NFL betting 2020: Each division’s best bet

While some sportsbooks offer divisional futures only in terms of who finished the division in first place, others allow you to bet on a team finishing in second, third and fourth place, as well.

This gives you more options to find value in the market, especially in a division with a dominant team or a division containing one team that the market overvalues and another that the market undervalues.

For this analysis, we simulated the 2020 NFL season 10,000 times using data from PFF Elo along with our opponent-adjusted quarterback grades. The aggregated results were then compared to the odds currently available on DraftKings.

The bets below are shown in reverse order, from the bet that offers the least value to the bet that offers the most.

8. NFC West: Seattle Seahawks in 1st Place (+220)

It's hard to find value in this division. It's likely that the best spot is believing in last year's PFF WAR leader, Russell Wilson, to bring his team a division championship, but we expect the Seahawks to regress slightly in 2020, given their 9-2 record in one-score games a year ago. This makes this bet hard to justify at only +220.

7. NFC North: Detroit Lions in 2nd Place (+450)

Lions quarterback Matthew Stafford had a great year last year, earning an 84.4 grade until an injury sidelined him for the rest of the year. Meanwhile, the offseason moves made by the Chicago Bears, Green Bay Packers and Minnesota Vikings are not likely to make these teams much better in 2020. None of the teams in the NFC North are terrible, but none of them are great either. 

Unfortunately, the market has largely tapped most of the value out of the Lions, and with so many teams so close, exact-place divisional bets are probably not the right way to bet on the NFC North.