Miller: How to Play Weekly Running Back Props

Between 2016-20, NFL games went under their total 50.7% of the time.

At -110 odds, you need to win at a 52.4% rate to be profitable. Because of that, you wouldn’t have been profitable blanket-betting either side of NFL totals over the past five years.

In July, I wrote about why major markets are a waste of time and money for most (but not all!) bettors, so that shouldn’t come as a surprise. If history indicated you could post a positive ROI simply by betting one side of major markets, people would already be doing it.

The same can not be said for props, which are extremely skewed toward one side over the past few seasons. Over the next month, we’ll dig into historical results at each position to form a general strategy for how we want to attack weekly player props – starting with running backs today. Let’s get to it.

WHAT DATA ARE WE USING?

Before we start, I want to clarify what data we’re using. Our 2020 data (courtesy of SportsData) aggregates closing lines from different sportsbooks to form one consensus number. We’ll also use Bet the Prop’s research from previous years to reinforce our 2020 findings, and that data is based on Bovada closing lines. It doesn’t have much of an impact since both data sources tell the same story, but I just want to be transparent about what numbers we’re using.

HOW TO ATTACK WEEKLY PLAYER PROPS AT RUNNING BACK