handicapping NFL regular season tilts

The annual Hall-of-Fame game features the Buffalo Bills vs. the Tennessee Titans in Canton, Ohio on Sunday, August 9th. The matchup, which will be nationally televised on NBC, was created to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the American Football League.

When involved in online sports betting, you are probably already starting to think about these preseason games, reading one or two NFL annual preview magazines and cruising NFL-focused sites.

Preseason NFL betting takes some finesse, as handicapping the exhibition games is quite different than handicapping NFL regular season tilts.

The first thing I do when betting on the NFL during the preseason is look at QB depth and then quickly move on to handicapping the situation. If a team has a real QB battle going on, with two or three decent pro-level pivots on the roster who are going to be playing, this is of real interest. Look for quality on the depth chart below the starter. Peyton Manning and Tom Brady have a significant impact on the NFL preseason betting results over the first couple of weeks. But the second and third stringers will. Keep this in mind.

The situation is also highly relevant. Particularly look for coaches and teams that are in spots where they might be really motivated to win. Preseason NFL games is the only time of the sports betting year when you will find varying motivations coming into a game. One coach might not care at all about whether his team wins or loses, he simply wants to get some players reps, evaluate a few key newcomers or watch for a positional battle or two. But it is not uncommon for a team like that to be facing a coach who does actually want to record, for whatever reason.