NFL week 2 game scores, adjusted for point spreads

In week 2 of the 2022 NFL season, home teams went 8-8 against the spread (ATS). Favorites went 8-8 (or 7-8 if you got the Washington-Detroit game as a “pick ’em”) ATS. Overs only went 6-10 but clearly most defenses are ahead of their counterpart offenses right now. In summation, it was mostly business as usual – so why do so many of the individual results seem surprising?

Below runs the Official NFLbets ATS-Adjusted Scoreboard™, which runs down the week’s scoreboard adjusting for bettors. Note: Scores in bold denote those games in which the SU winner did not cover ATS.

• Los Angeles Chargers 24 at Kansas City Chiefs22½. In the NFL betting game, dogmatic thinking kills. And NFLbets’ belief that Kansas City – not Buffalo – gets to Super Bowl LVII through the AFC will be sorely tested if the Chiefs keep squeaking out the ATS wins while the Bills blow out opponents weekly.

• New York Giants 17½, Carolina Panthers 16
• New England Patriots 16 at Pittsburgh Steelers 14
• Tampa Bay Buccaneers 18½ at New Orleans Saints 10. NFLbets had the under in all of these games and was never close to feeling threatened of losing any of them. Again, until further notice, the combination of excellent defense and low-watt offense on these teams should have you covering the under in every game any of them play – excepting games against Buffalo, maybe…

• San Francisco 49ers 18, Seattle Seahawks 7. The same thing might be said about Seattle, except for the excellent defense part. And since we never tire of mentioning so, the 49ers have suddenly become a bona fide Super Bowl contender, as Jimmy Garoppolo is 31-14 SU as a starter for the Niners. He’s also 4-2 SU and 5-1 ATS in the playoffs, with the sole ATS loss coming in the Super Bowl against Kansas City. Again finding it hard to figure why Kyle Shanahan dislikes the dude so much…

• Miami Dolphins 42 at Baltimore Ravens 34½. Okay, so throwing for six touchdowns is pretty fucking amazing, but shouldn’t we have moved past “Tua has arrived” quite some time ago…? The man is 15-8 SU as a starting quarterback, including 7-5 for a team whose owner was trying to bribe the head coach to lose. Come on now…

• Houston Texans 9 at Denver Broncos 5½. NFLbets sometimes laughs at the distortions to traditional football scores when subtracting the pointspread from the favorite’s final score, but if any team played about 5½ points’ worth of football on Sunday, it was the Broncos.

• Green Bay Packers 17, Chicago Bears 10. NFLbets’ pick for the first team to go 1-16 in an NFL season is the 2022 Chicago Bears.

• New York Jets 31 at Cleveland Browns 23½
• Detroit Lions 34½, Washington Commanders 27. And from the Scoreboard Spinning Department, four teams that have served the league well as punchlines for most of the 21st century. These games may indicate that overs in Jets and Lions games might be worth a look going forward, particularly against teams with suspect defenses and/or coaching.

• Atlanta Falcons 27 at Los Angeles Rams 20½. Possible freakshow team in the NFL in 2022: the Falcons, sitting at an expected 0-2 SU but a costly (for a lot of bettors) 2-0 ATS. Next week, they’re at Seattle before returning to double-digit pointspreads vs Cleveland, at Tampa Bay and vs San Francisco…

• Jacksonville Jaguars 24, Indianapolis Colts -4. Lades and gentlemen, your AFC South-leading Jacksonville Jaguars (1-1 SU/ATS)!

• Arizona Cardinals 29 at Las Vegas Raiders 19½. After a miraculous cover of the over with a 16-0 fourth quarter culminating in a 2-point conversion from 8 yards out with no time remained followed by a fumble-six in OT, NFLbets will no longer say a bad word about the Cardinals, Kyler Murray or Kliff Kingsbury again – or until they’re back to burning us next week…

• Dallas Cowboys 20, Cincinnati Bengals 10½. Other shoe dropped: Dak Prescott is out.

• Buffalo Bills 31, Tennessee Titans 7. So how quickly did believing the Titans could backdoor-cover a 10-point spread burn out for you? With this loss, Mike Vrabel surely leapfrogged Kingsbury in the “First Coach Fired” sweepstakes. Leading the pack is of course Matt Ruhle.

• Philadelphia Eagles 21½, Minnesota Vikings 7. In the matchup of preseason vogue Super Bowl picks, NFLbets’ choice got stomped. All well, lots of football yet to play… 

– written by Os Davis