NFL Win Totals: Do New Coaches Offer Betting Value?

Historical NFL win totals performance data indicates that first time head coaches tend to outperform betting market expectations.

August 31, 2021 - by Jason Lisk

NFL win totals (also known as season win totals, or season over/unders) are simple bets in nature. A sportsbook sets a win total line and payout odds for every NFL team, and you can bet that a team will have more or fewer regular season wins than its line.

Because win totals lines and odds are generally market-driven, they also reflect (to a large degree, at least) the collective wisdom of the betting markets regarding how each NFL team is likely to fare in the upcoming 2021 season.

As a result, even though sharp NFL bettors often find edges in betting on certain teams’ win totals, on balance, NFL win totals lines serve as valuable predictors of the upcoming NFL season.

NFL Win Totals Performance Analysis: Coaching Factors

This is first of a series of articles on team performance against preseason win totals. This analysis, in turn, includes factors that go into our preseason predictive models for the upcoming 2021 season.

In this article, we are focusing on the men in charge, the head coaches. We take a look at how younger and older coaches have performed. We look into first-year coaches compared to coaches with more experience, and also look into team performance compared to expectations based on how long the coach has been with that particular team.

For this analysis, we used preseason win totals and results for every season from 2003 to 2020.

NFL Coaches Based on Experience

First, we’ll look at records against the win total based on the number of years a coach had helmed the team in question (“1” here means the coach is in his first official season as head coach with that team.)

Years with Team	Over	Under	Push	Avg. vs. Win Total	Over Pct	Standard Dev.
1	62	54	5	+0.10	53.3%	2.75
2	50	56	5	-0.23	47.3%	2.72
3	39	42	2	-0.06	48.2%	2.73
4	25	32	4	-0.39	44.3%	2.75
5	22	18	2	-0.20	54.8%	2.82
6	10	20	2	-0.94	34.4%	2.79
7	13	12	0	+0.06	52.0%	2.84
8	7	11	0	-0.56	38.9%	3.24
9	8	9	1	-0.33	47.2%	2.23
10+	35	26	3	+0.35	57.0%	2.69

Now, let’s look at it based on overall seasons as a NFL head coach (so a coach in Year 1 with a new team but who had coached six seasons elsewhere is now counted in Year 7).

Years Overall	Over	Under	Push	Avg. vs. Win Total	Over Pct	Standard Dev.
1	48	32	2	+0.50	59.8%	2.71
2	39	35	2	+0.02	52.6%	2.77
3	26	34	2	-0.33	43.5%	2.71
4	18	29	4	-0.59	39.2%	2.59
5	14	21	4	-0.67	41.0%	2.60
6	11	20	3	-1.06	36.8%	2.79
7	12	17	0	-0.68	41.4%	2.84
8	9	15	0	-0.69	37.5%	3.23
9	9	13	1	-0.61	41.3%	2.73
10	13	5	1	+0.58	71.1%	2.97
11	11	7	1	+0.45	60.5%	2.44
12	12	7	0	+0.53	63.2%	2.94
13	12	7	1	+1.13	62.5%	3.19
14	8	9	0	-0.32	47.1%	3.03
15+	29	29	3	-0.02	50.0%	2.58

This shows that new coaches in the first two years of their career, and old coaches with 10 or more years of experience, have performed better against expectations than other coaches with between 3 and 9 years of experience, at least over this time span.

NFL Coaches in Year One with a Team

Now let’s turn to those first seasons. When viewing these tables, keep in mind that coaches in their first year with a team have performed well overall against expectations.

First, let’s break it down by whether the coach was making his NFL head coaching debut or had previously been a NFL head coach elsewhere.

Years Overall	Over	Under	Push	Avg. vs. Win Total	Over Pct	Standard Dev.
1	48	32	2	+0.50	59.8%	2.71
2 to 9	6	16	3	-1.02	30.0%	2.66
10 or more	8	6	0	-0.25	57.1%	2.71

Rookie head coaches have been undervalued by the win total betting market, while established coaches moving to new situations have underperformed expectations in their first year with a new team as a group.

Predecessor length of tenure

Now, let’s look at the Year One results based on the length of the tenure for the coach they were replacing.

Predecessor Length	Over	Under	Push	Avg. vs. Win Total	Over Pct	Standard Dev.
1	8	5	1	+0.86	60.7%	2.98
2	7	17	2	-0.87	30.8%	2.66
3	14	10	0	-0.44	58.3%	3.01
4	9	9	1	+0.08	50.0%	2.10
5 to 6	13	5	0	+1.25	72.2%	2.60
7 to 9	5	6	1	+0.13	45.8%	2.87
10 or more	6	2	0	+0.94	75.0%	2.76

There does seem to be some relation between how stable the predecessor was and immediate success against expectations. When coaches took over for a coach who had been in place for five or more years, their Over record was 24-13-1.

Some of this may be correlated with moving into better-run organizations that don’t have a lot of instability and frequent change in recent years. We are dealing with small sample sizes here, but that Year Two number shows that franchises that have turned around and fired coaches after two seasons have tended to remain bad more often than see a new coaching hire turn it around.

