Are home dogs a good bet on Monday Night Football? Monday Night Football is more than just the final primetime game of the week in the NFL. It’s the last chance for bettors to get in on the action and either make up for or add to the money they made the day before.
Since its inception back in 1970, football fans relied on the Monday Night Football home underdog system to help them pick winners every week and the reason they kept coming back is simple: It worked.
However, things have changed over time and the numbers indicate it might be time to retire this system.
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What’s This NFL Betting System All About?
Everything you need to know about the Monday Night Football home underdog system is its name. All you have to do is find the underdog for the Monday night game and bet on them to cover the point spread. It is a very simple system and while it worked for a while even the casual football bettor knows that the odds makers at the best betting sites won’t let some thing that could cost them so much money slide forever.
What Are The Numbers?
The MNF underdogs posted a ridiculous 110-56 record against the spread between 1970 and 2000, which is a 66-percent success rate. Anybody that caught on to the numbers over that time made a killing knowing that they can use their own knowledge of the game and other systems to improve their success rate while still covering at least 66-percent of the wagers they made with no consideration to any other factors.
Odds makers eventually caught on to the numbers and made sure that they would make betting underdogs a lot more difficult. The early results from the first six weeks of the 2014 NFL season have illustrated that change. Week one opened with a split as the Detroit Lions blew away the New York Giants as 6.5-point favorites at home before the Arizona Cardinals won straight up as three-point underdogs against the San Diego Chargers.
After that, it was dominance by the underdogs on MNF for the next three weeks. Week two saw the Philadelphia Eagles win straight up as a three-point underdog against the Indianapolis Colts, then in week three the Chicago Bears won straight up as 1.5-point underdogs against the New York Jets. The Kansas City Chiefs crushed the New England Patriots as three-point home underdogs in week four to move the MNF underdogs to 4-1 ATS but that was a turning point. The Seattle Seahawks took care of the Washington Redskins as a seven-point favorite and then the San Francisco 49ers blew away the St. Louis Rams as 3.5-point favorites in week six to push the MNF underdogs record to 4-3 ATS.
Verdict
A 4-3 record through the first six weeks of the NFL season is testament to how things have changed and that the NFL MNF home underdog system cannot be relied on to bet blindly anymore.
With so much information available and so many systems out there to help bettors make informed choices it might finally be time to retire the NFL MNF home underdog system for good as there is definitely better ways to handicap games. But what about a Super Bowl betting system, though?
