Developing own point spread

One of the strategies I use in my Football Investing is developing my own point spread using Statistical Analysis of certain criteria and comparing that to Vegas spread . I dont look at the Vegas spread until my calculations are complete so I feel im not being influenced by the pre set spread.  Usually the spread i calculate is actually not that far off unless one team strength of schedule is much easier / harder than other team has i have not found a way to use strength of schedule in my calculations in my point spread .

I have done the same for NFL in the past, where I use a fairly simple formula which tends to match Vegas most of the time ... unless of course there are injuries to key players, or poor weather conditions.  

The formula I start with is based on Home Team and Away Team total points scored and total points allowed.  See below:

AS = Away Team Avg Points Scored
AA = Away Team Avg Points Allowed
HS = Home Team Avg Points Scored
HA = Home Team Avg Points Allowed

Away Team Points = (AS + HA) / 2
Home Team Points = (HS + AA) / 2

Take the difference and tack on 3 points for Home Field Advantage....  for example, tonight's game between Cowboys and Chargers would come out to Dallas 26.4 and Chargers 25.05 ...
Or a Spread of Dallas -1.35 and O/U 51.45  .... DraftKings currently has Cowboys -1.5 and O/U 51.  Pretty damn close most of the time!!

I then break it down by how the teams fair on the road vs home, not just take the total of all games.  So I do the same formula but only include the away games in the average for the Away teams, and only include the home games in the average for the home teams; and then do NOT include the 3 points for home team at the end.  Doing this, tonight's game comes out to Dallas 24.25 and Chargers 26.17  .... or Chargers -1.92 with O/U 50.42 ... So that would mean LA should cover the +1.5 and their O/U is too close to call.  I usually look for variances by more than 5 points which sometimes happen, and those are my more "confident" games.

What other statistical criteria do you search for? Does it consist of breaking down strengths and weaknesses of each team such as a good pass rush vs a weak O-Line? Or maybe DB1 vs WR1, and DB2 vs WR2 matchups?

good formulas . right now my criteria is strictly based on past stats involving yards per play vs yards per play against very simple formula but at least in college it seems to be efficient i can't seem to be as successful betting pros vs college .

I don't get player specific i mean just raw data because the data tells me everything that's happened to that point it would be great to incorporate what you mentioned but at this point i really don't know how you would i also use 2 pts for home advantage not 3. Not saying that's right it just seems all the websites now are using 2-2.5 pts homefield .

I'm intrigued by this "Yards per Play" strategy.  Can you please tell more?  Maybe illustrate it in an example using a Week 8 game such as Washington St. @ Oregon?

For "Yards per Play For", I added up QB pass Attempts and all Rush Attempts. Then took the Total Pass Yds + Total Rush Yds and divided it by the attempts.
For "Yards per Play Against", I did the same thing but went through the box score for all 6 past games to tally up the opposing teams Pass Attempts/Yds and Rush Attempts/Yds.

For the Washington St. @ Oregon game, I came up with the following:

Washington St. Yards Per Play = 6.35
Washington St. Yards Per Play Against = 5.75

Oregon Yards Per Play = 7.81
Oregon Yards Per Play Against = 4.51

But ....... how do you integrate that analysis into the Vegas line?

NFL i divide yppA. ( yards per play advantage) by / 15.4 which is the mean average for the NFL. 15.4 is the standard so it takes every team 15.4 yards to get a point. Again this just gives me a baseline to compare my spread to Vegas. For example say Cincinnati averages (5.4-5.0 ). ,5.4 per play on offense. 5.0 per play allowed . That's a YPPA of 0.4 ..again YppA. ..yards per play advantage...say Seattle is (4.8-5.4) ..so Seattle averages 4.8 per play on offense vs 5.4 allowed on defense .. so that's (-0.6) YppA ..well disadvantage ..So you add Cincinnati ( 0.4 ) + Seattle (-0.6) ...cincinnati averages (1.0) yds per play better than Seattle..i take that and divide that by / 15.4 and come up with a baseline spread than add 2 points for homefield.. so 1.0 / 0.154 says cincinati should be 6.5 faviotes all things being equal...and +2 at home so that would be 8.5 favirotes..hope that wasnt confusing..when i look at my nfl bets this weekend i will give you my spreads and a exsmple of one ..again dont let this be the end all be all there has to be common sense involved to factor other variables say a. team is playing real hit lately or injuries but it's just good to get a basic spread than see what Vegas is thinking

in your example i would have have Oregon -16 neutral field

i like divising a method on gambling because you compute the numbers and it tells you what the spread should hypothetically be so it takes indecision out of play. if your spread says team A should be favored by 8 but team A favored by 2. you go with team A because your calculations tell you Vegas has mispriced them by 6 points " so in theory" you should definitely take team A because they should easily cover that 2 point spread. i use to bet on guy instinct and while occasionally guy instinct is better than any method you can devise for the most part you can't live off gut instinct every bet you make

This is very solid logic. I have never tinkered with how many yards it takes to score a point and then manifesting it into logical analysis to come up with an advantage/disadvantage one way or the other. Makes perfect sense that Offensive Yards lead to points; and the only thing I can think of that could impact the outcome are defensive and special team scores (which does not happen very often).

