NFL Futures and Props: Random Regular Season Props for 2019

In addition to the more traditional variety of NFL proposition betting odds BetOnline.ag has some very unique wagers listed under ‘NFL Regular Season’.  While we have no opinion on whether Philip Rivers will announce that his wife is having child #10 before the Super Bowl (the ‘No’ is -3000) there are some others that we have better information on and will take a crack at handicapping:

WHICH CITY TEAMS WILL HAVE MORE WINS REGULAR SEASON?

LOS ANGELES (CHARGERS, RAMS)  -1000
NEW YORK (JETS, GIANTS) +500

The quickest and easiest way to handicap this prop is to head to the ‘NFL Team Wins’ odds at BetOnline.ag and do a comparison.  The O/U win total for both the LA Rams and LA Chargers is 10.  The O/U win total for the New York Jets is 7.5 while less is expected of the Giants at a 6 win total.  That makes the combined Los Angeles win total 20 and the combined New York win total 13.5 giving the West Coast a 6.5 win advantage.  The reality of the competitive dynamics this season could make it even more lopsided.  At worst, the Rams and Chargers are as good as they were last year when they combined for 25 wins.  Obviously, variance plays a big part in NFL football so there’s no guarantee that they’ll meet or exceed their 2018 results.  Even so, it doesn’t seem overly optimistic to suggest that 22 or 23 wins is well within reach.

The Jets and Giants combined for only 9 wins last season and its unclear if either team has set themselves up for a significant turnaround this year.  The Giants are in ‘rebuild mode’ but it’s not apparent that they have a good strategy to do so.  GM Dave Gettleman watched the team’s best offensive and defensive players leave town as Odell Beckham, Jr. and Olivier Vernon are both in Cleveland.  Another key contributor on defense is Landon Collins and he’s now in Washington.  They have a solid franchise running back in Saquon Barkley but as for now the team plans to go with aging Eli Manning as starting QB this year despite rookie Daniel Jones’ strong performance in the preseason.   Not a lot of confidence in head coach Pat Shurmur in getting much out of this talent depleted team.  The Jets brought in a lot of talent in the off season spending over $200 million to sign a laundry list of free agents led by Le’Veon Bell.  Quarterback Sam Darnold is still a work in progress and not sure that new head coach Adam Gase is the guy to hasten his development.  The Jets should be marginally better this year based on talent alone but their gains will likely be negated by a downturn in the Giants’ performance.

BET LOS ANGELES (CHARGERS, RAMS) TO HAVE MORE WINS OVER NEW YORK (JETS, GIANTS) -1000

SPECIAL MATCHUP—MOST TD PASSES

BAKER MAYFIELD -6 -120
TOTAL GIANTS TD PASSES +6 -120

The 2018 New York Giants ranked #19 in the NFL in touchdown passes with 23.  In fourteen games, Cleveland Browns quarterback Baker Mayfield threw 27 touchdown passes.  The bad news for the Giants is that 6 of those touchdown passes were caught by Odell Beckham, Jr. who is now playing in Cleveland.  Worth noting that Beckham missed 4 games last season so the productivity that the Giants actually lost was greater than what showed up on paper last year.  Interestingly, he also threw two touchdown passes last year which drops Eli Manning’s TD pass total to 21.  As we noted in the previous writeup, the Giants’ biggest problem this season is that they lost their best offensive and defensive players and did little to replace them.  The Giants are expected to regress further this year while the Browns—and Mayfield—are expected to improve.  New York could struggle to break 20 TD passes this season while Mayfield should top 30 with the upgraded talent around him.

BET BAKER MAYFIELD -6 -120 TD PASSES OVER NEW YORK GIANTS TD PASSES +6