“The Hard Knocks Effect” will it shift betting trends?
Tuesdays this pre-season are Hard Knocks nights for me. While watching several questions popped into my head midway through one of Detroit Lions coach Dan Campbell’s passionate speeches. While Campbell was story telling about swimming lions and people with missing butt cheeks I thought “Am I underrating what this Lions team could be this year?” Then as I shook off the dumbfounded look I thought: “Wow what kind of impact does the 5-episode marketing mastery have on the betting public?”
After 1 episode the hamster in my head was already calculating how many close games they lost last year, how many injuries they had, and accounting for the almost wins. Is the betting public as easily susceptible to the acapella Billie Jean as I am.
Everyone has their own preseason prep and betting strategies, one of mine (tedious as it may be), is to run through each team and their schedule and project week by week W/L. With that I had the lions winning 4 games. Of course, all of this is prior to Hard Knocks.
It seems that there are a lot of people out there that have begun drinking the blue Kool-Aide:
Lions’ playoff odds opened at +500 and as of August 23 their odds are +350
As of August 16th, 97% of bets and 95% of the money at betmgm is on Lions to make the playoffs! The playoffs…THE PLAYOFFS… They won three games last year!
Only 4 teams in the last 13 seasons of Hard Knocks have gone under their Vegas season win total. The Lions win total line is set at 6.5. They have some toss up games on their schedule and they do play the bears twice, the giants, jets, and jags, but I just don’t think they can get to 7 to cover that lofty line. I don’t think episodes 3-5 are going to influence this wagering husband to put my hard-earned dollars on the over.
The last six Hard Knocks teams have covered the opening week spread. The Lions are +4 dogs to the Philadelphia Eagles. Reminder, they lost this match up last season by 38 points. To be fair the Lions were 11-6 last year ATS, so they aren’t a bad team to pick week to week with some possible large underdog matchups against the Pats and Bills. Check out our weekly Armchair Picks against the spread
It will be interesting to see if this same “Hard Knocks Effect” will have an impact on the Cardinals during the in-season version of the show.
-Adam
