In week 1, the average over/under across 16 games was 44.8. In 9 of those games, the over hit.
Week 2 was when the passing explosion began; in 8 games that week, the teams combined for 48+ points, and in the other 8, teams failed to top 41 points. Nearly every over/under is between 41 and 48 points, so the O/U didn’t matter much this week: in the 8 games that produced 48+ points, the over hit, and in the other 8 games, the under hit.
But that doesn’t mean Vegas wasn’t aware of the passing explosion. The average over/under in week 2 was 45.0, but it jumped to 46.1 in week 3. Once again, we had a 41/48 split: no team scored 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, or 47 points in week 3. So the over/under didn’t matter: 8 games had 48+ points scored and went over, and 8 games had 41 or fewer points and went under. But Vegas had already begun raising the line.
How much? Week 4 had an average over/under of 46.7! And yet the over was still the good bet, as 9 of 15 games went over. This despite the rare event of two games producing 50+ points and still going under! In week 4, 10 out of 15 games combined for 49 or more points, in the greatest passing week in NFL history.
So in week 5, the over/under average jumped to 47.3…. and the over still hit more often than not! There were 8 games with 46+ points scored (7 had 50+ points scored), and the over hit in all of them. The other 7 games all went under, including two games with 44 points scored.
And last week the over/under average was 46.8, perhaps artificially lower because the Saints and Lions (who had 50+ point over/under lines in week 5) were on bye. And yet in week 6, 9 out of 15 games went over.
The table below shows the weekly over/under results this year. The Under has never been a winner, and the books seem to be doing all they can to make over/unders high enough to get people to bet the under:
| Week | Gms | Avg O/U | % Over |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 16 | 44.8 | 0.563 |
| 2 | 16 | 45.0 | 0.500 |
| 3 | 16 | 46.1 | 0.500 |
| 4 | 15 | 46.7 | 0.600 |
| 5 | 15 | 47.3 | 0.533 |
| 6 | 15 | 46.8 | 0.600 |
And how about week 7? The Packers, Raiders, Steelers, and Seahawks are on bye, and Lions/Dolphins game does not yet have a line due to questions about Ryan Tannehill’s availability. That leaves 13 games to discuss: on average, the over/under is a sky-high 47.5! That is led by a Chiefs/Bengals over/under of 58 points! This is the second straight week the Chiefs game had an over/under of 58 or more, after the line was 59.5 last week against New England (and the teams combined for 83 points). For some perspective, from 2015 to 2017, there was just one regular season game with an over/under of 58 points among all 32 teams.
In 6 of the 13 games, the over/under is 49 points or higher, and the lowest over/under of week 6 is 41.5.