When it comes to Super Bowl betting, you have a lot more options than you do with most NFL games. Sure, you can bet on a lot of different on props in most games, including individual yardage, first downs, the score after each quarter, and the like, but for most bettors, getting more granular than point spread and point total is not usually something that’s of interest. With the Super Bowl, though, there are all kinds of prop bets, and sometimes it is worth taking a look at past performance when picking your winners.
Can You Use Past Performance to Predict Super Bowl Betting Winners?
What about the point total?
In the last four Super Bowls, the game has ended up under the point total that the books arrived at. The most surprising example of this came in Super Bowl LIII, when the New England Patriots’ defense absolutely shut down an electric L.A. Rams offense in the lowest-scoring Super Bowl ever, 13-3. The year before, Super Bowl LII, the Patriots and the Philadelphia Eagles combined for 74 points, blowing the point total out of the water. What made the outcome all the more surprising was the fact that the Eagles had a backup quarterback (Nick Foles) running the offense. Foles has never done all that well in the NFL except during that season, when he replaced Carson Wentz and rolled all the way to a Super Bowl MVP trophy. That Super Bowl was also an outlier in the sense that neither team really could do much in the way of getting stops, and in most years, you need an elite defense to get to the Super Bowl, which could explain the lower point totals in recent years. This time around, both teams were in the top three in points per game and offensive yardage, and they both have dual-threat quarterbacks, so I’m leaning toward the over this year despite the recent trend.
What about the coin toss?
You know you’re dealing with a literal coin toss, right? In three of the last five Super Bowls, the coin has turned up heads, and “heads” has a two-year winning streak going. Here’s an interesting trend – the AFC team has ended up with “heads” in five straight years. What’s that about? If you look back at all 56 prior Super Bowls, “tails” has won 29 times, while “heads” has won 27. The best pick here is the one that you make with your instincts.
Will the team that won the coin toss go on to win the game?
The last five coin-toss winners have all lost in the Super Bowl. If you go back 20 years, the team that won the coin toss has won just six times, and the last time this happened was in 2014, when Denver had such a bizarre start against Seattle and ended up getting run out of the stadium. You might think that this would fall closer to 50-50 as well, given the arbitrary nature of a coin toss, but that’s not the way the trends are rolling right now.
Will the team that scores first win the game? (Yes -165 / No +135)
If we go back five years, the team that scored first won three times, including last year’s win for the Rams. Interestingly, the sports betting action favors this outcome slightly. If you think about the fact that Kansas City tends to be a slow-starting team in big games before pulling off the comeback, while the Eagles tend to dominate from the start, if they’re going to control a game, the choice on this would really depend on which team you think will win. I think the Eagles will probably score first, whether they win or not.
How will the first points of the game be scored? (TD -200 / FG +155 / Safety +3000)
Obviously, a safety would pay handsomely, but in four of the last five Super Bowls, a field goal has been the first score of the game. This makes sense, as offenses may have a little too much adrenaline going to complete a third-and-long pass, and game plans may skew a bit conservative to sniff out what the other team has going on defense. So it makes sense for the first sustained drive to end up yielding three points – and that option comes with some good value.
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