I've talked about this quite a bit on here before but I don't think I've ever made a post solely focusing on what and how to bet on The Super Bowl. So let's do a quick dive.
First off, to really get the full picture here, you need to zoom out and understand why the SB is such a different animal than literally any other sporting event on the planet. Let's look at it from the sports books view first.
You know that saying when someone is describing something huge in some field or industry. 'It's their super bowl!' Well this is THE Super Bowl for bookies, obviously. The amount of super square, public money that comes in on the SB is astounding. People who otherwise never make a bet in their lives will put money down on it. Normally public money means next to nothing to sports books. Think of public money like flys on a lion. Barely noticeable until there's a shit load of them. Then they're very noticeable. Sports books biggest season is NFL and they've ground out their 5 or 6% 11 or 12% hold for the year. (Some year end figures were just released which showed that online books had an over 12% hold in 2025. That is insane and will be something I'll discuss in the future). The last thing these books want to do is give it all back to the public in one game. Typically they'll be happy to take your action, let you all pile in on the wrong side, not move the line at all and go into the game with a good position. Over time they crush you doing this. But for the SB, the handle will be so high that even the biggest guys in town have to somewhat respect it. And the little guys? The mid and lower tier books? They really want even action and those are the places that will put up a +7 when everyone else is +6 or something similar. So the main takeaway here is that the SB is different than anything else and the incentives for sports books are different than normal. In general, they're not trying to accurately pick the game but rather just have balanced action. Again, very generally speaking here. Basically, it's what most people think sports books do anyway.
Another aspect to this is that books will be fighting over this public money. I think just about every PPH account I ever had introduced some sort of unique market for the SB. Draft Kings and Fan Duel have a ton of unique stuff up already. A lot of it is one way market trash with absurd house edges, but anything unique with a two way market is worth looking at. You have to realize here, with these kinds of small unique markets, you might be against one guy. One guy who works at the sports book might be in charge of making the cross sport or entertainment lines. How much time do you think gets put into those lines? Or the novelty/exotic section. They put up lines, put a $500 limit up and move on with their day. These kinds of new, unique, sort of odd looking markets are the low hanging fruit that you might hear people talking about.
Now from the bettors side, how do things look? Who are all these square bettors and what are they betting on and why? This is pretty obvious if you know (or are) square bettors. They want action. They want to bet on their guy or their team to do something. To get a lot of catches, to score a TD, to get an INT, they want safeties and over time and lots of points. They want action.
So what happens when we put these two things together? A massive contingent of public bettors that the market has to respect, if only because of the sheer size? Plus brand new, completely unique, one week only markets? We get opportunities.
The trick you want to pull here is to simply fade the action craving public. So what does that mean? We look for under's and no's, especially on star players. Any player that your mom might know. Think of a thrilling, high scoring, back and forth game. Now think of the exact opposite of that. What would have to happen for a boring game? Lots of 3 and outs, not a lot of passing, a lot of punts, a lot of no's and under's.
You might think this is too obvious to actually work, and these days, to be honest, you could be right. But it's worked for me for almost 20 years now. I know there's a lot more focus on player props these days, but you could argue that that's a good thing for sharps. Now your bartender might fire on Darnold over 1.5 TD instead of just SEA -4.5 parlayed with the over.
There's another cute trick you can pull off in the SB specifically.
There are two bets that the public loves: the favorite on the spread, and the underdog money line. With the amount of public money that comes in on the SB, these two markets will almost always get pushed out of whack at least a couple books. If you really line-shop and have access to a good amount of books, you can almost always get a profitable middle going with the favorite money line and underdog with the points. The higher the spread, the better.
There are all kinds of NFL moneyline/spread conversions online. Basically, what the money line should be on a game with a given spread, or vice versa. On game day, if you look for the very best lines, you should be able to find a mis-priced number on the favorite ML and dog with the points. I've probably had some version of this middle/position on every SB for the past 15 years. And obviously with all middles, you can't possibly lose both, so you can really unload if you want. And you don't have to have an even amount on both sides either. Say you find a really good number on the favorite money line and a break even or very slightly +EV number on the dog plus points. You could over bet on the money line and buy back some on the dog. So you have a position on the favorite winning but if they win and don't cover you really clean up. With this game being lined at 4.5/5, this is actually possible. Most Super Bowls usually have a spread under 3 or 3.5 which makes this middle hard to hit at all. But with it being 4.5, you have a roughly 15% chance of it hitting. You can't do this blindly, you should look into the conversion charts for a baseline, but it's a bread and butter sharp SB play.
