When we last updated the Superbowl betting trends, we noted that after more than a week of money coming in on the Indianapolis Colts, that some buyback had started to occur on the New Orleans Saints.  That trend appears to be continuing.  A quick look at my live odds feed shows the Colts as a -5 or even -4′ favorite all across the board, down from the high point where they were favored by -5′ or even -6.

At Bookmaker, the Colts are now favored by -4′ with the total set at 56′.  There really hasn’t been much downward movement on the total, though its settled at 56′ or 57.  Bodog now has the Colts as a -6 +100 choice, with the Saints priced at +6 -120.  They’ve got the total posted at 57.

The Saints money started to come in when the severity of Dwight Freeney’s ankle injury became more widely known.  As I cautioned at the time, its important to not put too much significance on this injury.  It was already known that he’d be questionable or worse when the line was posted, so to some extent its already been factored into the pointspread.  Typically, the general public ‘overvalues’ the significance of player injuries in all sports and this fact is reflected by the linesmakers.  While injuries can and do influence the outcome of a game, in the short term good teams are able to deal with them fairly well.  In fact, a favorite betting strategy of mine is to play ON teams with shorterm injuries to key players.  Backups take advantage of the opportunity to step up and show they deserve to be starters, and linesmakers set prices that overcompensate for the player’s absence.  This phenomenon has been demonstrated very recently in the NBA–the Utah Jazz were without their top two players Deron Williams and Carlos Boozer against Sacramento last Friday, but backup power forward Paul Millsap stepped up with a career high 32 points and 14 rebounds.  Rookie Sundiata Gaines, who had seen little playing time since his game winning shot against Cleveland, played the entire 4th quarter running the point and finished with 12 points.

A more likely scenario, however, was that much of this Saints money was sitting on the sidelines waiting for the best time to get their bets down.  With the upward pressure on the Colts’ early there was no rush as the pointspread continued to climb, but the Freeney injury hubbub was likely a sign that the number had crested.  So the New Orleans buyback is probably less of a direct reaction to Freeney’s status, but rather players that wanted to take the Saints all along and figured that the time was now right and that they weren’t going to get a better number.

What this means for the average bettor is that if you want to play the Saints, you should get down ASAP.  If your a Colts’ player you can wait and see what happens though there’s no guarantee that the line movement will continue in your favor.