Rob Pizzola's model expects roughly a 4.1% return on his NFL sides and totals this season, priced off where last year's lines actually closed.
Most bettors spend the summer loading up on team-total futures the moment a market opens. Pizzola does almost none of that, and instead spends the offseason auditing every game where his own numbers missed the market, then automating his process so it reacts to injury news faster than he can think about it himself.
"I think it's downstream of prediction market liquidity."
Pizzola is the CEO of The Hammer Betting Network and hosts the Circles Off podcast — and he's watched his own long-run betting edge across sports get cut roughly in half since 2017, which is why he's paying close attention to what liquidity is now doing to the market around him.
I listened to the full episode so you can skip it. 55 minutes of audio, 15 minutes of reading.
Here are the 9 takeaways that matter.
👤 Guest: Rob Pizzola, CEO of The Hammer Betting Network and host of the Circles Off podcast, a professional sports bettor focused on NFL and NHL
🎙️ Hosts: Chris Dierkes, who heads trading at Novig, and Henry Kerins, Novig's Executive Vice President of Trading Technology & Operations
📰 Published: 9 September 2026 on YouTube
🔴 YouTube | 🟢 Spotify | 🟣 Apple Podcasts | ⏱️ 55 min | ✅ Time saved: 41 min
Key Takeaways
His model's expected ROI on NFL sides and totals last year was about 4.1%, priced against the closing line
He splits duties with an anonymous US-based partner who executes all their prediction-market trades
Sportsbooks are already raising prop limits because of prediction-market liquidity, not because of week-one confidence alone
He's been fielding offers to license his numbers for market-making props, and expects it to get "wild by midseason"
His model treats every matchup as its own problem rather than comparing two static power ratings
Testing shows raw power ratings stopped being enough to beat the market 20 to 30 years ago
The Seahawks-Patriots line move to New England was driven by a cluster of Seattle safety injuries, not a schedule quirk
He built a contrarian case that the Rams' travel plan beats the 49ers' early-arrival strategy for the Australia game — then reversed himself after hearing from someone who has actually traveled with an NFL team
He thinks the market defaults to pricing questionable players at full health, and Baker Mayfield's hidden arm injury shows why that's dangerous
Every number he produces carries its own confidence rating tied to how much injury uncertainty is in the game
He thinks 12 teams could plausibly be the league's best by midseason, but the Rams are still "much better than every other team"
He's bullish on a comeback season for Aaron Donald because Myles Garrett will now absorb most of his double teams
LSU's hedge on Lane Kiffin's bonuses is, in his view, exactly the kind of real economic hedging prediction markets have argued for in court
He compares it directly to buying homeowner's insurance against your own house flooding
He expects his sports-betting edge to survive another 5 years, and is less sure about 10
His own edge from 2017 to 2020 is already "cut in half, if not more"
1. Football, Hockey Split
Pizzola opened by describing how he and his trading partner divide the year between NFL and NHL, since hockey season starts about a month after football wraps up prep.
He works with an anonymous, US-based partner who executes essentially all of their trades on prediction markets, while Pizzola builds the numbers. "He handles all of our trading through prediction markets." Pizzola called himself "more of a numbers guy" by comparison
His expected return on NFL sides and totals, based on where the market actually closed last year, was around 4.1%. "My expected ROI, based off of closing line last year, was somewhere in the range of like 4.1%." He said he'd rather hit that number again than repeat a year that badly overperformed it, because a big outlier season quietly resets what feels like a normal year going forward
He is not a futures bettor and avoids the week-one scramble to lock in team-total overs before books adjust them. He said he structures his year around placing "significant money on sides and totals" rather than chasing early market inefficiencies in futures
His betting activity skews heavily toward the start of the week. "Wednesday's pretty quiet day for me." He said he considers Thursday-through-Friday injury reports far more decision-relevant than the first reports of the week, and is reluctant to bet against the market at all on weekends unless a number looks "egregious"
2. Liquidity Resets Limits
Henry asked about $7,000 limits already showing up on some FanDuel touchdown-scorer markets in week one, and whether that traces back to prediction-market liquidity.
Pizzola said the higher limits are downstream of prediction-market liquidity, not just typical week-one confidence. "I think it's downstream of prediction market liquidity." He said books also gain confidence from lines being posted for months by the time the season opens, with many opinions already priced into them
He expects the effect to intensify as the season goes on. "I think it's going to be wild by midseason"
Multiple parties have approached him about licensing his projections to help market-make prop bets, which he sees as a coming source of mispricing risk. "I think there's so many people who are just going to be using sub subsets of projections that might not even be good this year to market make props"
He personally avoids props at scale, calling it "a skill issue" more than a principled choice, though he said rising liquidity could push him to shift focus toward props later in the season
3. Racing The Beat Reporters
Chris asked what Pizzola is trying to automate. He said the goal is closing the gap between when news breaks and when he has a number to trade on it.
