Gather that mortgage money: Lions over Steelers is the “upset” of 2021

14 November 2021

You read that headline right. NFLbets has waited all season long for this particular game to bet on. Since the release of the official 2021 season calendar, perceptions have shifted on most NFL teams – The Cowboys are really good! The Chiefs are actually quite bad! The Raiders were good, then got ugly and now seem fated for bad! – but not the reliable Jared Goff and his Detroit Lions.

Then there are the Pittsburgh Steelers somehow sitting at second place in the AFC North with a 5-3 (3-5 ATS) record and are enjoying a 4-0 SU (2-2 ATS) run. And buoyed by a legion of irrational fans with the power the bet real money on their favorite team, the Steelers have again been overrated all season: The Steelers are 3-5 ATS (2-5 after the opening day win against Buffalo, who will certainly regret that one at season’s end) and the under is a fat 5-2-1 in Steelers games.

All righty, then, the table is set for cashing in on

Detroit Lions +6 at Pittsburgh Steelers, over/under 40½ points

When the over/under win totals could reasonably be bet on in the preseason, the Lions’ total was set at 5, even in June a laughably high bar for a team that had just traded *for* Jared Goff. NFLbets guessed at that time:

Looking at the Lions schedule for 2021, NFLbets is having real trouble conjuring up more than five wins. Let’s say the Green Bay Packers don’t manage to work out the Aaron Rodgers situation and are forced to run with some ungodly combination of Jordan Love plus Blake Bortles; say it’s business as usual in Chicago and the Bears have no offense for the nth time; and say the Vikings Viking. So say the Lions break even and go 3-3 in inter-division games.

Well, the Packers worked out the Rodgers contract kerfuffle, but we have seen Jordan Love perform ungodly poorly (and Green Bay still almost won in Kansas City!). Chicago is indeed business as usual vis-à-vis the offense thus far and the Vikings certainly have Vikingsed their way to 3-5. Nevertheless, NFLbets’ most optimistic view was likely already shattered in week 5 when the Lions took the lead with 37 seconds remaining and incredibly out Vikingsed the Vikings.

To bet profitably, one must be realistic. Yes, the Lions are incredibly bad this season, but are they 0-16 bad? Such a proposition bet was offered in the preseason, but NFLbets goes nowhere near such a sucker bet. El Jefe had NFLbets look into the probability of Detroit going winless in 2021, but we ultimately couldn’t pull the trigger on endorsing this wager:

On first inspection, one can easily imagine the Lions losing out over 17 games – but the truth is that such a level of incompetence isn’t easy. Having a go at an undefeated season requires a confluence of lucky breaks and external factors, so too does an winless year require a perfect storm (an imperfect storm?) of variables.

Since 2000, just five teams have gone on an 0-17 SU run and just two have suffered a winless season. (Thereby fair odds on any “[NFL Team] Goes Winless” proposition bet should start at around 670 to 1…) All those teams were worse than the 2021 Detroit Lions (NFLbets thinks) and none played a 17-game schedule.

Then there are the Steelers, who have eked out four straight wins against notables such as the no-offense Denver Broncos, the Seahwaks with a backup QB, the Browns with a crippled QB and the maybe-offense Bears. The truth is, with a wide (wide!) swathe of AFC teams hovering around limited playoff spots with 5 wins, the Steelers are not looking like a 6-3 team right now: Despite Najee Harris, these guys are somehow a bottom-5 rushing team and a bottom-10 scoring offense.

If any team needs a bye right now, it’s Pittsburgh.

Unless it’s Detroit: For all the failings of Jared Goff, he has one major upside: He’s now 4-1 SU/ATS lifetime coming off a bye week. The numbers are telling us truths and the rest we can imply: Take the Detroit Lions +6 at Pittsburgh and even take the Lions ML at 3/1 or better.

–written by Os Davis

Os Davis has been covering sports for longer than he’d care to admit. For personality, check his Twitter feed; for professional acumen, here’s his Linkedin profile.