I just want to reiterate that turning a profit via gambling is not the goal of this project. I am estimating what the expectations are if every organization followed the cyclical nature of the league. I am not predicting what will happen on the field. I couldn’t expect to be right about who wins what game since I have no influence over what happens on the field.

Instead, I am just as, if not more, interested in who “should” have won the game. Using the spreads provided by the sportsbooks as a proxy as who “should” have won each game, I created a version of the seasons where every game resulted in the Favorite winning. These Favorite Only versions, along with the Actual versions for each season can be found above. The difference between these two versions provides an opportunity to assess how “lucky” the model is. The charts below show this luck through the first 5 seasons. More about Upset Luck can be found here.

Upsets can generate a significant amount of volatility. Through the first 3 weeks of the 2024 season, underdogs of 5.5 or more points were 10-4, including 5-0 in Week 3 alone. In that same time period, NFL betting public (51%+ of the bets) was 17-30-1 against the spread (betting using point spread), which is the second worst performance through that time span in the past 20 years. If one were to follow those bets, to use $10 as a unit, and to bet 1 unit on each bet, he or she would be down $145.30 (-30%). While the league had certainly undergone a period of instability from 2021 to 2023, I would be very suspicious of anybody who is confident about what will happen in any individual NFL game regardless.