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Yards Per Point = Profits
From
http://www.bettorsworld.com/pp/pick-winners.htm

Yards Per Point is probably the single most powerful stat in handicapping college and NFL football. It's a stat that at a glance, can tell you a whole lot about any given team. It's a stat that should be used by professional sports bettors and rercreational sportsbettors alike.

What makes this stat attractive to the recreational sports handicapper is that it allows a guy or gal who works a full week, and has a life outside of sports, to make educated selections on football games with only a minimal amount of work.

The stat is very easy to compute. Simply take a teams offensive yards gained and divide by points scored. On defense, take the yards given up and divide by points given up. Many publications, tip sheets, etc, do the work for you. Power Sweep is one such publication.

So now you have two numbers for each team. An offensive number and a defensive number. The lower the offensive number, the better the offense. The higher the defensive number, the better the defense.

You can now take these numbers and use them as a power rating.

Let's take a look at an actual game from the past. .Buffalo was playing at New England.

Buffalo's offensive number was 14.1 and there defensive number is 12. We subtract the offensive number from the defensive number and get -2.1 which would be Buffalo's rating.

The Pats numbers were 13.5 on offense and 15.4 on def. Making their rating +1.9. So, the difference between the two is 4 in favor of the Pats. We add 2 points for home field and have a Yards Per Point line on this game if New England -6.

Look for significant difference between the YPP line and the sportsbooks line.

Now there's all sorts of variations of this. You can break this down and figure out YPP for home and away. You can ferret out common opponents and look at a teams YPP against the same teams. The stat really requires at least 4 games to be effective. You can also keep a running tally of this stat only going back 4 or 5 games, which will give you a clearer picture of how a team is doing lately.

You'll notice many of the games fall right on the number. Yet others you'll spot differences.

So there you have it. This can also be used for college football but you need to be careful. The stat can become distorted as a result of the blow outs so common in college ball.

A few minutes work each week and you can take a lot of the guesswork out of your selections. This method, used as a power rating, in conjunction with other stats such as turnovers, trends, weather and injuries have produced very positive results for many football handicappers over years. Give it a try! Your Sportsbook will wish you hadn't. : )

Good Luck!

From
http://www.bettorsworld.com/web/forums/showpost.php?p=22520&postcount=1

Since the NFL offers relatively few betting opportunities, our development of a computer program for that sport is on the backburner. Although, we won't have a definitive system for betting the NFL until next year, or even the year after, I have done tons of research on the NFL, and if I weren't planning on vacationing during much of football season, I might seriously bet the sport just on the basis of what I know.

What I have done is an 8-season study of the various statistical categories that Pro Football Weekly uses to rate teams. In addition, I also studied what I call "creative stats," such as yards-per-point.

I did a correlation study between wins and losses and these stats to determine which stats were most significant in team performance. I now know exactly how significant every stat is. For example, total offensive passing yards per game and average yard per rush for an offense are very insignificant.

The 11 most significant stats, in order, were:

1) Point differential
2) Yards-per-point differential
3) Offensive points
4) Offensive yards-per-point
5) Average-gain-per-pass play diferential
6) Points against
7) Turn-over edge diffferential
8) Total yard differential
9) Average gain per pass play
10)Defensive yards-per-point
11)1st Down Differential

Now, these stats mean very little unless you can translate them into a betting line that beats what Vegas puts out. You can throw away point differential (points for and points against) because this stat, in and of itself, is grossly innaccurate over a short- term moving average. And in the NFL, you need to use a short-term moving average, say 4 to 5 games, to get an accurate read on a team. The key stat, and the stat that I had predicted would be the key stat prior to beginning my research, was yards-per-point.

Many astute handicappers are well aware of the value of yards-per-point as the ultimate "creative" stat for handicapping the NFL. Yard-per-point is such a great stat because it incorporates and summarizes what football is all about: production (yardage) and points (scoring). Yard-per-point, in my mind is the stat that best allows a handicapper to get an accurate statistical read on a team over a short-term basis.

Just as Jim Jasper's now out-of-print book "Sportsbetting" got me started on my baseball research, another out-of-print book, "The Winner's Guide to Pro Football Betting," by Art Glant and Leigh Cohn, got me started on my football research. This book preaches the value of yard-per-point and has a formula for making a betting line, using a 4-game moving average, with this stat. Glantz and called this method the "Dudley Formula." According to him, (note: the book was writen in 1983) prior to 1983, the formula had hit over 70% winners against the spread over the previous 10 seasons, and never had a losing season.

Anyway, it would be a bit involved to explain Glantz's formula and how he applies it against the betting line. Furthermore, his formula, from my perspective, is incomplete.

To summarize: yards-per-point, in my opinion, is the stat that serious handicappers should focus on if they want to beat the NFL.