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Okay now the fun part creating your own point spread. Many handicappers have long drawn out math equations for making power ratings. I have found that most of these statistical formulas are never as accurate as they claim to be. I have a very simple approach to creating power ratings and will share it with you below.
Okay the new football season is around the corner at the time of publish so I am going off of last season numbers at this point, but you will get the idea. I am going to use the Washington Redskins and Dallas Cowboys as my example in which the books have listed the Redskins as 3 point favorite at Dallas. We are going to take the last 6 scores from both teams 2005 NFL campaign.
Washington
10-20
17-10
31-20
35-20
35-7
17-13
Because we are looking for the median we are going to throw out the high
and the low scores for both offense and defense. This will give us the numbers
17, 31, 35, and 17. We threw out one of the 35s and the low score of 10. These
4 games total add up to 100 and give us a median score of 25 on offense. We
will do the same for the defense and come up with 20, 10, 20, and 13. The
defense power rating is 15.75, (63 divided by 4).
We will than do the same thing with the Cowboys, our hypothetical matchup.
Dallas
10-20
24-20
7-35
31-28
10-17
21-24
20-7
You will see I listed 7 final scores for Dallas and we are going to throw out the last performance of 10-20 against Seattle since that was the Cowboys last game of the season and it was not a meaningful game. Games like these will throw off the power rating, just as you don’t use preseason games in your ratings since it is not an accurate measure of the teams full capabilities.
With that said we come up with a median score for the Dallas offense of 24, 10, 21, and 20 which gives us an offensive rating of 18.75. On the defensive side of the ball we have scores of 20, 28, 17, and 24 giving us the defensive power rating of 22.25.
Now that we have our team ratings lets formulate a point spread. Washington’s scoring rating is 25 and Dallas’s defensive rating is 22.25. We add these 2 numbers together and get 47.25 than subtract 20.5 (which is the average team rating that will be used in every power rating for the season) and get 26.75 for predicted Washington points. We would do the same for Dallas, 18.75 + 15.75=34.5. Than subtract the 20.5 and we would come up with 14.
The predicted final score in this game using our power rating system would be Washington 26.75, Dallas 20.5. Because this hypothetical game is being played at Dallas we must add 3 points to the Cowboys score (adding 1.5 to their score and taking 1.5 away from Washington, since the Cowboys are playing at home. Giving us the new total of Washington 25.25, Dallas 22. With our hypothetical point spread of Washington -3 it looks like it is dead on for the most part. This game would be a pass in our book at the current number of Washington -3. Now if the books had made Washington a 2 point favorite, a Washington -2 bet would be a very good investment, just as a line of Dallas +4 would have made a very good investment on Dallas at that number. I recommend wagering on any number that is 1 point off of your power rankings. By staying disciplined and keeping to this 1 point model you will find about 3 solid bets per week against the NFL point spreads.
Just keep in mind to come up with a new median score after each game is played out. Once the first week of the season is over, you would than take that result and eliminate the first of the 6 games you previously used to derive a median score.
Now that we are picking winners lets move on to proper money management.
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