Everyone has heard the old cliché that ‘everyone talks about the weather but no one does anything about it.’  When it comes to handicapping the NFL, at least half that adage is true.   Line reports and handicapping previews concern themselves with the prevailing weather conditions at gametime and try to determine its influence on the outcome of the event.

We touched on the influence of the weather on NFL gameplay in our introduction to over/under totals wagers, and we’ll expand upon some of those concepts here.  Unsophisticated handicappers frequently try to read too much into the weather conditions and making a kneejerk play on the ‘under’ simply because there’s rain in the forecast is unwise.  Believe me, the guys on the other side of the sportsbook counter play close attention to the weather conditions as well and if there’s any indication that the prevailing conditions will factor into the side or total outcome they’ll adjust the line accordingly.

More frequently, however, they adjust the line in these circumstances in a response to the public’s perception that the conditions will play a role in the outcome of the game.  If the snow starts flying, the totals come down in response to players’ betting habits and not due to any tangible influence on the events in the game.

For this reason, it’s important for the successful NFL bettor to not overreact to the weather or even become a ‘weather contrarian’.  No one ever went broke longterm going against the wagering public, and if the weather in a particular game starts to result in a one way line movement there’s a good reason to go the other way in all but the most extreme conditions.

Once they reach the NFL level, football players have competed in all sorts of adverse conditions.  A little bit of rain or snow won’t have a substantial impact on the way they approach the game.  I’ve watched a lot of NFL football, and I’ve never seen a team start to panic when rain or snow started to fall.

If you really want to get serious about incorporating weather into your handicapping methodology, you need to become something of a ‘micro meteorologist’ and familiarize yourself on the impact on individual weather conditions in NFL stadiums.   Does the field get particularly slippery or soggy when it rains?  Do winds from a certain direction mess with kicked or passed balls in flight?

These are obviously factors beyond the scope of basic handicapping, but they are how professionals leverage information on weather conditions to their advantage.  Like so much else in sports betting, bad weather doesn’t make things any easier.  Be mindful of the weather, but don’t give it more importance in your handicapping decisions than it really deserves.