Ready for some football: Betting Buffalo Bills -2½ at Los Angeles Rams

The long wait is over – and even though talking of football season being played while the temperature hovers around 100°F, as expected in L.A. for the first Thursday Night Football game of 2022, namely…

Buffalo Bills +2½ at Los Angeles Rams, over/under 52 points

Despite the wild rollercoaster ride this point spread has taken since first released – from Rams -2 to PK to Buffalo -1 and finally Buffalo -2½, NFLbets has a pretty good idea how we’re betting this TNF. (As should most proper NFL bettors by now.)

First, though, a brief look at some trends on opening-day Thursday since 2002, when the league began the tradition.

• On opening day Thursday through 2021, favorites are 14-5 SU and 9-6-4 ATS;

• home teams are 16-3 SU and 11-4-4 ATS, and only twice has the home team lost SU and ATS in a week 1 TNF game: The New England Patriots against Kansas City in 2017 and the Chicago Bears against Green Bay in ’19;

• defending Super Bowl champions are an insane 14-1 SU/9-3-3 ATS in this game; and

• over/unders infuriatingly split 9-9-1 on week 1 TNF.

Most NFL bettors probably realize that all the action on Buffalo in this game is directly related to all the preseason hype this team is getting as favorite to win Super Bowl LVII. Going by the trends of past years, then, the Bills bandwagon has driven up this line high enough to compare them to the 2017 Kansas City Chiefs, i.e. they’re be the visiting team stomping the defending champions after falling short the previous season in the playoffs.

So … are the ’22 Bills analogous to the ’17 Chiefs? Perhaps, except these Bills aren’t upgrading to a superstar QB this season and may have even taken a half-step back this past offseason. Let’s therefore be a bit more rational and reasonable, and assume instead that the ’22 Bills more resemble, likesay, the ’21 Bills. And those Bills went 11-6 SU, including 2-4 against playoff teams and a loss in week 1.

And incidentally, the Rams are pretty good, too, and probably not deserving of a lot of disrespect from bettors. Take the Los Angeles Rams +2½ vs Buffalo.