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Thursday Night Vs Vegas Scoring
- Updated: October 12, 2017
By John Bush
Thursday Night Vs Vegas Scoring Patterns
Thursday Night Vs Vegas Scoring Patterns was created because I was tired of statements and predictions of Thursday Night NFL GAMES without some historical data to use. The purpose of this research was to satisfy me and thus the FAKE_PIGs get the best data analysis as well from me!
Figure 1 DAP Data for Tonights Game
This is expected to be a tough game and Vegas expect 45 points of total scoring!
Figure 2. 2016 and 2017 Thursday Night Games – Vegas vs Actual Scoring
The table highlights the game above and below the Vegas predictions (DIFF). I also color-coded the points data from Vegas’s predictions vs Actual Scoring. Overall 9 games above and 12 games below. (42 % Above/ 58% Below).
The Vegas average of all 21 games is 43.9 points vs the actuals of 43.4! Vegas is not a fool. the wisdom of the Sharps is seen!
Vegas is not a fool as the wisdom of the Sharps is seen!
I next turned to modeling the data. I sorted the games by the Vegas predictions of low to high in GREEN and plotted the actual game score in RED
I then determine the best-fit equation for the data. Not surprisingly, the trend line is a polynomial with multiple variables. (See equation). R-value was not strong at .32!
Figure 3 and 4. 2016 2017 Vegas Predictions vs Game Scoring with Differentials
In the differential Figure 4, I plotted the prediction vs game score differentials. Above the pink line are games the produced higher game scores than Vegas predicted and below are games that had scores below the predictions.
The data seemed to me to be “saying” something! Is it by random chance or real? More research later!
Let’s play a little with the observations. I broke the Data Table into 3 segments based on the polynomial trend line. I also placed tonight’s game within the data table!
Figure 5 Tablualr Version of the Segmented Data of Thursday Nights
If we “look” at the table and its plot the 3 segments are much different! The sweet spot is when Vegas predicts 40.5 to 43.5 total game points. In those 9 games, only 2 Thursday night games have not exceeded the predictions! WOW! Surprise!
The low-ball Vegas predictions were 3 games below 40 and they had a large negative median differential of -12!
Conclusion? “When Vegas is not happy it’s not good for FF players!” So Vegas error is being too generous? They know the games are defensive games but are off the mark!
The high-ball games, however, leave me with evidence of a Thursday issue! The concept is Thursday night games are not living up to expectations! This graph partially supports that. The games where Vegas has predicted 44 or more total game points, they missed the mark as well. In these nine games, only 2 beat the Vegas Sharps! The only one game really with a higher differential was at +21 occurred in 2016 in week 9 of the Thursday night game!
Tonight the magic number is 45 and on average expect a -7 differential of just 38 points! I used this in my Thursday Nigh Game breakdown!
Link Thursday Night Game Breakdown
Figure 6. Segmental Analysis of Thursday Games vs Vegas!
