Green Bay Packers: NFC North over/under projections for the 2017 regular season
There are few things that bring more pleasure to passionate sports enthusiasts than peering into their crystal balls and prognosticating everything from wins, playoff berths and titles to just about everything else on which we can place a number.
Most fans recognize that they will be wrong more times than not, but what fun is there in just “letting things plays out” or “seeing which team does the best job of staying healthy?”
It goes without saying that injuries will always play a determining role in what transpires, but why bother referencing them if there’s no way of accurately forecasting who will stay intact and who will fall apart … outside of a select few cases perhaps.
No sport elicits more attempts on the part of the public to look into the future than the NFL version of pro football.
The Super Bowl, in particular, is the one event that the public wagers more money on than any other game, match or competition in the world.
SBNation.com, in fact, reported that the gambling capital of Las Vegas generated $119 million in public wagers on the Super Bowl in 2015, which shattered the previous year’s total of $98.9 million.
Action on the big game isn’t only the result of individuals making their monetary pledges a week or two before the final showdown. Many indulge in taking a dip in the futures market by investing their shekels on a team they think will go all the way before the NFL’s Week 1 kickoff.
Others, however, prefer the safer method of wagering futures by simply taking the over or under side of a set number of wins posted for each one of the league’s 32 teams.
While Lombardi Ave in no way promotes or encourages any form of gaming, it’s always fascinating to take a peek at the current over/under lines set by the Vegas-based sportsbooks.
These services tend to be very accurate in terms of coming close to where the public consensus lies in projecting how many victories any given team will accumulate in the regular season.
The secret, of course, is to pick a win total that will induce an equal number of fortune hunters to place their bets on either side of the projection.
On the following pages, we take an early look at the most recent over-under Vegas prognostications in the NFC North found on FootballLocks.com, and whether it would be advised to go above or below the current estimates in the ole Black and Blue Division.
Check ’em out …