I take that with a grain of salt

This method is using Vegas over/under win totals to compute strength of schedule.

My issue with this method: Vegas determines over/under win totals based on the expected bettor response, not on how many wins they expect a team to have.

Let me us the Cowboys as an example. They might think the Cowboys will win 6 or 7 games next season, but they know that the Cowboys draw a lot of money and if they set the over/under at 6.5 then way more money will get bet on the over. That exposes Vegas to a big loss if the Cowboys do win more than 6 games.

Vegas' ultimate goal in establishing a betting line is to make the money fall evenly on both sides. If $1M is bet on the over $1M is bet on the under then Vegas makes money no matter how many games the Cowboys win. So how do they make that happen? They artificially raise the over/under win total to encourage more people to bet the under. If Vegas thinks that setting the over/under at 8.5 will result in an even split in the betting then that's what they'll do, and it doesn't matter if they are actually a 6 or 7 win team.

The result? Teams that play the Cowboys (like the Rams) get a stronger strength of schedule than they should by 2 games.

The most bet teams in 2025 were the Lions, Bills, Eagles, Chiefs, and Cowboys. [www.espn.com] You can expect their over/under win totals to be artificially high, and any team that plays them will therefore have an artificially high strength of schedule.

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AlbaNY_Ram



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 05/04/2026 04:39PM by AlbaNY_Ram.