if you would like help someone out and share your favorite Props for today
GL

If your book provides it, I think Burkhead Under 16 yards receiving is an interesting one...

Goodluck!

I have not watched the PATS much this year. Is there a reason that he doesn't kick many?

first kickoff touch back
yes +150
no -180

I am on these.

Brady no interception -110
Goff interception -110
J. White over 6 receptions -125
Lead change in 4th qtr +245
first turnover is interception -160
shortest TD u1.5 yards -165
LA under 1.5 sacks +120
two point conversion attempted +115
Gurley TD -130
Michel TD -130
2.5 players w/ pass attempt -120
Nat Anthem O107 sec. -140

Also bet
First half Under 27.5 -110
First Qtr U10.5 -145

Also played LA on the ML.

All of these are rather small bets

Stephen Gostkowski Touchback on First Kick +180

If the Pats kick off to start the game, I don’t see any reason why Gostkowski can’t kick that football well into the upper level seats. But for real, this is my favorite bet for Super Bowl 53.

The league median for touchback rate this season was 62%, with Gostkowski getting no return on 53.8% of his kickoffs (with a slightly better rate on the road). His average kick distance of 62.2 yards was the lowest of his career, which is certainly meaningful information.

But check out this stat: Falcons punter Matt Bosher, who kicks off for Atlanta, converted 70.6% of his home kickoffs into touchbacks in 2018 (seventh-best for any team) compared to only 39.5% on the road (third-worst) — i.e. there’s really good evidence that kicks carry in Mercedes-Benz Stadium.

With an implied breakeven probability of 37.5%, I think Gostkowski’s much higher true touchback odds make this the highest ROI bet in Super Bowl 53.

now +110 at 5dimes

Super Bowl LIII is not only about two of the league’s best offenses squaring off against one another — New England and Los Angeles — it’s also about America’s other favorite pastime: gambling. The total amount bet on the Super Bowl1 has risen from $40 million in 1991 to more than $158 million in 2018, and much of that growth has come from “props” or proposition bets.

For readers who aren’t degenerate gamblers, prop bets are wagers you can place on events during a game that don’t directly involve the final outcome. This year there are the standard prop bets, like if the Patriots will score a touchdown in the first quarter (they never have in a Super Bowl), or if the Rams will rush for more than 127.5 yards (they averaged 143.3 yards per game in the regular season and the playoffs). But there are also more exotic prop bets on things like whether Donald Trump will tweet more than six times during the game. (The implied probability on one offshore book is 58 percent that he will hit the over.)

Another interesting wager is on the length of Gladys Knight’s rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Several offshore books have set the total for the anthem at 1 minute 47 seconds, and the implied odds for both the under and the over were set at one book at -115 — a 53.5 percent implied probability — on both sides.2 The implied probabilities being equal indicates that the book has no real opinion on the length of Gladys’s performance — they just want to take a percentage from each side of the wager and hope bettors will place their bets evenly on both.

But is Knight performing the anthem in over/under 107 seconds really close to a 50 percent proposition? Or is there evidence that might convince us that the oddsmakers got the probabilities wrong?

To find out, I went to Youtube and watched 40 Super Bowl national anthems from 1979 to 2018. I eliminated any anthems with trumpeters (there were two) and then started timing the anthem from the moment the singer first started to sing and ended the timer after the completion of the first utterance of “brave.”3 Using this methodology, the 40-year average of all national anthem singers4 is 106.1 seconds, roughly in line with the total set by the books. So the total is correct so far as the average goes, but it also seems lazy. Surely there are other factors that might help us better predict how long Gladys might sing.

For starters, the performance time of the anthem has changed as the Super Bowl has grown to become the unparalleled cultural phenomenon we now enjoy each year. As the pomp, circumstance and viewership have increased, the time anthem performers spend on the stage has also risen.

So while anthems have gotten longer over time, the 40-year average is not fully accounting for that trend. When you do account for it5 the best forecast for the 2019 anthem is actually 119 seconds, 13 seconds over the 40-year average.

