I will keep track of the all-underdogs record for the National Football League (NFL) 2025 season.
Against the spread (ATS), underdogs are losing for the 3rd straight year at 87-89-1 or 49% after 11 weeks = 50-55-1 road underdogs + 37-34 home underdogs.
For 3 decades through the 2022 regular season, home NFL underdogs was the best bet in sports -- not every year, but most years.
So far this year, overdog favorites have a 67.5% winning record before taking the spread into account. 17% of matches have been reversed on points against the spread (ATS).
The overdog winning % is a touch above the long-term trend.
Matches decided on points are consistent with what might expect. That result so far is NOT consistent with the hypothesis that the long-time misperception is no longer there in the betting market that overdog favorites will win by larger margins than turn out to be the case.
A simple all-underdogs strategy recorded 25 winning NFL regular seasons out of 31 through 2022. But, underdogs lost the last 2 NFL regular seasons and are losing again in 2025. With NFL underdogs losing ATS for the 3rd year in a row, could it be the case that NFL underdogs no longer rule?
Have bettors finally twigged to the fact that they overestimated overdog favorites for years through 2022? It's possible. I expect underdogs to win a bit more than 1/3 of all matches straight-up and a bit more than 1/6 of all matches on points. Over the previous two seasons, underdogs won a bit less than 1/6 of all matches on points and bit less than 1/3 of all matches straight-up. Are the unusual results of the past 2 seasons just a short-term random walk around the long-term average? Or has the underdog-tilt identified by Professor Steven Levitt vanished? We will need a few more seasons to reach a conclusion. In the meantime, I will stick with regular-season underdogs in 2025 in the just-for-fun pool that Godiva boy toy Archibald introduced me to. I will not abandon my all-underdogs regular season strategy just because of two consecutive bad years.
I should say that the all-underdog long-term winning % ATS was not high enough to make a living against the small commissions implicity built into odds offered by gambling houses.
Sports betting is the House of the Rising Sun of the 3rd millenium: "the ruin of many a poor boy". Dare I say that the 19th century House of the Rising Sun was more fun for customers, but not workers.
