November can drag down NFL teams and late-season grit matters everywhere
Fatigue is a factor that most sportsbooks and the betting public regularly miss. It’s not just talent or the name on the jersey that’s makes champions across major sports, especially when you hit the hard month of November in the NFL.
The Grind is the Great Equalizer
Every season starts with optimism and a clean slate. (Ok, maybe not if you’re a Browns fan). Coaches haven’t seen the injury bug yet and they have a fresh playbook. Players are pumped to get going after a long offseason. Fans talk about potential (again, sorry Browns fans, not you).
But by the time any league is 75% into the season, it’s the ones that have handled the grind the best that are in position for the playoffs. And it’s not always the team with the biggest brand names.
Talent gets you in the door. Endurance gets you into the roped-off VIP section. Fatigue doesn’t just take out your legs, although that’s a big factor. It also chips away at execution and ability to focus, whether it’s a receiver running the same crisp pattern he ran in September that suddenly turns into a softer route (and an easy pick) or a pitcher that can’t hit the same corner of the plate that he was painting back in May.
Take the NBA, where 82 games of regular season action have to happen before the playoffs even start. The teams built for May aren’t always the ones full of elite shooters. They’re the ones that can dial it back in mid-January, when there’s a snowstorm outside and the Bucks or Celtics are sleepwalking too.
NBA coaches rest key players when they need to. Load management isn’t a fan favorite, but it became a thing for a reason. Players need to rest knees and keep their emotional tank full too. The Warriors didn’t win four titles because Steph and Klay ran hotter than everyone else in every game. Head coach Steve Kerr understood pace, rest, how to push and when to pull back. Their rotations were managed closely and their conditioning was elite. Burnout wasn’t an option.
The stats back it up too. NBA teams playing back-to-backs see shooting percentages drop, defensive intensity fade, and errors spike in the final minutes of the second game. The books are somewhat wise to this part of the grind. They routinely adjust point spreads by up to four points for teams that are likely to be tired. The teams themselves back up the grind factor: visiting teams only cover the spread about 42% of the time on the second night of a road back-to-back.
In the NFL, the 17-game season looks more manageable than an 82-game season. On paper. But every single play is like a small car wreck for running backs, linemen, and linebackers. Players regularly talk about not being able to get out of bed on Mondays, and they really only loosen up by Thursday. And the schedule is not a consistent Sunday-to-Sunday rhythm. The Dallas Cowboys, for example, hit a 12-day period one season where they had to play the Eagles, Chiefs, and Lions. The smart money knows it’s virtually guaranteed that the Cowboys will hit some fatigue in there, especially in the second half of the two later games.
It’s the well-run NFL organizations that manage the grind starting in Week 11-12 that are built for the playoffs in January. Teams that have the depth to rotate linemen and manage workloads with a running back-by-committee approach can navigate postseason pressure better than one-dimensional rivals.
Mentality and Focus: The Invisible Grind
It’s easy to go over a stat sheet and see how fatigue might play out – minutes played, snaps taken, sacks, etc. But the real damage also runs deeper. Across pro sports, sometimes the hardest part of the season isn’t just physical battle scars, it’s psychological wear and tear.
NBA players often talk about “the February wall”. It’s the dead zone before the All-Star break where the schedule grinds down, travel miles start to pile up, and even boredom comes into play. With the playoffs still 20-30 games away, or out of reach completely, players can be unmotivated. Focus slips. Bad teams are looked at like creampuffs, and that’s when the favorites get beaten. Great for bettors who have an eye for which team might be hitting the wall. Less great for pure fans who want to see their $30 million/year player hustle a little.
The NHL equivalent of the NBA’s wall hits around the 50-game mark. It’s the same set of factors. Coaches need to be psychologists as much as they need to go over game plans. You start seeing more morale boosters too – team dinners, optional skates, playful challenges in practice. Sharps will look for a team’s beat writers to stay up to date on which teams seem to be keeping the energy up.
Check these key points of potential failure in the schedule (and for NFL betting, start around Week 12). Across many of the big sports, passes become riskier, players don’t get back on D, and a drop in stamina late in games provides mispriced betting opportunities.
How the Smart Teams Stay Fresh
The margin between winning and losing in any major league is often only a handful of possessions, or a single shift, play, or drive. Conserving energy and beating the grind for those few moments is essential.
In basketball, with that load management we mentioned earlier? It works. Kawhi Leonard’s 2019 playoff run with Toronto is Exhibit A. He was rested heavily during the regular season, then he put the team on his back on the way to winning it all and becoming NBA Finals MVP. Teams have borrowed heavily from that model ever since. No fun if you’re a home team ticket holder expecting to see Steph or KD roll into town and play that night. Plenty of fun if you’re an NBA bettor who jumps on the lines before the books can adjust.
The NFL is getting into grind management through tech too. Sports science is becoming a thing for NFL teams, giving players wearable tech to monitor small changes in things like fatigue and sleep quality. Hydration, heart-rate variability, and muscle oxygenation are also tracked to forecast risk. That mandatory injury report you see on Wednesday’s walk-through is probably meaningless for many players – they’re just getting their batteries recharged. So bet with caution on early week injury news. At the same time, try to find out which teams are ahead of the curve on the tech side.
Whether it’s Mahomes delivering perfect passes or clutch third-down runs in January (he usually crushes in December too), Connor McDavid still turning defenders into pretzels in May, or Steph just seemingly never aging, it’s the same story: the players who still seem fresh in the final third of the season are being handled by teams that understand the science and psychology of the grind.
Betting fans with a similar understanding of the teams that manage the grind the best will also rise to the top.