How Coaching Impacts NFL Betting

While the players on the field in the NFL do so much of the work that decides whether or not a bet covers the spread, coaching can often be one of the most underrated aspects of the game. There are so many impacts that coaching has on the sport, from game management to style of play and beyond. Knowing these different methods of impacting the game is extremely important to anyone who wants to beat the books and wager on the NFL successfully.

Style of Play

A team’s style of play can be incredibly important when it comes to their ability to win games and cover spreads. And more often than not, the style of play that a team uses can be traced back to their coaching staff. Different coaches have different approaches, which can create matchup advantages or otherwise create confusion for opponents. Knowing these styles of play can be extremely lucrative.

One such style of play belongs to more innovative coaches like Sean McVay and Andy Reid. These coaches utilize more varied play calls than most coaches, utilizing skill players in more ways than their traditional roles. Wide receivers can be used in running plays if the coach sees an advantage in doing so. Running backs can be split out wide and used as receivers more frequently than you see on other teams. All of this is to say that these coaches believe in getting creative if it means giving themselves a better chance to win.

These coaches often fall into the category of teams with an aggressive style of play. Not every aggressive coach chooses to get as creative as some of the game’s great innovators, but here you’ll see coaches who aren’t afraid to call plays that push the ball down the field. These coaches aren’t afraid to go for it on fourth down either, which can have a profound impact on a team’s win probability whether or not those attempts are successful.

Compare that to coaches who wish to play more conservatively and you can see a clear difference. These coaches believe in executing well within the confines of a more traditional offense, and not taking chances that could destroy their chances to win before it gets too late in the game. This can lead to some punts on fourth and one and running the ball in short yardage situations.

Of course, no coach follows one coaching template on every occasion. There will always be times where a more aggressive coach gets conservative or a conservative coach gets aggressive when the situation they are in calls for it. But seeing which style of play a team employs ahead of time can give you a slight edge when making NFL bets.

And seeing how that style of play has performed over an extended period of time with a given personnel group is extremely important. Because a coach can have the most innovative game plan in the world, but that doesn’t mean anything unless the team can find a way to execute the game plan automatically. If the players aren’t put in the right position to succeed with their specific strengths and weaknesses, even the best coach can have their plans unravel right before their eyes.

That is why the most successful coaches are ones who can tailor their game plan to their specific rosters and to the matchups that they are up against. Bill Belichick is famous for this, as he and his staff are great at catering their defensive ideology to stopping the strengths of their opponent each week. Whether it is double-teaming a star receiver or committing more defenders to stopping the run, knowing which coaches are best able to adapt to the conditions and matchups around them is more important than knowing what their preferences are under ideal conditions.

Team Identity

In addition to a team’s style of play, their identity can go a long way toward determining how viable they are as a candidate to wager on. A team that has an identity that historically has trouble winning games could be one worth avoiding, while a team that has a winning identity can be a great bet. But knowing a team’s identity and tendencies is important regardless of what each team does individually, as approaching each team objectively is important, with identity starting with the coaching staff.

One such example is a team with a disciplined identity, which might be the most consistently successful identity in the sport. The Bill Belichick era Patriots are famous for being one of the most disciplined teams in the NFL, something that has helped them win championship after championship. Of course, the Patriots are also one of the most versatile teams in the league in terms of their identity, with those two elements combining to make them extremely difficult to beat.

A big component of being disciplined is avoiding penalties, which is something that the Patriots do very well. Since 2010, the Patriots have only had 1,000 yards or more in penalties just once, with that happening in 2014. Of course, the Patriots went onto win the Super Bowl over the Seattle Seahawks that year, thanks to Seattle’s decision not to run the ball from the one-yard line. But you see year in and year out that the lack of penalties committed by the Patriots, aside from that one season, help them make deep runs in the playoffs time and time again.

In addition to teams who want to play a disciplined style of football, there are teams who pride themselves on their toughness and their willingness to get their hands dirty to accomplish their goals. These teams don’t necessarily need to be teams that relish playing in the trenches, but can be brash and tough on the outside instead. But no matter where a team derives its toughness from, that toughness can intimidate opponents while boosting team morale.