Did you say this works in college games as well? Is there a different mean than 15.4 Yds per Point?

I think college is about a yard less I have to look that up

special teams ,/ turnovers are huge impact but I don't think they can be planned for so if you make a bet and your team actually out gained the other but turned it over 3 times i feel like i didn't lose the bet on analysis it just simply lost because of a " unplanned " event

I might be missing something, but 6.35-5.75 = an YppA of 0.6 for Washington St.; and 7.81-4.51 = an YppA of 3.3 for Oregon. Taking the difference of those since they are both positive would be 2.7 YppA for Oregon ... and 2.7/0.154 = 17.5 in favor of Oregon, right? So, should it be 17.5 instead of 16 or am I missing something??

i don't use 15.4 has my denominator in college . that's pros ...college is I think 14.4 its about a yard less than pros but you on right track

yards per play advantage / yards per point means...i get all this on team rankings

Admin wrote:I might be missing something, but 6.35-5.75 = an YppA of 0.6 for Washington St.; and 7.81-4.51 = an YppA of 3.3 for Oregon.  Taking the difference of those since they are both positive would be 2.7 YppA for Oregon ... and 2.7/0.154 = 17.5 in favor of Oregon, right?  So, should it be 17.5 instead of 16 or am I missing something??

your right on point I just don't have anything to account for strength of schedule

i also don't use this analysis until week 5;of season NFL or college you need at least 4 games per team for the data to become reliable

so you see how calculations Oregon -16 + ( 2.0 to 2.5) = 18.5 at home and if you look at FanDuel spread it's exactly -18.5 so this game tough pick. and actually I have Oregon -19.5 i don't use stats of division 1-a or whatever it's called so I would throw out calculations on when both teams played a non division 1 team. . wash st only averages 2.3 per run that dosnt carry well in the road . neither team has played a common opponent id really have a hard time putting money on this game .

Case Study Game #362 . #83 UNLV @ NEVADA #129. Vegas spread UNLV -7.5 . (db spread ). UNLV 21.5. ...Final score UNLV 45-27 .....pick UNLV -110 odds bet $11 to win $10... Spread calculations UNLV (5.6 -5.. 0.2. Nevada (4.2. -8.3 ) -4.1 . Advantage UNLV (4.3) per play . -2 for home field . UNLV should be favored by 21.5 . which is ,14 points higher than Vegas. So I only have to give Nevada 7.5 points so pick : UNLV . Result : win. Real score : 526 yds UNLV / 14.2 = UNLV 37. Nevada 474 yds /14.2 Nevada 33.4 . Real Score UNLV 37 NEVADA 33.4. Conclusion . Nevada would have covered the spread if not for 3 turnovers to 0 for UNLV . while UNLV won by 18 pts if Nevada would have 0 turnovers UNLV would have only won by 4.6 . The 3 turnovers cost Nevada 21.7 points. Which equals about 7 points for each turnover. There was no special teams or defense touchdowns . So numbers are validated

UNLV 5.6-5.8  vs nev 4.2-8.3.   huge 4.3 yppA equals UNLV should be favored by 21.5 not 7.5 ..turns out I was only 3.5 points off while Vegas was off 10.5 pts. i was lucky to get turnovers without them my line wasn't that close but UNLV came in +7 turnovers to +1 nev so you can make the point predictably Nevada would turn it over more than UNLV

i use a different denominator that i spent countless hours researching that I'm not sure im ready to make public yet haha lol. im at 54 percent picking NCAA games 205-196-2 thru 376 division 1 NCAA games

i meant to say 205-169-2 picking NCAA games in 2023 division 1 games only .. 54.8 % actually

I get not wanting to reveal the "master" denominator! LOL

I am going to work out today's 3 games on an Excel sheet and see what I come up with.

I haven't posted to my blog in a few days so need to do that, and would love to come up with something around this strategy to try to grab the attention of a few more subscribers to come join the forum.

as you can tell i probably get way to excited about this lol