Welcome back to another season of One Last Line! With football back tonight(!!!), we can’t wait to bite some kneecaps off and share all of sure-fire (read: dumpster fire) picks with you this season. For those of you who are new to One Last Line or anyone who needs a refresher, here’s the deal:
Yank and I are two regular guys who mostly spend our lives avidly watching football and formulating hot takes. We took up sports betting a few years ago and started writing this blog at the beginning of last season. The blog turned out to mostly be an exercise in memorializing our own follies, but we are on the comeback trail this year. We are both relatively wimpy gamblers who don’t really throw down time bets, but we both love winning and it doesn’t matter if it’s $5 or $500. We are giving the same schtick another spin this year: we are each going to start with $100 at the beginning of the season and see where we end up. The idea is that if we somehow get to $0 before the end of the season, we’re out, so you won’t see us tossing around big chunks of change early. Additionally, we’ve built in a little competition too, because someone always has to win. Every week we will each pick three bets as follows:
- The Collaboration – This is a consensus pick between the two of us. Over the course of last season, this pick was really good at finding public consensus, and unfortunately very good at losing money. We are hoping to use that knowledge to revise our principles which we will discuss more down below.
- The Confrontation – This pick will always be a bet on the spread and we have to disagree about which side we are on. Importantly this approach guarantees a W for somebody, which neither of us were complaining about by the end of last year.
- The Isolation – The third pick will actually be individual bets for the two of us. This section got WAY out of hand last season. While it was fun (and devastating) to try and pick more games than 3, we are going to limit ourselves to the three picks per post. It’s hard enough to identify 3 good leans, we’re only doing ourselves a disservice by spreading our losses out.
The blog goes out Sunday morning, just in time to gear up for a Sunday afternoon full of football. Feel free to play along with us, but keep in mind that may be bad for your wallet. But before we march into our picks this season, we want to do a bit of a recap on our miserable performance last season, review the principles and strategies that led us into those bad decisions, and make some adjustments and additions to those principles.
I think it’s fair to say that Season One of One Last Line didn’t quite turn out the way we had hoped from a gambling perspective. On all bets during the regular season, I managed to go 31-45 and Yank went 19-39. While I am technically the reigning champ, I can’t say that I take much pride in the title. We’ve spent a lot of the offseason reflecting on our misses and scouring the internet for new ideas. At the end of the day, we’re both competitive people so we’re going to mix things up and really get after it this year.
Last Season’s Principles and Strategies
- Don’t overthink it (strategy).
Sam: If it were as easy as picking the good teams, it wouldn’t be much of a money-making proposition. So while overthinking can certainly lead to decision-paralysis, not thinking enough won’t get the job done either. Step back, identify the key points, and rip it.
Yank: It is very hard to pick winners successfully in this game. They build those big hotels in Vegas for a reason; most people aren’t very good at this. How do we identify when the people who do this for a living know something? That can be the equalizer that helps us determine when we are right and need to rip it to Sam’s point and when we are barking up the wrong tree and should stay away.
Stay away from bad QBs and bad HCs.Only bet on HCs and Offenses you are confident in.- Bet for a team not against their opponent.
Sam: So here’s a principle I have learned the hard way. Just because you dislike a team or think they stink, doesn’t mean you should bet against them. Whether it was the Rams or the Saints last year, I lost way too many bets waiting for them not to be as good as everyone said. Ultimately I feel that I was proven right, but that came in the playoffs, not in terms of wins ATS. So when picking your favorites, make sure it’s not just because they’re playing someone who stinks.
Yank: Again, most people who do this have no idea what they are doing. Strong coaches and shiny QBs are the flashy bets they put on the craps table that have cool names but terrible odds. Favorites and underdogs both cover basically 50% of the time. I lost bets (plural!) last year going against Jake Luton (Jake F-ing Luton!) and won a bunch of bets on Jared Goff. I think the second part of that helps illustrate that coaching matters (hello Sean Mcvay) but I am not so sure that QB play really does at least it relates to winning bets week to week against the spread.
