Today’s Best Bets: The Early Super Bowl Line

It wasn’t anything we weren’t prepared to see. We bet against Patrick Mahomes, and we took a six-point underdog starting a rookie quarterback on the road. (Not that offense was the problem for the Commanders.) But expected or not, we took it on the chin with the conference championship games. Here’s what we’re thinking on the early Super Bowl line, with a little college basketball to follow:

Super Bowl

We made a lot of headway this year following FPI for our NFL bets. Enough that if the ship goes down again, we’ll be honored to go down with it.

Yes, the Chiefs have Mahomes, and they’re coached by Andy Reid and Steve Spagnuolo. But the Eagles have been the better team all season. Maybe this is that midwit meme. We’re willing to take that risk.

We’ll check in on the line again next Monday, or so is our plan. We’re aiming to put 30 units on this game in total.

Pick: Eagles +1.5 (–105). 10.00 units to win 9.52.

NC State @ Duke

It’s not that we think the line here is wrong. Duke is 22 points better than NC State. It’s that these Monday games are tough when they’re part of a quick turnaround. Jon Scheyer doesn’t have a great history in them, and even those he’s won—as he should win tonight’s—have sometimes been lackadaisical. We don’t think Kevin Keatts figured out some special formula to beat Duke. But we also don’t think Duke really thinks of this as a revenge game.

We’ll take the over as a slight hedge against Duke really running away with it. If Duke does blow NC State out of the water, you’d think it’d happen at both ends. That’s probably why the books we’re seeing aren’t letting you consider parlaying these two. (Yes, taking these together is counterintuitive. We’re in damage control mode with daily college basketball picks right now. Trying to survive until we have our bracketology model ready to point out opportunities for good Selection Sunday plays.)

Pick: NC State +22 (+100). 10.00 units to win 10.00.
Pick: Over 133.5 (–112). 10.00 units to win 8.92.

**

I am only roughly 90% confident in these numbers. We’ll get that Google Sheet up soon which tracks all our bets this year.

2025: –125.86 units (started with 1,000-unit bankroll)

2025: –11% average ROI (weighted by unit; sample size: 41 single-game markets)

Pre-2025: 0% average ROI (worse when limited to only sports)

Units taken from best odds we can find at major sportsbooks available to most Americans.

The Barking Crow's resident numbers man. NIT Bracketology, college football forecasting, and things of that nature. Fields inquiries on Twitter: @joestunardi.
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