NFL betting methodology: how every play is graded

What a play is

A play is a single wager at a single price for a stated stake. It is written down the moment it fires, with the market, the number, the price and the book — and it is never edited afterwards. If the line moves in our favour ten minutes later, the ledger still shows the price we actually took.

Stakes are in units, not currency, so a record is readable without knowing anyone's bankroll. One unit is one unit; a 0.5u play is half the conviction of a 1u play. Units differ in size between sports, which is why a combined curve is labelled as such rather than pretending every sport is on one scale.

How a play is settled

• Won / Lost — graded against the final result from the sport's results source (named below), not from a book's screen.
• Push — the result lands exactly on the number. Stake returned, counted in the record, excluded from win rate.
• Void — the event or the market did not happen. What counts as that differs by sport, and the exact rules are below. Removed from the record entirely rather than scored as a win or a loss.
• Open — posted, not yet resolved. Shown separately and never counted toward ROI until it settles.

Profit is the price we recorded, at the stake we recorded. Nothing is re-priced after the fact, and no play is removed because it lost.

How NFL plays settle

Results. Final scores from the nflverse game results, and player stats from the league's play-by-play as nflverse publishes it.

Markets graded. Spreads, totals and moneylines, and player props: passing yards, passing touchdowns, pass attempts, rushing yards, rush attempts, receiving yards, receptions, rushing plus receiving yards, anytime touchdown and two or more touchdowns.

Push.

A spread or total landing exactly on the number, a tied game on a moneyline, or a prop stat equal to its line. An anytime-touchdown play is yes or no and cannot push.

Overtime.

Counts. Games grade on the final score.

Touchdown props.

Count rushing and receiving touchdowns only. A quarterback’s passing touchdown does not count toward his anytime touchdown.

Inactive players.

A player with no stat line in a finished game is never graded as an under. The play is held and settled by hand the way the book settled it, which for an inactive player is a void.

Postponed or cancelled.

Not graded automatically. The play stays open until it is played or settled by hand to match the book.

What the record covers

NFL's public record covers every staked play on a game dated September 21, 2026 or later and runs to today. Every staked play since then is in it — winners, losers and the stretches where nothing worked. There is no “since we changed the model” reset hiding behind the number, and there is no second, better set of picks somewhere else.

Research that has never been staked does not appear in the record at all. When a system is being tested without money behind it, its plays are kept out of the ledger rather than blended in.

What we don't publish

The selection rules — what the models measure, the thresholds a play has to clear, how stakes are sized — are not on this site. They are the work, and publishing them would both give it away and move the very prices the plays depend on.

That is a real limit on what you can verify from the outside, and we would rather say so than dress it up. What is verifiable is everything downstream: the plays are posted before the event, the prices are the ones we took, the grading is against official results, and nothing is quietly deleted. Judge it on the ledger.