There's a couple of bridge jumper bets that are almost always +EV for the SB, too. These aren't anything juicy and they won't make you rich, but they're usually worth betting if you have some dry powder left on game day. Specifically, NO on will there be a 2 point conversion (attempt and actual conversion), safety, over-time, or pick six. This is so widely known now that I've actually noticed these lines get sharper over the years, but they're usually worthing looking into.
As far as the nuts and bolts, don't want until a couple hours before the game to start to do anything. You have over 10 days to do some work. Either opening new accounts or doing some capping work on your own. Remember, capping this stuff really isn't as hard as it seems and trying at all will put you ahead of most people. With player props you want to focus on averages and medians. Don't forget about medians. You need the stats for the average NFL defense and SEA and NE defenses. Think about how they differ from the average and by how much. The SB is the perfect event for the Justin7 style of 'do lots of props, quickly'. Also, you can absolutely get an edge on markets like the the length of the national anthem, too. There's a lot of small youtube channels out there that give out edges they don't even know they're giving out.
Betting props on the Super Bowl is kind of where I got started handicapping at all. If you aren't gonna cap any props for the Super Bowl, you ain't a capper at all. It really is a feeding frenzy and completely passing on it is just unthinkable to me. Plus it's fun! The whole world is in on it.
Lastly, and this is for the fellow sharps out there and something I wish someone told me 15 years ago: don't be a know it all with your friends/squares. Over the next 10 days, you might have an inordinate amount of people talking about betting with you. Explaining their dreadful 5 leg parlay that they're probably paying over 30% juice for, or what they think will happen in the game. Maybe they're asking you for bets. Don't explain this shit to people who don't want to hear it and don't be a dick. I used to know this one kid that used to hound me for bets, especially on the SB. He was obnoxious and a sweaty little gnat, but plenty of other people are just making conversation or looking for you for one 'lock.' They aren't trying to 'exploit' you. I wish I was more graceful with these people when I was really in my hey-day of betting. (Although one thing I will say: stay away from giving out actual plays to complete betting n00bs. If it wins they'll be happy but if it loses they'll be apoplectic. "I thought you were like a professional or something?!" They don't understand that they have something like a 6% edge, not 90%. I've learned the hard way that this is just not worth it.) Once you have a few good years of betting/capping under your belt, you can start to feel like you've cracked the code and you can't even relate to what other people are saying about sports and betting. You hear them talk and just can't stop yourself from correcting or explaining something to them. 'Well Axtchually-ing' them. Don't be that guy. For 99% of the world, this is a silly, fun event that they're putting their yearly 50 dollar wager on. Don't correct them or explain anything to them. They don't want to hear any of it. Trust me.
Lastly, as a little secret thank you to anyone who is a regular reader here, I'm going to give you some of my push chart results. If you know what this means you'll know how valuable this is.
This is from the past 4 seasons, 2022-2025.
Here are the most important numbers and their push percentages:
(Positive means home team won).
-3: 7.45%
+3: 7.36%
+7: 4.05%
-7: 3.96%
+6: 3.96%
+2: 3.22%
-1: 3.22%
Pretty interesting to see +6 so high and +2 and -1 at all. No 10's or 14s. Makes sense that I don't think I've ever hit a 10 middle in my life. I thought the 10 would be right under the 7s to be honest. And I think my screwball through the zero teasers are even better than I thought.
Contact me if you want the full report. Some guy at Sports Solutions was going to charge me $3k for this info, plus I had to sign something that I was only using it for (bold and all caps his) RECREATIONAL - NON COMMERCIAL PURPOSES ONLY. A bit steep if you ask me! We all know how to use google sheets now!
Finally, completely unrelated, I just finished a wicked good book. 'Tender Is The Flesh' by Agustina Bazterrica. It was written in Spanish in 2017 and translated into English in 2020. It's about the near future where animals get some virus deadly to humans and all have to be eradicated, so they legalize cannibalism. State sanctioned cannibalism and all the implications. I love horror movies and TV shows but I haven't delved too far into horror books. Boy was this one a fucking gut punch. Especially the very end. Go into it cold if you're going to read it.
That's it for today. I will definitely have some Super Bowl plays up before next Sunday so check back soon. Bye for now! (By the way, you know how people always say 'stay safe' or 'be safe!' as a goodbye? Can you picture anyone from any other time period saying that? Can you imagine a hippie chick in the 60's saying 'stay safe!' as a goodbye? Or a 1980's Chad? Of course not. Just something I thought about recently. We are so godamn safe these days, aren't we?)
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