Betting on offensive fireworks: Ravens @ Saints o47.5

The betting total for week 9 Monday Night Football action featuring the Ravens at the Saints opened at 49, but faced immediate attack. The number settled at 48 for time, but again faced pressure coming into the weekend, and is now in the 46.5 vicinity.

Explaining the draw lower, 64% of O/U wagers and 84% of the handle are down on the UNDER, suggesting sharps and squares alike are betting on disappointing scores Monday evening. This result is rather remarkable in that casual bettors optimism is more likely to produce undue herding around OVERs, generally speaking. Weinbach & Paul (2002), for instance, analyzed NFL games between 1979 and 2000 and found that UNDERs won more than 50% of the time (suggesting action on OVERs bid lines too high). Paul & Weinbach (2005) validated this result with evidence that OVERs are overbid in college and arena, as well as in NFL and NBA markets.

We remind ourselves though that the UNDER is 80-55 (59%) so far this season, and recency bias is a thing in betting markets too--Durand, Patterson & Shank (2021) and Krieger, Davis & Strode (2021) offer documentation of bettors' tendency to overweight recent outcomes in decision making processes...perhaps bettor's have simply abandoned the OVER as a result of the UNDER's dominance this year.

At any rate, we are shunning the herd and backing the OVER Monday, as we think the a visit from third best offense in the League represents an ideal spot to bet on an upside surprise in offensive productivity. As rationale for our contrarian bent, we offer the following contextual support:

In Monday Night Football action, backing the OVER has proven easy money when the home team is facing the opposing conference following a game where the UNDER hit.

In contrast to the prior four, New Orleans' last action, as hosts to Las Vegas, finished below the total--the Raiders were held to a goose egg.

This simple angle has been good for a hypothetical 37%(!) return on investment back to the 2003-04 season, which has proved statistically significant at better than the 95% confidence level, despite the slight sample size, and has suffered sub-50% cover rates in only three years during this span.

Happy betting!!