A great recent example of toughness being a legitimately beneficial team identity came from the Seattle Seahawks during the Legion of Boom era. With some of the best defensive players in the sport, the Seahawks knew that they were tougher on defense than most teams could ever dream of being on offense. This created a dynamic where the Seahawks played with an incredible confidence, with defenders like Richard Sherman, Kam Chancellor, and Michael Bennett flying around the field at every level of the defense to create legitimate havoc against whoever lined up opposite them.

Of course, here is the possibility that a team’s identity can be a negative one as well. Just like there are teams who pride themselves on being disciplined, there are teams who are undisciplined, which can become an identity within itself. Teams who often commit personal foul penalties and make mental mistakes can fall into this category, as they consistently make mental errors that can cost them wins or at least make things more difficult for themselves.

A good way to find out which teams are the most undisciplined in the league is to look at which teams in the NFL are the most penalized both for a current season and for the duration of a coach’s tenure with their team. This could reveal trends about a team’s lack of desire to remain disciplined over an extended period of time, rather than just a handful of games that don’t provide a representative sample of a coach’s time with an organization.

Keeping an eye out for off-field issues can be a sign of a team’s lack of discipline under a coach as well. This doesn’t necessarily apply to incidents that involve just one player, as isolated incidents and bad individual decisions exist across sports at all times. But a series of bad decisions by multiple players on one team can potentially reveal the fact that a coach doesn’t have as strong an identity in his locker room as he might want or need to be successful.

Clock Management

Clock management might be one of the most difficult things that a coach has to contend with in the NFL, and they have to do it while managing personnel, making in-game adjustments, and doing a million other things during the course of a game. And the difficulty with clock management is made clear by the fact that so many NFL coaches have a hard time managing the clock intelligently. Whether that comes in the form of misusing timeouts or just not utilizing the running clock properly, there are a lot of coaches who just are not good at this very important skill.

Take Andy Reid for example, who is one of the more innovative offensive minds in the NFL. He can take any quarterback and make them into a quality leader of an offense and can get the absolute most out of his skill position players seemingly every year. But put Andy Reid in a situation where is tasked with managing the clock in a big spot, and suddenly he inexplicably falls apart. There have been numerous documented examples of this phenomenon, where one of the best coaches in the league during his era struggles when it comes to existing in the presence of a clock.

While this might not come into play on a regular basis, it is something to consider when evaluating the impact of coaching on NFL betting. Reid has absolutely cost his teams games on occasion with his inability to properly manage the clock. And if you are someone looking to back one of Reid’s teams in a big game, you have to live with the possibility that his inability to put his teams in the best possible positions based on the time on the clock can cost you.

Conversely, it seems like Bill Belichick is always good at managing the clock and giving his team the best chance to win with great situational coaching. He doesn’t rush things in late-game drives, but doesn’t take too long to get his team moving either. Whereas most teams look frantic and disorganized when running late-game no-huddle drives, the Patriots look like they are in full control of the situation, which has a lot to do with Belichick.

Sound time management also has a ton to do with the talent on the field and their comfort level with these pressure-packed situations. After all, Tom Brady is probably going to be better at running the two-minute drill than a rookie who has never done it before. But there is a clear difference between the coaches who are good at clock management and the coaches who are not, and that can help players become effective in those situations through working on it in practice and in games. Making sure you know where each coach stands in this department is extremely important.

Coaching Stats To Look For

There are plenty of statistics that can help illustrate which coaches are more effective than others, which can provide an edge in key areas depending on which criteria you hold the most valuable. There is no one-size fits all approach to which stats will best fit the NFL betting systems that you follow or create, but these particular stats should give you an idea as to which teams are and are not to be trusted under their coaches.

Against the spread records are a great place to start when evaluating the history of a head coach. Because wins and losses are great for those who only care about whether or not a team won a game, but whether or not a team can cover the spread is obviously a better indicator of their ability to deliver for bettors. A good record against the spread often indicates that a coach can get his team ready to overdeliver relative to the expectations set out before them, rather than underperforming.

