Football odds: don’t forget to consider coordinators

Football odds are handicapped with attention paid to head coaches, but coordinators are very important to consider analyzing football gambling odds.  Coordinators play different roles on each team, but, in general, coordinators can impact football odds significantly because they conduct much of the behind the scenes work.  Therefore, by considering coordinators as you evaluate football odds you will be better equipped to make astute wagers on both sides and totals.

Football odds should always recognize the influence of coaches because it is the coaches who serve as the glue holding teams together and guiding teams through the difficulties of each NFL season.  After handicapping football gambling odds for several years, gamblers tend to begin realizing that teams with good coaches perform consistently better against the football odds than teams with substandard coaches.  But even within the coaching staff it can be particularly important to pay attention to the offensive and defensive coordinators when evaluating football odds, even though most gamblers fail to consider coordinators when handicapping football odds.

These coordinators are generally the coaches with the greatest influence over any team’s offense and defense, so an offense and defense will either rise or fall with its coordinator.  In fact, when handicapping the football odds one generally recognizes that big transitions in an offense or defense result from the insertion of a new coordinator, not a new head coach.  Also, coordinators often make lots of important calls on the sidelines, meaning they can directly impact the outcome of a game and therefore the football gambling odds.

Coordinators should, in fact, play a major role in your handicapping of football odds for both sides and totals.  When you are considering football odds involving totals, a team’s coordinators are very important.  Such is the case because coordinators tend to have very definable characteristics and strategies that will influence how football odds should be analyzed.  For instance, some offensive coordinators prefer an offense involving lots of running and ball control, while other offensive coordinators favor an offense involving far more passing.

Therefore, by knowing the preferences of a coordinator, you will be far more prepared to handicap the football odds for totals.  Once you become more familiar with the different coordinators, you will eventually learn about how different offensive coordinators respond to the schemes and strategies favored by certain defensive coordinators, and vice versa.  This knowledge will be particularly useful in telling you how a game will be played and, therefore, how you should wager on the football gambling odds.