His stated goal is to produce a betting number based on breaking news as fast as possible, so he isn't forced to guess in real time. "I want to be able to produce a number in a game based off of news as quickly as possible"
His model treats each game as a specific matchup rather than comparing two teams' static power ratings. "My model is very much as if the game is being played between the two teams." He said an injury to a specific cornerback could matter enormously against one opponent and barely at all against another
He said pure power ratings stopped being a winning approach roughly two to three decades ago as the market got sharper. "The market is so much more competitive now than it was"
He distinguishes what he actually trusts in his model from what he uses to sound smart on his own shows. "There's differences between what I actually model and what I will potentially use for content to make myself sound smart"
Every offseason, he audits the games where his number missed the closing line by the most, looking for a pattern the market may be capturing that he isn't. He said last year that process turned up a specific miss in prime-time games: "I found my numbers in prime time games last year largely closed off market relative to any other time"
The prime-time gap traced mostly to specific teams rather than a general home-field effect, and he pointed to seven Kansas City games as an example he attributes partly to lingering market priors on Patrick Mahomes from his peak seasons
4. Seahawks-Pats: News Move
With New England getting bet down from a roughly 4.5-point underdog to 3.5, Chris asked whether the move made sense given the Patriots' offseason additions.
Pizzola attributed the move mainly to a cluster of Seattle safety injuries that surfaced only in the days before kickoff, not to any broader reassessment of the two rosters. A hamstring injury to one starting safety "came out of nowhere," and a second safety was already on injured reserve, leaving Seattle thin at the position against a Patriots offense built to throw downfield
He said he'd already priced the possibility that the injured safety would miss the game before the news broke. "I think it was always likely, more likely that Nori would miss the game than play"
His overall read was that the market was reacting to fresh information rather than reassessing the matchup on its merits. "This is a news based move more than anything else"
He said he still believes a contingent of sharp bettors trades "revenge game" narratives — the idea that a team blown out in a prior meeting will draw money the next time the same teams play — and thinks that belief likely pulled some New England money into this line too, even though he attributes most of the move to the injury news
5. Rams-Niners Travel Reversal
Chris flagged that the Rams were flying to Australia the day before their game against the 49ers, while San Francisco arrived far earlier to acclimate — and initially assumed the early arrival favored San Francisco.
Pizzola argued the opposite: that the Rams' late arrival was the better strategy, because it keeps their bodies on their normal athletic clock. "I'm not an expert in like circadian rhythms or anything like that, but because of my nature of betting NFL for a long period of time, I've had to study them"
He reasoned the 49ers don't have enough time in Australia to fully adapt, and are also playing at a local morning kickoff that works against peak athletic performance. He argued the Rams have "the optimal strategy for this game," and that the market wasn't pricing it correctly
He said he once discussed the subject in depth with a sleep specialist who has since taken a job with an NFL team, though he didn't name the person on air
He ran the idea by another bettor, who wasn't convinced. The friend dismissed it as Pizzola "thinking it does something stupid" — a reaction Pizzola called "a pretty fair take"
After Chris relayed a conversation with his own trainer, a former NFL practice-squad player who traveled with a team and said players don't feel much jet lag arriving the day before, Pizzola backed off the idea entirely. "I'm not betting it. I'm not expressing my opinion." He said he still found the travel question interesting, but no longer trusted his own read on it enough to bet it
6. Pricing Players As Healthy
Henry asked whether sportsbooks systematically price uncertain player statuses as if everyone will play at full strength, given how retail-driven their prop markets are.
Pizzola agreed the bias exists, and said it shows up clearly when a questionable player is formally "ruled in." He said the market typically gives that designation a full reaction even for players who barely practiced all week, which he called a hard problem to trade around because some veterans skip practice all week and still play a full game
Every projection he produces carries its own confidence score tied to how much injury uncertainty is in the game. "Based off of the information that's available, this is how confident I am that this number is accurate." When confidence is low, he builds separate projections assuming a key player is at 50% of his normal value versus 100%
He used Baker Mayfield's hidden arm injury last season as an example of how hard it is to see the truth in real time. Mayfield's "arm was basically purple for like weeks," hidden under his sleeves so no one could tell how badly he was hurt, and it took weeks for that to become public
He said the NFL's small in-season sample makes this worse than in a sport like the NBA, where a team gets a fuller read on an injured player across five or six games rather than one or two
He described a growing class of "news traders" who react only to whether a player is officially in or out, without weighing the nuance behind it. "I've seen this happen firsthand, where you give traders just like a list of player names, and this is what we think he's worth to the spread." He said he has had to build models of individual beat reporters' own track records for accuracy, because their reporting quality varies so much
7. Twelve Teams, One Rams
Chris asked how many teams realistically have a shot at being the league's top-rated team by midseason.