NFL Coaches Based on Age

In the previous sections, we looked at experience. Age is certainly related (coaches with less experience are often younger) but here we will specifically look at coaching ages. Here are results based on age in a coach’s debut head coaching season, for all debuts since 2003.

Age	Over	Under	Push	Avg. vs. Win Total	Over Pct	Standard Dev.
35 or younger	3	2	0	+0.60	60.0%	3.15
36 to 40	9	4	0	+0.96	69.2%	2.52
41 to 45	12	10	0	+0.11	54.5%	2.79
46 to 50	12	12	0	+0.15	50.0%	3.01
51 to 55	7	1	1	+1.72	83.3%	2.23
56 or older	5	3	1	+0.44	61.1%	1.67

Overall, rookie head coaches have performed well across the board. But the highest hit rates in year one have been among both the youngest and oldest groups of coaches, while those at more typical age of mid-to-late 40’s are closer to average against the win total expectation.

Age in all seasons since 2003

Here are the results for all seasons (not just debut seasons), based on the age of the head coach.

Age	Over	Under	Push	Avg. vs. Win Total	Over Pct	Standard Dev.
35 or younger	6	6	0	+0.17	50.0%	2.96
36 to 40	16	14	0	+0.18	53.3%	3.02
41 to 45	36	35	1	-0.10	50.7%	2.47
46 to 50	75	68	6	+0.02	52.3%	2.69
51 to 55	64	82	8	-0.46	44.2%	2.92
56 to 60	38	49	6	-0.32	44.1%	2.62
61 to 65	27	19	1	+0.51	58.5%	2.91
66 or older	9	7	2	-0.04	55.6%	2.46

NFL Coaches Based on Background

Finally, let’s take a look at coaching performance against expectations based on background. In this case, coaches are classified by their role prior to becoming a NFL head coach, including whether they came in as an offensive or defensive coordinator, or had been hired after most recently being a college head coach. This data is from head coaching debuts only.

Background	Over	Under	Push	Avg. vs. Win Total	Over Pct	Standard Dev.
College Coach	8	6	2	+0.44	56.3%	2.50
Offensive Coordinator	25	20	1	-0.08	55.4%	2.79
Offensive Assistant	6	2	0	+1.63	75.0%	3.19
Defensive Coordinator	21	20	2	-0.02	51.2%	2.76
Defensive Assistant	1	4	0	-1.40	20.0%	1.75
Other	1	2	0	+1.17	33.3%	3.33

The “Other” in this case were a special teams coordinator (John Harbaugh), a CFL coach (Mark Trestman), and an offensive coordinator in college (Lane Kiffin).

Offensive coordinators who debut at a young age have done well in their first seasons. Here are the youngest since 2003:

• Sean McVay, age 31
• Josh McDaniels, age 33
• Zac Taylor, age 36
• Adam Gase, age 38
• Kyle Shanahan, age 38
• Kevin Stefanski, age 38
• Ben McAdoo, age 39
• Matt Nagy, age 40
• Matt LaFleur, age 40

Eight of the nine went Over in their rookie head coaching seasons, with six of them exceeding the win total number by 2.5 or more wins, and six making the playoffs while entering the year with an average preseason win total of 7.1.

New 2021 NFL Head Coaches

Here is a summary of the new NFL coaches in 2021, all of whom are first-time NFL head coaches. Ages listed are based on calendar year, and represents the age by December 31, 2021.

• Dan Campbell, Detroit Lions: Age 45, most recently assistant head coach and tight ends coach for New Orleans Saints
• David Culley, Houston Texans: Age 66, most recently assistant head coach, wide receivers coach and passing game coordinator for Baltimore Ravens
• Urban Meyer, Jacksonville Jaguars: Age 57, most recently head coach of Ohio State University
• Robert Saleh, New York Jets: Age 42, most recently defensive coordinator for San Francisco 49ers
• Nick Sirianni, Philadelphia Eagles: Age 40, most recently offensive coordinator for the Indianapolis Colts
• Arthur Smith, Atlanta Falcons: Age 39, most recently offensive coordinator for the Tennessee Titans
• Brandon Staley, Los Angeles Chargers: Age 39, most recently defensive coordinator for the Los Angeles Rams

This year has given us a large range of ages and backgrounds for new NFL head coaches. David Culley is the oldest head coach to debut in our data set, at age 66. Urban Meyer is also returning to coaching at age 57 with Jacksonville, after last coaching Ohio State University in college football in 2018. Meanwhile, three of the other new coaches will be 40 years old or younger by the end of the 2021 NFL season, and Robert Saleh at age 42 is also below the average age for a new head coach. Culley and Campbell are getting a head coaching job while being neither a college head coach or NFL offensive/defensive coordinator.

The only thing that we do not have in 2021 is an established NFL coach moving to a different team, as we have seen in recent years with Bruce Arians, Jon Gruden, Mike McCarthy, and Ron Rivera.