Battle Red Blog
The following post is brought to you by FanDuel.
It’s still a little hard to believe that meaningful Houston Texans football is four days away. Doesn’t it feel like this offseason was just a little longer than other ones? Granted, in previous offseasons we’ve had teams where it looked like they wouldn’t win three games and those offseasons flew past; so what do I know?
What I do know is that with the regular season officially underway tomorrow and effectively underway on Sunday, there’s a lot of money to be made on the side just from watching football.
Just go to this link to get to FanDuel and bet on some of the options they have available, like, say, the opening odds (sorta) of the game.
Spread:
Houston Texans (+3)
Los Angeles Rams (-3)
Context: Think of a spread as a head start. Whichever team has a positive number for the spread means oddsmakers think the Texans need a three point head start going into the game. If the Texans win with the extra three points, they covered the spread. If the Texans lose or win by two points or less, they got beat by the spread. If the Texans win by exactly three points it’s called a push and you get your initial bet back.
Moneyline:
Houston Texans (+132)
Los Angeles Rams (-154)
Context: Let’s say you have $100 to bet and you wanted to bet the moneyline. This is a straight “will this team win or lose” bet, no point spreads just a winner and a loser.
If you were to bet your $100 on the Texans, you would win $232 ($132 for the win and your initial $100).
If you were to bet your money on the Rams, it would take a bet of $154 to win $254 ($100 for the win and your original $154).
Over/Under:
44.5 O/U
Context: The over/under is the combined point total expected by oddsmakers to happen in a game. For this game, oddsmakers believe the total combined score of the Texans/Rams game will be about 45 points. Gamblers here will bet if the total points in the game will go above 44.5 or below 44.5. In cases where the O/U has a .5 at the end, it means that there will be no push, everyone will either win or lose money because a game can’t have score with decimal points. I mean, come on.
