Columnist Dean Juipe: Preseason bets require special rules

Dean Juipe

Friday, Aug. 8, 2003 | 10:13 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4084.

There are guidelines for betting NFL preseason games, as any experienced gambler knows.

You can't put too much stock in a team's previous tendencies; you have to gauge a head coach's commitment to winning the somewhat meaningless games; you have to pay particular attention to quarterback rotations; and you have to watch out or be aware of teams that are experimenting with new schemes.

In many cases, bettors with a handle on these items find wagering on the exhibitions easier than dealing with the well-researched lines that will be posted during the regular season. It isn't so much a chance to outwork the competition as it is a chance to capitalize on bookmakers and bettors who may be spread thin by baseball or may be slow in responding to the gambling-related information that's available.

That said, and with the NFL preseason schedule starting in earnest this weekend, just how important is it for a team to win these games that don't count in the final standings? Conversely, how devastating is it if a team fails to impress or win during the preseason?

In other words, are wins and losses in the preseason a precursor of what's to come?

I didn't know what I'd find in looking back on four seasons' worth of exhibition results and comparing them to the final standings. But what I came up with was at least a little bit surprising.

For starters, I was looking only at teams at either extreme, teams that either won or lost all of their exhibitions. At the risk of oversimplification, this narrowed the variables.

Overall, of nine teams that went 4-0 during the preseason in any of the years between 1999 and 2002, five went on to reach the playoffs but only two -- the New York Jets last year and Tampa Bay in 1999 -- won or shared a division championship. Two of the nine -- Minnesota in 2001 and San Diego in 2000 -- actually went on to have losing regular seasons.

In other words, in almost half of the instances the undefeated preseason record meant very little in the long run and in a couple of cases it merely served as a temporary disguise for what was a bad team. The '01 Vikings and the '00 Chargers may have thought they were solid teams in August of those years, yet once the games counted in the standings they were exposed as mere pretenders; the Vikings won only five games in 2001 and the Chargers, almost unbelievably, won only one in 2000.

Conversely, of the seven teams that went 0-4 (or 0-5 in one case) in the preseason during the years being studied, two -- Detroit in 2000 and the New York Giants in 2000 -- rebounded to have winning regular seasons. The Giants were a complete anomaly in '00, going winless in the preseason but rallying to win 12 of 16 games in the regular season.

So a winless preseason isn't a good thing, we can all agree, but there's precedent that it may not be the end of the world either.

The teams on the extremes last season more or less held true to form. Buffalo (8-8 in the regular season) and St. Louis (7-9) were both coming off 0-4 preseasons, while the Jets (10-8 including the playoffs) and Atlanta (10-7-1 including the playoffs) had both gone 4-0 in exhibitions; quarterback Chad Pennington was the catalyst for the Jets in both the preseason and regular season after he took over for an 0-3 Vinny Testaverde, while the Falcons continued to improve as second-year quarterback Michael Vick wowed opponents with his speed.

Eventual Super Bowl champion Tampa Bay was 3-1 last preseason.

Perhaps it's worth noting that the Bucs' no-nonsense head coach, Jon Gruden, is now 15-7 during the preseason and 12-9-1 against the spread going into a game tonight against Miami in which Tampa is a 3-point underdog.

The Bucs are 'dogs because it's thought jet lag -- they're coming back from a game last Saturday in Japan -- and the Dolphins' spirited quarterback battle conspire against them. I'm not so sure the benefits of having already played a game don't offset Miami's advantages, and that's what makes this particular game an interesting play.

But remember whether you're cautious or gung-ho, there are at least two constants for bettors in dealing with the NFL regardless of whether it's August or December: Don't get too attached to any one team, and always stay within your budget.

Base your preseason picks on nothing more than what's apt to happen on the field that given day, not on what happened a week earlier or when those same teams played a year ago.