Monday Night Football NFL Betting Trends: Historical Spread, Over/Under Analysis
- Home Teams on MNF Underperform Against the Spread: From 2019 to 2024, home teams on Monday Night Football (MNF) covered the spread less often than in other timeframes.
- Favorites Perform Consistently Across MNF and Other Games: Favorites win and cover at nearly the same rates on MNF as in other games, suggesting no major edge or disadvantage for favorites in primetime.
- Scoring Expectations vs. Reality: MNF games tend to have slightly lower scoring and over rates than expected, likely due to inflated point totals and small-sample volatility.
Being able to look forward to NFL football on Monday nights is always a great way to start the week, but do Monday Night Football games play fundamentally different than other NFL games?
Let's find out by digging into high-level Monday Night Football betting trends and see what emerges.
Monday Night Football Betting Trends
I'll be looking at data from 2019 through 2024 -- six full seasons -- to account for historical FanDuel NFL betting odds.
To be included here, games must be played on Mondays and be at night -- so no specialty MNF airings are included.
All data is for only the regular season and comes from the numberFire database.
It's important to remember that these are all descriptive trends, meaning they tell us what has happened in the past. We still need to be aware of upcoming matchups and project forward based on current data, rosters, etc.
Monday Night Football Betting Home/Road Trends
Let's begin with home/road splits. Splits here are from the home team's perspective for simplicity.
Home Team Splits | Home PF | Away PF | Home PD | Win% | Spread Cover% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monday Night | 22.14 | 22.17 | -0.03 | 49.5% | 43.9% |
| All Other Games | 23.63 | 22.14 | 1.49 | 53.3% | 48.8% |
Monday Night Football has been pretty much a coin flip overall for home teams and road teams in this span, though the spread has certainly favored the road side, which isn't that atypical as far as the larger sample goes.
But, as always, we have to remember that past performance may not be indicative of future success.
Year-over-year against-the-spread results are really volatile in small samples like this (i.e. solely Monday Night Football games). We'll see a lot of that here.
To hammer that home, here's the yearly split of home team cover rate on Monday nights from 2019 to 2024:
- 2019: 29.4%
- 2020: 50.0%
- 2021: 58.8%
- 2022: 35.3%
- 2023: 41.2%
- 2024: 47.6%
Notice how much it bounces around? We're looking at roughly one game a week when narrowing things down to just MNF matchups, so it's not a surprise that these numbers are so volatile.
Monday Night Football Betting Favorite/Underdog Trends
Do things change much when we look at things from the favorite's perspective?
Favorite Splits | Favorite PF | Underdog PF | Favorite PD | Favorite Win% | Favorite Spread Cover % |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monday Night | 24.97 | 19.33 | 5.64 | 65.1% | 47.7% |
| All Other Games | 25.45 | 20.33 | 5.13 | 66.9% | 48.6% |
Favorites on Monday Night Football perform quite similarly to non-MNF favorites in this sample. So that seeming awkwardness about home teams not covering very well?
Well, just 55.0% of home teams on Monday in our sample were favored, down from 60.9% across the whole sample.
MNF features teams across the league, and we often see some mismatches as a result -- per the betting data. Some home teams get the spotlight on Monday night but aren't necessarily the favored side as often as in other matchups.
Monday Night Football Over/Under Splits
How does the scoring data look?
Game Splits | Home PF | Away PF | PC | Over% | 50+ | Under 40 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monday Night | 22.14 | 22.17 | 44.30 | 42.6% | 30.3% | 36.7% |
| All Other Games | 23.63 | 22.14 | 45.78 | 49.0% | 37.4% | 33.4% |
Low over rates in primetime aren't that uncommon, and we've seen that continue on Monday Night Football in recent years.
Over/unders on Monday Night Football have been set -- on average -- a full point higher (45.6) than the early slate of Sunday games (44.6), for context.
Scoring isn't abnormally low on Mondays, either. Rather, it's just a combination of slight underperformances offensively plus big expectations in terms of the point total.
Again, though, it's not uncommon to see big swings year-to-year given the small samples we're looking at. Just take a look at the yearly splits in Monday night scoring by points combined:
- 2019: 43.06
- 2020: 48.39
- 2021: 43.06
- 2022: 40.24
- 2023: 40.05
- 2024: 49.95
That should tell you all you need to know about year-over-year scoring trends from small samples of NFL action.
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The above author is a FanDuel employee and is not eligible to compete in public daily fantasy contests or place sports betting wagers on FanDuel. The advice provided by the author does not necessarily represent the views of FanDuel. Taking the author's advice will not guarantee a successful outcome. You should use your own judgment when participating in daily fantasy contests or placing sports wagers.
