I had my best week of the year so far last week but it was, again, chock full of drama with two near heart attacks. It's been feeling like I'm walking a tight rope this year with sharks and spikes on one side of the fall and piles of cash on the other. Let's dive in and try to make sense of another whacky week of over-betting wong teasers and middling/arbing each leg, plus more.
It was quite the busy week for teasers. The MNF game got me started with LAR blowing out the NYG. A good but not great result.
The next leg up was GB which was -7, almost -7.5, all week until game day when a TON of ATL money came in, pushing the line all the way down to -4.5. I managed to hedge my way completely out of my GB position and made it so I had more ATL exposure. ATL won outright so, again, a decent but not great result.
The madness really started on Sunday. These are the 1:00 legs I had, in rough order of exposure: BUF -1.5, SEA -1.5/-2.5, IND +7.5, TEN +7.5, CLE +8.5.
BUF won by eight. A lot of my LAC hedges went in at LAC +7.5 so that was a bit of a bummer.
SEA gave me my first near heart attack of the day, however. This was another terrific teaser spot: SEA was getting bet all week, going from -7 -100 all the way to -9 at kick off. I nibbled on them all week, getting them from -1.5 ( really -1 but my book is any teaser push is a loss, so that is effectively -1.5) to -2.5. With the total being so small, I hedged with a lot of WASH +3.5 and +8.5, but a good amount of money-line as well. So the only thing that really couldn't happen in this game was SEA winning by exactly one...which is why it was so brutal to see that game be WASH 33, SEA 31 with SEA about to get the ball late in the 4th quarter. All they had to do was kick a FG to win by exactly one. I live bet some SEA ML just in case, but WASH ended up winning outright. A bad result that was close to being a lot worse. This was another game that took forever and was very much in balance at the end, so I had to wait until the bitter end to know if a lot of my afternoon legs were live or not.
IND and CLE won outright which was decent. TEN +7.5 was the only leg of the 1:00 slate that won and had some of my middles hit as well.
The only other action I had in the 1:00 games was a JAX -2.5 scalp that won easily, and a big PIT +3.5 scalp that won as well. Draft kings, for the second week in a row, put up an arb to the market on PIT +3.5 and ML for most of the week. I got PIT +3.5 -105 at DK and scalped with CIN -3.5 +115ish and a little bit of CIN -3 -110. CIN winning by 3 would have been perfect, and it looked like the game was going to end that way, but PIT winning outright was fine too.
On to the 4:00 slate where we again had a near heart attack. With the 1:00 legs doing so well, I had a lot of teasers alive going into the afternoon games. My two big 4:00 legs were SF -2.5 and TB +7.5. The SF game was very similar to the SEA game, an 8.5 favorite and a low total. So I had SF -2.5 for a massive amount, and hedged with everything from ARZ ML to ARZ +8.5. Again, the only thing that really couldn't happen in this game was SF winning by exactly 1 or 2. I don't know if you were following along with that game, but it was insanity at the end. It all started with SF missing an extra point to go up by exactly 9 late in the game. As soon as I saw that my heart dropped and I started firing ARZ +2.5 live. Sure enough, ARZ fucking marches down and scores to go down by exactly two way late in the game. I'm thinking 'well I'm fucked, it's finally going to happen.' To make matters worse, I could have gotten SF at -1.5 instead of -2.5 if I had just waited. SF opened at -8.5 but closed at -7.5.
So I'm trying to give my daughter a bath, pretend that none of this is happening as I'm watching the play by play on my phone, trying to jam in ARZ +2.5. SF has the ball and I'm thinking they're just going to try to run the clock down. Then out of nowhere they score a TD! A wave of relief!
But wait! There's a lot of time left and ARZ is now marching! Again! Dear god. Thankfully, they get bogged down and end up kicking a FG! So SF wins by 6, a near perfect ending. The teaser won and all my ARZ +7.5 and +8.5 hedges won. I dusted off a good amount live betting, again, but so far so good.
TB ended up perfect, losing by 7. I only had one small MIN -1.5 middle on this game, however, as I just ran out of time hedging the big SF play.
Anyway, with both 4:00 legs winning, this meant I had a massive position on DEN +7.5 and +8.5. They were a perfect 3rd leg to put in on nearly every teaser I had all week, so my position really was big. I hedged with a mixture of LAR ML, -1.5, -2.5, -3.5, -6.5, -7.5, -8.5, and even some -9.5. If LA won last night by anywhere between 3 and 8, it would have been party time USA for me. And it was SO agonizingly close! I was able to watch the entire second half of that game last night, and boy did LA get fucked. LA was winning by exactly 3 with less than 2 minutes left with DEN having the ball. DEN throws a literal game ending interception that somehow got called pass interference. DEN went on to win outright. Brutal. However, right before that drive started I hammered DEN ML live. Those live bets won me back most of what I lost on my SEA and ARZ panic plays. DEN winning outright was fine; I always leave more risk on the last leg of a teaser.
After all the dust settled, I had a fairly amazing week. 25 units, my best week of 2026 so far. Again, another week where I'm not entirely sure if I got lucky or unlucky. Feels like a bit of both but more lucky than not. I know I'm due for one of these dreadful 1 or 2 point teaser leg wins. I still will continue to hedge the -1.5 and -2.5's with opponent money-line, but I definitely need to pare it down a bit and get more of +2.5. The stress alone isn't worth it!
So far, I'm up about 30 units on NFL. And while it definitely could have been worse, it could have been better too. I feel like I'm stepping around a minefield but some of the mines are buddles of cash, and I'm all around everything but mostly missing. I might be running good but part of me feels like I'm running bad. Maybe I'm just running normal and this is what it feels like. Either way, it's been a bizarre, swingy, dramatic but profitable start to the 2026 NFL season. I really can't stress enough how great it is to have an exchange this year, especially for the way I bet now. Getting my middles/hedges in at exactly breakeven or even slightly better numbers has been a godsend. Sometimes when I get a -7.5 or -3.5 hedge filled, I check Pinnacle and can't believe how much better I'm getting than what I used to. I kind of can't believe I made as much money as I did on these last year - not that I even made all that much. But it just feels like this really could be a big year.
Looking ahead, tonight I'm able to get PHI -2.5 at -145 for a big amount which is arbable with the market. I'm arbing it with mostly CHI +2.5 at +150ish, but also some CHI +3.5 at good odds with a couple odds boosts, plus CHI ML and a tiny bit of CHI -2.5. So I'll basically have PHI -2.5 at about -115 odds, plus a small -2.5, +3.5 middle. And the tiny -2.5, ML/-2.5 polish middle. If PHI wins by exactly 3 I clean up, and anything other than PHI winning by exactly 1 or 2, I make money.
There isn't a single teaser leg I'm jumping on early. A couple +2.5s that I'll probably be on later, but I'll wait to see how the week develops. I'll be looking at ARZ/NYG for one of those teams to get to +1.5, and I'll be watching the PATS/BUF line as well. If I can get PATS ML at +285 or better, I'll start firing some BUF -1.5 teasers so I can shave another couple days off my life next week.
Anywho, that'll about do it for me today. So far this season has been a lot more work, a lot more money flying all over the place, but nicely profitable. I'm making some tweaks in my set up to account for orders getting matched as the day goes on which has been good. Check back soon, thanks for reading!
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