A $100 bettor who took the Eagles on the money line in 2011 would be down $1,754

Place the blame wherever you want when talking about the shortcomings of the much-hyped Philadelphia Eagles this season.

It could rest on coach Andy Reid’s shoulders, who couldn’t find the right message to communicate with his talented roster. Or you could pass it to Vince Young, who drew a big bulls-eye on the Eagles’ collective back by declaring them the “Dream Team” before the preseason. Or you could even call it dumb luck, because an injury to Michael Vick was certainly difficult to overcome.

Wherever the blame should go, the Eagles would’ve been the worst team to back for a money-line bettor in 2011.

By far.

If you placed a money-line wager to win $100 on the Eagles every week, you’d be down $1,754 heading into their Week 17 game against the Washington Redskins. The next worst? The Minnesota Vikings, who would’ve lost you $574.

The most costly loss was easily the Rams winning in Week 8 over the Saints, who were -950 favorites. If you take that game out, New Orleans would be up 8.72 units ($872 of profit) for bettors instead of down 0.78.

This type of “unit analysis” is far more common in baseball, where money-line bets are the norm. But in football they’re much more rare, so I thought it’d be interesting to see who the best and worst teams would’ve been if you’d bet the money line each week, as opposed to dealing with the spread.

One important nugget: Only 12 teams in the table below would’ve been profitable, led by the San Francisco 49ers at +8.89 units (or $889 of profit). Twenty teams would have lost bettors money. That tells you that most of the value is sucked out of money line bets when compared to baseball, so it’s probably not a very good strategy.

But it’s still fun to look at.

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