NFL Betting Tips

As any handicapper knows, you can't just look at the final score to analyze a game. It's always a good practice to study box scores, because if you're trying to look ahead to what's going to happen in the next game, it's well worth studying not only what happened, but why it happened and in what circumstances. All the while ask yourself what might not be readily obvious from what you're looking at.

One of things you want to "bookmark" in a team's performance is the "backdoor" touchdown(s).

In pro football, it doesn't happen all that often that you would have a line that exceeds two touchdowns, and even this season, when there are so many bad teams, when you see that kind of line it usually involves a team that can hardly put a drive together. In college, however, you can easily see a line between a talented and much less talented team that can be 35 points or more. In fact, you could even see lines between teams in the Top 25 that can get pretty big. For example, if a team like Florida was playing host to, say, Utah, which is 19th in the coaches' poll, the line might be as high as 21 or 22 points, maybe even a bit more.

Teams that are getting a lot of points, and find themselves well behind in a game, and then wind up scoring some touchdowns in "garbage time" during the second half to come within the number are said to be covering through the "backdoor." As you can imagine, this can produce some results that are deceiving. Some teams are less concerned with running up the score than others, and lets up when the game has pretty much been decided. At that point the opponent may still be trying to prove something, or accomplish something, and they will have first-team players in the game against what may be third-team players. A badly beaten opponent, more often than not, has a desire to make the score look more respectable. This sometimes turns a cover into a non-cover for the favorite.

When you're analyzing an upcoming game involving either of the teams in question, it is useful to make a determination as to how either of those teams did when the outcome was still, theoretically at least, a matter of some question, which will give you an idea of what their true strength is. By the same token, you will also want to make note of the teams who have the ability to score these backdoor TD's, because they are worth a long look when they are a sizable underdog. if they are bad enough to fall far behind an opponent, they may not have great front-line talent, but not much of a drop between the first and second-stringers. By the same token, a good team may have a big dropoff, especially if they're at home, dressing more players, and want to get some young players into the game as a way of evaluating them for extended playing time in the future.

This combination can result in a big dog making up some ground with "meaningless points" that don't impact the win-lose result. Since the advent of the BCS, there is (theoretically anyway) not as much to be gained by teams running up scores against outmanned opponents, though from some of the scores you see out there from teams like Boise State, you wouldn't know it.

Watch schools who may be looking for "moral victories." Maybe they're from a non-BCS conference, or they have a new coach who is trying to build a program. Making games look more competitive than they really are is a boost for the existing players, and mitigates the effect if these mismatches, albeit cosmetically, in the perception of recruits. These are programs that aspire to be "on the rise." Then there are the schools who have fallen far short of expectation, have played themselves out of the bowl picture (admittedly harder and harder these days), are playing out the string, amidst a negative atmosphere, have a lame duck head coach, etc. All of this will be reflected in whether they put out for the whole 60 minutes or not.

It is your mission to know the difference between these programs, and to effectively analyze the meaning of backdoor scoring plays, so you don't get back-doored yourself!