Overs continued to be very successful in Week 3. In fact, overs were 7-0 when the Bengals and Eagles went into overtime needing just one point to push the game over the total. Neither team scored, and a few more unders came in later, but overs are still the big story once again.
I mentioned last week that I wouldn't be blindly looking to bet overs or unders in Week 3. I don't think we are necessarily ripe for a correction in Week 4, either. Beyond the unique offseason and the lack of preseason games, there is at least one other likely reason that scoring is up so much.
Through the first two weeks of this season, the average amount of time between plays was 26.69 seconds, according to Football Outsiders. That's nearly a full second faster than in 2019 (27.63), which saw an increase in pace of play, compared to 28.05 in 2018. There are situation-specific factors when it comes to seconds per play; Football Outsiders accounts for those with its situation-neutral pace metric. That shows seconds per play being 1.3 faster in 2020 than in 2019.
This isn't groundbreaking, but if teams are playing at a faster pace, more plays will be run. More plays equal more points. Until we see a significant shift in the market with extraordinarily high totals or see a shift from offenses stylistically, I don't see any reason to expect a significant correction in Week 4.
There isn't much that stands out to me after a first look at the spreads and totals this week. The last thing we want to do is force early action, so I am looking at only one matchup right now. But come back for my market watch piece on Wednesday as the numbers move and we take a deeper dive into more games.
