Move The Line - 2026 NFL Playoff Odds & Make or Miss Bets

Episode Date: July 24, 2026

Ryan Noonan and Connor Allen examine the 2026 playoff qualification market, discussing which teams offer value to make or miss the postseason. They consider division strength, conference competition, roster construction, schedule difficulty, and the prices available before training camp begins. Subscribe to 4for4's Betting Package or try SharpStack free for 7 days: https://www.4for4.com/plans Circa Sports Survivor and Circa Million, $30 million guaranteed: http://circasports.com/contests Watch Move The Line on YouTube: https://4for4.co/3OupraJ Join the Discord: http://discord.gg/4for4 Follow the show: https://x.com/MoveTheLineNFL Connor: https://x.com/ConnorAllenNFL | Ryan: https://x.com/RyNoonan Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

And welcome to move of line, presented by Circus Sports. Ryan Newton, joined here, as always, by Connor Allen. Wrapping up the week here, a little bit of future talk. Connor, how are we doing today? Doing well, completing my sports tour tonight of Chicago, went to a Cubs game on Monday, going to a Sox game tonight on Friday. Went to an Argentina game a week ago. So just got to keep going to games.

You know, where there's tickets, I'm pretty much an auto yes. So excited for, excited for tonight should be fun uh chicago sky at some point we're doing that this weekend are they in town can go over and see i've never been to a sky game before i don't know if you remember but awesome oh you used to have season tickets apparently i i yeah court side season tickets to the sky that's was awesome oh's bit but i think he has since had some kids and is not as involved in the w anymore but okay i would love to go to a game i think it'd be fun yeah for sure i i like the venue uh I've been to a few DePaul games.

Like if, you know, DePaul's hosting like a, you know, good Marquette team or Yukon or like, you know, find that, take my oldest over there. And it's, you know, easy parking, easy in and out. It's a nice little, nice little venue. Totally. Okay. What about, like, Chicago Fire? Is that going on right now? Well, they're building a new stadium in, like, South Loop.

So definitely would love to go to that. Can't say I'm a big fan of the MLS. I think the soccer is mostly garbage. The players are garbage. And it just says what it is. And then you have all these European has-bens come and hang out. The MLS is essentially the retirement home for all the former European stars that like want to get paid a lot of money and still be pretty good because they're still way better than everyone else, but not have to do a whole lot. So it's a win-win.

And then all the American fans get to see 40-year-old Messi and was Lataun played here for a little bit towards end of his career, David Beckham, you know, all these famous guys. So it's fine. I'll go to games when they when it's in Chicago. I'm not driving a bridge port or whatever it is, wherever it is now. Yeah, it's not super close to where you are. I don't know. I don't know.

Get the bag on the way out the door. I don't know. Messy, you know, non-ball nor it looked pretty good in the footy over the last month or so. He did. Also turned down two billion from the Saudis to play in America with Miami. So for a chunk of like Apple TV and equity and stuff like that in the team and everything.

So, yeah, I think, I think his deal was like 500 million or something like that. So doing quite well. Doing all right. All right. We're going to wrap up our week. If you missed anything, again, move the line, wherever you listen to podcast, move the line on YouTube as well. We went through some Super Bowl previews.

We did some AFC, NFC stuff. Check it out. We've been knocking out episodes. If you want to get our thoughts on some stuff, we'll continue to drill down and get revved up here for the regular season, which, is closer than you think before we jump into this episode. Connie, we want to tell everyone about our friends over at Circa

and all the great offerings that they have and things that we get to be a part of this season two. Yeah, Circa, a ton of contests in Vegas, and they have a Circa millions contest where you pick five against a spread each week. It locks early in the week. You can play with the line movement and lock in the ones where the line's already moved.

You can fade those, depending on game theory, where you're standing, how many picks you're at. But there's also quarterly payouts, there's full season payouts, a ton of different stuff there. And then also Circus Survivor, obviously pick one team, survive and advance. And you can't pick them again. Really hard contest, very difficult. Something I have not historically had a ton of success with. But Circa Millions, I think Newton and I are going to give a run out of this year and, you know, put our knowledge to the test.

Because I think we can, if Andy can win something, I think we can win something in one of the quarterly payouts. Stand strong on that take. Two Andy, Andy strays in a week might be tough. So Andy, hopefully, you know, we're sorry if we caught you the wrong morning here. He won't hear this. He's out in the 3M boots in the ground at the golf tournament this week.

