First and foremost, remember we are not a sportsbook. We will not provide you with conflicting advice so that money comes in on both sides. If you’re like most reading this blog, you like to bet on sports and particularly all things about sports. Heck I am sure you have seen the FanDuel commercial with the jovial gypsy bum who arrived at the tailgate just in time to make everyone a boatload of money betting on him in a “cornhole” game. Well, I am going to make one bet here and bet that has never happened at least on this side of the pond.

FanDuel and the other online betting sites love for users to make “prop bets,” short for proposition. Anything to increase their action is going to bring in more money for them. So just betting on the outcome of a game limits that potential. Prop bets are made on the occurrence or non-occurrence of an event that does not affect the outcome. For example, you could bet on Jalen Hurts having 2 rushing TDs in the next playoff game. Whether he does or not is not exclusive to the Eagles winning the game. Although I am sure it does help the Eagles Offense, but the outcome of the game is not tied to him must scoring 2 TDs.

Sure, I can hear some of you saying well you are starting to sound like my dad, it’s just a little fun to bet on prop bets. I’m not saying you can’t, I’m just saying you shouldn’t. Let’s face it, just by putting a bet down you are probably going to lose more over time than you win. You work hard for your money, at least most people do, so don’t waste it. As the saying goes, “A fool and his money are soon parted.”

So, let’s breakdown the prop bets and why it’s best to stay out of them and if you do want to play them, what I would look for as a strategy.

Usually, player prop bets are setup around an average of catches per game for receiver or yards for a receiver or running back gained. If it’s a QB, it may be completions per game or yards per game passing.

For Example: If George Kittle had 800 yards receiving on the season for 10 games, they may set the prop around George over/under getting 80 yards receiving for the game.

They may even set it at 78 perhaps, so immediately you think ‘yeah I’m getting a good bet on the over with him averaging 80 yards.’ Well, are you? Go back and look at how many games he had over 80 yards. You may find that he only did that 4 times out of 10 but they were big games, so the total yards got padded.

Secondly, let’s say this is the first round of the playoffs. There are 17 games in an NFL season. Meaning he missed 41% of the snaps during the year. If you wanted to be more thorough you could total up all the games, he missed during his last 3 seasons. Let’s say it was 30%, and let’s say there were 5 different injuries leading up to those missed games. This means 5 / (3 seasons X 17 games), or he has roughly a 10% chance of not finishing a game. Is that accurately reflected in the average yardage he will achieve, probably not.

Now the case could start to be made for saying well bet the under then, however that brings me to my third and final reason to stay away from Prop bets. There is one thing I can guarantee in football, at least with the good teams and that is they rarely do things the same from earlier in the season. So just because Kittle had a good game in week 9 against the same opponent doesn’t mean the team will attack the same way in the playoffs. Why? Because any coach worth his salt is at least going to gameplan around what he has seen on film, or he won’t be around long.

So long story short I don’t advise betting on the Prop bets especially early in the season. If you do want to play them, lean towards opposite results of previous matchups, and check a players injury history to gauge what % of the time he doesn’t finish a game. If it’s high, you could lean towards the under on performance. At the end of the day in our opinion we like to bet on game outcomes because we know for sure a team will win or lose regardless of injuries. If you bet on an over for a player performance and they get injured, then you just lost your bet 100% of the time.