Gender of the anthem singer is also significant. Men tend to sing the anthem more quickly than women — though not many men have sung the anthem in recent years, when the anthems have been getting longer overall. Still, the all-time shortest anthem performance was by a man — the incomparable Neil Diamond — who got in and out like a boss in a cool 61 seconds. And the longest anthem ever performed at a Super Bowl was by the unforgettable Natalie Cole in 1994, which clocked in at a diva-esque 148 seconds.

Finally, Knight herself appears to be a singer who knows how to stretch a note. Using whosampled, I identified 31 covers performed by Knight and timed the cover performance of each using similar criteria to the anthem timing. Knight’s covers were 7 percent longer than the originals on average, good for a bonus 12.7 seconds of soothing soul per track. In perhaps the best comp to the national anthem — “Ave Maria,” a soaring, vocal-heavy standard covered by hundreds of artists — Gladys’ performance was 37 percent longer than the standard version.

Taking a larger view, only two anthems in the past 15 years have been performed faster than the 40-year average of 1 minute 47 seconds. And when I looked at the age of the anthem singers, I found no significant correlation between age and performance time.6 On the other hand, we can look at one of Knight’s previous performances of “The Star-Spangled Banner” itself, which is solid piece of evidence against the over, running for 92 seconds. It was, however, performed 28 years ago. All things considered, the bookmakers appear to have this line wrong on Gladys, and her upcoming anthem performance is probably going to go over 107 seconds.

Researching a single prop was a lot of work, and it’s understandable why books might not want to put this level of effort into each and every bet they publish. But it does imply that there are profitable edges for some Super Bowl props. Using the Twitter machine, I threw up a bat signal for a gambling expert to help me confirm my priors. Rufus Peabody, a professional sports bettor and former ESPN contributor who is well-known in gambling circles for the scale and volume of his Super Bowl prop wagers, agreed to help.

“The time and effort to accurately value props is pretty high,” Peabody said. “Some books put more effort into their props than others, and for some props there’s almost no data. Books will move the lines aggressively when sharp bets are made though, which helps them adjust.”

I’ve been keeping an eye on the Gladys anthem line, and it hasn’t moved all week. I was tempted to bet the over, but when I was confronted with the prospect of having to convert real money into Bitcoin in order to place a bet on an offshore site, I decided to abort. When I looked around for somewhere to place the bet in Las Vegas — where they accept actual money — I struck out. Peabody explained that prop bets like anthem length are illegal in Las Vegas because of restrictions on the types of sources casinos can use to “grade” or determine the outcome of a bet.

Even if it won’t net me any cash, I’ll be pulling for Knight to go over regardless. I want her to belt out that last note in “home of the brave” for an egregiously long time.

I see this game being very close...
Patriots win by 1-3 points at 5/1
Rams win by 1-3 at 7/1
Under 10 first quarter
Hoping for a low scoring first quarter and a tight game at the end.GL

You’ve been given your Super Bowl squares. You’re ready to watch the game. But what exactly should you be rooting for based on the numbers you have, and just how screwed are you with 5-2?

The idea of a squares pool is to land the correct final digit for each team’s score at the end of the game, and often at the end of each quarter depending on the pool is set up.

If you had the Eagles 1, Patriots 3 square last year, you would have taken home most (if not all) of the money when Philly won 41-33. The squares in most pools are assigned randomly, so there’s not much strategy involved.

The best squares to get are traditional finishing score numbers that come as a result of touchdowns (with extra points) and field goals, and the sum of those two. So you want 0, 7, 4 and 3, in that order.

Most Likely Outcomes for Super Bowl Squares
This year, the two most likely end-of-game outcomes are Patriots 7, Rams 0 and Rams 7, Patriots 0.

There are 15 total combinations that have at least a 2% chance of winning, all involving 0, 3, 4, 6 and 7.

