Week 3 NFL Betting Trends: Road Teams Remain Lively Early in Season

• Road teams perform well early in the NFL season, with home field advantage becoming more impactful as the season progresses due to injuries and travel fatigue.
• Favorites historically struggle in Week 3, showing the lowest outright win rate of any regular season week since 2019, possibly due to early-season overreactions.
• Against the spread (ATS) trends are volatile early, with 2-0 ATS teams covering infrequently in Week 3, while 0-2 ATS teams cover at a higher rate than usual.

Research is a key component to NFL betting, and while some trends can really come across as flashy, we have to keep in mind that trends are descriptive. They tell us about what has happened.

If a team's star quarterback is out, his franchise's record against divisional opponents the last four years may not really be of use when digging into an upcoming matchup.

But even with that, it's good to know as much as we can before making up our minds.

So, I'll be looking to pinpoint some potentially noteworthy trends entering each week of the NFL season.

Note: All betting odds and trends since 2019, unless otherwise noted. All data from numberFire.

Road Teams Remain Strong Early

The impact of home field advantage tends to grow throughout the year, as injuries and mileage pile up for the traveling teams.

Early in the year, however, road teams remain pretty lively.

Here's a quick look at road team win and cover rates since 2019 broken down into thirds of the season.

Of course, the outright win and cover rates for road teams is important, but the point differential column is also pretty noteworthy, as it helps show us the growth of home field advantage throughout the season.

Favorites Have Historically Struggled Outright in Week 3

This is very possibly variance, but since 2019, favorites have the worst outright win rate (56.8%) of any regular season week.

Not only that but also the overall win rate for favorites has been 67.0% across the full season, meaning a full 10.2-point drop exists in Week 3.

Further yet, only one other week (Week 10 at 57.3%) has shown a win rate by favorites lower than 62.8%.

Perhaps early-season results through two games have altered perception on teams too much, thus leading to some overcorrections.

There's another note that suggests similar.

Against the Spread Records Are Volatile

Great teams cover and all that, but early-season NFL against the spread records might also change perception a great deal.

Teams that held a 2-0 against the spread record entering Week 3 (i.e. those that covered in each of their first two games) went on to cover just 38.6% of the time in Week 3.

Also notable in that sample, is that 2-0 ATS teams playing at home in Week 3 covered in 35.5% of their games, though the sample is only 31 games.

Conversely, teams that were 0-2 ATS across Weeks 1 and 2 went on to cover at a 53.3% clip in Week 3.

This serves as another reminder that early-season results can really skew the way teams are perceived.

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The above author is a FanDuel employee and is not eligible to compete in public daily fantasy contests or place sports betting wagers on FanDuel. The advice provided by the author does not necessarily represent the views of FanDuel. Taking the author's advice will not guarantee a successful outcome. You should use your own judgment when participating in daily fantasy contests or placing sports wagers.