He's, you know, not circling back to listen to our make or miss the playoffs. So that's fine. You know, maybe someone in the deep dive, you know, Discord will tag him and tell him that, you know, Connor and Noon or bodybagging him a little bit. So see. One more listener.

One more viewer. We'll bring it back in. So we did a little bit on the win totals, talked about some of the inefficiencies in that market. There are some, I guess, a derivative way to play some of that would be to make or miss the playoffs. You could play a derivative of make and miss the playoffs to play division winners. We're going to focus in on the current make, miss prices and some of the teams that we like. Again, if you've been listening, you know, we have a handful of teams we've agreed upon. You know, we both have highlighted a handful of teams, so I'm sure those will be highlighted here.

But, you know, we were talking before we got started, you know, where we sit now. Again, recording here in late July. It's almost August. We're close. This is not a market that I'm like desperately trying to get into now. And I, in some of this is where I feel like I want to take a swing. I kind of wish the price was going to reward me for that a little bit more. Like I feel like, you know, being aggressive on a team that's, you know, say, sitting in the top five, six on to win the Super Bowl odds.

I probably want a little bit more than like. I don't know, high ones, low twos to miss the playoffs. But here we are. What jumps out to you? What's your favorite one? Are you going through the board right now in terms of, you can take it either way you want? I don't know if you want to go make the playoffs, miss the playoffs. Give you the four.

Yeah, I got three yeses and three noes. Okay. So I'll start with the yeses. And we've touched on some of them. So I won't go too in depth. Saints yes plus 200, I think is really interesting. It might be too much of to win the division, I guess, if that makes sense. because you're probably only getting one from that division.

So the discrepancy, so it's showing as a value, but also I think it's worth looking into. If they win the division, that just might be a better price, I think. So that's, so, but it's two to one. So maybe not, maybe there's multiple good teams there and two of them can sneak in. I tend to doubt it, though. Colts yes, plus 170. You've talked about them a bunch. I think that's another good one.

And then Patriots minus 175, I thought was pretty good. good chalk actually to be honest even though there's a bit of juice there looking at the aFC they obviously have two really bad teams in their division it's tough for me to see a way that they're not in pretty close contention or pretty secure for a playoff spot whether it's winning the division or second place uh with the bills so i think minus 175 is a pretty decent price there it's not a clean correlation but are you thinking in terms of maybe on the other side and maybe we'll get that when you share those going like oppo in division, right?

Where you're like, hey, if I'm trying to leverage, thinking you back to the Saints discussion, right? Or I think the Saints path, just in terms of like the North is loaded, the West we know is loaded. The most part, you're probably getting, you know,

one in there in terms of like looking to grab the other side or like to miss the playoffs or something like that. Is that, we're just trying to fight of like, hey, let's go back to the South. Maybe it's Tampa Bay and New Orleans. That means someone from either the North or the West, who is favored or we would expect to make the playoffs,

probably isn't because there's only so many seats. Are you thinking even in terms of that, like in terms of the correlation of making these bets? I haven't been, but I do like that point. I think that that makes a ton of sense. And I'm sure that they won't let you actually parlay all that, but I think just logically and thinking through it, I do think that that's an interesting way to look at it.

Maybe a little bit too much overconfidence in being right in one thing, but at the same time, I like where heads at. And generally, I do have more NFC knows and AFC guesses, I guess, looking at them that we're popping just because of the way that the divisions are structured and the strength of certain teams versus other divisions. Seems like the AFC is a little bit more open in terms of, I don't know, the top seven to ten teams. Yeah, that makes sense too.

One that I thought you might highlight. And again, maybe it's best in this path to play. the division number. I think the commanders, a little north and two to one, are interesting. You know, maybe that's still best to be like, hey, I like the over, you know, seven and a half win total, meaning that they could still win, you know, you still profit on them winning eight or nine games and still missing the playoffs. But, you know, commanders are a team that I think we're both a little bit optimistic on in terms of like sealing outcomes, if things clicked there. I kind of agree with your big picture take that

we'd like to see them out a little bit on the offensive side of the ball and pass. catcher and things like that to feel a little bit better. But James pretty good when he was when he was healthy as a rookie. And I like the changes that they made defensively defensive mind and head coach. I think that they're they're pretty interesting. I mean, the bucks, it's like you got to lay a little bit for them to miss, but that's kind of the opposite side of the Saints play is. Yeah.

