Mad Bets: NFL Handicapping Tips in 2020
Minty Bets is joined by professional handicapper Drew Dinsick to give his 3 things to look for when handicapping a game.
Video Transcript
MINTY BETS: Welcome to Mad Bets, everyone. I'm Minty Bets here with professional handicapper, Drew Dinsick of the Deep Dive podcast. He's here to give us three tips on how he handicaps games.
Drew, lets get right into it. Are there any teams you actively avoid no matter how bad the number is? Or are you willing to take the ugliest dog on the board?
DREW DINSICK: I mean, this year, I've avoided the Jets every single week. It's when you're at the very edges the extremes, both very, very good and very, very bad, which you know, a perfect match-up this week of the best team across my rankings against the worst. It's a lot tougher to price those games in my opinion.
I tend to stick towards match ups where you, you know, you have things that are a little closer to a coin flip. And then smaller edges you can suss out of the data tend to matter more, in my opinion, when you're kind of near the middle. So I haven't bet on the Jets this season and I don't see that changing anytime soon.
MINTY BETS: Really? OK. Well that's very profitable for you then. All right, next question. How much action do you generally have a week? And do you tend to watch the games? Or do you avoid watching games and just check the score at the end to avoid, like, high blood pressure?
DREW DINSICK: Oh, for NFL?
MINTY BETS: Mhm.
DREW DINSICK: I watch almost every single minute of every game I have action on. Because I do a very careful assessment of, was this the right play? You know, was this a lucky result? I think that's a hugely important part of your process.
If you just fire away on picks and then, you know, check your results after the fact and see you went 5-2. Oh, I had a great week. Everything was great. But you didn't kind of dig in and see that two or three of those wins were influenced by some lucky officiating, or some fumble bounced your way, you know.
Or you got an under because of some missed field goals. You know, things that would otherwise, you know, you can't predict but they're just totally random. When they work in your favor, you need to account for them. You need to be able to acknowledge that.
Because it can make a huge impact on your next round of decision making. So I watch every single game. And in terms of action, I try to keep it relatively limited to say, no less than five, but no more than nine on any given NFL weekend. Just because, you start to spread yourself out a little bit thin.
If you cover too many games, you can't really keep track of all of the injury information, all of the news. And, you know, the NFL market is pretty efficient anyway. So if you think you have an edge on every game, I would say dig a little bit deeper. Because it's almost certain you're not correct.
MINTY BETS: Yeah. I-- you know what? I love the stress of watching NFL games. So I totally agree with you. And now last question. With COVID this year, how differently has that affected your handicapping?
DREW DINSICK: Oh man. You know, it's made it easier in one hand. Because if you are an information handicapper and you have kind of close sources and you can get tips. It's bigger in college football than the NFL by a long shot.
If you can get ahead of the market when there is a couple of key players who are going to be out because of COVID protocol, then, you know, you can capture massive value before the line moves. And that's been nice. It's been a nice little bonus, you know, to kind of pad the bankroll.
But, you know, in terms of handicapping the games, you know, my home field advantage is pretty much zero. I have about-- I have about 1% or 2% on average in terms of win probability added to the home team. You know, that's what the data tells me, at least, over the last year and change. And it's down even from last year.
And last year was low. That's probably in large part because the fans. And then on top of that, it's cost me a couple times. You know, I had the Raiders last week before Trent Brown came, you know, came down with that. And I think that was massively important.
The offensive line for the Raiders is such a big deal. If those guys aren't healthy and available. If Derek Carr doesn't have enough time, he's like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde when he's under pressure. So, you know, unfortunately, on the wrong side of that one. But over the course of the season, it's been pretty good.
MINTY BETS: Good. Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Drew. Great advice. And guys, check out Drew on the Deep Dive podcast.
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