People are always looking for an edge when it comes to drafting for their fantasy football team. Some people spend countless hours poring over statistics, rankings and comparison models to assemble the optimum pack of players.
Another angle that can be used for the selection process is bookmaker odds. These can help players decide which player will fit best into a role, especially if they are torn between a few choices to fill a slot.
All fast bookmakers on Legalbet, a service which analyses betting sites and their offers, have NFL odds readily available. That bank of accurately priced quotes can prove to be a valuable research tool.
Easy Research
Bookmaker odds for NFL lines and prop bets are easy to find, making them a great resource to turn to. Bookmakers make sure to post odds for markets on everything from conference winners to Super Bowl winners and player MVP markets early enough so that fantasy research can implement them.
You can visit any online bookmaker without the need to open an account and just browse the odds. It’s also advisable to bring up an odds comparison tool as well, which aggregates the prices for a market from numerous bookies, just to eliminate the chance of one sportsbook being an outlier in their pricing.
Understand What They Mean
Odds equal implied probability. This is the first thing to get a grasp of when using them for fantasy picks. Bookmaker lines are highly calculated predictions of outcomes, as the sportsbook operator needs to be as accurate as possible.
Sportsbooks are a business after all, and bookies don’t like losing money, so mispricing something like a Green Bay Packers point spread could be costly to them. That’s why they rely on massive computing power to piece the most accurate odds for everything together, and that makes them a pretty good resource.
If you see a +110 quote, that represents a 47.6% chance of happening, compared to a much slimmer 33.3% chance of an outcome happening quoted at +200 odds. Just gaining a familiarity with understanding the implied probability from a glance at odds is good working knowledge to have.
Where Odds Can Help With Fantasy
Tracking the odds of players can be useful for fantasy. It could be watching the deviation over time of the pre-match odds for a Player’s Total Yards per game. Tracking odds history like that over a few matches can give some good insights.
If over a few weeks, that particular player’s starting quote on the line average has got shorter, then it’s likely because he is trending in form (as well as their team) and could make for a good trade option.
For pre-season picks, you can look at teams that are expected to do well, by the ranking of bookmaker odds, and use that as a base for selecting players from. Any form teams that are expected to go well are naturally expected to also generate better offensive stats, for example.
You can find bookmaker odds for everything as well, ranging from the front-runners for the season’s MVP and other awards to the individual top performers for receiving gains, quarterback totals, rushing yards and more. These can be matched to the area of focus for player position within your fantasy team.
Stack the Deck
It is advisable not to just pick fantasy selections based on bookmaker odds. What you see listed in a sportsbook still needs to marry with other research that you are familiar with, like NFL power rankings, but they can be an important part of the puzzle.
One of the most useful ways that bookmaker odds can help with fantasy football is by acting as a tiebreaker. If you’re on the fence over which player to put in as a Wide Receiver, then the projected odds from the respective player’s teams for long-term selections like Division or Conference odds, coupled with relevant Yard Totals quotes, can help you split hairs.
It should be said that bookmaker odds do carry some vulnerability, and bettors try hard to expose them. Bettors are always looking to exploit any perceived weak odds when they can, but in general, the odds that you see listed are pretty accurate for probability.
Because of that accuracy, bookmaker odds make a great resource, especially for looking at the updated prop bet quotes for players week by week to track player’s expected performances.