NFL Betting Picks – Value on Futures Props

One of my favorite wager types are NFL betting exotics. They're not your traditional bet. Defined as a prop bet, instead of betting on an individual player you are betting on combined outcomes of multiple players throughout the season. How many interceptions leads the league, how many passing touchdowns lead the league, how many times a player will have over 200 receiving yards in a game are all examples of exotics.

William Hill sportsbook just released multiple exotics for the season and there are real advantages to be had. Most people look to bet overs, they are naturally more fun to root for and the numbers are normally inflated to reflect that. With season long exotics you have inflated numbers that require pretty extreme outliers and at -110 odds, that's the wrong way to approach building a betting portfolio with positive expected value.

Here are three of my favorite exotics for the 2021 NFL season:

Under 7.5 200 yard receiving games in 2021 regular season (Under -120, William Hill)

Insert "Michael Scott, explain this to me like I am five" GIF. There have been eight 200-yard receiving games in the last three seasons combined. Yes, we add 16 more games to be played this year with an extra week on the schedule, but this number is extremely inflated. Last season, Tyler Lockett had 200 yards, Tyreek Hill had 269 yards and Darren Waller had 200 yards. Waller’s 200-yard performance was one of only six tight end 200-plus-yard games in NFL history. A 200-yard game is an extreme outlier and needing to have eight of those events is incredibly unlikely, making the under one of my bigger bets of the offseason so far. Only one player last year even cleared the number by more than one yard. If we changed the number to 180 yards, there were only eight total players who did that, so this is an extremely tough number to crack.

Under 9.5 Interceptions by league leader in 2021 regular season (Under -110, William Hill)

Last year, Xavien Howard had 10 total interceptions and the number is set to reflect that. With the additional game on the schedule, you might think someone did it in 16 games last year, it should happen in 17 games this year. Looking closer at Xavien Howard’s double digit interception season, you see that he was the first to hit double digits since Antonio Cromartie in 2007. Last year, two players had nine or more interceptions, the next closest was Tyrann Mathieu with six. Typically, the best corners aren't targeted enough to rack up big interception numbers and the ones who are aren't good enough to put up those kinds of numbers. In 2019, Stephon Gillmore led football with six interceptions, in 2018, Kyle Fuller led the league with seven interceptions and in 2017, Darius Slay and Kevin Byard both had eight interceptions. At a 52% implied probability on the under – this is a no brainer bet on the under 9.5

Under 43.5 highest individual passing touchdown (-110, William Hill)

While not as highly inflated as the last two bets, this is still a monstrous number that has been eclipsed just twice since 2014 – once last year by Aaron Rodgers and once in 2018 by Patrick Mahomes. The efficiency needed to hit this number requires a quarterback to have an all time great season. Going back too far to show how rare this number wouldn't do its probability justice, as it is more a passing league today than ever before and this season will be 17 games. However, we are still talking about a herculean effort. In 2019, Lamar Jackson had a historical touchdown rate at 9.4% and led the league with 36 total touchdown passes. Give me the -110 on someone not passing for over 44 touchdowns. According to our projections, Patrick Mahomes is projected to lead the league with 38.6 touchdown passes – 5.4 less than he would need to eclipse this number.