For Once “Punt To Win” Is Accurate … For Our Super Bowl Prop Bet, Anyway

January 31, 2012 - by David Hess

I’ve been told that sports books generally take no more than 10 to 15 minutes to set the line and odds for a Super Bowl prop bet, and then they let the market do the rest.

That definitely seems plausible given the prop bet I’m analyzing today. The line and odds make total sense on first glance, but when you take half an hour to dig deeper, it seems like there’s one choice with obvious value. Of course, few people want to invest that time to do a bit of extra research.

Especially when we’re talking about punters.

Total Yards On Giants First Punt in Game

There are actually quite a few prop bets related to punting available at leading sportsbooks, and to the Giants’ foul-mouthed kicker Steve Weatherford. But this one jumped out as something that could be easily researched.

0 punt attempts for game: 21.000 / +2000
1 – 20 yards: 11.000 / +1000
21 – 37 yards: 3.800 / +280
38 – 42 yards: 3.600 / +260
43 – 47 yards: 3.550 / +255
48 – 55 yards: 4.250 / +325
56 or more yards: 4.400 / +340

Some of you might not recognize the first number for each bet above. Those are decimal odds, which are a common way of listing lines outside of the United States. I’ve gone ahead and translated them into US money line odds after the slash.

The first thing I did when I saw this prop was to look up Weatherford’s average 2011 yards per punt. It was 45.7 over the regular season and the playoffs, but over the previous 5 years it was in the 42.1 to 43.8 range. So, the 43-47 yard bin seems to be right at his average, and it’s the one with the shortest odds.

But averages can be deceiving.

Punters aren’t out there trying to knock it 65 yards every time the ball touches their foot. Sometimes they’re more concerned with air time, or trying to the the ball to stop inside the 20 yard line. If you look at the actual distribution of the lengths of all a player’s punts, I’d expect you to see two peaks — one around 30 to 35 yards, and one a bit higher than the player’s average. The intentional short punts drag the average down, so that a “normal” long punt is actually longer than a player’s average.

At least, that’s my guess. The only punter I’ve ever tested the idea on is Steve Weatherford, today. I dug up the gross yards of every single punt Weatherford made this season, including those in the preseason and those called back by penalties. The following table shows the frequency that his punts fell into each bin, along with how those rates compare to the break even rates for each of the options on this prop.

Punt Length	Frequency	% of Total	Odds	Break Even %
1-20	0	0.0%	11.00	9.1%
21-37	23	20.7%	3.80	26.3%
38-42	17	15.3%	3.60	27.8%
43-47	15	13.5%	3.55	28.2%
48-55	41	36.9%	4.25	23.5%
56+	15	13.5%	4.40	22.7%
Total	111			137.6%

The oddsmakers made the bin above Weatherford’s average bigger than the bin below. So the peak of his distribution actually falls in a relatively large bin, at least according to these unsmoothed numbers.

It looks too good to be true, so I’m wondering what I might be missing here.

The game is in a dome, so weather shouldn’t be a factor. And based on the research I’ve read on the topic, kickoffs and punts in domes tend to travel farther than those in open air stadiums.

The Patriots don’t have a particular tendency to force their opponents into short punts. They rank a middling 14th in opponent yards per punt.

I thought about the fact that this year could have been a fluke, and that the we should expect Weatherford to regress back toward his averages of the previous few years. But his punting average has stayed very consistent in the preseason, postseason, and playoffs this year, so I don’t think that’s a good assumption.

Do punters generally not do as well on their first kick of the game? Honestly, I have no idea, and I didn’t find any research on the topic. If you think that’s the case, then maybe you should stay away from this one.

It could be that the oddsmakers expect few three and outs in this game, and so they think the punts will skew a bit shorter. That’s the most reasonable explanation, I think, other than just setting an imperfect line. But even in the Giants’ earlier game against the Patriots, two of Weatherford’s eight punts fell into the 48-55 yard bin.

Conclusion: I’m hoping this is simply a case of converting a punting average into a prop bet, and not considering the distribution behind it. Because Weatherford’s punts this year have been bunched pretty strongly in that 48-55 yards bin, which means there is value on 48 – 55 yards: 4.250 / +325.

Alright, I’m running short on time, so only one for today. As always, please leave a comment if you have a certain prop bet you’d like us to analyze.