Football Predictions and Picks

What a football prediction should tell you

A football prediction is only worth reading if it tells you three things: what the market says, what we say, and whether the gap between them is worth your money. Ours do exactly that. Every game gets its own page before kickoff, with the game priced three ways, our own number beside the price, and the call. When our number and the line agree, the call is no bet, and we write it down like any other pick.

That last part matters more than it looks. Many football picks you will find are a side on every game, because a pass is hard to sell. We would rather tell you to sit one out than invent a reason to play it. Once the game is played, the prediction stays where it was, word for word, so the record is there for anyone to check.

When football is on

Football has a calendar, and the betting follows it. College football opens in late August, plays every week through November, and finishes with conference title games, the bowls and the playoff from December into January. The NFL starts in early September, runs its regular season into early January, then plays its playoffs through January and the Super Bowl in early February. The CFL plays the summer and autumn, from June to its championship, the Grey Cup, in late November.

So there is football to bet on from late summer to early February, with Saturdays for college, Sundays for the NFL, and the primetime games on Thursday and Monday nights in between. Our predictions follow the same calendar: each game gets its page in the days before it is played.

Football odds, read in half a minute

Every game is priced three ways. The point spread is a handicap: the favorite must clear the number, and the underdog can lose by less and still cash. The total is the combined score, bet over or under. The moneyline is the winner straight up, with no points involved.

Football betting odds in the US are written as American prices. With a minus sign the number is the stake that wins 100: -150 risks 150. With a plus sign it is what a stake of 100 wins: +150 pays 150. Every price is also a probability, and that is the number to keep in your head.

Read the chart from the middle. At -110, the standard price on spreads and totals, a bet has to win 52.4% of the time just to break even. Lay -200 on a favorite and you need 66.7%. Take +200 on an underdog and 33.3% is enough. The price is not a detail of the bet. It is the bet.

Picks against the spread

Most football money goes on the spread, and that is where our football picks live. The question is never “who wins?” but “is this number right?” A team can win the game and lose the bet, and an underdog can lose the game and still cover.

Two things shape every spread in pro football. The first is the way points arrive: a field goal is three and a touchdown with the kick is seven, so games finish on margins of 3 and 7 far more often than on their neighbors. Half a point either side of those numbers changes whether a ticket wins, loses or pushes; half a point around 5 or 9 rarely matters. The second is the push itself: land exactly on the number and the stake comes back. A spread of 2.5, 3.5, 6.5 or 7.5 takes the push off the table: one side wins.

The 2025 NFL season showed it plainly: 46 of 285 games ended on a margin of exactly 3, and 26 on exactly 7.

College spreads behave differently. The gap between the best and the worst teams is far wider, so lines of three and four touchdowns are ordinary, and the key numbers count for less when the margins are that big. A pick against the spread in college is less about the hook and more about whether the favorite will keep its foot down.

In 2025, 310 of 907 college spreads were 14 points or more, against 9 of 282 in the NFL. Home field told a similar story: home teams won 53.6% of NFL games outside neutral sites and 64.8% in college.

Favorites and underdogs split the spread almost evenly over a season, whatever the size of the number. That is the market doing its job, and it is why a pick needs a number of its own.

Betting the total

The total is the bet for people who would rather not pick a side. The book sets a number for the combined score and you take the over or the under, usually at -110 either way. A total is a forecast of the whole game: how fast both teams play, how well they score in the red zone, how many possessions there will be.

Outdoor football adds the weather. Strong wind hurts the passing game and the kicking game, and totals tend to move when a windy forecast appears. Read the total on our prediction alongside the conditions on the day, and remember that the number you see may already have moved.

Over a season the two sides of a total come out close: in 2025 NFL games went over 148 times and under 135, and college games under 470 times and over 456.

The moneyline in football

In football the moneyline is the smaller market, because the spread does most of the work. It earns its place in two spots. With a short spread, a point or two, the favorite’s moneyline asks only that it wins, and the price is often close to the spread’s. With a big underdog, the moneyline pays a large multiple if the upset lands, and a small stake is all it needs. Our moneyline guide shows how to compare the two.

