A great spot for favs with playoff chops: backing Green Bay -3 (-145) while it lasts

As a rule, back underdogs in the NFL playoffs. The simple strategy of taking the points in post-season action has delivered a 54% win rate since 2003, for a 7% long-term return. Further, this system has submitted losing records in only five of those years.

But despite the broad profitability of naively collecting chalk in NFL playoff action, there is a spot in the post-season that decidedly favors points layers. Of the nine NFL Conference Championship games since 2003 where the favorite campaigned in the prior post-season while the underdog did not, the experienced team giving up the points covered all but once!

Granted, at nine games, the size of this sample is utterly miniscule, however statistical inference validates the significance of the result. A quantitative test to assess the likelihood that this system just got lucky over a few game stretch rejects the potential that chance accounts for the extreme results.

A one-sample z-test concludes one would expect to draw a nine-game sample with an 89% cover rate less than 1.5% of the time, if this system was really no better than breakeven. Given that the <1.5% figure is smaller our stated 5% significance level, we reject the hypothesis that this system covers at less than the breakeven 52.4%.

Math need jargon aside, the key takeaway from this exercise is that this system seems to have delivered value in the past, despite it's extremely limited applicability. We are betting on accordance with the indication for Sunday's contest.

Separately, since 2003 the tail rounds of the NFL playoffs have tended in the UNDER's favor--especially true for the first set of post-season matchups. Wildcard games have amassed a long-term O/U record of 28-46, good for a 21% long-term return on investment to UNDER-backers.

This strong bias reverses into the belly of the playoffs though, as the OVER has been the play in the division and conference championship , delivering an 11% long-term profit, with only three sub-50% seasons since 2003.

In particular, the O/U for NFC Championship games is 11-4-2 over the last 18 years, for an exceptional 39% return.

Intriguingly, over the past four seasons, NFC teams averaged 23.5 points per contest, versus 22.5 for the NFC. In response to the greater offensive output, bookies lifted average game betting totals for contests featuring two NFC teams (between 2016 and 2018 the O/U ranged between about one or two points higher in NFC games, on average).

Still, in spite of oddsmakers' efforts to adjust to this reality, NFC action still exceeded the betting total consistently more often then AFC games, amassing an OVER cover rate of 48.2%, versus 44.6% for the AFC.

As far as we can tell, this exploitable angle still exists today, and we are eager to try to capitalize on this robust and persistent tendency, just as is the case with the favorite with recent playoff experience.

Happy betting!!