Earlier, the discussion of team identity mentioned that penalties are a great way to measure how disciplined a team is. And that makes it an excellent statistic to keep an eye on as well. Knowing not just the number of penalties committed and the number of yards they produced, but the context of those penalties, is important to increasing your chances of sustained NFL betting success.

For example, a team might have committed six penalties for 60 yards. But those penalties could be five offside penalties for five yards each and one 35-yard pass interference penalty, or they could be six 10-yard holding calls. The first of those scenarios would tell me that a team is aggressive defensively and is trying to jump the snap count and be physical with receivers, while the other scenario would tell me that the team is either bad at blocking or lacks discipline. Context always matters when it comes to penalties, and knowing that context is a huge deal when evaluating coaches for betting purposes.

Then there are situational stats, which can tell you how well a coach prepares his players. Whether the situation is a team that plays its home games indoors having to play outdoors, or a west coast team having to travel east for an early start, or anything else, these changes in environment can be a great indicator of how well a coach gets his guys ready to take on the task at hand.

Fortunately, it is easy to find out how different situations can impact a team, as there are split stats available for teams that break down how they perform in all kinds of different conditions. Those split numbers combined with betting trends from a number of sources can tell you a lot about how well-prepared a team is, along with how good they are at overcoming adversity both with regard to winning games and covering the spread.

Performance after the bye week is something that only impacts a team and a coach once during the regular season, but it can also be the source of some profitable betting when looked at properly. Andy Reid can’t manage the clock to save his life, but he went on a run of 16 wins in 18 games following the bye week at one point in his coaching career. Being able to get a team ready to play with extra time to prepare is important, and some coaches are great at it. While Reid’s incredible run may have sapped the value out of betting his teams after the bye, being able to identify coaches with similar yet unheralded success following a week off is something you could want to pursue.

Balancing Reputation With Results

The ongoing battle between perception and reality in the NFL is a very real thing, as some coaches are better than others no matter what the public may think of each of them. Looking past what analysts and talking heads have to say and truly evaluating the ability of each coach is one of the most important things that a football bettor can do outside of doing the same for the rosters that will actually take the field on a given week.

While a coach like Doug Marrone isn’t given a lot of credit because of how bad some of his tenure with the Buffalo Bills was, he has had legitimate success in the postseason with the Jacksonville Jaguars. Sometimes, all it takes is the ability to acknowledge that a chance of scenery was good for a coach or that there was a mitigating factor holding the coach back in another scenario and that they are doing better now.

Other times, this game of reputation versus results is a matter of finding when a coach is perhaps valued too highly by the rest of the NFL and the betting community. A great example of this was the hire of Pat Shurmur by the New York Giants heading into the 2018 season. Shurmur had a disastrous run as the head coach of the Cleveland Browns in his first run as the man in charge of an NFL sideline. In fact, Shurmur had won less than a third of his games as a head coach prior to being hired by New York. So why was this decision thought to be such a home run?

The answer to that question is public perception. Shurmur took some time away from head coaching from the end of his run with the Browns to his time with the Giants, with the exception of a brief stint as the interim head coach of the Philadelphia Eagles. He bounced around the league a bit, before having success in 2017 as the offensive coordinator of the Minnesota Vikings. And while many were impressed by his ability to turn Case Keenum into a worthwhile professional quarterback, a simple look at why he was successful in that role would have told a different story.

What made the Vikings so successful offensively in 2017 was their defense, not their offense. The Vikings had one of the best defenses in the league in 2017, which often forced their opponents to punt the football after three-and-outs or other short possessions. That would lead to the Vikings offense coming out to take on a defense that didn’t get enough time to properly rest from the previous possession. And a tired defense often means an easier time for the offense, which helped the Vikings play well on the offensive side of the ball.

Of course, having great wide receivers like Adam Thielen and Stefon Diggs will help an offense too, but having those players against a tired defense can multiply their impact on a game. This isn’t an overly complex analysis, but it is an important one. And every single NFL bettor should analyze coaches in a similar fashion to avoid falling into the trap of falling in love with a coach that may end his head coaching career having failed to win half of his games just because the public told you to.

As you can see, the impact of coaches on pro football betting runs a lot deeper than just the plays that they call on game day. Knowing that and embracing it could be the ticket to a profitable season.