How often does the favorite simply win? In the 2025 NFL, favorites of under three points won 56.4% of the time, and favorites of 7 to 13.5 points 76.8%. In college, favorites of 14 or more won 93.5%, which is why their moneyline prices are so short.

Football futures

A futures bet is a bet on something settled weeks or months away: who wins the title, who takes an award. The prices are long, the money is tied up for the whole season, and the book’s margin is bigger than on a single game, so the price you take matters even more. Our futures guide explains how the odds are built.

Our football futures pages follow the markets through the season:

• Super Bowl odds and predictions
• NFL MVP odds, Offensive Player of the Year, Defensive Player of the Year and Rookie of the Year
• College Football Playoff odds and the Heisman Trophy

The weekly card and the primetime games

Every NFL week and every college Saturday also gets a card: all the games in one place, each with our call and a link to its full prediction. The primetime games have their own pages: Thursday Night Football and Monday Night Football.

The rhythm is as regular as it sounds: in 2025, 230 of the NFL’s 285 games kicked off on a Sunday, Eastern time, and 765 of 934 college games on a Saturday.

How our football numbers are built

One method per league, stated on each prediction, so nothing is hidden. In the NFL we start from last season’s scoring: how many points each team won or lost by per game. The difference between the two sides becomes our spread, and when it sits two or more points away from the market’s, we bet it. In college football we look only at games against FBS opponents over the last two seasons, compare how the home side has done at home with how the visitor has done away, and halve the gap; three points of daylight from the line makes a bet. The method is plain on purpose. A number you can check is a number you can trust, or argue with.

Football betting tips that hold up

Most betting advice is about picking winners. The tips that last are about price and discipline.

• Shop the number. Books do not always agree, and half a point on a spread, most of all around 3 and 7, is worth more than any opinion. Our predictions name the line they were made against, so you can see whether the one in front of you is better or worse.
• Bet a fixed amount. A unit is the same slice of your bankroll on every bet. It keeps one bad Sunday from deciding your season.
• Respect no bet. Skipping a game is a decision, and usually the right one. The best football betting tip we know is to leave the games where the price is fair.
• Keep the record. Write down the price you took, not just the side. Over a season, the gap between the price you took and the price at kickoff tells you more than your win rate.

Behind all four sits the price. At -110, a bettor who wins exactly half the time is still losing money.

Football betting terms, in plain words

• Cover: to beat the spread. A favorite covers by winning by more than the number; an underdog covers by losing by less, or winning.
• The hook: the half point on a spread or total, as in 3.5. It decides whether a result can push.
• Key numbers: the margins football games finish on most often, 3 and 7 above all in pro football.
• Juice or vig: the book’s margin, built into the price. At -110 on both sides, you risk 110 to win 100.
• Chalk and dog: the favorite and the underdog.
• Line movement: a spread or total changing between the open and kickoff, as money and news arrive.
• Closing line: the last price before kickoff. Beating it consistently is a good sign that a bettor’s prices are good.

Free football picks, and how to judge them

Free football picks are everywhere, and most of them are a side with a sentence attached. Judge any pick, including ours, the same way: does it name the price it was made at, does it say how the number was reached, and is it still on the page after the game? A pick that cannot answer those three questions is a guess, however confident it sounds.

Ours are free to read, with the number and the reasoning on every page, and they stay where we put them.

Pick your league

Football is three different markets on this site, and each has its own page with every game we have called. NFL predictions cover every game of every week in pro football’s sharpest market. College football picks cover the slate from midweek to Saturday night, where the spreads run widest. CFL predictions cover the Canadian game, with three downs, twelve players a side and a bigger field.

The two big markets also play differently on the scoreboard: in 2025 a college game averaged 52.8 points, an NFL game 46.0.

Start with your league page, then go to the game.

Questions and answers