How to bet the two TD point spread, part 1: Buffalo Bills -13 at New York Jets

What gives with the bookmakers in week 9? To date in 2022, just two games opened the betting week with point spreads of 13 or more points; this week, we had three such lines. Thursday Night Football kicked off with a line of Philadelphia Eagles -13½ at Houston Texans, ending up in an Eagles SU win and a Texans ATS win. For Sunday Night Football, bettors can ponder Tennessee Titans -13 at the Kansas City Chiefs. Plummeting from a spread of Bills -13 is the line of this intradvisional matchup:

Buffalo Bills -11 at New York Jets, over/under 47 points

This line shed a good two points going into Sunday, perhaps due to hype on the Jets, plus the fact that 13 points is a lot of points for any NFL team to be giving another – TNF gave us an immediately-recent example as the league’s sole undefeated team simply took the foot off the pedal most of the game against arguably the NFL’s worst in Houston Texans.

And in the longer term, the difficulty of covering massive point spreads is well borne out: Since 2013, underdogs of 13½ points are a predictable-enough 11-84 SU, but an up-to-spec 49-45-1 ATS. Such big underdogs at home in the same timespan are a more realistic 8-9-1 ATS. Dropping this line 2 points puts the already-impressive Bills into a strange sweet spot because, dddly enough (so to speak), oddsmakers become terrible at picking games after the ’spread hits double-digits. In the past 10 seasons, underdogs of 11½ points or more are 69-81-1 ATS. Put another way: Since 2013, underdogs of 11½ to 13 points are 20-36 ATS for a winning percentage of .357.

Meanwhile, here’s yet another weird fact about the 2022 season: Just 36 of 123 games – or about 29.25% – have been decided by more than 13 points in 2022. Last season, 102 of 272 regular-season games ended up in such a victory, representing a 37.5%; and in ’19 (we’re skipping over the bizzarry of Covid-strangled 2020), the percentage of blowouts was nearly 48.5%!

So with all of the trends on the Super Bowl favorite’s side, we turn to the injury reports, where LBs Von Miller and Matt Milano are listed as “questionable” for the Bills (though Miller will likely play) and S Jordan Poyer is out. But the Jets are coming in with a passing offense that’s produced nine TDs versus eight interceptions anyway – and they’ve got bigger problems in this regard regardless: Namely, as of Saturday, RB James Robinson, brought over from the Jacksonville Jaguars to improve a bottom-10 rushing attack, is a gametime decision.

And all that hype on the Jets must not preclude a certain amount of figuring for smoke and mirrors: The Jets may be 1-3 SU/ATS overall, but they’re 1-3 SU/ATS against teams currently at .500 or better, with the sole SU/ATS win coming against the Miami Dolphins with Skylar Thompson at quarterback.

These Jets against the no. 1 scoring offense in the NFL? Yeah, NFLbets will have to go chalk – especially at “only” 11 points. Take the Buffalo Bills -11 at New York.

– written by Os Davis