Do I lay minus 150, minus 160 on Tampa Bay to miss the playoffs? But when I floater to you before we get started, look, I think this team can win the Super Bowl, right? So like taking them to miss the playoffs isn't great. But San Francisco, like, you've just seen it every year? I don't know if we want to go back. If it's the power station, the location with like, you know, everyone getting injured. But we seem to have it every year where you have these cluster injuries. We talk about the Rams being somewhat of a top heavy roster.

Niners are kind of a top heavy roster too, right? And they're an old roster. They're an older roster. You have, you know, CMC, think it could still be good. but we got some mileage up there. The house of cards of the offensive line with Trent Williams is, it gets really dicey if you pull him off of that offensive line in terms of how it impacts everyone else.

The defense is good. The defense is a little bit older. You know, you're bringing back Dr. Drake Greenlaw, Fred Warner's a little bit older. He's not old, but coming off of an injury. They just seem to have nicks and cuts and things with Brock Purdy every year. There's just, we don't know, like George Kittles dinged up to start the season. We're looking at a lot of like Ricky Pearson.

all having to like step up like evans is not young and we've asked him to kind of be a big piece of it this year so again there's a lot of dudes that i mentioned that things would have to necessarily go wrong but like we see it kind of every year with san francisco where cluster injuries and all of a sudden that team is really really tough division yeah the no is unfortunately only plus 130 as you mentioned so i think i would have wanted more than that because they are they you know amongst all the things that you mentioned all of those are really good players they're just old and injured often. So it's tough because I think we made a similar, I don't know, argument against the Rams last year to some extent in that, hey, they're old. They're injured.

Like Stafford might be retired soon. And then they end up winning Super Bowl. Now, that's probably not likely here for the further to 49ers. But it is a pretty wide range of outcomes here because of the strong division, because of the fragility with basically the entire team and all their important players here. So yeah, it's. they're a tough one for me, honestly, because that division, I think, is interesting because someone is probably not going to make playoffs.

I don't think that there's going to be three playoff teams in a row again. I mean, even though they are three really good teams, just likely one of them, another one probably misses at this point. Is it the Rams? Is it the Seahawks? Is it the Niners?

I guess if I had to pick one, probably the Niners, but I don't know. I don't feel too great about it either way, to be honest. No, same. Like Seattle is like he's a, wagon but now you're dealing with like three coordinators in three years for sam donald and you got

you know nick emma worry going under the knife and getting a it'll pop up surgery it's like what happened to nick amoree where did that come from just a few things that you know all of a sudden it's there are there are a pass to get a little bit uh a little bit dicey how about to miss were your three to miss teams yeah i had uh jaggs no which again is kind of correlated with colts yes to some extent uh bears no and then cowboy know. So Jags was even, Bears is minus 110, Cowboys is minus 112. I think all those are pretty interesting. The Bears one's tough. Obviously, we live in Chicago. I like the bears. I want them to be good. They just ran, I mean, hotter than physically possible. We talk about it almost every show.

We'll probably keep talking about it, but it seemed unsustainable. Maybe it is sustainable, and Ben Johnson keeps improving with Caleb. Either way, I think they're going to be better and it's still going to be a real like sweat down to the last thing if things go well if things do improve they don't improve they can easily win i don't know seven or eight games i wouldn't be that surprised so totally i don't know any of any of those stand out there is that uh yeah none are awesome prices but i think solid liens yeah i go back to like i have the same feeling that i had about jacksville all in like october november december last year where we like show up and be wrong every week.

And they kind of shoved it down on at least my throat. I still have questions. But like it's also a team that has a lot of decent talent and could continue to ascend if like quarterback coach situation is just kind of on that path like we're talking about with the Bears. You know, and that is a division that has, you know, some, I'll say layups, but like some winnable games for them for sure. So, but I like them.

They were one of the teams that jumped up to me. also very pro Texans. I'm not going to lay the Texans to make the playoff number, but just in terms of only so many AFC teams, Jack Civil is one that I, you know, close to even odds, I'm okay with kind of leaving on the outside that that would make a little bit of sense to me. I thought that the Bears would be on your list, but again, make sense. We'll him and Hall on the Bears all season because I think that we both feel the same way in terms of like just insane amount of run out that played their way. at almost like a 90, 95% rate. That's just so hard to run back.

