NFC North proposition bets

14 August 2018

The optimist would say we’re only about three weeks away from NFL Opening Day 2018. The pessimist would say the preseason has barely begun. NFLbets says the time is ripe for speculating on 2018 NFL futures and proposition bets. So today, we’re presenting part five of NFLbets’ division-by-division look at the “Over/Under Wins” and “To Win Division” NFL futures offered at online sportsbooks.

Today, we’re considering the NFC North, which in 2018 features a returning Super Bowl contender, a potentially dissolving perpetual contender, a will they/won’t they upstart and the good ol’ Detroit Lions. We’re talking the NFC North today; click on the appropriate link below for NFLbets’ takes on these proposition bets for other division

AFC East • AFC North • NFC South • NFC West

•••••

The NFC North should be one, let’s say, challenging division for NFL bettors in 2018. Two serious contenders for a Super Bowl LIII appearance head up the division’s odds tables: The Green Bay Packers and Minnesota Vikings. But the former is uncharacteristically riddled with controversy and question marks, while the latter has a long history of tragic late-season exits (not that the proper NFL bettor should rarely, if ever, consider history as part of week-to-week calculations for betting; just sayin’). The lines in the “Over/Under Wins” and “To Win Division” prop bets are listed below.

NFC North			O/U wins	to win div. (oper)	to win div. (current)
Minnesota Vikings*			10	+125	+115
Green Bay Packers*			10	+125	+150
Detroit Lions			7.5	+600	+600
Chicago Bears			6.5	+700	+900

 

Note the separation between going on between the Vikings and Packers. The smart money – literally – is on the Vikings right now, and NFLbets’d guess that these odds will only get shorter as the line approaches +100 by opening day kickoff.

Does defense win championships (if you straight-up ignore Super Bowl LII)? Sure, and therefore if you’re a Minnesota Vikings fan, you’re liking your team’s chances. Dt Sheldon Richardson joins a defense that was top-3 statistically in allowing total yards, first downs, passing yards, passing TDs, net yards per pass attempt, and rushing yards. The average quarterback was reduced to a QB rating of 71.1, just 0.3 lower than Tom Savage in ’17 – against this Vikings D. With all starters and key third-down subs back aboard, the Vikings have an early claim to the best defense in the NFL; about the only argument would come from Los Angeles Rams land and two of their main studs (Ndamokung Suh and Marcus Peters) are newly acquired.

If you’re a believer in a Minnesota team newly armed with Kirk “You Like That Meme” Cousins at quarterback to at least win the division, as is NFLbets, you’ll want to cover the Minnesota Vikings to win the NFC North, preferably as part of a parlay involving an odds-on favorite (likesay, the Rams and/or New England Patriots) to beef up the potential winnings.

Minnesota going over 10 wins – three fewer than in the 2018 Vikings’ regular-season romp – might also be worth a bet. The schedule in the early going isn’t easy: The Vikings will play vs San Francisco 49ers, at Green Bay, vs Buffalo Bills, at Los Angeles Rams, at Philadelphia Eagles; a game at the New England Patriots comes in December. If you’re taking the Vikings seriously as a contender, however, then you’re figuring this group of games is worth at least a 3-3 record, and finding four more losses for Purple People Eaters 2.0 seems quite implausible. Take the Minnesota Vikings to go over 10 wins.

•••••

In Green Bay, Aaron “R-E-L-A-X” Rodgers is not chill early in the preseason over his lamely constructed receiving corps. Jordy Nelson is gone, but Rodgers’s favorite targets in 2017, Randall Cobb and Devante Adams, are still around. That was the bad news and good news, respectively. The terrible, all-too-familiar news is that the Green Bay brain trust did typically little to pump up the roster in 2018 free agency. 

So Rodgers, who’s suddenly staring at getting slapped with the “franchise player” tag in back-to-back seasons for a team he’s sick of quarterbacking, will (possibly) be throwing to some members of a rookie quartet who may have been chosen showing for memorable monikers: J'Mon Moore, Marquez Valdes-Scantling, Equanimeous St. Brown and DeAngelo Yancey.

Beyond this, Rodgers has got to be concerned about his offensive line – again, little improved from 2017 – which ranked a paltry 28th in pass protection last season, per the awesome Football Outsiders.

NFLbets cannot say with assurance that Rodgers and head coach Mike McCarthy have done more with less, as the 2018 Green Bay Packers appear to have less than at any point since probably 2008 (ironically, Nelson’s rookie season), a year in which the Pack went 6-10.  NFLbets simply cannot buy this team winning more than 10 games as constructed. Take the Green Bay Packers to win under 10 games.

•••••

When the tale of Matt Stafford’s career is written, the inferiority of the Detroit Lions will play as huge a part as it does in those of Dominic Raiola, Calvin Johnson, and of course Barry Sanders. Sure, NFLbets’d love the 2018 Lions to win over 7½, but as Os Davis’s original piece in this series indicated, bookmakers are accounting for a total of five wins more than losses league-wide, meaning that when in doubt, bet the under.

On the Lions, we’d probably bet the under, but we’re not recommending such. The Packers and especially the Bears are big question marks for this season, and the four games against these two teams are likely to determine the pendulum of this Lions team. Essentially, we’d stay clear of these Lions – at least until Stafford goes down, at which point bet the opponent minus the points all Sunday long…

•••••

The Chicago Bears for 2018 are pushing a lot of young talent and old faces on the sidelines. Someone off the playing field has apparently decided that the direction to head in for wunderkind RB Jordan Howard and rookie TE Adam Shaheen to grow and develop is to begin the season with Mike Glennon at quarterback, with the Damocles Sword of Mitch Trubisky hanging over head. Nice – for the NFL bettors.

With so much of the offense handed over to youngsters (‘Member the days of Matt Forte and Brandon Marshall?), the coaching staff is remarkably unchanged: Beyond head coach Matt Nagy, offensive coordinator Mark Helfrich is still here along with general manager Ryan Pace. One or more of these dudes thought it was a good idea to a) sign Glennon; b) draft Trubisky with little extant infrastructure; and c) both, and NFLbets believes that all three may stick around until someone else in the front office realizes little good will happen under the watch of this trio.

Since more pieces must be added to the roster (and Pace’s acumen is mostly in dispatching veterans) and sidelines, NFLbets figures these Bears are at minimum two seasons from contention. And while winning 6½ games is a fairly low bar for Vegas et al to set, we wouldn’t wish having to hope for seven wins from these guys – with five likely to be needed in the season’s second half – on any NFL bettor.

NFLbets’ best bets for NFC North betting:
•  Minnesota Vikings to win division at +115 (or anything over -150, really); and
•  Vikings to win over 10 games.

NFLbets’ recommendations for NFC North betting:
•  Green Bay Packers under 10 wins.