This offseason, I ran multiple statistical model that looks back over the last several years of football to try to find edges in various oddball markets.
One of those was the overtime market. For this particular market, I looked back over the last eight years, when the extra point rule was changed to push the attempt back to the 15-yard line.
Over that sample, I've found some interesting quirks in the overtime market using my statistical modeling. Since betting the no side of overtime markets at ridiculously short prices isn't fun, we'll just look at when I show value on the yes side of the equation.
As it turns out, tonight's season opener between the Lions and Chiefs stands out. Let's take a look at why.
Lions vs. Chiefs Prediction
It's clear that games with a closer spread should go to overtime more frequently. Tonight's Lions vs. Chiefs line has the Chiefs as a 4.5-point favorite, as of 1 p.m. ET.
It's also probably intuitive to most readers that lower-scoring games have a better chance to go to overtime. So, you may ask yourself, why am I on the yes side in a game with a 53.5-point total?
The main reason, I believe, is that the recent Travis Kelce news has had an impact on both the spread and the total for tonight's game. Prior to the news of Kelce's hyperextended knee on Tuesday, the Chiefs were as high as 6.5-point favorites with the total hovering around 54.5 points. Both of those factors would lead to a game less likely to go to overtime.
There are other factors that come into play here, but this is the primary reason why I'm betting the game to go to overtime at +1420 at FanDuel: Other books have this as low as +800, and no other book I've run into has this above +1000.
I have fair value at +1050 in my model and even if there ends up being good news for Kelce and he can go, it's likely that he'll be limited and the spread and total won't move back to its original numbers.
Let's take the value here and root for a close game to give us a sweat.
What is QuickSlip?
QuickSlip is an Action Network feature that allows users to automatically pre-load their bet slip at FanDuel Sportsbook.