You can't keep putting yourself in position to have to come back and then actually come back every time. Like at some point, putting yourself behind the eight ball is going to catch up to you. Now, things change. Players can ascend into some of the situations that can make them be sticky in terms of a playoff team. But we have to remember we sat here last year.

I think we were both on the Ravens. The Ravens were, you know, not necessarily where the Rams are in terms of, like, prohibitive favorites, but, like, it would have seemed wild to talk about the Ravens to miss the playoffs last year. They went eight and nine. Everything fell apart. Like, things were rough, right? So not having so much arrogance on thinking what you know in July is being correct, I think is a really good place to be. And that kind of jumps out to Cincinnati to me, getting, you know, around 140, 150 to miss the playoffs.

Like, I like Cincinnati. any things would be, I would like to see a healthy Joe Burrow. I think the defense is better. But you know what? He still eats a ton of sacks. He still gets hurt almost every year. And like the defense can be better. Still don't think the defense is good.

And if you are correct on your pro-Steeler's thoughts and that the Ravens are a little bit better, that division is a little bit tougher. And then you're just trying to think of, hey, we got these like three South teams that we think can be competitive for playoff seeds. We have three West. teams that get real competitive for playoffs. And all of a sudden, just the math, you got eight, nine teams that are basically priced like yeses to meet the playoffs. And that just is not how it goes.

So you're going to give me, you know, that number on the Bengals. I think that that would be one that I'd be interested in, even though I'm optimistic that the Bengals could be a good football team. But we just haven't seen them piece it all together. Yeah. Since the Super Bowl run. What are we, yeah, what did you say? It was like, uh, plus 165 to, for no, for the, for the,

them not to make the playoffs. It's not a bad price. They're another really volatile team, I think. Yeah. And, I mean, for all the reasons that you mentioned, the Steelers are, we mentioned it again, but they're really interesting. I just think that this could go quite well or quite poorly based on, I mean, everything that Aaron Rogers does, I would say.

But this specifically, you add a lot of pieces and on paper, if you get anything out of Aaron Rogers, I think it's kind of interesting. And the defense plays as well as we think that they can. could. They're going to be just a really competitive team. Or Mike Tomlin was the key to keeping everything together and a talent maximizer and no one really is all that good on their roster. And then they end up being pretty bad. That's also, I think, very much in the range of outcomes here. Because, I mean, Tomlin, there is just no way that it's a fluke that you don't have whatever, losing season in your career. You're hitching your wagon to a, you know, an older quarterback.

that is not super stoked to stick in the pocket, push the ball down the field and take a bunch of hits. Maybe the good vibes he's reunited with his family. So maybe there's, I saw that. You love to see that, you know, so maybe there's some good Rogers vibes.

I mean, still tells us he got married. We still don't see. I don't know who this person is, but, you know, he's an interesting character, main character syndrome for sure.

But, you know, I'm with you on the roster. There's a lot to like here in the trenches and both sides, I think. and like some of the offensive additions around Rogers to support him. So I think that's another, that's an interesting one. I kind of go back to like, are you safer just kind of taking the over on the wind total and protecting yourself from them, you know, falling short of the playoffs,

but they still exceeded expectations? The other team for me that's kind of like that is Minnesota. Like you can sell me on Minnesota being good and competitive, even though that division is like really hard. Do I want to take Minnesota to make the playoffs in that conference? in that division. Not so much, even though we're getting, like, I don't know, a decent number. I think I just would rather play win total, even though I, like, have a glimmer of hope

of, you know, Kyler putting it all together, KOC definitely being a talent maximizer, that floor is defense is fun, the offensive line can stay healthy, just there's, I think, a lot to like in Minnesota, but even though I'm not sure they're a playoff team. Yeah, they were showing as a value in my model, basically, to make the playoffs. And I didn't, I just disregarded it just because I don't want to bet on plus 160. It just seems like the, the asymmetric kind of like upside or like the, if you are right, how much do you get paid out type of logic is just not really worth it. It's not worth it in this types of market.

So if you're right that Calmer-Murie is good and the defense plays better and things are clicking again, you should be taking them to win 10 games or something and get, you know, 4-1 or something fun. Because then you're right and you get rewarded for it or latter the wins. I wouldn't be vetting plus 154 on draft kings or plus 150 on MGM to make the playoffs because they might have to win 10 games anyways to make playoffs. And you're only getting plus 150. and there's also the downside. So I don't know.

