For week 2, NFLbets has already tipped NFL bettors off to backing the New England Patriots at Jacksonville and the Philadelphia Eagles at Tampa Bay Buccaneers, but here’s a handful bets to make on Sunday’s games.
Kansas City Chiefs +4 (down from +5) at Pittsburgh Steelers. Thank you, Pittsburgh Steelers fans for driving this line down! Also, are you insane? Undying loyalty to your team is cute and all that, but you must’ve snuck a peak at the week 1 box scores not involving your non-Browns beating team. You must’ve heard the way NFL talking heads are tell you your guys are now 12-18-1 without Ben Roethlisberger, Le’Veon Bell and Antonio Brown all in the game?
And if you’d put down that copy of the 1977 NFL Almanac for a second, you might look up “2018 Kansas City Chiefs offense,” quite possibly destined to be the NFL’s highest-scoring team in the league. While y’all are all titillated by replacing Bell with James Connor – and you’ll certainly marvel to a nice stat line from him this week against a pretty weak Chiefs run D – Kansas City’s bringing real gamebreakers like Tyreke Hill and Kareem Hunt. Which of your guys are going to stop them? And you’re throwing money at this team right now?
None of the last eight teams to start an NFL season with two away games has gone 2-0. NFLbets says that happens this week. We’d take the Kansas City Chiefs to win SU at Pittsburgh at +170 and definitely take the Chiefs +4.
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Los Angeles Chargers -7½ at Buffalo Bills. Here’s a simple question: Where are the Bills points going to come from? Philip Rivers’s Chargers were good for over 22 points per game last season and though early on, that feels like a decent benchmark for the 2018 team. So say the Chargers score three touchdowns. The Bills can thus count on a few points from … Josh Allen, rushed into his first game as a starting QB in the NFL? Um…
Look, until something changes, any bet against the Buffalo Bills for the remainder of 2018 is in play. The 7½ points the Chargers are giving up must be considered child’s play for the clever NFL bettor, who’s obviously going to take the Los Angeles Chargers -7½ at Buffalo. Hell, the only thing keeping us from figuring on a 30-6 game and taking the under on an O/U of 42½ (down from 44½) is the very realistic possibility of another awesome 47-3 Bills game.
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Gurley watching: Two awesome player props to bet as Rams RB eats Cardinals’ lunch. It’s a tough week for the NFL’s beatdogs, but a potentially lucrative one for NFL bettor. (Not to mention for the Los Angeles Rams, who drew two of the NFL’s worst three teams to start the season.)
Even though we reckon the Rams should take this game by two touchdowns going away, 12½ points is a lot to cover. Instead, we’re looking at a pair of player props involving Todd Gurley. The over/under in the “Todd Gurley rushing yards” prop is just 94½, with the over paying at -110 and the under somehow going for -130. Gurley is also the odds-on favorite in the “To score first TD” prop at +250.
The thinking here must be that either Gurley will be catching more passes than average (and thus increasing his total, but not rushing, yards) against a Cardinals defense pitiful on the second level: Last week, past-prime Adrian Peterson with Chris Thompson combined for 151 yards and one TD on the ground, but 133 and a TD in the air. Additionally, many are apparently betting Gurley will sit much of the game after the Rams turn it into a laugher.
NFLbets says that, limited time or not, Gurley should break 100 yards by the end of the first half; after leading the league in runs from scrimmage of more than 20 yards, how many big gainers will he have to whip off before putting his backers over the top of 95? A.P. went for 96 yards rushing last week and his long was 17.
Take Todd Gurley to rush for over 94¼ yards and to score the game’s first touchdown at 5/2.
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