for that ride.
What’s more, these are already extraordinarily stressful times, thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic that continues to wreak havoc. That volatility has led to wild swings in some betting lines for the NFL’s new Week 18 as players are suddenly ruled out for games.
All of the above means the final week of this year’s NFL regular season involves the usual anxieties, but with a few added twists for the 17th game that teams must now play. In short, there's even more for books and bettors to worry about.
Kris Abbott, head of North America for Coolbet, said their bookmakers are probably having to do the same work three or four times each week instead of just once due to all the COVID-connected developments.
"Those guys could probably do without [Week 18] because it's another week of headaches for them on players in and out, and where player prop lines should be, and where spreads and totals should be," Abbott said with a laugh. "It's difficult for our bookmakers, but I don't know if that's more a function of this Week 18 or just the roster flux that we've had with COVID. It's kind of hard to separate those two."
#Ravens coach John Harbaugh announced that QB Tyler Huntley will start at QB this weekend. Lamar Jackson out another week.
— Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet) January 7, 2022
The NFL’s playoff format now gives only the top team in each conference a week off as well. Coaches may or may not be resting or benching players as they decide whether it’s better to preserve their lineups or fight for better playoff positioning — and that’s even before COVID-19 is factored into the equation.
“Traditionally, Week 17 — now Week 18 — is always the hardest, in my mind, to book and handicap from a bettor’s perspective because you’re not necessarily going by pure numbers, pure power ratings,” said Tom Gable, director of race and sports for the Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa in Atlantic City. “You have to certainly take into account motivations for teams and coaches and how they’re going to handle it.”
Some punters are confident they've got a grip on the motivations of certain teams, as Gable said they saw early action from sharp bettors on Saturday’s Dallas Cowboys-Philadelphia Eagles game.
The line for that matchup opened with the Cowboys as three-point favorites before a flock of Eagles were put on the COVID-19 list, which helped move the number to Dallas -7 or more. It's since tumbled to Dallas -4.5 or -4 following COVID-related news for the Cowboys.
Sharper bettors are always looking for angles, even for games that may mean nothing in the grand scheme of the season, Gable said. However, casual bettors seem to gravitate more towards games that really matter, such as the Sunday night matchup between the Los Angeles Chargers and the Las Vegas Raiders.
“The COVID news, I mean, that's something that we adjust to week after week,” Gable said in an interview with Covers. “We're used to doing that now. But you have this extra factor, which to me is always difficult, of handicapping these motivations for different teams.”
Timing is everything
Still, COVID-19 is causing some wild swings in betting lines. And those movements have weighed on the behavior of bettors.
A player thinking they had an edge on a game used to be able to lock in a bet on Sunday night or Monday morning that could appreciate in value as more wagers came in during the week and books adjusted their numbers accordingly.
This season, however, has been a bit like playing roulette, Coolbet’s Abbott said. A bettor could make what looks like a smart play on Monday, only to find out on Friday that the team they're backing is missing a slew of players.
“There's certainly a huge shift in the timing of the action that we see come in,” Abbott said. “And I think that's only the prudent thing to do. I think you're kind of foolish if you think you're getting ahead of anything early in the week when things change on a dime.”
Phill Gray, head of trading operations at Sports Interaction, said there have been some “unbelievable line moves” this year. For example, in Week 18, the Cincinnati-Cleveland game swung from Bengals as three-point favorites to six-point underdogs.
Some of that movement can be chalked up to COVID-19-related news about star running back Joe Mixon and other Bengals players, as well as the expectation that Cincinnati quarterback Joe Burrow will be resting on the sidelines come Sunday.
In these volatile times, staying glued to Twitter has been a must for Gray, as news usually breaks there first. But there are also proactive defensive measures being taken at Sports Interaction.
“I’ve had to this year keep my pregame limits much farther into the week than I ever have before or that I would like to,” Gray said. “It does affect handle, but really I have no choice. You can’t be at full-game limits midweek now, you just can’t. You’ll get buried on some early liabilities.”
Micah Parson isn’t the only high-profile #Cowboys player to land on the COVID-19 list. Per me and @MikeGarafolo, LT Tyron Smith tested positive, as well.
— Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet) January 6, 2022
Gray said he expects this NFL season will indeed be leaner in terms of profit for sportsbooks, especially compared to their record winnings from the 2020-21 season. There have been weeks in which bettors won plenty, although those were still offset by weeks in which punters lost plenty.
"It hasn't been a disaster year, but it hasn't been a very good one, put it that way,” Gray said.
For the Borgata, though, the 2021-22 NFL season was “very good," Gable said. Handle increased and, while bettors fared well in earlier weeks, the books struck back in the latter half of the season.
Furthermore, sportsbooks continue to gain traction with the general public due to the rising tide of legal sports betting in Canada and the U.S.
And football, of course, remains the undisputed heavyweight champion of wagering options.
“Any time the NFL wants to put an extra week of games in there, sportsbooks, I'm sure, are all for it,” Gable said.
