NFL, Rest and Heading South

Hopefully some of you ignored the 'Andy Reid and Unders' advice out there last week, and followed me on the Overs this past weekend in the NFL Championship games:

Overs do have a 20-13-1 advantage

Some of you may have seen the trend that since Andy Reid has been the head coach of the Chiefs, Unders is 37-19-4 in home games. While this is true, in playoff games this record is an insignificant 3-2.

So the Kansas City Chiefs will play the San Francisco 49ers in the Superbowl, and I shall be in Cape Town that weekend so you're on your own looking for an edge in this one, and good luck finding one with the game one on the most analysed in all of sports. 

If the market does have an inefficiency it would appear to be that the favourite is over-rated, (6-12 ATS in Superbowls since 2001) which makes sense given the public and 'square' money coming in to add an interest to the game. 

In games where the line is greater than a field goal, the 'dog is 10-2, but unfortunately the line looks like it'll be close to 1.5 with the Chiefs favourites.

I'd have expected Overs to be 'over'-backed also, but 'over'all these are 9-9 over the small sample size. However when the line is relatively small, i.e. fewer than 4.5 points, Overs has a 7-3 record. 

And that will be it for the NFL 2019 season, one that flew by and was again profitable for followers of the Small Road 'Dog System. I'll try to remember to do a summary when I return from South Africa in mid-February.

This will be my last post until then. 

I don't have time to go deep into the topic right now, but I have seen some recent comments about the importance of 'rest' in some sports, but in my opinion the impact of this is pretty well understood and factored in. 

I've written on this topic before, and where someone might want to focus their attention is where the rest might not be as straightforward as simply looking at the number of days since the last game. 

For example, a night game that went into double overtime followed by a day game on the road in a different time zone still counts as zero rest, same as the opponent who is at home following a blowout day game in which the starters were rested for much of the second half. Surely few would agree that the "rest" parameter for both teams is really the same, and it can be useful to consider these details.

Something to think about, but I have a plane to catch for my first, and long overdue, visit to the southern hemisphere and some cricket matches.

I shall return.