I think that largely as we started at the top, this is not a market we go deep into for, I mean, kind of this reason, to be honest. And that probably betting no playoffs is probably a better look on some of these teams than trying to chase like an upside yes, I would say. Could not agree more. Yeah, I would look for it. We talked about the inefficiencies in the wind total market

and how year over year they're off. And these books are offering. ladders. So kind of bet into those situations. I think that there's the scenarios where this is a market. I'm not, I'd rather play the derivatives of it. And I would definitely be chasing plus numbers. And I would not necessarily be tripping over myself to to lay chalky yeses. And again, go back to the Baltimore situation last year. Like these things can spiral. And all of a sudden you get these clusters of divisions where there's a bunch of really good teams in there. It's a little tricky. And then the one-offs,

where you think someone can jump the favorites, the prohibitive favorite, well, you just take them to win the division. You're probably going to get rewarded more. Or in the same situation, like even Minnesota, just take an all ladder up the winds. It's probably a better place than just them. You're sneaking in the back door of, you know, of making the playoffs.

So check it out, shop around, see if you can, you know, build one of those massive Connor-style futures parlays, you know, bet a little bit of, bit to win a lot. Those are fun little sweats as the season goes along. It's probably the best way to play this market. I did, um, so I did try and bet the AFC make miss playoffs and like correlate them a little bit. They, they don't allow, they allow it, but they do what Cesar's does with the like anti-correlated parlays or the non-correlated parlays where they just nerf the odds. So if you take pats to miss the playoffs at plus 180 and bills to make the playoffs at minus 320, they give you plus

169, which is just worse than Pat's to miss the playoffs alone. So they just don't want that action at all. They do not want to bet. They're basically saying, if you want to bet this, great. We are not going to reward you for any correlation. In fact, we are just going to make it worse. And I'm sure people still bet it because they're not paying attention. Not paying attention.

It's, yeah, just don't, don't bet that. And maybe you can find a book that will allow it. I doubt it, to be honest, anyone with half a brain, would not allow it, but who knows. Yeah. All right. I think that wraps us up. Anything else for listeners before we take off?

No, we got four more shows next week, and then every week after we'll start. I think we start divisional previews next week. We'll probably keep trying to keep it tight, 20, 30 minutes per division and keep having more bets. And probably have some guests on for some longer live shows for specific, I guess more specific topics. You know, maybe a prop show, something like that.

I have some props on the defensive side. that I'm interested in pushing out because there's a couple of softer books that have lined some stuff. We have some pick-um lines, but I'm hoping that we can get some more widely available stuff here, maybe get some prediction markets jumping in because I have a couple of edges out there. We get some people in the space popping out some of these one-off bets. Please stop. Can we just wait until we get a little bit of liquidity? Some books that will take some bets before we can start pushing these out to our, you know, 20,000 followers.

the defensive uh touts just seemed shameless with this kind of stuff by the it seems like it seems like the props like the office of props were three or four years ago where people were just popping off random ones and then bragging about their record on mGM lines or whatever and i mean it's just a sign you're not even betting them you know it's the problem yeah i mean you're just not even betting them you're just bracking up a record and i don't know maybe some people get bet on mjim for a little bit but that's just not going to be a long-term thing. So no, it's tough, tough balance. You know, counting live ads on a Sunday in your win-loss record, um, knowing that no one can, you know, like,

you can't do that. Like, if you're actually trying to put it out to like share with people, like you can't, if you're just counting your own win-loss record, cool, keep a sheet, congratulations. I'm not, I don't want to be a little anyone for, for winning money. But like, if you want to put it out as like, hey, we're winning over here. Like, yeah, we share live bets in Discord. It's more like counting in as like best that everyone can make. Those live markets move like this. Those market there's up, it's down.

It's up. It's down. Play and play stops. Especially on the defensive side. Like those markets are like those screens are flashing and popping all day. Yeah, let's just wait until we can. Let's just wait to we can. And we got people that are, you know, big followings that are.

CLV and. And boost that one's a good price. No one's betting it. It's not moving until we push it out. So let's just wait until we can all bet on it, share it with people and go from there. So sorry, be frustrated. Yeah. All right.

Check out the show notes. All the good stuff from Circa is in here. Again, move line where we listen to podcast. Move line on YouTube. Come back on Monday. Connor and I will be here again with some more future discussion, more team deep dives. And we'll go from there, get you ready for the season for Ryan. For Connor, I'm Ryan.

We'll see y'all next time. Thanks, everybody.