Shortcuts make you lose faster!
Another reminder for the betting public this past Sunday that it’s dangerous to take NFL favorites in teasers and money-line parlays who “only have to win the game.”
A slew of options were on the board right in the sweet spot for luring the overconfident into a trap. In the past, those traps were usually just for teasers. Those are propositions where you can move the line at least six points in your favor on multiple teams … but your teams have to SWEEP at the new lines to cash the ticket. More recently, using teams in money-line parlays has become a virtual fad. Bettors string together a bunch of favorites and wait for a jackpot that rarely comes.
Why bother handicapping when you can just bet on superior teams to win their games? Here were Sunday’s main teaser and parlay busters:
| TEAM (ODDS) | OPP. | RESULT |
| Jets (-6¹/₂/-300) | vs. Bills | L, 41-10 |
| Pats (-6¹/₂/-280) | at Titans | L, 34-10 |
| Falcons (-6/-250) | at Browns | L, 28-16 |
| Eagles (-7¹/₂/-360) | vs. Cowboys | L, 27-20 |
Squares (industry parlance for less-educated bettors) just can’t resist teams at -6 or -6.5 for teasers and money-line parlays. Turn every six-point favorite into a pick ’em? Sure, the favorites might be a little flat and only win by a field goal. But, lose outright? No way!
Philadelphia was in the classic “basic strategy” teaser spot that would cross both the 7 and 3 with a six-point move … and the Eagles failed to win straight up as well.
Sports books were deluged with prop bets that included most or all four members of that quartet. Any bet featuring any of those options lost.
If you paired the Falcons with the Saints in a teaser or parlay, it didn’t matter that the Saints (-5.5/-260) crushed the Bengals, 51-14. You can’t swing points from one game to another. Loser! If you paired the Jets with the Bears, who bullied the Lions 34-22, Loser! Tom Brady and the Pats were linked with many other options because a 7-2 team was playing a 4-4 mediocrity that had a short preparation week off a Monday nighter. Profit poison.
Don’t be misdirected by the monstrous margin misses. It was mostly a fluke that the listed favorites missed the mark by 37.5, 30.5, and 18 and 14.5 points. Those favorites only had to lose outright to ruin the overly popular square strategies.
We should also mention the Buccaneers (-3/-180) over the Redskins snuck into a lot of money-line parlays too. That’s a 16-point market miss on another square favorite in Washington’s 16-3 upset.
Simplest rules of thumb to remember if you’re new to NFL betting: upsets are more common than you realize. Sweeping your picks is more difficult than you realize. And betting money-line parlays is more often a shortcut to trouble than a shortcut to riches.
