The best play on a game by game basis is picking the underdog straight up to win, usually this is a live longshot
playing on the road, since the home team gets a standard 3-6 point home advantage on the line for playing at home.
So
when looking for that upset special road dog we go back a bit and look at a teams first 2 road games of the year,
if they won at least one of them straight up we put them in our road dog category, the general rule here is that if a team
starts the season strong on the road they will win on the road again during the year.
Another thing
to look at is a teams head to head history vs their opponent, if it is decent, and they are on our road dog list of teams
to watch, and an underdog in the game, we'll take a shot on them to win straight up at juicy odds.
The
home team wins an average of 55-60% of the time, translating that to money lines on the road team it comes out to +120-150.
When we bet on a road dog we want to get value, so we'll look at +120 on the money line and up, we won't always hit
with these but the logic is that if you use the above formula to find a live road dog and get good value on the odds, it will
payoff over the long run.
The Road Dog playoff edition is one to watch out for, go to the
bank and get ready to go to town, in 2005 the road dogs went 6-4 straight up in the playoffs, 3-1 in the Wild Card games,
in 2004 they went 4-6 straight up, but again were 3-1 in the Wild Card games, in 2003 they were 4-6 straight up, 1-3 in the
Wild Card games.
Just keep in mind these are straight up wins by a road dog, hitting at a 47% rate
in the playoffs, 58% in the Wild Card games, over the past 3 years, i remember riding Carolina and Pittsburgh in 2005 on the
road, +150 and up money lines game after game, the road dog playoff edition is one to save up your cash for.
It
makes sense that the playoffs consist of quality road teams, after all the Super Bowl is played on the road, so most
playoff teams will make extra preparations for the road.
If you look at the regular season road
records of all the playoff teams in 2005, they were all above .500, the 6 Super Bowl finalists of the past 3 seasons, 2005,
2004, 2003, had a combined regular season road record of 35-13, the Super Bowl is owned by The Road Warrior
