Preseason markets behave very differently, but there’s money to be made
Preseason football gets dismissed as garbage-time by the average fan, even though everyone’s craving NFL football after a long offseason. There are too many variables from game to game, even inside a single quarter.
The Sharps treat NFL preseason football betting like a completely separate game from the regular season. The NFL lines move faster and the off-field information matters more than the talent on the field.
Understand what matters in the information game and how the pros actually approach it. That’ll improve your NFL betting strategy and could set you up for a strong season.
Why Preseason Markets Behave Differently
In the NFL regular season, everybody works off the same information more or less. The starting 11 doesn’t change all that much from week to week. Each player’s workload is predictable, from previous seasons and previous games from the current season. New data comes in every week, every quarter, to help firm up a sportsbook’s models and the data set that the bettors are working from.
Preseason flips all that on its head.
NFL preseason betting means depending on information that is changing constantly. Lines will move aggressively as a result, sometimes four or five points off a single press conference. A starting QB might be expected to play, then get a small hamstring pull and the coaches get spooked. They’ll sit him for the #2 or #3 QB on the depth chart for an entire game in the preseason.
It’s not just QB either. There are so many moving parts. Every position player and every guy in the trenches is getting a look, even if 50% of them will be cut before next week’s preseason game. That means roster usage from quarter to quarter doesn’t follow normal patterns.
That means your NFL betting strategy has to change, big time, for any games before September.
You might see a team favored by 3.5 in the first half but only -3 or lower for the full game, something that never happens in the regular season or the NFL playoffs.
That volatility is exactly why preseason attracts an outsized share of sharp money.
Check out the latest NFL odds at Lucky Rebel.
Sharps Start the NFL Season Early
The volatility of preseason games scares off the casual bettors for a good portion of the preseason. Will Mahomes even see the field? Is the rookie QB facing the 3rd-string secondary or the first unit that will eat him up? That’s why sharp action can account for close to 70% of preseason tickets and as much as 90% of the dollars wagered.
Out of 1,100 preseason games, stats geeks found that lines moving a point or more produced a 65% ATS hit rate for bettors who got ahead of that movement. Even bettors who jumped in after the steam had already hit still cashed at a 58% clip. That’s a great edge by betting standards. The smart money is looking at pregame info, coaching tendencies, and mispriced lines instead of the brand name, and he/won’t he questions that make the headlines.
Reading Coaching Tendencies
Every coach treats the NFL preseason schedule a bit differently.
Some want the W, thinking it sets a winning mentality. Others don’t mind getting smoked 35-10, as long as they got to test the players they wanted to test. Some take it seriously and use it to pick out their RB1 vs RB2 and evaluate other potential starters battling it out. Still others use it as a conditioning game.
For NFL preseason betting fans, it can pay to know these habits. John Harbaugh actually tries to win preseason games, and the Ravens have gone 42-21 against the spread with him running the show. We’ll see if that carries over to the New York Giants, but it should. Buffalo’s Sean McDermott carries a strong preseason ATS track record too.
Then there’s the LA Rams’ Sean McVay, who rarely plays his starters before the games actually mean something. They’ll win some preseason games, but it’s not the point. Their eyes are on the Super Bowl. They never crossed 15 points scored on offense in their 2024 preseason, for example. And the biggest margin of victory was 4 points across their 3 games.
The catch? This isn’t a hidden edge anymore. Books already price in these coaching tendencies, so auto-betting Harbaugh by itself won’t beat the market. What actually moves the needle is newer information within any given summer. This is what sharps pay attention to.
Look at who’s getting extra reps in joint practices or which staff is dealing with a coaching change that alters their incentive to win exhibition games.
Roster Battles and the Real Information Edge
The public fixates on starting quarterback competitions, but the sharps are looking in other places too.
Point spreads in these games typically get decided in the third and fourth quarters, when the third-stringers are on the field trying to make a roster. A backup O-line facing a defense that’s actively testing new blitz packages can get overwhelmed. Turnovers pile up fast.
That means you want to listen to info ahead of the game, like a defensive coordinator’s quote about “trying out some new pressure packages”. That’s a legitimate signal that they might bring the heat.
The single biggest bet-against signal for sharps is often cluster injuries at one position. Jalen Carter just signed for $35 million per year with the Eagles. Think they’re going to let him play with even the slightest injury? If there are a few injuries behind him on the D-line, the coaches and coordinators might overhaul the whole plan to test out the defensive schemes and be content to give up 35+ points.
Backup quarterback battles are worth watching when it comes to betting. A real three-way fight for a roster spot in early August means each of those players is playing with real effort deep into the fourth. That could see more TDs and overall points, especially since they’re probably going to be facing a much softer defense that late in the game.
Playing Time Expectations Have Changed
Starter usage has collapsed over the past decade and a half when it comes to the NFL preseason.
Regular season Week 1 starters played nearly 50% of available snaps in preseason Week 3 games back in 2010. By 2019, that number had dropped to just over 23%, and that number is even lower these days. In that same 2019 season, 85 regular-season Week 1 starters didn’t play a single preseason snap.
That trend has only continued as teams get more conservative about resting proven veterans. Player salaries going through the roof in recent years means they’re treated like fine china now. It also means totals in these games can run lower than usual, so watch for matchups that support any mispriced O/Us.
Other Ways to Bet Preseason NFL Football
Early lines can get posted before teams announce which quarterbacks are even playing, so the smart move is waiting for depth chart news to drop and then betting the reaction before the number fully adjusts.
You could also stick to small favorites, typically -2 or worse, since second-half game management by both coaching staffs to avoid overtime makes those key numbers behave differently than they do in the regular season.
It all means being plugged into beat writers, practice reports, and press conferences. Stuff the casual players usually skip. The market is thin on hard data at this point in the NFL calendar, but having fresh info and knowing preseason patterns can pay.