This is not a drill, this is not a dress rehearsal. Set klaxons to “furiously blinking red.”
The NFL season is nigh.
Hall of Fame Game. Lions and Chargers Thursday night. It’s on.
And before you say, “Pfft, exhibition football isn’t football,” allow me to say this: It is, and there is money to be made.
“You can’t model the preseason,” Adam Levitan, one of the founders of Establish The Run, told InGame. “It’s an information game. Who’s going to play, how long are they going to play, how good are they?”
In short: The advantage held by sportsbooks is cut, sliced, and diced. Much like other information markets — like the NFL and NBA draft, or the Oscars — the bookmakers and the bettors are dealing with the same information. The edge is gone.
“Essentially, you have to decide how much coachspeak you want to buy into, which is always fun,” a FanDuel trader said. “I remember a couple seasons ago I was watching Logan Woodside’s CFL tape, trying to see what the Bengals had as a backup QB, trying to price the game.”
The trader — FanDuel keeps them behind the scenes — knows the battle he’s in with the bettors.
“It’s a bit of a guessing game for us too. It’s hard to model. It’s hard to know exactly who’s going to play, how much they’re going to play, even how good some of these players are. So we try to do the best we can.”
Levitan sees this as a major advantage.
“We’re talking about players who will be working in Home Depot in a month,” Levitan said. “So there’s a big edge to the deep ball knowers over the modelers.”
Even so, the trader admits the thrill of the chase in the preseason is a blast.
“I kind of love the preseason,” he said. “I think it’s a great opportunity for the bettor, and it’s fun for us too. You’ll see another book put a game up that’s a field goal off where your number is — which obviously would never happen in the regular season — and you’re like, ‘I wonder what they see that I don’t see.’ So it is a bit of a guessing game, but it’s fun at the same time. And it’s a good exercise for traders: Flying blind but still needing to price up these games.”
Who’s in the streets?
Of course, the question remains: Are people actually betting these games?
“It’s always among the most-bet games of preseason, and we expect this year to be no different,” said Adrian Horton, ESPN BET’s director of North American sports trading. “Last year, even with the Hall of Fame game being cut well short due to weather, it was the second most-bet preseason game by handle, right behind the nationally-televised Patriots-Commanders game where Drake Maye put on a show.”
Our friendly neighborhood FanDuel trader agrees.
“I think we will probably get a big wave tomorrow with the game — kind of that feeling of, ‘Oh my God, the Hall of Fame Game is today.’ So a lot of our handle is going to come in last minute. So far we have seen double the amount of bets on the Chargers, just for the spread and moneyline. I do not know if there is a real reason for that, but that is what we have seen so far.”
That might be those ball-knowers, reading that the Chargers will be playing quarterback Trey Lance — who was the third pick in the 2021 NFL draft — for at least a full half.
On the other hand — and again, this shows how wacky this game, and all of the preseason can be — maybe the public is leaning Lions.
“Last year, we saw a consistent wave of Lions action as they became America’s darling on their way to a 15-2 finish,” said Tyler Gour, a trader at Fanatics. “As for the Hall of Fame Game, the vast majority of action has been on Dan Campbell’s Lions, so while this is only the preseason, it seems this interest in the Lions will continue once again.”
For what it’s worth, the Lions are -1.5 point favorites for the 8 p.m. kickoff in Canton, Ohio.
Football. Is. Back.
