Betting the NFL draft - Tips, tricks and best practices to cash in

You can beat the NFL draft.

Please pay particular attention to the third word in that previous sentence, because I didn't say you can «bet» the NFL draft — just about anybody can do that. I said you can «beat» the NFL draft, as in make money wagering on the National Football League's annual job fair.

This is no doubt an intriguing assertion to ponder because you are most likely not a professional bettor, which means turning a profit over a significant period of time is extremely unlikely. Over a large enough sample size, only a select few people in the world are capable of beating incredibly tight markets like the NFL. Between the juice and the attention paid to the lines and injuries by the bookmakers, only the sharpest of the sharp find themselves in the black over three-, five- and 10-year periods when wagering on professional football.

The NFL draft, however, is a different beast entirely.

The ominous warning, «Any given Sunday,» exists for a reason. It exists because Urban Meyer's 1-6 Jacksonville Jaguars upset the Buffalo Bills 9-6 last season despite closing as 14.5-point underdogs. It exists because the Cincinnati Bengals, who opened the 2021 campaign 75-1 to win the AFC, went on and — wait for it — won the AFC. No matter how good your information, no matter how strong your handicapping, every National Football League side and total is more than capable of making the transition from betting slip to low-grade toilet paper.

Perhaps this might come as a surprise to you, but that's not the case with the NFL draft.

Here's an obvious example: Last spring it was a 100 percent stone-cold lock that Clemson quarterback Trevor Lawrence was headed to the Jacksonville Jaguars with the first overall pick. Everybody knew it.