NFL Power Rankings
The taste of victory is even sweeter when there’s something on the line. There’s nothing quite like the feeling when you bet on the NFL at Bodog Sportsbook and your chosen team gets the job done – especially when you’re betting on the Super Bowl. It’s like your birthday and all the holidays wrapped into one.
Some people enjoy that winning feeling enough to put some time and effort into it. Sports betting at Bodog should always be done for entertainment first and foremost; that being said, you can definitely increase your chances of beating the NFL odds – and turning a profit – by doing a little legwork before you place your bets.
It doesn’t have to be drudgery. If you’re a football fan, you probably know a lot about the NFL already. You can build on that knowledge with some simple research, just like you’re doing right now by reading this, and put together your own personal NFL Power Rankings to help you make smarter betting choices here at Bodog.
What are the NFL Power Rankings?
Chances are you’ve seen versions of power rankings published by media companies like TSN, Sportsnet, or even the NFL itself. The concept behind them all is the same: Rank each of the 32 teams in the NFL, from the best to the worst.
It’s much the same concept for NFL betting purposes. When you make your NFL picks for the Super Bowl or any other game at Bodog, you’re comparing the relative merits of the two teams in question. If you do a more accurate job of assigning value than the larger betting public, you’ll be ahead of the game.
So why not use the best tools you can? When done right, your NFL power rankings will give you a quick snapshot of the league as a whole, which you can use as a model to help reinforce your knowledge of which teams are better than which. The more useful details you add to your rankings, the better your knowledge base will be – especially if you assign a specific value to each team, one that shows how many points they’re better or worse per game than the average NFL team.
How are the NFL Power Rankings calculated?
There are as many different ways to calculate NFL power rankings as there are people – everyone’s got their own twist on how they value the teams and players they’re looking at. There’s a lot of bad information out there in the world of sports betting; Canada has plenty of smart football fans, but there’s nowhere to hide from the global 24/7 sports talk media and their hot takes on the NFL.
Protect yourself by getting your information from reliable sources. That includes statistics; the whole premise of Moneyball was to take advantage of people using shaky baseball stats like wins and saves to inform their decision-making. The same holds true when you’re surfing the NFL lines at Bodog and putting together your power rankings. Look for sharper, efficiency-based statistics in general rather than per-game counting stats, and be very careful around high-variance events like fumbles and interceptions.
Analysis of historical spread coverage
Depending on how you like to construct your NFL power rankings, you might want to include some data on how well each team has performed against the spread (ATS). There are divergent schools of NFL betting thought here; one says these ATS numbers should be reflected in the rankings, the other says that ATS has no impact on team or player performance.
Keep it simple when you’re putting together your first power rankings. The most important factor to consider is the final score for each game, which also includes the margin of victory. That margin ultimately determines who beats the spread and which NFL bets pay out, so focus on that for now, then build your model out as you get more comfortable.
Opponents and strength of schedule
Once you’ve got those final scores and point margins factored in, the second-most important thing for your NFL power rankings is strength of schedule. A 6-point victory over the reigning Super Bowl champions is impressive; a 6-point victory over the worst team in the league feels almost like a loss – and probably is against the spread.
If you’re half-decent at crunching numbers, it shouldn’t take too long for you to correlate the winning margins and the strength of schedule for each team, and rank them all from 1-32 accordingly. We’ll show you some useful tricks in a moment. First, remember to adjust your rankings on a weekly basis, giving more weight to victories against stronger teams and losses versus weaker teams. Your ability to see and interpret the changes in the rankings will determine how well you do at the betting window.
Free agency
Now it’s time to move from beginner-level to intermediate. Football is a team sport, and there are up to 55 players on each NFL roster, so player movement isn’t quite as important in this league compared to the NHL or especially the NBA. But it’s still important – even more so when it’s a star quarterback or other key piece on the move.
Free agency is one way rosters can change from week to week. Most of these signings take place during the offseason, but there will be times throughout the year when an important enough player is added or subtracted to put a dent in the NFL odds. Your power rankings should reflect this.
Do the star players have frequent injuries?
These days, injuries are an increasingly common source of roster turmoil in the NFL. And if it seems like it’s always the star players who get hurt, that’s because they’re the ones with the highest usage rates on the field. Your third-string quarterback isn’t likely to get injured when he’s standing on the sidelines holding a clipboard.
That doesn’t mean you can afford to ignore these players. In recent years, we’ve seen third- and even fourth-string quarterbacks get thrust into duty on a weekly basis. Keep your NFL power ranking skills sharp by diving fully into the depth chart at the most important positions like quarterback, so you can make the right adjustments when the inevitable occurs.
Numbers and score projections
Okay, now let’s get into the nuts and bolts. One quick way to put your NFL power rankings together and use them to make projections is the old “0-100” method. Think of it like the Madden video game franchise, but for teams. The best-ever NFL team – say, the 1972 Miami Dolphins – gets assigned a 100, and the worst-ever team – say, the 1976 Tampa Bay Buccaneers – gets a 0.
Put your 32 NFL teams anywhere on that index you see fit, then look at the difference between your best and worst teams. Read that gap between the two as a difference in points; this number shouldn’t be any larger than the largest point spreads you’d expect to see this year in the NFL, maybe 25 points tops.
Once you’ve got said difference figured out, multiply the team rating by that difference, then divide by 100. Do this for both teams in a matchup, compare the two numbers you get, and presto – you’ve got a quick-and-dirty point spread projection.
For example, let’s theoretically give the San Francisco 49ers a 90 and the Green Bay Packers a 75. If we make 25 points our maximum league-wide difference, that gives us the following:
(90% x 25) – (75% x 25) = 3.75
Using these ratings, you’d expect the Niners to beat Green Bay by 3.75 points on a neutral field; add or subtract roughly 2.25 points for whether they’re playing at Levi’s Stadium (San Francisco –6) or Lambeau Field (SF –1.5), then compare that number to the actual NFL odds and see if you’ve got a bargain price on your hands.
If you want to get extra-fancy with your rankings, you can use “median points” instead of “average points” when you’re doing your calculations. The median tends to hew closer to reality than the average; for example, the average NFL team scored 21.8 points per game in 2023, but the No. 16-ranked Cincinnati Bengals scored 21.6 PPG. Every decimal point means money when you’re betting on the NFL.
You can even use your NFL power rankings to project exact final scores for upcoming matchups on the schedule, so you can bet on totals as well as point spreads and moneylines. However deeply you want to get involved with your rankings is up to you. As long as you keep it simple to begin with, and don’t overload your model with relatively unimportant data, you’ll be best prepared to tackle the NFL odds at Bodog Sportsbook.