LAS VEGAS — The NFL playoffs have gone through various trend patterns over the years, with some seasons being dominated by underdog and upstart teams, and others being relatively predictable with favorites taking care of business eventually. Because of the ever-changing landscape, it is somewhat difficult for bettors to navigate the waters from year-to-year using past playoffs as a guide.
In past eras, predicting the playoffs was usually as easy as looking at a team’s body of work. When you consider that all four road teams won against the spread in last year’s playoffs, that truly isn’t the case anymore, especially on a round-to-round basis. How a team is playing lately seems to be a bigger factor than anything else nowadays.
That line of thinking would bode well for all of the teams playing this weekend, as only the Texans are not at least 5-1 in the last six games. That said, if any round of the playoffs is truly wild and unpredictable, it is fittingly the wild-card round.
In just the last two years, we’ve seen home teams go 4-0 ATS in 2017, with road teams returning the favor with a 4-0 ATS sweep in 2018, including two outright upsets. Overall, in the last six years, the ATS breakdown is Road 12, Home 11, with one push.
Though each of the last five Super Bowls have matched teams that enjoyed the wild-card round off, prior to that a truly significant trend had emerged of the eventual champion having started its playoff round on wild-card weekend. In fact, six of the last 13 Super Bowl champions have started their playoff journey here, so it sometimes makes more sense to just throw away anything you think you may have learned in the 17 weeks of the regular season.
Is the eventual Super Bowl champion one of the teams playing this weekend? Only time will tell, but savvy bettors have picked up big winnings by banking on such thoughts. Many experts right now believe the Chargers, Ravens, and Bears are all capable of winning a title in 2019.
With the overwhelming perception of unpredictability on our minds, I dug through the database of the recent playoff logs to see if we could uncover any tips of the trade that might help better handicap the wild-card weekend games. I looked at all, home/road scenarios, underdogs/favorites, lines, stats, you name it. See if you can apply any of the findings to the upcoming weekend action:
- The outright winner owns a point-spread record of 37-4-1 ATS in the last 42 wild-card playoff games! That said, games in three of the last four seasons have produced the only ATS losses in that stretch, including twice a year ago when the Jaguars (-9) failed to cover in a rather ugly 10-3 win over the Bills, and the Saints (-6¹/₂) edged the Panthers, 31-26. Those win/non-covers are rare, so after a year in which it happened twice, for this weekend, regardless of the point spread, if you can’t see the team you’re betting on winning the game, my advice is don’t do it.
- Road teams seem to have regained the edge in this round in recent years, going 10-10 SU and 11-8-1 ATS in the last 20 wild-card games.
- Favorites are on a run of 12-4 SU and 8-8 ATS in the last four wild-card seasons.
- There has been a definitive separation in success levels of the home teams in the Saturday and Sunday games. In the last 24 Saturday wild-card games, home teams are 15-9 SU and 15-8-1 ATS. In that same span, home teams are 13-11 SU and 10-13-1 ATS on Sundays.
- Sunday road NFC teams have been terrific, going 9-7 SU and 11-4-1 ATS in the last 16. Under the total is also 11-5 in those games. The Eagles will test Chicago on these trends this weekend.
- In the 11 wild-card matchups between divisional opponents since 2003, road teams own an 8-3 ATS edge (5-6 SU). The Colts face the Texans in the only intra-divisional match this weekend.
- No. 4 seeds are on a 15-9 SU and 14-8-2 ATS run over the last 12 wild-card seasons.
- Of the 12 meetings between the No. 3 and No. 6 seeds, Under the total is 11-0-1! Those matchups this year are Colts-Texans and Eagles-Bears.
- No. 3 seeds that were an underdog or less than a 3-point favorite have lost eight straight games outright while going 1-7 ATS, scoring just 13.4 ppg in the process. The Texans are less than a field-goal favorite versus the Colts.
- Under has dominated over the past six years, going 17-6-1.
