Reverse line movement and the moneyline in the NFL
This is simpler than it is usually made to sound. The line moves toward the side most tickets are NOT on. Ticket count and money are different quantities, and the number follows money.
The moneyline is a bet on who wins, and nothing else, and in the NFL it behaves like this: Rarely worth taking on a favourite: a −7 spread implies a moneyline price so short that a season of correct picks barely clears the vig.
The league's own contribution: The clock stops on incompletions and out of bounds, so a two-score deficit inside two minutes is recoverable in a way it is not in basketball.
The problem arrives next. Public ticket percentages are marketing numbers from whoever publishes them, and almost nobody publishes the handle that would make them mean anything. And on this market in particular: Heavy favourites pay back barely more than the stake, so a run of correct picks can still lose money. The price is the bet.
The archive
What the published price did in the NFL
276 games in the NFL that are over and carried a price when we wrote them up, between November 25, 2025 and November 6, 2026. Each count sits beside what it is out of, and the share is the one divided by the other.
| What | How often | Out of | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| The shorter price won | 155 | 263 | 58.9% |
| The favourite covered the handicap | 117 | 276 | 42.4% |
| The total went over | 143 | 274 | 52.2% |
| The home side won | 134 | 276 | 48.6% |
- Points in a game, on average
- 44.26
- Winning margin, on average
- 11.25
How wide the games were
Over 457 finished games in the NFL with a score — a margin needs no price, so this sample is wider than the one above.
- Half were decided by this or less
- 8
- One in ten by this or more
- 24
- The widest
- 38
How they ended
Over 457 finished games in the NFL whose result line says how it ended — the feed's own one-line verdict, not a reading of the play.
| What | How often | Out of | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Went past regulation | 27 | 457 | 5.9% |
8 games landed exactly on the number — the handicap or the total — so they are in the counts they are out of and in neither result.
The prices counted here are DraftKings', as they stood when we last wrote each game up — one snapshot per game, near kick-off for almost all of them, and never a closing line. So this says what the published line did, not how it moved on the way there.
A season that happened. Nothing here predicts the next game, and none of it is advice.
Counted November 6, 2026.
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