Pizzola settled on 12 teams as plausible midseason number-ones, after Henry argued the true number is larger given how few rosters still lean on defense to drive their rating. He initially guessed the top ten would be too generous
Even inside that group, he said the Rams stand apart. "This squad right now is…very, very…much better than every other team," with their main real risk being injury depth rather than any team currently closing the gap
He took a contrarian bullish position on Aaron Donald's return, expecting "an amazing season." Chris pushed back, noting Donald's two years out of football; Rob's case rests on how the pass rush is now built
His reasoning is that Myles Garrett will absorb most of the double-team attention Donald used to draw by himself. "Aaron Donald is basically double teamed for his entire career, and Myles Garrett is going to eat most of the double teams now." Chris called the take "very contrarian"
He said the Rams' rebuilt defensive line and newly signed cornerbacks address the specific weakness Seattle exploited against them in last year's playoff loss, when Seattle's receivers got open against Los Angeles all game
8. The Kiffin Bonus Hedge
A listener, Sam Schwartz, asked about the hedging potential of prediction markets for players, coaches and owners, referencing reports that LSU hedged bonuses tied to Lane Kiffin's coaching performance.
Pizzola's understanding was that LSU's Kiffin-related bonuses were directly hedged on a prediction market, tied to CFP milestones like reaching the semifinals or winning the title. "I think I read it was 3 million in bonus"
He argued this is exactly the real-world hedging use case prediction markets have been making in court, and compared it directly to ordinary insurance. "That's exactly what insurance is, right? Like when I buy homeowner's insurance, I'm effectively betting that my house is going to flood or that I'm going to leave the stove on"
Henry raised the public-perception risk, since betting against your own team is normally treated as a red flag for a player or coach. Pizzola agreed the distinction that matters is who places the trade — an organization hedging its own bonus cost is straightforward, while a player betting to soften his own incentive payout would read very differently
He separately criticized a CFTC push requiring affiliated prediction-market makers to always quote both sides of a market, arguing no insurer is required to sell customers a policy betting they'll stay perfectly healthy, because there's no demand for that product
9. Will AI Kill His Edge?
A listener named Kunkel asked whether Pizzola expects to still be able to win at sports betting in five or ten years.
He said yes for a five-year horizon, and less confidently for ten. "I think the longer you stretch the time period, the more likely it is that the edges could erode"
He's already lived through real edge decay. "I say this as someone who's like, had a pretty large edge from 2017 to 2020 across various sports that is basically cut in half, if not more"
His betting partner has recently argued that AI tools, including ones built on Claude, could let far more people compete at his level; Pizzola is skeptical for now. "I'm like, no, they can't. Like they don't have the subject matter expertise that we have to get the right answers out of AI." He added: "we're nowhere near that yet"
He said his answer isn't that nothing changes — he expects to adapt into different formats, such as leaning more into player props or fully "top down" market-following strategies, rather than assuming his current approach keeps working forever
Bonus Insights
Asked by a listener to build a five-year franchise around one quarterback, ignoring contract cost, Pizzola ranked Patrick Mahomes lowest of the three offered options because of age and a recent knee injury, and would pick Joe Burrow if a fourth name were allowed. Factoring in contract value, he'd take Drake Maye instead, reasoning that "you're getting years 24 to 28 on a much better contract than you are" with Josh Allen
He distinguishes himself from top-down bettors who trade purely off market movement, without disputing that it's an easier path to profit. "I never dismiss any style of betting," but said he stays with his own slower, research-heavy process because he finds it more engaging, not because it's more profitable
His two final picks against the market: higher than the market on Arizona, lower than the market on Atlanta. He said Arizona's 2025 season was distorted by a cluster of offensive-line, defensive-line and secondary injuries that made the team look worse than its underlying roster, and called the Cardinals' quarterback underrated. On Atlanta, he's bearish "especially with the announcement that Tua is starting now," and separately flagged the Falcons' pass rush as a serious weakness this year
Pizzola's own summary of the job is that the edge comes from being faster and more precise with the same public information everyone else has, not from any single pick — and that prediction-market liquidity, not any one game, is what will keep reshaping the odds around him.
Products, Companies & Tools Mentioned
The Hammer Betting Network and Circles Off (Pizzola's own betting network and podcast, referenced in his introduction and in the sign-off)
Kalshi (Pizzola cited Kalshi's court arguments as the clearest precedent for prediction markets' real-world hedging use case)
FanDuel and DraftKings (Cited as the retail sportsbooks whose touchdown-scorer prop limits Henry said are already rising, and whose full-price-on-questionable-players pattern the hosts discussed)
CFTC (The regulator Pizzola criticized for pushing prediction-market makers to quote both sides of a market, comparing it to requiring an insurer to sell a guaranteed-healthy policy)
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