OVERLOOKED HANDICAPPING TOOLS

There's a ton to take in when trying to form an opinion on which side of a game to bet on. In doing so, many important handicapping tools go overlooked. Often times, after a game is over and you've reflected on why you lost, you may say to yourself: "Crap, if I'd have only known that it was going to be a snowy field" or "Oh man, I had no idea the starting center was out!." These are predicaments you don't want to find yourself in hence why we wrote this article, so you can make note and make sure your bases are covered!

Weather

You wake up on Sunday morning. Its sunny and 60 degrees outside. Your overjoyed that Sunday football is here, you sit down, fire up the computer, place your bets, grab your beverage and chips and move over to the bigscreen to turn the game on. Your all excited to see lots of points scored as you've just gotten down on the over 37.5 in the Vikings/Bears game at Soldier field and then horror strikes. Its snowing at Soldier Field! Oh no! How can this be? You forgot to check the weather report! Just because you live in California or Florida doesn't mean Chicago's nasty weather is going to be "over" friendly.

All too often we forget to think objectively about the little things such as nasty Solider Field winds and crappy inclement weather that keeps passes to a minimum, rushes to a maximum, the clock getting eaten up and lower freakin' scores!

Don't let this happen to you. Sitting through 3 hours of run and a cloud of dust (or snowflakes in this case) is depressing as hell and could be prevented had you gone to weather.com to check the cities forecast. It never fails either, the time your on an over and forget to check the weather the game will be scoreless at the half with a final score of 7-3. We've been there!

Line Movement

Another "must do" each week is to check out what the opening line is compared to the current line. Has the side or total changed during the week? If so, figure out why. There's surely a reason. It's either taken on a ton of public money, sharp action or there's a key injury that you need to find out about. (Hint: If the starting center is out on a team, this is huge as the team's timing will be off with a backup hiking the ball!)

Use wagertracker.com and view their public consensus. See what percentage of the picks are being made on each side to help you determine if it's public or wise guy action. If a game has 85% on one side and the line is going up, that's public action. If the game has a high percentage on one side and the line is moving the other way, that's sharp action and probably something you don't want to go against unless your absolutely sure that your play is rock solid. Injuries can be determined by checking out any NFL injury report found on numerous sites on the web. Go to google and type in NFL Injury Report and you'll find more options than you can shake a stick at.