NFL Week 1 betting -- Last-minute bets to place before kickoff - ESPN

Your fantasy lineup is ready, the snacks are set, and a glorious afternoon of football viewing lies ahead of you. All that's left: making some last-minute bets. But we want to be a little smart about it, right? This close to kickoff, we ought to be somewhat picky about the types of bets we're making. Regular old game spreads and totals have been bet into all week — they're mature markets with high volume, and therefore difficult to beat. We want to spice up Sunday with some action, but in spots with a chance for an edge. Hence: our new last-minute bets column. Where we're diving deep into sportsbooks' offerings to find those angles still available to hit shortly before kickoff.

Often (but not always) that will mean looking for the obscure. It's what I like betting most, anyway. Last season I built, bet and tracked a game-level sacks model that was profitable. In 2023 I figured: let's expand! I'm an analytics writer here at ESPN, and so anything I want to bet is going to be, at absolute minimum, quantitatively-informed. But what I mostly mean is building more statistical models — which is what I did over the summer for stats like solo tackles and assisted tackles and quarterback interceptions that can be bet as props. I plan to add more as we go. I focused on defensive props because they are smaller markets that usually aren't posted until later in the week. Thus: much better last-minute bets to make! Will they work? I don't know. That's the true, honest answer. But we're going to find out together. One commitment I'll make here is to track the results of the bets we make, assuming a flat one unit for each bet. Each Sunday I'll post results for the previous week and cumulatively for the season, and broken down by category