Parlay (and tease) at your own peril.- Tease big-line favorites down, especially at home (strategy).
Yank: I have come all the way back around to our original line of thinking on this one. It is really really hard to pick one game right. Adding 2+ picks together starts to feel impossible, and introduces extra juice for the house to boot. I’ve already illustrated that I think shiny favorites are often big flashing sucker plays. I’m in favor of trying to get good lines on favorites, but I want to do it through identifying matchups early in the week this year before the lines move, instead of through spreads or teasers.
Sam: To Yank’s point, it’s easy to get enamored with the best teams from a W-L perspective. It would seem like a no-brainer to tease the big favorites down every week, but tying two outcomes together is risky business for not a lot of reward. The only time worth trying it is if we can pick out when the Sharps have moved the lines on two matchups and grab them at what they were before via a tease.
- Due to the salary cap, there isn’t a significant talent gap between the vast majority of NFL teams.
- Identify the home underdog(s) that we think are overlooked (strategy)
Yank: This is the best and most important of our rules in my opinion. The salary cap is the great equalizer. Any NFL team can beat any other on a given week. I am going to spend the vast majority of my time this year trying to find underdogs that are overlooked (playing at home is a great start). Laying money on teams at plus odds gives me more wiggle room, especially early in the season when what we know for sure is some team’s preseason projections will be wildly incorrect. More on that below.
Sam: I am fully onboard with Yank on this one. Since 2003, underdogs in the 9-14 point range win or push 52-53% of the time. That may not seem like a large percentage, but when the whole point of setting lines is to make it 50-50, 2-3% above 50% actually does matter. Furthermore, like a dummy, I want to bet on the winners and the best teams. So at the risk of sounding like a broken record, I need to actively work against that mindset and identify the underdogs worth grabbing.
- Division games are less predictable than non-division games, due to team/scheme familiarity.
Sam: Despite how it seems watching the games and from what you read on Twitter coaches and teams are actually quite good at game planning. These guys know what they’re doing. Play a team twice every year, you get a good long look at what they do, how they do it, and what they don’t do well. These games are going to be hard-fought and often close. Don’t fall into the trap that thinking because one team is obviously better than another, that a blowout is in store.
Yank: Couldn’t agree more with Sam here, teams playing division rivals as underdogs will be prime candidates for me as I look to execute my underdog-centric strategy.
- If you’re going to pick a dog Week 1, play the money line.
Sam: This is my favorite principle. Weird shit always happens during Week 1. Try to find the bad team playing a good team or some other bizarre outcomes. Think Jags-Colts last year. The Jags went 1-15!!! That one win came in week 1. It always happens. Good luck to those trying to sniff it out.
Yank: Sam has it covered here. Somebody is going to come out hot in Week 1 for no reason. Let’s figure out who and win some money.
- Vegas knows better. Some lines don’t look like you think they should – be very careful (nominated).
Yank: This is going to be critically important this year. Where did the line open? How has it moved? That should give us a good sense of what smart people think (say it with me: only sharps move lines). I want to be betting with those smart people close to 100% of the time, as I’ve clearly proven that otherwise, I am definitely dumb.
Sam: If we want to avoid sucker bets, we have to consider more information. How lines move is one great way of finding advantages. We want to bet on the side of those who are pushing the line away from where they think it’s valuable.
2021 Strategies
In summary, the Principles remain but these are the Strategies we will be utilizing this season:
- Watch line movement carefully. Sharps move the lines and we want to be on their side.
- Pick more underdogs. Even though many of them lose more than 50% of games, they still cover the spread about 50% of the time.
- Put in bets earlier. Once you get to Sunday, the lines are close to perfectly efficient.
The season starts tonight – first picks post coming Sunday morning! Can’t wait to gamble our way through it, thanks for following along (and as always Fade Us like your life depends on it).
One Last Line 
One thought on “2021 NFL Season Primer”