Sometimes, you look ahead at a game on a schedule and think, “Wow, this is going to be a great game between two really good teams.” Other times, you see an NFC contender like the Dallas Cowboys set to host the struggling Seattle Seahawks, losers of their last two games, on Thursday Night Football.
While oddsmakers expect the Cowboys to walk away Thursday night with a commanding win (currently 8.5-point home favorites), this feels like a great opportunity to place a little money on the line to make your game-watching experience a little more fun, even if you have nothing invested in either team playing.
Currently, DraftKings Sportsbook has the money line for a Cowboys win at -410, meaning in order to win a $100 payout on the Cowboys winning the game, you would have to wager (and risk) $410 on the bet. On the flipside, if you were willing to bet on the Seahawks shocking the world and upsetting the Cowboys in Jerry’s World, a measly $100 bet would pay out $320 on the current +320 odds.
But if, like the oddsmakers, you think the Cowboys are going to win, you can string that bet together with others in what is known as a “parlay” to potentially increase your payout. You can head over to DraftKings Sportsbook for a full definition of what a parlay is, but essentially, a parlay is a string of multiple bets (each individual bet known as a “leg”), where for there to be any payout whatsoever, each leg of the parlay has to be correct. It is all-or-nothing. In a three-leg parlay, if one of the bets misses but the other two hit, there is no “partial payout.” It is simply a loss. But if all three bets hit, that is where there might be opportunity for money to be made.
So consider this four-leg parlay for tonight’s game:
- Cowboys WIN (-410). This goes without saying. The Cowboys look like a complete team and the Seahawks offense has struggled of late. Dallas should roll at home.
- Cowboys OVER 19.5 (-600). The Cowboys have scored at least 20 points in all but one game this season, scoring over 40 points in three of the last five games.
- Dak Prescott OVER 280.5 passing yards (-115). Last week, Prescott threw for 331 yards and four passing touchdowns. With CeeDee Lamb and Brandin Cooks around him, Dak Prescott is playing like one of the NFL’s better quarterbacks.
- NO safety in scored by either team (-2500). Safeties are a rarity in the NFL, so banking on neither time scoring a safety Thursday night seems like free money.
The parlay odds for this bet would be +144, meaning a $100 bet would pay out $244 (the original $100 bet plus an extra $144). Again, this takes all four individual legs of the parlay have to come true for this bet to pay out. But look at the odds: Instead of a $100 parlay, if four $25.00 bets were placed on each of these legs individually and all four were to come true, the total payout would be $133.01 (the original $100 bet plus an extra $33.01). By stringing these four bets into a four-leg parlay, a winning bet pays out almost five-times more than the four solo bets by themselves.
Does this mean the parlay is a safe bet to make? Of course not. Every bet also presents risk. But stringing together a series of less-risky bets into a parlay, while the risk is greater because it presents more opportunities for the overall bet to miss, the potential reward is greater. Once a basic parlay bet is understood and made, the feeling of it hitting is like no other, and soon, a novice sports better can eventually start stringing together ultra aggressive parlays for a big-time payday. You can head over to DraftKings Sportsbook to try to make it happen.
If you like this material, make sure you’re subscribed to The SB Nation NFL Show podcast where we cover Thursday Night Football sports bets every week. You can catch us wherever you listen to your podcasts. As always, you can follow me on Twitter/X @ChrisDunnells. Odds/lines subject to change. T&Cs apply. See draftkings.com/sportsbook for details.