Action Network's NFL Luck Rankings are back in 2024 for its third season.
In 2022, our Luck Rankings identified 61 unlucky teams to bet on, going 39-22-0 ATS for a 63.9% hit rate against closing lines.
Last year, we updated our methodology to quantify luck even better. That reduced the number of sides we bet, but we also added in Luck Totals. Last year, unlucky teams our Luck Rankings identified went 14-9-2 (60%) against the closing spread, while Luck Totals went 35-19-1 (64.5%), which breaks down into 29-18-1 (61.5%) for unders and 6-1-0 (85.7%) for overs.
Overall, bets our Luck Rankings identified hit 63.1% of the time over 80 wagers.
What Are the NFL Luck Rankings?
Our Luck Rankings use a metric we call Luck%, which aims to represent the win-probability difference between a team's on-field performance (as measured through play-by-play data) and its actual winning percentage.
We do this through our Expected Score metric, which identifies the average score of a game between two teams if replayed infinitely while facing the same game situations it encountered.
As an example, let's say the Philadelphia Eagles have fourth-and-goal on the Washington Commanders' 1-yard line. If we were to replay this scenario a million times, the Eagles are likely to punch the ball into the end zone quite a bit. But there's also a chance they don't.
The average expected score of this play is around 4.5 points for two average teams. So when the Eagles score, they come in above expectation, and when they don't, they're below expectation. The specific expectation is adjusted for each offensive and defensive strength on that specific day.
Do this for every play of the game, and we can come up with an Expected Score for the game, which in turn gives us an expected win probability for each team in that game.
By comparing all 32 teams' Expected Scores to their actual results, we can figure out which teams have been lucky or unlucky through the Luck% metric. We can then rank them by Luck% from 1-32 to get our Luck Rankings.
End-of-Season Luck Rankings
Our Luck Rankings don't carry over from season to season. Instead, they start fresh every year. That means we won't have any luck-based bets in Week 1. However, if you're curious about what our end-of-season Luck Rankings looked like in 2023, you can find them here. These can be useful when betting season-long win totals, as unlucky teams tend to outperform their win expectation the following year, and vice versa.
In addition, we can use those end-of-season rankings to project out the luckiest and unluckiest schedules for 2024. Luck Schedules can be used in combination with Sean Koerner's Strength of Schedule rankings (the raw strength of schedules for all 32 teams), to get an idea of the difficulty — or lack thereof — of the opponents each team faces in 2024.
Betting Spreads Using Luck Rankings
We've identified three main criteria to use to identify luck-based NFL sides:
- A difference of at least 24 places in our weekly NFL Luck Rankings
- A Luck% difference of at least 50% between two opposing teams at any point in the season
- A Luck% difference of at least 30% between two opposing teams in Week 13 or later
The first criteria we call a Luck Difference, so we'll want to key in on the unlucky team in games with a Luck Difference of 24 or more.
For Criteria Nos. 2 and 3, we use the difference in Luck% between the two teams. If we subtract the unluckier team's Luck% from the luckier team's Luck%, that difference is called the Luck Gap. If the Luck Gap between two teams is at least 50%, that also warrants attention toward the unlucky team.
In Weeks 13 and beyond, that Luck Gap shrinks to 30% because we have a large enough sample of games, so we can shrink the amount of that Luck Gap needed to make a bet since we are more certain that teams have been either lucky or unlucky.
We're also always on the lookout for new trends as we add more games to our database throughout the years. For example, one trend we've noticed is how unlucky road teams tend to fare better in most of these splits than unlucky home teams, but there's still an edge in both.
Betting Totals Using Luck Rankings
Our Expected Score metric can also be used to bet totals.
By looking at the combined effect of how Team A's offense and Team B's defense have fared, and the same for when Team B is in possession, we can determine if the teams have combined to score + allow points more or less than expected in their previous games.
If teams combine to score + allow more than expected, it's reasonable to believe regression would eventually set in and these teams would trend toward the under if bookmakers are setting the lines too high based on actual scores rather than expected scores. The opposite is true if teams have scored and allowed fewer points than expected.
When two teams play, the difference between the combined Expected Score per game and the combined actual score per game is what we call a Luck Total. For Luck Totals, we use the following criteria:
- A Luck Total above +10 after Week 3.
- A Luck Total above +5 after Week 11.
- A Luck Total below -5 after Week 2.
In other words, at any point in Week 4 or later, if there is a Luck Total off by at least 10 points in either direction, our Luck Rankings have identified this as a bet on the total in the corresponding direction.
For unders, this threshold is actually lower and kicks in earlier — likely because the public tends to prefer betting overs, which artificially inflates totals. Thus, at any point from Week 3 or later if the Luck Total is below -5, our Luck Rankings have identified this as a bet on the under.
Similar to the Luck Gap for sides, later in the season the Luck Total threshold lowers for overs as we have more data.
NFL Luck Rankings in the Playoffs
While our records for Luck Rankings are all graded on regular-season bets from Week 2 to the penultimate week of the regular season (the final week presents motivation challenges as some teams rest players while others don't), we can also use Luck Rankings to bet the NFL playoffs.
There's no change to the criteria for betting sides. However, since the playoffs are even deeper into the year, the Luck Total thresholds narrow even further.
In the playoffs:
- Luck Totals of +1 or higher are 11-6 (64.3%) to the over
- Luck Totals of -1 or lower are 24-8 (75%) to the under
That makes Luck Totals 35-14 (71.4%) against closing totals in the playoffs.
NFL Luck Ranking Content for 2024
We'll have a ton of content in 2024 for our NFL Luck Rankings as part of our Action Network Pro subscription, including:
- Tuesday: Updated Luck Rankings.
- Wednesday: Luck Ranking matchup previews in which we anticipate line movement to determine if we want to make an early bet on a game
- Saturday-Sunday: Breakdowns of luck-based bets
Sometime after Week 6, we'll also use Luck Rankings combined with strength of schedule to bet win totals for the remainder of the season.
And every Sunday before kickoff, Nick Giffen provide my top three Luck-Based Bets, which will go beyond just sides and totals to include other player and game props that stem from our Luck Rankings.
Follow along with us this season, and good luck with your bets!