OK, So What If I Have Terrible Numbers?
Fortunately for you folks with 5-2, unique game scores are at an all-time high since the NFL pushed the extra point back in 2015. The traditional numbers like 0, 1, 4 and 7 aren’t occurring at the same rates that they were between the NFL/AFL merger in 1966 and 2014 — those numbers are collectively down almost 8% over the past four seasons.
Does It Matter Which Team I Have For Each Number?
In some cases, yes. There are more likely finishing scores for winning teams than losing teams.

But given that the betting market has these two teams pretty evenly matched, it shouldn’t matter all that much in this particular game.

Eldo.co says, for example, that the Patriots 8, Rams 7 square has a 0.9% chance to win, while Patriots 7, Rams 8 has a 0.8% chance. The winning team is more likely to have 8 if the losing team has 7.

Best Super Bowl Squares by Quarter
Many Super Bowl squares pools pay a portion of the pot for the score at the end of each quarter, with the largest chunk going to the final score.

As the game goes on, there’s more variance in scores. Three combinations in the first quarter (0-0, 0-3, 0-7) make up 31 Super Bowls, while there have been 32 different final score combinations.

Shop Around at Various Sportsbooks

Even if you’re betting on props just for fun, you still want to get the best line possible. Why limit your winning upside by betting a prop at +130 on one book when it’s +150 elsewhere?

I wouldn't call these Best Bets but I'll take a flyer on these two.


Patriots defense or special teams TD's ...... OVER 1½ +3568

Rams defense or special teams TD's ......... OVER 1½ +3568


Also, with two very good Field Goal kickers kicking indoors today, I like this one.


NE/LAR Longest Field Goal in game .......... OVER 47½ -120

I too like the O47’ for longest FG

I am seeing scoring in this game (preferably in 2H) and also looking to play:

-Over 3’ for number of Rams to score points

-Over 3’ for number of Patriots to score points

-Over 3’ TDs by Rams

-Over 90’ yards of all TDs in game


Also:
-Over 6’ yards for James White longest Rush


GLTA

My local has the Anthem O/U at 115.5 and with your post on the last 40 NAs performs averaging 106.1 seconds has me really leaning Under

Where did you get the info about Gostkowski?

Which Team is Most Likely to Miss a Decisive Field Goal Attempt?

Stephen Gostkowski, Patriots: 30-of-35 (85.7%)
Greg Zuerlein, Rams: 34-of-39 (87.2%)

C.J. Anderson Under 49.5 Rushing Yards (-125)
The under on Anderson’s rushing prop hit against the Saints thanks to a negative run and him finishing with 44 yards on the ground. I’ll go back to the well again, sweating the under the whole game in hopes that Anderson doesn’t receive 16 carries again.

Instead, I’ll be buying into McVay’s coach-speak that Todd Gurley will “be a big part of this game.”

Rams Field Goals Over 1.5 (-125)
Under McVay, the Rams have attempted an NFL-high 84 field goals over the past two seasons (excluding playoffs), and kicker Greg Zuerlein has connected on an elite 91.2% of his field-goal attempts in that time (including postseason).

In his 13 games this season, Legatron has made two field goals in every game but one. He’s had at least two attempts in every contest.

I like Zuerlein so much that I’ve bet on him to win Super Bowl MVP at +12500.

Under 7.5 punts
The Rams averaged the fewest punts in the league this season at 2.7 per game, and though they weren’t as aggressive as you’d think on fourth down (bottom third in attempts), they didn’t need to all that often.

The Patriots on the other hand will grind out long drives with plenty of painstaking third-down conversions. I think we see 6-7 punts in this game.

Both Teams Have Lead in Fourth Quarter or Overtime: Yes +280

Time for a bit of a longshot try here. At many different books, they offer a lead change in the fourth quarter, but this prop adds in overtime, which has been a common theme lately.

I’m not here to sell you on the fact that overtime is likely, but the fact that it’s only happened once in 52 tries is misleading. Twenty of the 109 playoff games over the past decade have gone to overtime, good for an 18.3% rate — a 6% increase from the regular season.

There has been a fourth-quarter or overtime lead change in five of Brady’s eight Super Bowl appearances, including his past three trips to the Big Game. I think there is some value in this number.