Don’t even get NFLbets started on the “opportunities” for NFL betting this week. After putting faith in Jason Garrett’s Dallas Cowboys (now gearing up for a top-10 pick) and betting against Mike Tomlin’s Pittsburgh Steelers (now on a three-game winning streak ATS at home after suffering an 0-7 jag dating back to last season), we’re presented with this sorry slate of point spreads: Four spreads opened at 10 points or more, while six started right in the 6½- to 7-point range.
The reason for this complete imbalance to the favorites? Just one game this week features two teams with winning records: the New Orleans Saints (7-1 SU/6-2 ATS) at the Cincinnati Bengals (5-3 SU/4-4 ATS) – and even that one has a line of Saints -6!
However, if you’re into voodoo like 3-way 4-team parlays or 6-point teasers, following are the games that NFLbets would recommend playing:
• Chicago Bears -7 vs Detroit Lions. Weather conditions could make betting the under on an O/U line of 44½ worth betting as well, as the Lions offense slowly disintegrates.
• Los Angeles Chargers -9½ at Oakland Raiders. Due to wildfires in Northern California, the Raiders missed a day of practice. Like this team can afford that.
• Philadelphia Eagles -7½ vs Dallas Cowboys. So, yeah, Amari Cooper is probably not the answer if your playbook only has enough material for 30 minutes’ worth of football.
• And our failsafe for 2018, which we’ll be betting anyway…
Clearly, we do not ’member the 2011 New Orleans Saints and Bountygate.
Nor do we, the NFL-watching masses, apparently remember the 2018 edition of Hard Knocks or any of Gregg Williams’s inauspicious career beyond one lightning-in-a-bottle season with New Orleans during which his sociopathic Machiavellian attitude was on full display. Williams, drunk with power, went down and took others with him (Sean Peyton, Jon Vilma, Will Smith) – don’t let it happen to your bankroll.
Betting against the Browns with any reasonable point spread right up until week 17 will likely be a solid play due to this jackass “leading” the team, particularly the offense.
Without reviewing Williams entire career, we can summarize as follows: As a head coach, he’s 17-31 SU. At defensive coordinator, Williams’s teams have gone 140-131-2 SU – decent enough numbers unless you consider three years’ worth of Saints teams makes up a good chunk of the winning percentage with their cumulative 37-11 mark. Or that Williams-led defenses have gone 26-60-2 since Bountygate. Only bad teams, dysfunctional front offices and/or transitional franchises will hire Williams since his plot was foiled in New Orleans.
The reasons for this were on full display on Hard Knocks, which either nobody watched or everybody forget about. Williams appeared to spend the majority of the preseason mugging for HBO cameras, excoriating players for the inadequacy of his defensive schemes, and scheming to subvert then-offsenive coordinator Todd Haley in the quest for Hue Jackson’s job.
So now he has the job, but the 2018 Cleveland Browns may be even worse off than they were under Jackson – and the simultaneous ejection of Haley with Hue means the rookie QB Baker Mayfield will be playing under his third OC inside of one calendar year. (Ironically, Mayfield now has more NFL experience in his current position than does new coordinator Freddie Kitchens.)
But in this game, couldn’t Williams get his D to turn this game into a field position battle, forcing the one-dimensional Falcons to take multiple 3-and-outs? And the weather will be cold (expected temperatures for game time at in the low 40s), so that will help against the warm-weather, dome-playing Atlanta, right?
Playing field position against the Falcons thus far has not proven fruitful. At 55.3%, Atlanta leads the NFL in third-down conversion success rate. They’re also rung up 30-plus points on three defenses well better than that of Williams’s Browns: the Saints, Bengals and Washington.
As for the weather, the bizarre truth is that the Falcons haven’t played a game in temperatures below 55° since December 8, 2014, in Green Bay (they well covered the 13½-point spread in that game, by the way). But geez, if 42°F with no precipitation is your hope against a scoreboard-spinning offense with a former Boston College QB is your only hope, well, you must be a Cleveland Browns fan. Besides, NFLbets believes that even Mother Nature hates Gregg Williams.
Be pragmatic: Take the Atlanta Falcons -6 at Cleveland, and get set to start laying cash against Williams and the Browns ever more.