NFL Futures: Best Bets

Football. Is. Here.

I’m going to dive right in to my “Robin Hood Guide to 2025 NFL Futures” shortly, but first some quick housekeeping items:

1) First, for readers located in or near New York City, there’s a Juice Reel NFL Watch Party tonight at Flannery’s Bar!

I’ll be there with the Juice Reel crew and a group of app users and readers. RSVP at the link — would love to see you there.

2) Second, Juice Reel recently released the ability for top bettors to chat and post easily with their subscribers (check it out if you haven’t).

With this feature, I’ve decided to share more of my betting activity on the platform (!!), and will be testing this out with an initial group of 10-20 Beta subscribers.

Reply to this email if you’re interested, first week will be free as we ramp up!

Now, let’s get to the season wagers. I’ll share context and specific bets in different categories. As always, we’ll close with this week’s (NFL) bets of the week!

Let’s get after it.

Category 1: Division Winners

Angle: Worst to First / First to First

NFL division outcomes have surprising variation from year to year, but also some predictability.

On one hand, we’ve seen worst‑to‑first NFL division flips in 19 of the past 22 years (some years have more than one).

On the other hand, since 2002, around 44% of division winners won again the following season, a figure that has risen slightly to 47.5% over the past 10 years.

I’ll be betting three teams to go “Worst to First”, and one to go “First to First”.

Here’s the list:

I see value on the tail outcomes of 2nd-year QB maturation in both Chicago and New England, and we’re getting the right price.

Caesars has an outlier price on the 49ers right now (grab it fast), making the NFC West a great market to attack. I’m also betting on positive health regression for their strong core.

Lamar Jackson has gone 70-24 as a starter in his career, so this Ravens bet is a wager on his health. If he plays 15+ games, I think they win the AFC North with ease.

Category 2: Season Win Totals

Angle: Rest Advantage or Personnel Change

I wrote about Warren Sharp’s analysis of rest disparity when the NFL schedule came out last summer, and while the lines I reference have moved a bit, I still see a (lack of) rest-driven opportunity to fade the Raiders.

Micah Parsons’ impact on the Cowboys was massive. As per Bill Barnwell’s research, from 2021–2024 the Cowboys were the NFL’s No. 1 defense by EPA/play with Parsons on the field — and the worst defense in the league when he was off. Sample is ~1,039 snaps — not small.

Even with the win total line drop that followed the trade, I’m willing to bet the impact of his departure is even more severe.

Here are the bets:

Category 3: Player Props

Angle: Run/Pass Regression or Tail Bet on Small Data

Last year’s Eagles were the most run-heavy team in the NFL — by a mile.

They ran on 58.1% of plays, ranking #1 in rush rate. The next-closest was Baltimore at 53.7% (!!). Philly had the fewest pass attempts in the league (448) — just 26.4 per game. It was such an extreme outlier that I don’t think it will repeat.

I am looking to make bets that may win if they run a little bit less, but should win if they come back to the pack more dramatically. Think Hurts passing overs, A.J. Brown receiving yardage outcomes or even Saquon unders.

Separately, despite the occasional naming snafu on TV, Michael Penix Jr. flashed real juice in a small sample late last season.

From Weeks 16 – 18 he ranked 8th in passing yards and 8th in explosive-pass rate (15.5% of throws gained 16+ yards), with a league-leading 10.2 air yards/attempt over that span.

On a situational split, Warren Sharp charted him with the best EPA in the final 4 minutes of each half among QBs with ≥100 attempts in 2024.

Here are the wagers I’m making to play these edges:

Category 4: Betting the “No”

Angle: Getting Better Pricing by Playing Bookie on Kalshi

This is an approach I’ve been going deeper on as prediction markets like Kalshi gain more steam.

By betting multiple teams to “not” win something that can only have a single winner, I can create synthetic bets with much better prices.

Here’s an example of a group of bets I made:

In aggregate, that’s a -178 bet for anyone other than Cincinnati, KC, or LAC to reach the Super Bowl from the AFC.

It’s not accessible on retail sportsbooks, but if you want to sign up for Kalshi, click this link and use the code JUICE to get a free $10.

If there’s interest, I’ll go deeper on these with subscribers — I have a LOT of that type of action.

Bet(s) of the Week $$

Last week our winning streak finally came to an (uncomfortable) end.

We had the Colorado Buffaloes +4.5, and Georgia Tech was cautiously driving to a walkoff field goal win (and cover for us!) when this happened — yeesh.

We lost one unit.

Even so, the bounces will even out over time. Since starting the newsletter, bets in this section are ahead 19.5 units, with a positive 22% ROI. We’ll update this regularly.

Based on my research, I am making the following bets this week (non-futures):

• Eagles -7 (alt line) @ -130 on HardRock for 1 unit

• Eagles -13 (alt line) @ +150 on BetMGM for 0.5 units

• Falcons +2.5 @ -122 on Kalshi for 1 unit

My reasoning for these bets aligns with the futures bets listed above.

Specifically:

• I don’t believe the departure of Parsons is fully captured in this Cowboys line, and I could see them losing big as Hurts is particularly effective in a clean pocket.

• I expect Penix to make a second-year leap and don’t think Week 1 pricing reflects that yet.