Vegas Lines Released for Season Wins Totals

Las Vegas has released their opening over/unders for 2012 NFL season win totals.  They have the Bears listed at 8.5 wins (-135 over, +105 under).  This means that if you were to bet on the Bears to win more than 8.5 games, you’d have to bet $135 to win $100 where betting on Chicago to win less than 8.5 games would net you $105 for every $100 you wagered. 

Immediately, I would think that the value would have to be on the over here.  After all, Chicago was at 7-3 last year before the injuries to Cutler and company.  Since then, we’ve acquired one of the best WR’s in the league in Brandon Marshall and the firing of Mike Martz (and subsequent hiring of Mike Tice) should help address the team’s biggest weakness; the offensive line.  The defense is a year older, so that should also be taken into consideration.  With all this in mind, let’s look at the schedule to see if we can get a good idea of how many games we’d expect the Bears to win.

Before we list the games, let me say that I project wins a little differently than most.  Instead of going through each game individually and projecting a win or loss, I go through games in small groups and project an estimated number of wins from that group of games (sometimes using decimals).  For example, if I thought the Bears were worse than both the Packers and Lions, I may be enticed into giving the Bears a loss in all four of those games if looking individually.  If I look at the group of four games together, however, I would likely say that the Bears would likely win one of those games (again under the assumption that I thought the Bears were worse than both those teams, which I do not).  So with this in mind, let’s look at the games.

I’ll analyze the games in four game blocks.  The first four are Colts, @Packers, Rams, @Cowboys.  A little unlucky in that we get two very weak teams at home and have to travel to two difficult teams.  We have to give wins for the Colts and Rams games.  As far as the two road games, I’d like to say that Chicago should win one of them.  Since they’re both on the road, though, that’s probably a little optimistic so instead of giving them one win, we’ll give them .8 wins over those two games.  Current projected win total:  2.8

The next four games are @Jaguars, Lions, Panthers, @Titans.  These are definitely four winnable games and, in fact, the Bears are early favorites in all four of these games.  While I do think the Bears will likely win each of these games, let’s give them one loss in this group.  Current projected win total:  5.8

The second half of the season starts with a home game vs. the Texans, @49ers, Vikings, Seahawks.  This is the toughest quarter of the Bears schedule.  The Texans and 49ers are very good and the Seahawks always seem to play the Bears tough.  Let’s say they win one of the Texans and Seahawks games and let’s also say they split the other two games as well.  Two wins here puts the projected win total at 7.8 games.

Chicago finishes the year with games @Vikings, Packers, @Cardinals, @Lions.  Let’s give the Bears wins at the Vikings and Cardinals.  For the last two division games, let’s give Chicago another .8 wins.  That puts the final projection at 10.6 wins.  That means that, if this was handicapped well, the OVER on season wins seems to have great value, even at -135.  So the last question is:  did we handicap it well.

Knowing that the over/under was 8.5, I thought I may have been too generous after having arrived at a projected win total of 10.6 games.  Then I looked at the individual game lines.  Vegas has Chicago favored in 11 games this year.  That leads me to believe that our analysis here was fair to the Bears and there is, in fact, value in the Over 8.5 Wins wager for our Bears in 2012.